Check out our new fall colors
The leaves have yet to start turning here in the Northeast (even though we already had some frost the other night), but as you can see, we've got a splash of orange there in the left-hand column to let you know about the Fall Savings Sale at The Dagley Dagley Daily Souvenir Shoppe at CafePress.com. To celebrate the sale, we've added some new fall color images on two of the sale items, the long-sleeved T-shirt and the canvas tote bag. The travel mug is also on sale.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @12:00 PM
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4.10.03  |
House votes to protect overtime pay, and possibly their own jobs as well
Congratulations to all who contacted their Congressional representatives about the threats to overtime pay: Yesterday the House of Representatives voted 221-203 to uphold the Senate amendment protecting the right to overtime pay for millions of American workers. Now it's on to the White House, whose occupant in chief has already announced he'll veto the appropriations bill to which the overtime-protection amendment is attached. Several Republican Congresspeople defied their party's leader on the overtime issue, because they understand that ultimately they answer not to their party leader or any politician but to their own constituents.
Mr. Bush also has to answer to voters, so if you're one of those and you want to protect your right to overtime pay for overtime work, now is the time to speak up. If you're not registered to vote, you can fix that right here.
CEOs don't get overtime pay, but they manage to get by somehow on salaries (with benefits) that went up an average of 6 percent last year, even though the average stock price went down 23.4 percent, giving them an average compensation package of $10.83 million a year. Yes, they vote, too, but despite their disproportionate pay, their vote doesn't count any more than the votes of the people who work for them, something elected officials tend to forget, especially when they're collecting campaign contributions.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:26 PM
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3.10.03 |
Proposed solutions...
...to some of the most vexing problems facing us today.
Problem: Rush Limbaugh
Solution: Assign the commentator on color to get down there on the field like George Plimpton did and engage in some "participatory journalism." The NFL might need to grant him a special exemption from the rule against performance-enhancing drugs. He also might need a doctor's exam to make sure the affliction that kept him out of the Vietnam War is all better now.
Problem: Kim Jong Il of North Korea and his new nukes
Solution: This one's up to California voters. A) Elect him governor. When he goes through airport security on the way to Sacramento to accept the job, he won't be able to bring any weapons along. B) As soon as he's sworn in, recall him. Repeat as necessary or desired.
Problem: Threats to overtime pay from proposed changes to Labor Department regulations
Solution: Rename the Harkin amendment, already passed by the Senate, and now before the House (yesterday's scheduled vote on the question was postponed). Call it an amendment to ban "Partial Pay Workdays", and the House will pass it right away.
Problem: Outing of CIA operatives, thus crippling our efforts to thwart terrorists
Solution: Assign the investigation to a man for whom the primary suspect once worked as a campaign advisor, and meanwhile, station Robert Novak with a bullhorn to stand outside the White House saying, "Move along. Move along. Nothing to see here. Move along," until that investigation is completed. Just kidding: that's the current administration's solution. My proposed solution would be an independent investigation conducted by a trained, experienced prosecutor with no ties to the people involved, working on a fixed budget rather than the blank check that was given former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who incidentally had no previous criminal law experience when he got the assignment.
Problem: More than 43 million Americans with no health insurance
The government's solution: A growing number of the uninsured are also unemployed, those who are working either are employed but can't afford premiums, or are self-employed and can't buy insurance at any price. So the Department of Health and Human Services has come up with a plan to give those people tax credits, which might help some of those who are employed but can't afford premiums, that is if they're families with two parents, two children, and household incomes under $25,000, in which case they could get up to $3,000 in credits (with premiums around $1,000 per month for a family that size, that means that if they could find a plan that would take them, and if they could manage to pay $9,000 in premiums themselves, the government might chip in and pay 3 months' worth. But if they're not in a group plan, that insurance wouldn't cover any pre-existing conditions. An individual making up to $15,000 a year would be eligible for up to $1,000 in credits, which at the prices I've seen would cover two months' worth of premiums, maybe a bit more to buy a prescription. The individual would have to cover the other 10 months' worth, or $5,000 in premiums, out of that $15,000, and that would still not cover any pre-existing conditions. The unemployed would presumably get a break on the taxes they don't pay on the income they're not earning, and as for self-employed people with pre-existing conditions, they couldn't buy individual health insurance that would cover those conditions, not even if they won the lotto.
My solution: Single payer, universal health care, already available in most every other "developed" country in the world.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:42 PM
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2.10.03 |
Partly cloudy
From a photographer's point of view, cloudy days are better than cloudless ones, especially when the clouds are white and puffy and the skies are bright blue. Add a few sailboats, a few people fishing off the pier, and perhaps a passing ferry or even a garbage barge, and you've got another memorable view of Manhattan from Hoboken.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:35 PM
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1.10.03 |
Talking about baseball
That's what our representatives are doing right now in Congress. All the important stuff going on in the world, and they're going on and on about their favorite baseball teams, and one of them is even spending his time reading a list of some of the people who've played for his favorite team. And I'd turned the TV on in the first place in hopes of catching them voting on protection for overtime pay! Oops -- now they've gone on to another urgent matter: renaming a post office after Bob Hope. Fine, OK, do it. Next item on the agenda? There's no need to stand there and tell us Bob Hope's life history. Everybody knows who he was.
