willard

They killed Kenny!! Bastards!!

Have a complete understanding that even the idea of "patriotism" is an individual idea and different for everyone. Whether that means burning a flag in front of the White House or rounding up bad guys in Iraq is your decision and yours alone. That's my idea of partiotism.

I'd like to see him get the nod from the Dems, though I consider it unlikely. I think his only chance is if the Dems feel Hillary is unelectable come convention time. I'm not sure what the polls say at this time, but I would guess the only person who has a higher percentage of likely voters who wouldn't vote for her is Bush himself.

1 - leave it up to statisticians to invert a simple correlation activity of each of the input parameters and call it another name. Just to make it seem harder than it really is. I really hate statistics for that. There are a bunch of really simple things they do that they then add a bunch of unnecessary mathematical manipulation........ job security I guess. 2 - I think duct tape is really, really, neat. I always have duct tape nearby when taking a nap. You never know when somebody is going to disturd that nap and needs duct taped to a folding chair.

That appears to be blaming all inflation on the minimum wage. The minimum wage has been stagnant for years but inflation hasn't stopped. Sorry, counselor, I don't buy that one. Our spread between the richest and the poorest Americans is just unconscionable. The Swedes have plenty of wealthy people, and they have a far lower poverty rate than us, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and more redistribution of wealth. I don't like the income difference either, but it is a byproduct of a capitalist society. Every person has the same right (not neccessarily the same chance) to advance as far in life as they want. More than one person has gone from near starvation to CEO or President. To put a cap on the amount a person can make in a year borders on a political system I would much rather not be a part of. If someone isn't happy with their income they are free to do something about it. A former classmate of mine put herself through college by working two part time jobs at minimum wage while raising her son, who was 4 when she started college. It took her five years but she graduated from Ohio State with a BS in Civil Engineering. No, the system isn't fair. But it's better than communism.

Many companies consider the receptionist to be a very important position, and pay more than $7.25/hr, even small businesses. The receptionist is the first, and sometimes only impression the public or potential clients will receive, so a valued pro will often pay dividends in the long run. As they say "you don't get a second chance to make a first impression." You are absolutely right. A well spoken, well groomed, friendly and personable receptionist can do wonders for business relations. Add intelligent to that list of qualifications. Any and all qualities a customer sees in their first contact are the ones they envision in the rest of the company. It doesn't matter if you make the best Widgets in the world, if the customers first contact is anything less than, at the minimum, normal, then you won't sell many Widgets to that customer.

Your point has already been addressed, and you are wrong. www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2665420#2665420 ALSO, I didn't assert that he is wrong, I asked him to prove that he is right. No, my point was what I think of the situation. I am fully aware of the idea that when someone makes an assertion they bear the burden of proof. But there are exception to most any rule and I feel this is one of them, mostly because it would be easier for you to find one example to prove him wrong than for him to search through all of history and quote each and every case. Or are going to now tell me that I'm not thinking what I am thinking? Have you developed an ability to read minds from hundreds of miles away? Your assertion that he was wrong is implicit in your posts. Your repeated demands for proof bear that out. I don't expect you to change your mind or opinion, nor do I expect anything from you but more sarcasm. You implied to me that it didn't make sense to stop hiring high school kids, I proved you wrong. But you won't even admit that. Kind of like a certain President.

So? Dang it, Kallend, I was gonna say "So?" Now I gotta come up with something else.

"No, it doesn't work that way. You make an assertion, you back it up. It's not up to others to prove you wrong." Well, Kallend, you have made the assertion that he was wrong. Prove it. I could easily ask you to prove that it made no sense to stop hiring high school kids at my shop, but I won't because that would be asking you to prove something you can't. Or we could just stop playing your little game of semantics that you seem to enjoy so much.

So you do not see that raising the min wage does more harm than good? Of course I do realize that evil business have to be told what to do. Still waiting for PROOF that it has happened EVERY time. That is nice. I suggest (as you have) do your own dam research. I am not going to put info out there and watch you deride the source. Oh, and I fully expect the "I will take that as a you don't have a source" comment too. fun to watch

Sure, that would be free, wouldnt it. Unfortunatly, at the most, all the subsidizing would do would be to spread the cost around. The government would still have to get the money from somewhere, probably through more taxes.

Here we go again.

Not all min wage hikes come with tax breaks, and the tax breaks that small businesses are supposed to get are rarely what they seem.

I'll go even further. There are additional marginal costs associated with simply having another human being around: paper work, personnel management time, desks, tools, equipment, square footage, and general distraction. So having 9 employees might be cheaper than 10 even if the total wages are higher. Cheaper is not always better. Like I mentioned above... you have to walk the line between overworking and overpaying your employees carefully. If you are a fast food restaurant you have a set number of hours in the work day that need to be filled. You can't just replace 2 people with 1 and work that one less hours for higher pay and magically have your problems go away. You still need people there from 10am to 11pm or whatever. The only industry that's going to be directly hit by a minimum wage hike is an industry which exploits purely teenage labor or adults who can't/don't move up to other forms of employment. Fast food is a prime example of this and the businesses labor hour model for all of the business in that industry are pretty much subject to the same rules. Our business was far from a fast-food operation. Presses, shears, welders, torches, etc. create a work environment that insurance companies just love to rape, not to mention workers comp payments. I can only wish our fixed costs per employee had been anywhere near a McDs.

Economically it was cheaper to pay the regulars a few hours overtime each week than to have the couple extra employees so it was put onto them. They didn't have a problem, most were happy to get the extra bucks. It's ironic that what was intended to help those kids ended up, in our case, hurting them. And those regulars get more than minimum wage, of course. Yes, I can see how paying them overtime makes sense. Yes, it did. In case you aren't aware, there are expenses associated with every employee that are called "fixed". These have to be paid by the employer regardless of how many hours the employee works, even if they don't work at all during a given pay period. Insurance is just one of them, and in case you haven't noticed insurance costs are constantly rising. In one year alone our insurance premiums for our shop went up almost 200%. No, it wasn't because of safety issues. In fact, with app. 12-15 people on the payroll we went the entire year without a single day lost due to a work related injury. So before you start telling me, the one who went over the numbers with our accountant and had to make the decision, that it didn't make sense, you better know what the hell your talking about. And the only way you possibly could in this case is if you somehow looked at our financial records, which I'm pretty certain you don't have access to. So there.

Economically it was cheaper to pay the regulars a few hours overtime each week than to have the couple extra employees so it was put onto them. They didn't have a problem, most were happy to get the extra bucks. It's ironic that what was intended to help those kids ended up, in our case, hurting them.

I used to hire high school kids to help around the shop. They got minimum wage but learned a skilled trade, many of them went on to college and paid their way working with the skills they had learned. Then the government came in and boosted the minimum wage once too often to a level we could not justify paying someone to fetch tools, sweep floors, etc. so we stopped hiring those kids. Hated to do it, but it was the realities of running a business.

I remember from an anthropology class that the genetic difference between so-called races is so minor it is virtually ignored, if not considered non-existent. Am I remembering correctly?

Sorry for your loss. It's a tough price we pay for their companionship. I lossed one myself in a similar manner. Farm dog, country road that saw maybe 10-12 cars a day on it and she just happened to run in front of one.

40. Pretty accurate description. Interesting test...thanks for sharing!

There probably is a difference, but I'd spell it out as the difference between dispassionately considering the matter and getting your blood up. Saying calmly (though perhaps with intense conviction) that a crime is horrible and requires a response to satisfy a specific societal goal is probably healthy. On the other hand, competing to graphically describe increasingly extreme sadism is probably feeding an unhealthy inner urge. While I don't dispute their basic point that people should be discouraged from doing bad things, I wouldn't want them as friends. They're almost scarier than the criminals. There's been a lot of the latter sort of threads here recently. edited to clarify a point If I understand your post correctly then I agree with you. Stating what you feel the punishment should be is one thing, but to get involved in a game of one-upmanship to see who can devise the worst execution is not healthy. I will have to admit that I contributed to that on occasion.

Those shoes have got to go. They look horrid! Where did she get them, from a '70s discount barn??

You could look at it that way, that is a valid point. Do you think there is a difference between people saying what feel he deserves and people saying what they feel his sentence should be? (Assuming a guilty verdict, of course) This isn't a smart ass question, so please don't construe it as such. I feel there is a difference. Edit for spelling.

I thought there was already more than one thread on the revenge vs cure vs deterrent aspects of capital punishment? C'mon dude, lighten up. It's not like any of us are going to be the ones sentencing the man if he is found guilty. And even if he were sentenced to freeze to death the courts would throw out the sentence in a heartbeat. Nothing wrong with someone here telling what they feel is an appropriate punishment including a quick bullet in the back of the head when he isn't expecting it.

Just in case he lives past 800 I hope he does. 800 years of being a prison bitch would be pretty fair punishment. Then the night before he is paroled Bubba kills him with a spoon.