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Author Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread  (Read 1212912 times)

Frumple

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4950 on: March 06, 2013, 07:46:34 am »

Apparently 'cause they signed a contract related to such things in order to be hired. Whether the contract itself is legal, hell if I know. Don't think it's illegal yet for private schools/private business in general, but I know similar such things have been knocked down over the years (used to be something like that for public school teachers, ferex, which I think was busted at some point.). It probably varies from state to state.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4951 on: March 06, 2013, 08:03:47 am »

They then offered the job to the man who got her pregnant.

This makes me want to make THESE fuckers lose their jobs. Privileged hypocrits. I can understand maintaining your ideals in a faith based school. But this makes it clear this wasn't an issue about that, it was just an attempt to fuck some poor woman over, a blatant show of contempt and vileness in the part of the authorities responsible. They aren't even trying to hide the fact.

* GlyphGryph simmers angrily
« Last Edit: March 06, 2013, 08:11:01 am by GlyphGryph »
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Leafsnail

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4952 on: March 06, 2013, 08:33:12 am »

There are some states where you can just fire someone arbitrarily ("right to work" states), and in those any kind of anti-discrimination in the workplace laws would be meaningless.
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SalmonGod

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4953 on: March 06, 2013, 08:58:23 am »

There are some states where you can just fire someone arbitrarily ("right to work" states), and in those any kind of anti-discrimination in the workplace laws would be meaningless.

Yeah, I live in one of those :(

As far as I'm aware, FMLA is literally the only right I have as a worker here.  And if they ever get sick of me making use of that supposed right, they can just fire me without even having to provide an excuse.  I know multiple people who have been fired just for getting sick a single time.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4954 on: March 06, 2013, 09:45:25 am »

There are some states where you can just fire someone arbitrarily ("right to work" states), and in those any kind of anti-discrimination in the workplace laws would be meaningless.
Right to Work states are ones that prevent union security agreements. You're thinking of at-will employment.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
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Leafsnail

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4955 on: March 06, 2013, 09:49:34 am »

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've heard the two used interchangeably though
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Reelya

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4956 on: March 06, 2013, 12:01:26 pm »

Peronally I'd glad to see Chávez gone, although I'm still pessimistic about Venezuela's future. The man was a demagogue, corrupt as all hell, who ruined what used to be one of the richest and best-off South American nations, despite sitting on tons of oil. His replacement will likely be more of the same. Nonetheless, I'm seeing a lot of happy posts on facebook from friends I made while studying abroad in South America.

WTF? He multiplied the GDP by about 4 times, whilst bringing inflation below 30% for the first time in decades (it averaged 52% in the 1990s). They had year-on-year growth rivalling China during 2004-2008.

Yeah, he ruined it into becoming one of the fastest-growing countries in Latin America, whilst lowering infant mortality and bringing rampant income inequality to near-western European levels, and giving them one of the highest minimum wages in South America (with unemployment actually lower than the USA).

Meanwhile, inequality in neighboring countries like Colombia has increased even further during the period of Chavez's governance.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2013, 12:04:43 pm by Reelya »
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Quote
No Gods, No Masters.

Reelya

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4958 on: March 06, 2013, 12:08:57 pm »

Quote
I did not support you because you had led a coup against president Carlos Andres Pérez. I didn't like Pérez, but he was elected by our people and attempting to overthrow him was proof that you did not respect the will of Venezuelans.

1. President Perez was a mass-murderer, and Chavez's coup against him actually is what made him popular in the first place. The army coup leaders in 1992 were opposed to the current government because that government was ordering troops to fire on peaceful demonstrators. A little context is always nice ;D :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracazo

The lack of context given about this basic fact pretty much discredits the writer, as a whole.

Quote
I knew that the Cuban doctors in the slums were unprepared and unequipped
Bullshit, Cuban doctors are some of the best-trained in Latin America, if not the best outside advanced-nations. They brought the infant-mortality rate way down. Very nit-picking tone, and sounds like playing on xeno-phobia. The cuban doctors program multiplied the total number of medical professionals in Venezuela by about 12 times, according to Mark Weisbrot of the CEPR.

Also, the "in the slums" line suggests the writer is biased against the poor people who make up a large segment of the Venezuelan citizenry. Those people got exactly ZERO health-care coverage before 1999.

Quote
2. Your disrespect for the rule of law and your contribution to a climate of impunity in Venezuela. In 1999, you re-wrote the Constitution to fit your needs,

factually incorrect, they had a referendum on constitutional change, which passed. then an election of delegates to a constitutional convention, who drafted the new constitution, THEN another referendum at which the public voted on the new constitution.

Plus, the new 1999 constitution actually wrote that further constitutiuonal changes require a referendum. Previous to this, the constitution could be changed by a decree of congress without a public vote. You won't find ANY reference to a referendum before Chavez came into office, because they were 100% initiated by Chavez. Also, the 1999 constitution is what created "recall elections" for the president and other officials. e.g. look up the recall election in 2006 which tried to oust Chavez. That wouldn't have been possible AT ALL before the 1999 constitution.

So, the constitutional changes actually limited the powers of the government and gave more say to the people in how future laws are formed.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/indicators/2009

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Quote
Your hypocrisy on democracy. Your favorite insult for the opposition parties in Venezuela was "coupists",
Well, you will get that insult when you actually lead a coup, then the same names are the leaders in the opposition parties after the coup as the guys who signed the coup-declaration...

