Nickel and diming football cheerleaders

Two cheerleaders for the Oakland Raiders football team, identified as just Lacy T. and Sarah G. have initiated a class-action lawsuit against the team alleging ‘wage theft’, denying them compensation that they feel they are entitled to. They are not paid for practices or overtime or for other appearances like at charity events, which results in them getting paid at roughly $5 per hour, which is below the California minimum wage. Plus they only get paid at the end of the season so they have to pay their own expenses up front. As Lacy T. says, she was surprised by this since football teams make so much money. [Read more…]

When government bungling becomes ‘sensitive security information’

Last month I wrote about an important ruling handed down on January 14, 2014 by US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco where he slapped down the government for placing a Malaysian architect Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list in 2005 and not telling her why. The trial lasted five days from December 6-10, 2013 during which at least on ten occasions the judge reluctantly closed the court to the public and the press at the request of the government because the case supposedly involved ‘sensitive security information’ or SSI. [Read more…]

The return of Karl Marx

Karl Marx is one of the major influences in the whole field of political economy. Even those who think he is the embodiment of evil have to acknowledge how much his analyses of capitalism has shaped the way we view things and structure our socieities. But some of his most publicized predictions were spectacularly wrong, chief among them that the communist revolution would first occur in advanced industrial societies like Germany during his time. The fact that it happened in the more backward feudal and agrarian country of Russia, plus the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shift of so many formerly Communist nations such as those in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China to more market-based economies were widely portrayed by his critics as conclusively demonstrating failure of his entire theory of political economy and seemed the occasion to bury Marx’s ideas for good. [Read more…]

Sense and nonsense about the CBO report

One of the worst aspects of the current US health insurance system is that it is employer-based, which means that people can get trapped into jobs just in order to get health insurance, a phenomenon that has been given the name of ‘job lock’. So any improvements in the system that would enable people to get affordable health care outside of employment was bound to result in people deciding to leave their jobs voluntarily, either to stay at home to look after children or others who need them, to start their own businesses, to freelance, and so on. [Read more…]

The Canadian government gets the Snowden treatment

Canada is one of the ‘Five Eyes’ group of English speaking countries that formed a pact following World War II to share their spying information, the others being the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. This arrangement enables these governments to skirt the letter of the law that some countries have that prevent spying on their own citizens, since each country can spy on others and then share the information. [Read more…]

Are dogs generally scared of cats?

The conventional view is that dogs chase cats, not the other way around. I have only had dogs as companions so have never experienced what the dynamic is between members of these two species if they live together.

But from reader Norm I received this video that indicates that in homes that have both dogs and cats, the cats seemed to be quite mean to the dogs and the latter, even big German Shepherds, were quite intimidated by them. [Read more…]