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August 25, 2009 03:32 PM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 46 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.”

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Comments

46 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread

  1. Finally found Color of Change’s press releases for the Glenn Beck campaign.

    Companies not advertising on the Racist Nutjob Cavalcade:

    Airware Inc. (makers of Brez anti-snoring aids), Allergan (maker of Restasis), Ally Bank (a unit of GMAC Financial Services), Ancestry.com, AT&T, Best Buy, Blaine Labs Inc., Broadview Security, Campbell Soup Company, Clorox, ConAgra, CVS, Ditech, The Elations Company, Experian (creator of FreeCreditReport.com), Farmers Insurance Group, GEICO, Johnson & Johnson (makers of Tylenol), Lawyers.com, Lowe’s, Men’s Wearhouse, NutriSystem, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, RadioShack, Re-Bath, Roche, SC Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Sargento, Sprint, State Farm Insurance, Travelocity, The UPS Store, Verizon Wireless, and Wal-Mart.

    Still on the shit list:

    Red Lobster and Vonage.

    1. What can be done to force educate these owners that mandates and taxes won’t bankrupt them — somebody call Geithner!!

      Small-business owners say no mandates, others say fuck you pay up

      http://www.denverpost.com/ci_1

      Three key issues

      Health care proposals that have small-business owners talking:

      # A mandate that every business, except for the tiniest ones (some proposals have said fewer than 25 employees) must offer employee health benefits.

      # An 8 percent penalty tax on businesses that don’t offer insurance, presumably to help fund a public insurance option.

      # A push by some small- business owners to detach health insurance from employment. This idea hasn’t made it into national legislation.

      Hey I got am idea … let let employee service organizations like the SEIU outsource healthcare for the employer and only give them the cross state buying power and national plan exemptions!

      No doubt Libertad will be left wondering were is my paycheck positive public option … I’m counting on that to cover the increased taxes I’ll be paying for bi partisan Obamacare.  

      1. under 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and what about contractors … do they count as PT or FT employees or not?

        If we work it just right HR departments could add 50% more employees just to account for the mandate tracking and compliance; trial lawyers would have a windfall of planiff opportunities and … much easier to go single payer, fuck the insurance sector, squeeze the rich doctors/nurses and force a mandate on all Americans.

        1. usually I ignore you and your tiresome screeds just as I would a man on the street with his pants around his ankles yelling “get these spiders off of me.”

          However, your recent behavior has really become irksome and beyond my ability to ignore.

          Please, for the love of what ever you hold dear, read what you are writing before you hit post and ask yourself “would a sane person post this on this thread?” then go find a link to evidence and avoid the tiresome video propaganda which has no factual content.

      2. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/

        At Chuck Grassley’s town hall meeting. He also said, “The president of the United States, that’s who you should be concerned about. Because he’s acting like a little Hitler.”

        Why can’t the left be more civil like these people? (And yes, we’re all top-posters now.)

  2. I waited till today so the impact of the example was lessened. I posted an auto-play on Monday’s open thread to compete with Libertad’s.

    Note to Pols – if you don’t want this to become the future of comments here – please delete any comments with autoplay.

    1. We can’t have autoplay wars, agreed. We try to keep track of all threads going but need all the help we can get with this–send us email when you see things that require immediate attention.

              1. Lets you know if anything regrettable is about to be posted. Gives you a moment to decide, “is this really what I want?”

                Come to think of it, works for regrettable plain text too.

  3. from HuffPo

    The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That’s the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking.

  4. From the Denver Post:

    • Eliminating 59 beds for mental health patients at a facility in Fort Logan and closing a 32-bed facility in Grand Junction that cares for patients with developmental disabilities, including some described as “medically fragile,” saving an estimated $2.3 million;

    • Cutting $4.5 million from a program that gives $200 monthly stipends to disabled people waiting to receive Social Security benefits.

    For $6.8 million the cuts seems kind of harsh.  

    I have coached special olympics basketball at the Regional center in GJ (originally the Indian School).  The clients there arer in need of 24 hour care.  They cannot communicate nor wipe their mouths.  It is a sad situation and now the familes must find a new location to house these clients.  

    Why can’t we end the Natural Program at DNR? Why can’t we merge the police forces at Parks and Wildlife?  Why can’t we streamline the purchasing process for the State?  Why can’t we eliminate 1% accross the board of management positions?  

    Why do we avoid offending state employees and pick on the most vulnerable?  

    This is truly sad and shows again a lack of leadership at the state level.  

    1. Why can’t we streamline the purchasing process for the State?

      ‘Cuz they haven’t purchased Windward Reports…

      Shameless plug for Dave…

      1. btw – thank you for the nice plug 🙂

        I think even more important than streamlining is for them to look at what they buy and determine if there are alternatives that either cost less or provide more.