Quote
And yet you decided to throw it away on corruption and buying elections and weapons.

^ This is where you really know the guy is full of shit. Arms spending actually fell as a percentage of GDP since Chavez came to power.

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If you had used these resources well, 10.7% of Venezuelans would not be in extreme poverty.

Hmmm. what about the 25+% lving in extreme poverty BEFORE Chavez came to power?

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you denied access to foreign currency for newspapers to buy printing paper (regular citizens can't access foreign currency unless you authorize it),
This is complete bullshit. You can buy as much foreign money as you like on the unregulated market. But the exchange-rate is subsidized if you go to the government-run market, e.g. you get better than market rate worth of US Dollars for your Venezuelan money. Like about 5-times higher Because of this, people were scamming the system by exchanging all the bolivars to dollars, selling the dollars on the black market then buying more dollars. So they put a "per person" quota on how much you can exchange per year like this. So the exchange rate is subsidized, but there's a quota per person (the system would break without the quota due to scamming).

Go look up the articles, people bitching about the subsidized rates existing, then bitching that they can't get more of the subsidized dollars.


Quote
You shut down more than 30 radio and television stations

Well, a little context again:

Quote
The head of Venezuela's Conatel telecommunications agency, Diosdado Cabello, said the radio broadcasters were among a group of 240 stations that recently failed to update their registrations, let their concessions expire or possessed licenses that had been granted to an individual who is now deceased.

Plus, the only TV channel named in the news reports is RCTV who openly coordinated the 2002 coup (in which opposition supporters were quite clearly shot and killed by their own side to justify the coup - the coup generals pre-recorded their outrage to the shootings several hours before it occured). It's discussed on this video from SBS News Australia, 5 minutes in (watch at least 1 minute):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Uqx_mkhPs
« Last Edit: March 06, 2013, 12:54:28 pm by Reelya »
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4959 on: March 06, 2013, 12:53:50 pm »

Yeah, Chavez wasn't exactly perfect, but I don't think any national leader ever was. It's hard to argue that he didn't introduce a ton of positive changes to Venezuela, and from everything I've read he was way better than the other options available and that's why he got re-elected. Most of the bad things I've heard and read about him later turned out to be entirely bereft of context or completely made up.

He was given a tough situation and did really well with it and made it work, and it's unsurprising he was as popular as he was. Maybe he should have retired instead of considering running forever, but hey, FDR is still seen pretty favorably, isn't he?

I just hope the country can continue doing even better moving forward. Chavez seems to have given them a much needed and strong foundation to work from, despite his various flaws.
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Reelya

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4960 on: March 06, 2013, 12:57:18 pm »

the problem is that sources like the one that MetalSlimeHunt linked, just aren't credible, if i can find 10+ things wrong (backing up my stuff with citations) with his "10 reasons to hate chavez", then it really casts doubt on the stuff i don't have time to look into. Certainly there are some legitimate criticisms, but there's clearly a massive smear-campaign on top of that making rational discussion of Chavez's shortcomings almost impossible to conduct.

e.g. Did ya hear about Chavez's "motorbiker army" that was supposedly going to turn Venezuela into Zimbabwe or something?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

here's an example of media-bias against Venezuela via "The Guardian", showing it's been greenlighted to present a completely nonsensical set of "facts" totally at odds with public record, as long as those facts are negative.

BTW funny how they like to make a big deal out of Chavez having trade links with Russia and China. Doesn't everyone including the USA have massive trade links with them? Also, Venezuela has signed trade deals with dozens of other countries, too. Why single them out? Baseless muck-raking.

also, just about everyone in South America is supportive of Cuba (I think Brazil actually gives them more aid that Venezuela, at least they did for a while), so yet again it's just grandstanding to single out that relationship.

EDIT: Oh this is a "gem" I missed from MetalSlimeHunt's link :D :

Quote
When the opposition won the referendum that would have allowed you to change the Constitution in 2007, you disavowed the results and you figured out a way to change the articles and allow yourself to be reelected as many times as you wanted

How he "figured out a way to change the articles" after the first referendum failing is the sneaky method of rewriting the proposals and having ... another referendum. (Like if you didn't get elected the first time, you came up with the "sneaky" method of revising your platform and running again in the next election. how undemocratic) Which you're clearly not meant to check for yourself.

BTW Chavez wouldn't have needed any referendum under the old rules from before he was elected...

Clearly the whole article relies on the reader being ill-informed of dates and events.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2013, 01:56:11 pm by Reelya »
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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Nadaka

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Leafsnail

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4963 on: March 06, 2013, 10:31:03 pm »

It's nothing of the sort really.  It's just a report that reminds the EU it voted yes on a porn ban resolution back in 1997.

The fact that that resolution has been sitting around for 16 years with no action taken should be some indication of how likely this is to actually become legislation.  I think "We need to ban pornography" is like the EU equivalent of "We need to stop Israel from building any more settlements on the west bank"
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread
« Reply #4964 on: March 06, 2013, 10:51:26 pm »

It's still some bullshit, though. What happened to you, Europe? You were supposed to be the land of rampant sexuality and social permissiveness, but now you look positively puritan next to the US.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Quote
No Gods, No Masters.
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