One of the most required, yet things that can’t be aforded easily.
Oh, if you’re working, have good wages, and actually have health insurance through your company…. maybe you’ll have a “cheap” rate…. but if you’ve got to get it on your own — watch out! Two years ago I got health insurance for the first time (by myself) in almost 6 years. Cost? $140/mo. Not bad eh? Just today I get a notice in the mail for the third or fourth increase in the past two years…. it’s now going to be almost $240/mo for the exact same coverage. BUT If I want to pay 20% more of all the bills, and have up to a $1000 deductable — I’ll save $50!
There’s some things in life that make you want to scream and force the politicians to get involved — like a “if you’re alive, you shouldn’t have to worry if you get sick” thing. The insurance I have now will be running me more money per year than the medical bills would run — yet if I don’t have it, and have so much as one medical visit, I’d have to come up with $750-5000 to pay for the bills (as, well, no insurance puts you in higher price brackets – despite it should be putting you in LOWER).
It’s a sad, sad thing where people can’t afford the health insurance, can’t afford to get sick, yet sometimes have conditions that require them to have health insurance….
While we just posted about the candidate sueing over them missing it, it’s also said on other places that they did file in time — well they filed with dummy candidates or something to be on the ballot, but not with the actual candidates, and they would update with the proper people. So the filing date actually doesn’t apply to any part holding a convention….. that holds power.
We’ll see… Actually we’ll see the case get taken to court, people realizing that this type of thing shouldn’t be done. Tons of people getting in an uproar, then it being brushed under the table in the wonderous mind-washing abilities of the mind-numbing speakers we call the establishment.
Right now the big thing is the hacked “Palin” yahoo e-mail account that was used for state business. Now while this is bad on many levels (from being able to hide and delete messages that otherwise would’ve been saved to just bad business practices all around), it just goes to show how sometimes people are either technologically “dumb” or just “smart” in a way that you’d never want them working for you.
It’s “dumb” in the sense that you should never do that. Personal E-mail is for just that: personal non-work related stuff (although I, being the president of a corporation, sometimes use a personal account for work things — it’s only when things sent with my work address seem to get “lost” [strange company name - it sometimes triggers spam filters when I first contact someone as it's an acronym]).
It’s “smart” in the way that it frees the people to do illegal activities without any accountability or records for the activities. So instead of the person being nailed for selling trade secrets (or illegal appropriations for funds), everyone think’s it’s all OK.
Which is it with Palin? Who really knows completely; although the latter will always be in the back of a person’s mind.
The problem with this happening, either with politicians or employees [which are really employees], is:
- it leads to the possibility for dishonest things happening with no ability to trace it
- it allows potential confidential information to be seen by third parties, archived or hacked with no proof it happened (imagine if yahoo/google/hotmail got hacked) or proof if yours was
- it allows information meant not to ever be disclosed to be sent, with no records it was
- it allows people to do illegal things without any papertrail (or electronic trail)
- it allows information to be removed sooner than it would be if done through proper channels
Basically, while it’s a good thing for personal communications — it’s a very bad thing for businesses —- even worse for governments as everything they do should be visible by the people.
Well I can’t say for certain, although it wouldn’t surprise me considering the difficulty in third parties getting on the ballot there, and the “two” parties seeming to think they’re not above the law, but are the law.
Nevertheless, Bob Barr Filed suit saying both parties missed the deadline and therefore shoudln’t be found on the ballot. Let’s be honest here, if there’s a deadline that all candidates need to abide by, and even if the major two parties don’t — too bad. It’s either the rule and guidelines for all, or it’s being used to intentionally block the other parties from having access to the people.
Now while I’m sure this is just a small-town thing really, but exactly what are the “democrat/republican” headquarters supposed to be doing? There’s a fairly good-sized republican headquarters in my town, it’s been “open” for quite a while now. Yet there’s almost never anyone in there. We’re talking that any given week — I might see some activity in or in front of it twice. And I can’t even guarentee that it’s for the headquarters as it’s right beside a florist’s.
So if anyone knows what they’re supposed to do, other than plaster all the republican signs in the window, please, tell me!
This is a spacer post — meaning we were either really busy this day, or we didn’t have time to actually post anything. While we normally just backdate posts, there are times where there’s just nothing other than “the same old stuff” that’s going on, or we’re just way too behind on other things.
For your potential interest:
http://digg.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
Want a job? Better hope you’ve got the same political, religious, and moral beliefs as the hiring manager. If not, they won’t hire you and it’s apparently legal. Discrimination is perfectly legal apparently if it’s listed as “job search” and can be covered under “moral conduct” or whatever term applies to social networking such as MySpace or Facebook. Granted they say it’s to do things such as check out drug use, trashing former employers, drinking too much, letting out trade secrets, etc — but you can’t say that if they discover you don’t believe in god, or just not Christian (or not whatever religion is popular in the company), it won’t adversely affect your chances of being hired.
Nothing new? Perhaps not, but it’s a fairly scary trend. And for a simple reasons really:
- Are you doing drugs? This kind of falls into a “if it doesn’t affect your work, it doesn’t really matter”. Just because someone says they smoke marijuana on their social site doesn’t mean they’ll show up to work stoned — nor does them not saying they smoke it mean they won’t. Do some hard stuff? Whatever happened to drug testing or background checks? Oh that’s right — that costs money and searching online doesn’t. I can tell you this, I’d much rather have a person that admits to using drugs working for me than someone who will lie about it — or worse yet be wanted for murder.
- Trash your ex boss/job? That’s horrible! Did your boss make passes at you? Maybe you were treated like the dog poo on the bottom of your shoe’s servant? Too bad! Can’t say anything bad about the company because that means you were a bad employee! Yeah, right. What it really says is you’re human and your prior job sucked. It also says that your company knows they treat people like crap and they don’t want the world to know.
