Study: The Top 10 Most Corrupt States (via FreakOutNation)
A new study by researchers at Indiana University and City University of Hong Kong identifies the most corrupt and least corrupt states in the United States. It also calculates that government corruption costs American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars…
Hobby Lobby fired an employee yesterday for divorcing her husband without company approval.
33-year old Jennifer Silverton of Scottsdale, Ariz., spent seven years as a cashier at the arts and crafts retail giant and was promoted to assistant manager just two weeks ago.
However, her employment was abruptly terminated for reasons of “moral laxity” after upper management learned she had divorced her husband two months ago after six years of marriage.
“My ex-husband Brad has a severe drinking problem,” she explained to the Scottsdale Times. “I tried very hard to make our marriage work, but towards the end he became increasingly violent. After my daughter was born, I decided that I just couldn’t be in that kind of environment anymore.
“I never expected filing for divorce would affect my job. But here I am. Unemployed. They told me it was for religious reasons, whatever that means. I just hope I can find something soon. I’m already late on my rent this month.”
“My ex-husband Brad has a severe drinking problem,” she explained to the Scottsdale Times. “I tried very hard to make our marriage work, but towards the end he became increasingly violent. After my daughter was born, I decided that I just couldn’t be in that kind of environment anymore.
“I never expected filing for divorce would affect my job. But here I am. Unemployed. They told me it was for religious reasons, whatever that means. I just hope I can find something soon. I’m already late on my rent this month.”
…“But unfortunately this fornicator refused to take the Christian path. Why should we be forced to employ some hussy who bounces around from one man to the next? Maybe if she had performed her wifely duties properly, her husband wouldn’t have needed to drink so much.
”Look, the Bible doesn’t even specifically mention contraception. But Luke 16:18 tells us that divorce is as bad as adultery, which is in the Ten Commandments. That’s why we had to let her go. We couldn’t let her rotten moral core corrupt all the other employees.”
Most people I know who were lucky enough to get raises got only one or two percent:
NEW YORK (AP) — If you hope to get a raise that finally feels like one, it helps to work in the right industry.
Pay for all kinds of workers should be rising by this point in the economy’s recovery. But five years after the Great Recession officially ended, raises remain sharply uneven across industries and, as a whole, have barely kept up with prices. Overall pay has been rising about 2 percent a year, roughly equal to inflation.
The best raises have gone to workers with specialized skills in a few booming industries — energy, transportation, health care, technology. Those in retail or government have been less fortunate.
“If you’re in an in-demand field, with the right skill set, the chance of getting a raise is much higher,” says Katie Bardaro, an economist at PayScale, a pay-tracking firm.
http://youtu.be/0yfoVrsZl1k
Mitch McConnell blocked Elizabeth Warren’s student loan bill, so she’s going to Kentucky to campaign for his opponenet, Alison Lundergan Grimes. She’s raising money for her, too.
Ha ha! Let’s see if we can’t take down another member of the GOP leadership!
Another great Richard Thompson song, done by Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt:
http://youtu.be/tz0ZsJHC4qs
JD Souther and Matraca Berg:
Marti Jones with a John Hiatt song:
William K. Black with a long, long piece about a topic near and dear to my heart. Here’s an excerpt:
Theft of Food Aid in Somalia
The massive thefts of food aid in Somalia, primarily by the dominant clan, have worked just like Heyne predicted. As a result, Somalia is a true utopia. (It is also an NRA paradise in which because nearly everyone has an automatic weapon the streets are perfectly safe.) The reality of course is the same as what I described above in my discussion of thefts from Doctors Without Borders – except that thefts of food aid have caused far more deaths and widespread malnutrition. As with Heyne’s tale of economists’ invariably false predictions about voting based on a primitive misunderstanding of incentives the common denominator is that theoclassical economists are terrible at understanding the true nature of human incentives. The very thing that theoclassical economists claim to the defining element of their approach to predicting behavior, understanding incentives, turns out to be a great weakness.
Iraq: a similar ode to “privatization” via theft becomes a nightmare
As I write, Sunni Iraqi extremists have taken over Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, Tikrit, much of Falluja, and key facilities in a key oil city. This is eleven years after President Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” propaganda event on an aircraft carrier. One of the primary reasons that the U.S. occupation turned into a strategic disaster for Iraq and the U.S. is that the Bush administration took Heyne’s approach to epidemics of the theft from the Iraqi and U.S. governments. They treated epic thefts of state assets as “privatization” – and assumed it made Iraq’s government, society, and economy stronger.
Continue reading “‘Theoclassical economists are basically immoral’”
http://youtu.be/OlJVx7MgZpc
She was an amazing actress and an astounding human being. With her husband Ozzie Davis, she was a prominent civil rights activist.
Here she is in Raisin in the Sun:
