Expert Compliance Insights & Tips for Businesses

June 3, 2009

37 view(s)

Stress of Global Recession Leading to Weird Results

Actually, I'm not sure if what I'm going to write about has anything to do with either stress or global economic blues, but it must be indicative of something. (Now, I know I should be writing about Government Motors and the new Pelosi GTX, or even about health care deform, but this looked too good to pass up.) According to the Wall Street Journal and a Japanese culture writer named Lisa Kata...

June 2, 2009

68 view(s)

Income Distribution (and Taxes) in the United States

income distribution IRS taxation

I found this (now-purloined) graph prepared by an economist writing about health care in the United States in the New York Times. His purpose was much different than mine. I'm reproducing it to show how politicians blatantly lie every time they say they're going to tax the wealthy and leave the middle class alone. Yeah, right. All the money is in the middle, as the graph clearly shows (totals i...

June 1, 2009

49 view(s)

Duelling Memos: Baucus and Kennedy Go Head to Head

Health Care Reform

This past week saw Ted Kennedy and his Senate Committee on Health (and a zillion other things) issue a paper on how the Massachusetts Senator envisions America's new health care system. Now, his counterpart over in Senate Finance, Senator Max Baucus of Montana, has joined the fray with his own paper on the subject. Actually, there's not much difference in the two, but Baucus reveals some juicy...

May 27, 2009

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EEOC Sues Strip Club for Firing 56-Year-Old Waitress

strip club waitress

I stumbled upon this attorney's employment law blog that focuses on the bizarre, humorous and unusual in case law (Wal-Mart execs dressed in drag and filmed at a meeting, for instance). On his site, CurrentEmployment.net, Tim Eavenson brings up the tale of a lawsuit filed this past week by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against a strip club that burned to the ground--two ye...

May 25, 2009

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Lawyers Seek Own Bailout Through Tort Reform

tort reform trial lawyers

It was kind of hard to capture what I'm trying to say in one short headline (title), but basically the trial lawyers of America are going around knocking on the doors of statehouses and legislators everywhere to expand liability laws, so they can rack up increased litigation--and paychecks. It's what Tiger Joyce of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel calls the "litigation industry's stimulus pla...

May 24, 2009

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In This VAT, There Be Billions

value-added tax VAT

Scrambling to come up with money (i.e., take it from us taxpayers), Congress and the White House are experiencing a taxing time figuring out sources of revenue that won't have serious political repercussions. One that is almost sure to be enacted in the name of "healthcare reform" (since when did health care become one word?) is a tax on employer-provided health benefits, which will probably b...

May 18, 2009

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Countrywide Leads the List of Top 25 Bandits

Countrywide

I don't usually agree with AlterNet, which is generally a left-leaning (to say the least) site, but The Center for Public Integrity has a well-reasoned piece on "The Bad Guys of Subprime Lending Are Raking in Bailout Billions." The article details the woeful and sordid spectacle of non-banks (for the most part) dishing out $1.4 trillion in subprime (paradoxically, actually meaning higher than...

May 14, 2009

69 view(s)

Heritage Foundation Asks, 'What Employer Advantage?' | WWC

EFCA unions

James Sherk, writing for the Heritage Foundation, has challenged the assertion that current union organizing laws favor the employer over the organizers. He makes these points, and I'm taking the liberty to quote his text directly: In fact, as I have written before, labor law heavily tilts the scales in favor of unions during organizing drives:* Unions control the election timing, so workers d...

May 12, 2009

51 view(s)

British Doctor Warns of Human Toll from U.S. Health Care Reform

health care health care rationing

The British organization going by the acronym of NICE is anything but when it comes to its role in policing health care in the United Kingdom. It routinely denies the use of drugs that the United States and European nations rely on to prolong and save lives from chronic diseases such as cancer. NICE stands for the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, Britain's model for what Obama and c...

May 6, 2009

41 view(s)

EFCA Sponsors Says Card Check May Go Bye-Bye

card check EFCA Tom Harkin

Senator Tom Harkin, D.-Iowa, says compromise is in order to save the Employee Free Choice Act, specifying that the card check provision will no doubt have to be dropped. "Compromises are going to be made," said Harkin, 69. "It probably won't be card check [as part of the final law], because too many people are opposed to it now." Card check allows organizers to unionize a c...

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