- Drink too much? Oh this one’s obvious! What is “too much”? One drink a day? A case of beer a day? Maybe a pint a day? Perhaps it’s a glass a wine with every meal? Maybe “too much” means you say you’re drunk! But that doesn’t mean much. Some people are drunk from a single drink (or two), while others can down a bottle. Some people say “drunk” even when they’re not “drunk”. Can’t even judge this one by how many times you go to a bar — pregnant women can go to a bar every day of their pregnancy, it doesn’t mean they’re drinking. Even if a person is downing a bottle on camera, with the video posted online — it doesn’t mean anything for what they’re like overall.
- Letting out trade secrets? Well this one seems to be reasonable on the surface, but really doesn’t make too much sense overall. Even though I personally don’t think there’s anything that should be secret (some companies have “secrets” that are public knowledge and done by other companies), how would a company know if someone’s telling trade secrets unless they already know what the trade secrets are. You know, which means it’s apparently not a secret.
- Telling confidential info? Basically this is like the above, how do you know it’s confidential unless you already know — and if you already know it’s not that confidential.
- Inappropriate photos? What’s “inappropriate”? Some people don’t think anything of nudity. Some people don’t think anything of posting hunting photos. Some people don’t think anything of posting their wife posing by their new car in a bikini. Just because one person’s morals don’t align with another’s doesn’t make the one person wrong, and the other right. Yet… if they don’t match up you won’t get hired.
- Poor communication/written skills? This one is so funny overall it’s laughable! How many people really pay that much attention to what they’re writing to form complete well-thought-out-thoughts on their online space designed for friends and family? It’s for fun and to reunite yourself with lost friends and classmates (family/etc)! It’s not meant to be the next published paper in some journal. Don’t get me wrong, if I see someone’s blog that looks more like a text message than a website I’ll skip it. After all, “hi how r u?” gets annoying really quick — but I also won’t assume that they don’t know how to write, just they’re too used to texting people (or are a teenager). Of course if they’re talking like Yoda (and not a Star Wars or sci-fi based site), I’ll probably read into it. Or if they’re completely off with how they write (“high, are you doing alright? I’d question 4U.”) then I’d read into it.
- Unprofessional screename? This one, by far, is the worst possible reason not to hire someone…. Their username for their personal site for friends, family and lovers isn’t meant to be for professional use. Now if you get a resume with “hotchick_luv69″ or “stud4u” as the return e-mail for a submitted resume, that’s one thing (after all, e-mail accounts are free these days, and you should have at least one that’s your name) — but if they’re on a site for social things (a number use them for dating) there’s nothing wrong with them. Actually they’d be about right for that.
- You belong to “questionable” groups? Again…. It’s for personal and recreational use! Just because John and Mary visit a nude beach on their vacations doesn’t mean they don’t know how to handle money or anything else for that matter. And unless the person checks out the groups, they might get the wrong impression. Think “dog lovers anonymous” — I know where some of you just went with that, so might an employer, but if it’s actually a support forum for people who’ve lost a dog….
- Your personal site doesn’t look like a resume? And why should it? Generally it’s meant as a place to meet people, communicate with classmates, friends, family, etc — it’s not meant to be an “online resume” for job hunting. That’s what a resume is meant to be. For an employer to think that all employees need to follow the company’s (i.e. their) moral beliefs both at work and in their personal lives is wrong on so many levels it should be illegal.
It’s one of those things that people should be expected to act 24/7/365 the way the company wants their employees to act on the clock. If they want the employees to act and do things a certain way all the time – great! They should be paid overtime for the 128 hours a week they’re not at work yet are expected to conform to work standards. I’ll even give them a break, 88 hours a week overtime every week that way you get to dream however you want and the company doesn’t have to pay. As soon as companies demand that people act the way they want them to act all the time, you’ll run into a conformity-based society where everyone will think and do the same things because if they don’t they’ll die. But let’s face it: if you don’t have a social networking or website, you could be a serial killer nudist who rapes women while getting high on meth every day and you could get hired for being a “good moral person” because the company wouldn’t know otherwise — all while the woman who says she had a threesomes won’t get hired because she admits to it online.
Just something for employers to think about… just because you find something doesn’t mean anything. It’s not an invasion so much as they posted it willingly — but it is a tad bit discriminatory as you use something done off the clock to prevent a person from being hired (and you apply the same rules across the board).
With all the flooding going on now, and even a death being reported in Indiana from it, it just makes me wonder how much of this is just the normal life cycle of the planet in it’s position within the universe, and how much is caused by human error.
The one sad thing is, the flooding is around where the windmills (wind turbines) are located (well, more north I believe). It makes me hope that the windmills were built with flooding in mind — I’d hate for there to be problems while they’re still putting some up as it might kill any other towns from using them.
This is a spacer post — meaning we were either really busy this day, or we didn’t have time to actually post anything. While we normally just backdate posts, there are times where there’s just nothing other than “the same old stuff” that’s going on, or we’re just way too behind on other things.
For your potential interest:
http://digg.com/
http://www.opensecrets.org/
In the end, I really don’t care. Really I don’t. It’s just one of those things that’s absolutely hilarious when you think about it.
A woman who believes in teaching abstinence to everyone would most likely teach her offspring the same. Her offspring would’ve been raised to believe it from the start — and even shares genetic code with the mother (so, you know, would probably have a higher chance of having similar traits)…. yet she got pregnant and isn’t married. Why it’s funny is, despite her own beliefs not even working in her own family, she thinks it will work for people that, oh, haven’t been told that type of thing from the start.