        Getting people in the state to even look at an alternative is close to impossible (in the case of OIT it is impossible). There’s a reasonable amount of savings that could be had there.

      2. All I know is for a State Parks Ranger to build a budgeted cabin he/ she must:

        1. Bid it out.

        2. Decide who to use and develop contracts.

        3. Contracts go to Park Manager.

        4. Contracts go to Parks Region Manager.

        5. Contracts go to Parks HQ at 1313 Sherman

        6. Contracts go to Ex Dir at DNR.

        7. Contracts go to AG

        8. Contract goes to State Comptroller.

        Oh, the Ranger might have already buildt the same cabin five times previously.  

        1. where it appears to really break down is high-tech purchases. It’s open bid, but the software product is defined in the bid request – so you can buy Microsoft Windows from the low bidder – but it will be Microsoft as the publisher.

    2. what did you think that meant? The Governor did as best as he could given the circumstances of the budget, and if the Republicans were in power then the cuts would have been deeper and more widespread.

      If you care as deeply about these services as  you seem to, then why not support removing the $320 million severance tax credit for the O&G industry. I can guarantee Josh Penry won’t be too pleased about it, but if he and you were more interested in protecting the most vulnerable and not in scoring political points off of our weak Governor, then you might seriously consider it.

      There exist alternatives to these cuts, but they’re not what Republicans (and some Democrats) want to hear. They involve creating new sources of revenue, or diverting old ones.

      But for you to claim that these cuts are a failure on Ritter’s part, when the Republican leadership was talking about much more brutal, widespread cuts, it’s more than a bit disingenuous.

    3. Um, you shouldn’t cherry pick your data point. Today came news that the governor is increasing the number of state employee jobs that are being eliminated. That is in addition to the 4-day furlough that state employees are facing this year.

      Another thing you are missing is that even with these cuts, state support for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled is higher today than when Bill Owens left office in a strong economy.  

  5. from KRDO we have:

    COLORADO SPRINGS – Colorado Springs City Council is expected to vote 5-4 Tuesday to put on the ballot for the November municipal election a measure that will effectively strip the city’s own Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) of most of its complex wording and nuance, reducing it to a bare-bones law requiring voter approval of all future tax increases and extensions.

    If Colo Spgs votes to strip their local TABOR, can a constitutional change state-wide be far behind?

  6. Link.

    U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold told a large crowd gathered for a listening session in Iron County last week there would likely be no health care bill before the end of the year – and perhaps not at all.

  7. Rep. Parker Griffith [D], a former oncologist from Alabama, told a town hall

    meeting this week that Pelosi is too divisive to be speaker. “I would not vote for her [again],” he added. “Someone that divisive and that polarizing cannot bring us together.”

    Sorry. /gloating

  8. Seriously, guys…

    House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel , already beset by a series of ethics investigations, has disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets.

    Among the new items on Rangel’s amended 2007 financial disclosure report were an account at the Congressional Federal Credit Union worth at least $250,000, an investment account with at least $250,000, land in southern New Jersey and stock in PepsiCo and fast food conglomerate Yum! Brands. None of those investments appeared on the original report, which was filled out by hand and filed in May 2008.

    1. How the F*** do you mistakenly forget two accounts each worth a quarter-mil?  I wish I had that kind of money I could forget to file.

      However, while I think the failure to disclose these assets is dumb and a definite breach of disclosure requirements, it’s not like these non-disclosures are terribly meaningful in the overall scheme of things.  He was already well over the million dollar mark in declared assets, and he hasn’t made any decisions that were directly related to these accounts AFAICT.

      All in all, perhaps it’s best taken as a sign that it’s time to retire before he forgets more important things…

      1. The IRS would give you a pass on this if you did it, Phoenix.  Same with me.

        Not just the Chairman of Ways and Means.

        What a giant load of crap.

        1. .

          that was given to you to use your official position to benefit the folks who gave it to you.  

          I’m living as if I’m poor because I just can’t remember where I tucked all those donations away, myself.

          .

          1. When R’s support some kind of campaign finance reform, then I’ll take your anguished tales of quid pro quo a bit more seriously.

            Otherwise, it’s a mistake, not corruption, as you insinuate. If you can show some connection between these assets and favorable legislation, I’m all ears.

            And, y’know, I don’t recall much of a stir from the right when Cheney was busy writing energy plans and contracts that benefited his old friends at Haliburton….

        2. It’s about Senate disclosure filings.  Depending on how the accounts are set up, he may not have needed to report them to the IRS – or he may have actually reported them to the IRS and not reported them to the Senate.

          If I could say this was IRS tax fraud, I’d support his ouster rather than his retirement.

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