StrangeSox

I used to work at a place that packaged a lot of quaker instant oatmeal, you could really see the seasonal swings. by this time of year, they've probably shut down most of their production. /cool story

it was just a lame joke about food preservatives and "expired"

something ironic about a link that brings me to an "expired" page

Most choices aren't particularly healthy, though, and as the author noted, the unhealthy choices are the ones we subsidize e.g. corn syrup in damn near every processed food. There's strong profit motive to keep a large portion of our choices focused on not-really-that-healthy foods, and some of that comes back to basic biology and what our brains want us to consume because we haven't had tens of thousands of years to adapt to the industrialization of food.

I saw this interview on The Daily Show from Tuesday and thought it applied a little bit to that concept of Wall Street corporate pressure and limited individual choice. He's talking specifically about the food industry, and there's a lot that goes back to what I was saying in that health eating thread we had a few months back, but he also gets into the fact that even when companies try to change their unhealthy foods, Wall Street freaks out and the company is quickly pushed back to salty, fatty, sugary foods because that's where the biggest profits are. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

'Merica edit: but also lol@"atheist" shoes

So Clement's argument appears to boil down to that there's a rational basis for DOMA because some states allow SSM and others don't so this ensures that every SSM couple gets treated equally by the Federal government, i.e. equally has their rights denied. Otherwise, some gay couple in Texas would get treated differently by the Federal government than a married gay couple in NY, so best just to refuse to acknowledge any of them. I'm not sure how that doesn't apply to every marriage law deviation between the states though.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 27, 2013 -> 01:42 PM) Good timing, always want to make noise after the decision has been made. oral arguments on prop 8 were yesterday, doma was today.

A photographic journey through Montana’s vanished towns

DOMA oral arguments transcript here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments...12-307_jnt1.pdf (merits don't start until page 55, whole lot of standing discussion before that)

Trolling around the comments on an National Review Online post, I've discovered that marriage equality is really just a Leftist Marxist plot to destroy religion and family. I dunno, I thought I had decent exposure to American rightwing nuttery through the various blogs and websites I read that comment on or link to that stuff, but this is a whole different level.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Mar 27, 2013 -> 01:35 PM) I thought Starbucks generally did treat their employees well with health insurance and other benefits for part time employees. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bes...apshots/73.html I dunno, my friend fought to unionize the store he worked at in Chicago several years back. Their wages are still low, but their CEO did support the proposed minimum wage hike. Their average wage is below the proposed wage right now, so he needs legal cover to pay his employees more. If he suddenly decided to pay them all say $15, keeping Starbucks profitable still but reducing overall stockholder value, he'd be out on his ass quickly as the company gets undercut by numerous competitors paying crap wages and eating up their market share. It's the nature of the beast. yeah, the guy now working a crappy minimum wage job because Walmart forced their suppliers to move manufacturing overseas to cut costs or be dropped from stores can't afford to shop at Whole Foods. He's stuck going to the Walmart. Our media is generally terrible. Teh Deficit!!! is the most important thing to them in the world, despite most people who aren't in DC and not wealthy not really giving a s***. They got bigger things to worry about, like not having a job.

