Bastard employers. Bastard government.

This is one of those stories where you’ll stop and ask yourself; “exactly what the f*ck did I celebrate yesterday?”

Employers use federal law to deny benefits

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dying of cancer, Thomas Amschwand did everything he was told to make sure his wife would collect on the life insurance policy he had through his employer.

“He was obsessed with dotting every `i’ and crossing every `t’,” Melissa Amschwand-Bellinger recalled about her husband, who died in 2001 at age 30.

But Spherion Corp., the temporary staffing company where Amschwand worked, told Amschwand-Bellinger she would not receive any of the $426,000 in benefits she believed she was due. When she went to court, Spherion succeeded in getting her lawsuit thrown out. The Supreme Court on June 27 refused to review the case. [...]

“The beneficiary under the policy didn’t get the promised benefit,” said Colleen Medill, an expert on ERISA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “To say we’re just going to return your premiums, that’s a total farce. That’s not what they paid the premiums for. They paid them for the benefits.”

See, the way it works is, for each employ that a company screws over, the CEO of said company gets a huge pay wage. Cherry!

In March 2005, one of the Pentagon’s most trusted contractors - Virginia-based MPRI, founded by retired senior military leaders - won a $400 million contract to train police in Iraq and other hotspots. Two months later, MPRI set up a company in Bermuda to which it subcontracted much of the work.

Like MPRI’s Bermuda subsidiary, the Cayman Islands company appears to have no phone number, website, or staff of its own there.

Rick Kiernan, an MPRI spokesman, declined to explain why the company created the two offshore entities and stressed that MPRI operates in “total adherence or compliance with the current law.”

But tax lawyers say that MPRI appears to be avoiding the payment of roughly $4 million dollars a year in Social Security and Medicare taxes for the police-training contract alone and is sidestepping scrutiny by hiring workers through offshore entities based outside the jurisdiction of the Internal Revenue Service.

“The employer is trying to take itself out of the audit reach of the IRS,” said California-based tax lawyer James R. Urquhart III.

More at Boston.com

The nation’s top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.

“It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.

More at the Washington Post

It’s official - I HATE POLITICS!

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s most prominent African-American supporter in Pennsylvania says that had he been a member of Sen. Barack Obama’s church, he would have left because of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s fiery and controversial sermons.

“I think there’s no room for hate, and I could not sit and tolerate that kind of language, and especially over a very long period of time,” said Philadelphia’s newly elected mayor, Michael Nutter, in an interview with ABC News’ David Muir.

“If I were in my own church and heard my pastor saying some of those kinds of things,” he added, “we’d have a conversation about what’s going on here, what is this all about, and then I would have to make my own personal decision about whether or not to be associated or affiliated.”

Asked by Muir if he would he have quit Obama’s church, Nutter said, “Absolutely.”

That’s what it amounts to, anyways. Per TPM:

Twenty top Hillary fundraisers and donors have sent a scathing private letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, chastising her for publicly saying that the super-delegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate count and demanding that she say that they should make an “independent” choice.

TPM commenter, LuxVeritas, interprets the letter as:

“Millions of voters have yet to have their voices heard, so don’t dare say that we will have to abide by their voices once they vote, because we’ll cut off funding if you do”.

Sounds about right to me! Hillary supporters are going to be the end of us yet.

(Full letter - click on ‘More’)

(more…)

Greg Palast reports:

The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an A-escort- $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.

Full story at Gregpalast.com

it was being revised to correct flaws = taking the scientific evidence out that Bush doesn’t like.

A congressional panel will investigate why a federal agency is withholding a report describing potential health threats near 26 heavily polluted areas in the Great Lakes region, lawmakers said.

The handling of the matter by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “raises grave questions about the integrity of scientific research” at the agency, “as well as the treatment of its scientists,” U.S. Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak said in a letter Thursday to CDC Director Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding.

Dingell is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, while Stupak is chairman of its Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Both are Michigan Democrats.

CDC spokesman Glen Nowak said the agency would make an announcement soon about its plans for the report. Earlier this month, he said it was being revised to correct flaws.

More at Yahoo

Non’smokers love themselves some high cigarette taxes. More money for state coffers, less people smoking, sticking it to the dregs of society… hey, it’s a WIN, WIN, WIN!

I’ve stated several times on this board that high taxation on cigarettes is unfair, but I doubt most non’smokers can fathom the position. They’re not being hurt by it so why even try? Well maybe this little article will get the brain juices flowing…

Instead of saddling the poor and middle class with more taxes or selling off America’s assets left and right, wouldn’t it make more sense to get spending under control?

I remember when Barbara Bush, charitable creature that she is, channeled her Hurricane Katrina relief donation to her son’s software, Ignite. God these people make me sick. And I’m here to tell you……there’s plenty of children left behind in Florida.

The inspector general of the Department of Education has said he will examine whether federal money was inappropriately used by three states to buy educational products from a company owned by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector general, said he would review the matter after a group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, detailed at least $1 million in spending from the No Child Left Behind program by school districts in Texas, Florida and Nevada to buy products made by Mr. Bush’s company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Tex. Mr. Higgins stated his plans in a letter to the group sent last week.

Full article here

Senators Dianne Feinstein, Russell D. Feingold and Charles E. Schumer after the vote today.

I’ll be back later. I have to go throw a few more darts at this pic……and I ain’t looking for a bullseye.

Full story at the New York Times