Yo! Congress! Did you people hear that 2.4 million have lost their health insurance since 2001? Did you know that brings the lowball estimate on the number of uninsured Americans to 43.6 million people? Do you realize that's more than 15 percent of the population?
Wow. The Congressperson telling her colleagues Bob Hope's life story is up to 1947. Only 56 years to go and then maybe they can vote and go onto more pressing matters. Uh-oh. She just went back to 1934. This is going to take all day.
Meanwhile, the press is on the trail of a really important story that Congress will probably get around to addressing at some point.
The vote on protecting overtime pay is scheduled for tomorrow, October 1. You might want to contact your Congressperson about that right away: or you might just want to call your representative and chat about baseball. As they say in the sports world, time is becoming a factor.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @3:47 PM
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30.9.03 |
Nature's freelancers
They don't have anything near the support system, resources, or benefits that garden vegetables or cultivated flowers do, but independent contractors are an important part of any ecosystem. These freelancers are eking out a living clinging to the piers along the Hoboken waterfront.
Many of them can be good for what ails you, although they often get blamed for things that aren't their fault.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:59 PM
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29.9.03 |
Union maid, part 4: Why gaming is not my game
I didn't bet a dime in Las Vegas, and to answer the question I've heard most frequently about that since I got on the plane to come home, no, I wasn't even tempted. My friends who do gamble from time to time say I'm lucky that the one time I did try putting a quarter in a slot machine, 20 years or so ago at a Nevada gas station during a brief stop on a long cross-country trip, I didn't win. To me, it was kind of like trying to use a Russian pay phone: you put the money in, nothing happens. You bang on the side, nothing happens: your money's gone, and for what?
It's just as well, my gamer friends say, that I've never experienced the thrill of wagering a pittance and collecting a bonanza. They tell me that if I had, it might not be so easy for me to resist taking a chance, just once, and taking along with it the chance that I might win a cupful of change and then finally feel the rush they were talking about. Some expected that my resistance would be worn down during four days in a casino hotel, surrounded by the flashing lights and siren songs of the one-armed bandits, that maybe, when I thought nobody was looking (a ludicrous concept in a casino!), I might pull a coin or a twenty out of my purse and just see what happened.
But when I walked through the gaming areas on my way to my room or to our meetings or to breakfast, it wasn't so much the lights and whistles I noticed, but the sad expressions on the faces of the people peering so intently into those machines. When I followed my friends into the human-operated gambling areas, I didn't see much in the way of opportunity, except the union jobs held by those employed there. I admired the precisely choreographed movements of the blackjack dealers, couldn't help but notice the roulette wheels spinning in my peripheral vision. I was impressed by the perfect physical specimens sashying past with trays of temptation, whispering a word you rarely hear outside places like this: "Cocktails? Cocktails?"
Mostly, what I saw was people reaching into their wallets and purses over and over to pull out cold hard cash and hand it over to someone who would stuff it into a hole in the table, where neither player nor dealer could ever get to it again. From time to time, I did see a dealer shove a few extra chips in the direction of a player, but only once did I see that lucky player pocket those chips and walk away. If I closed my eyes, I could hear the slot machines singing and the cocktail waitresses cooing and the excited murmur of a thousand conversations under it all, even the occasional cheer or groan from the craps or roulette tables, but only once did I happen to hear the chugging of a machine spewing out quarters. And I never saw anybody (not a single person) approach the cashier cages to cash in their chips. I admit that I didn't linger in the gaming areas for long, so I'm sure there must have been some exciting moments, maybe even lines at the cashier's window, when I wasn't there to observe. Then again, I wouldn't bet on it, (just as I didn't bet anything in Final Jeopardy!)
Every ride in the elevator, up or down, morning or night, was a perfect little minidrama:
The two silver-haired ladies staring grimly into empty plastic cups with pictures of coins and smiling people on the sides.
A young couple with three children under 10, going downstairs one morning. The husband asks, "There IS money, isn't there?" The wife doesn't answer.
A sloppily packed suitcase, only partially zipped, and a woman, her mascara running, hurrying to push everything inside and zip it the rest of the way. A man, his arms folded sternly across his chest, glares at her.
Although the casino hotel complex was a maze of twisty little passages, all different, the exit signs hard to spot what with all the other, brighter flashing lights, a small group of us did manage to escape one evening for a brief field trip down the strip to the quintessential Las Vegas lounge.
As we emerged, blinking like moles, from the hotel, the first thing we saw was a large tower in front of us, a small swimming pool at its base. People stood on a platform at the top. "Ooh, let's watch! one of my friends said, "This one's about to jump." Sure enough, just then a woman jumped headfirst off the platform, then bounced around awhile on the end of a long elastic cord.
"You want to try it?" someone asked. Once again, I was anything but tempted. Bouncing around upside down on a string like that just seemed too much like everyday life for a freelance writer.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:10 PM
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28.9.03 |
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