Starbucks maybe less so now (who did they displace though? and they still don't treat their employees well), but Chipotle and especially Whole Foods are niche markets (no idea about their labor relations but they have other social positives). Chipotle is never, ever going to displace significantly cheaper options like McDonalds or BK and Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck!) is never going to replace a majority of grocery stores. Either because people can't afford them ($8.99/lb organic chicken vs. a box of frozen Tyson for $9) for the most part or because the short-term (trying to be value-neutral there) benefits of much cheaper food/things are instantly realized and understood while the long-term harm of the destruction of domestic manufacturing, wage stagnation, etc. aren't right in your face as you pay for your groceries. Sort of an aside, but this is the same type of problem with advocating upper-class solutions to many environmental, ethical or economic problems. I buy organic, free-range chicken and eggs because I like the free-range part (and the chicken is substantially better quality), but it's never going to compete on a large scale with Tyson or Purdue. The forces that exist in the market will pretty much assure that. It's all very cyclical, with people not being able to pay higher prices at a store to support higher wages because their owns wages are low. Absolutely wages and benefits exist because the labor market demands them, but it's an asymmetric market and labor's been losing power for decades now. I know that Walmart might not be around forever, but I see no reason to assume that they'll be pushed aside by social justice forces that completely remake global capitalism into something that doesn't function solely on the seeking of more profits. edit: note, too, that in your argument, you state that it's about attracting "better candidates." It's still a desire to maximize profits at its core. If we don't believe that companies have any social responsibility and instead only have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize returns for shareholders, this is how they will operate. This is where capitalism fails from an egalitarian perspective and where it needs to be amended by social policy.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Mar 27, 2013 -> 12:51 PM) Made a few live edge walnut slab coffee tables over the weekend...pretty pleased with how they came out. Looks pretty cool. I've been wanting to get into some woodworking myself lately.

I don't know that I have a good fix here. Maximum wage laws would be one potential solution. You can't really rely on consumer choice to prevent this sort of thing, though. There's a limited number of producers that all engage essentially in the same behavior. Even when a company adopts a philosophy of treating its employees well, it's couched in economic/profits language. One example of this is Costco vs. Sams Club. Costco's founder and CEO believes in treating his employees well and offers much better pay and benefits than Sams Club. However, he has to justify this to the board on terms of "employee retention" and "better moral=more efficient workers," ie how it ultimately helps profits. Otherwise, he'd be out on his ass and replaced with someone focused solely on generating the maximum possible return for investors. Our current structures reinforce this ideology, that the only thing that a company should care about is pursuing profits at all expense. Management is rewarded for cutting wages and sending jobs overseas because investors get bigger profits. The notion of any sort of social responsibility for a company is nonexistent. The management team that doesn't follow these profit-maximizing goals is going to find itself out on its ass in a short manner, and you can never ignore the larger Walmart-type effects. Sure, niche markets can exist where higher-quality products and made and sold at higher profits (I have hiking socks that are $8 a pair, lol), but on the larger scale, it'll never work. Even if the Walmart cycle ultimately is terrible for communities in the longterm by driving out local retail and manufacturing, they're going to win in the short-term based solely on price. Here's a book that covers what I'm saying much better than I can: TOM SLEE: NO ONE MAKES YOU SHOP AT WAL-MART, CHAPTER 1 As far as "deciding if they want to work for a company[...]," that presumes a lot more choice than most people in the labor market actually have, especially these days.

Nah, it's just that people, including Congressmen, tend to vastly overestimate the amount of "waste, fraud and abuse" that's actually in the system.

Any risk of hampering the rehab process by shutting him down for the year? My understanding is that the next phase is "play in games." Will 6+ months of missed time mean he's that much further from his (new) 100% next season?

QUOTE (Felix @ Mar 23, 2013 -> 09:55 AM) This: http://qotsa.com/ !!!

Waste! Fraud! Abuse!

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 26, 2013 -> 03:12 PM) A good quote from Verrilli? My god. a better one from Olson:

I thought this is a good response w.r.t. "timing"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 26, 2013 -> 02:31 PM) An appellate court can rule on that issue. The 9th asked the California SC to do so, which the CSC did and found that they did have standing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 26, 2013 -> 02:23 PM) Well that's true. I guess I was assuming we're talking about the here and now. For Kennedy to say it's too early to decide is sort of a copout. Based on what we know now he can decide if it's constitutional or not. He's kicking the can down the road, which makes me wonder why they decided to hear the case at all. To address standing and whether or not citizens can flood the court with legal challenges a state would normally handle.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 26, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) See, this is the common misconception of what SCOTUS does. They don't decide "is gay marriage acceptable." That's what you all want them to decide, but they don't. Their job is to look at a particular law, in a particular context, and decide if it's constitutional. Prop 8 opponents were making the legal argument that SSM bans are a Constitutional violation and were asking the Court to make a national ruling, e.g. Brown v Board didn't apply to one particular school board.