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[Sheb]

I read a funny letter in the Economist from a reader that was saying he would get an in-vitro fecondation, keep the surplus embryo in a freezer in his cellar and list them as child dependent for tax purpose.

[Andir]

Ohio's anti-union bill was also voted down with a pretty decent margin.

It wasn't anti-union... the unions wanted you to think it was anti-union.  The main change it had was requiring state employees pay a part of their health care like the rest of us.  It did not modify collective bargaining in any way except by making the final decision of how many people to keep on staff to local management (ie: the Police Chief decides how many people to work on a particular day.)

[Bauglir]

I read a funny letter in the Economist from a reader that was saying he would get an in-vitro fecondation, keep the surplus embryo in a freezer in his cellar and list them as child dependent for tax purpose.

That's brilliant, but he'd probably get caught up in child abuse laws for keeping his child locked in a freezer in his basement.

Ohio's anti-union bill was also voted down with a pretty decent margin.

It wasn't anti-union... the unions wanted you to think it was anti-union.  The main change it had was requiring state employees pay a part of their health care like the rest of us.  It did not modify collective bargaining in any way except by making the final decision of how many people to keep on staff to local management (ie: the Police Chief decides how many people to work on a particular day.)

Depending on a couple of things, that could still be anti-union. For instance, if the health care change was reversing something originally won through collective bargaining (without also reversing whatever the union sacrificed for it), that's pretty much kicking the idea of bargaining in the head. "Yeah, okay, here's the deal, only we don't have to uphold our half. Have fun with that, guys." Also, that latter could be problematic as well, but I think only if it also provides a defense for possible abuses of that power (for instance, dropping someone from the schedule for a month or something), which I would hope it doesn't. I'm not familiar with the bill, or Ohio's public service unions' history.

[Vector]

Dear PETA: fuck you and your little misogyny too.

Yeah, I'm not so fond about this.

[Andir]

Ohio's anti-union bill was also voted down with a pretty decent margin.

It wasn't anti-union... the unions wanted you to think it was anti-union.  The main change it had was requiring state employees pay a part of their health care like the rest of us.  It did not modify collective bargaining in any way except by making the final decision of how many people to keep on staff to local management (ie: the Police Chief decides how many people to work on a particular day.)

Depending on a couple of things, that could still be anti-union. For instance, if the health care change was reversing something originally won through collective bargaining (without also reversing whatever the union sacrificed for it), that's pretty much kicking the idea of bargaining in the head. "Yeah, okay, here's the deal, only we don't have to uphold our half. Have fun with that, guys." Also, that latter could be problematic as well, but I think only if it also provides a defense for possible abuses of that power (for instance, dropping someone from the schedule for a month or something), which I would hope it doesn't. I'm not familiar with the bill, or Ohio's public service unions' history.

Basically, it asks for the employees to pay a percentage of their benefit cost (If I remember, it was 10%) which is not much to ask of anyone.

It also proposed merit based raises (you know, the same thing those of us in the real world use) instead of allowing some teacher/police officer to screw off all day long and get the same raise as someone who really cared about their job.

As far as the "bargaining power" of staffing, the proposal disallowed the union from dictating staffing needs.  The unions currently have the ability to demand (in negotiations) that the state hire 100 more firefighters even if they aren't needed.  If you think about it, it allows them to determine their income from dues by forcing the local government into hiring more employees when they aren't needed.  The proposal would disallow that and put staffing needs in the hands of the local departments where the needs are better known.

The staffing proposal really had nothing to do with cost cutting as much as the employees paying a share of their overhead cost but it was used in all the commercials to scare the populace into thinking that the law would cut back on emergency services when there was no wording in the bill dictating said job cuts.  It only disallowed the unions from demanding more union members to pad their numbers.

It basically boiled down to a power struggle and the unions poured more money into commercials.  Public employee unions are a wildly different creature from private enterprise unions, but the unions didn't see it that way.  To them, it was a dirty Republican plot to kill all unions.

[Bauglir]

Well, it is a lot to ask of somebody making a public servant wage who isn't single and childless. I've got it pretty great on what I get paid, because I am exactly that and so don't have to worry about anybody's wellbeing but my own. I actually could stand to pay more for my health insurance (which, incidentally, is only free for some of the most basic plans; families pretty much across the board have to pay significant money), but it'd probably tank my plans to go to grad school. Point being, squeezing blood from a stone tends not to work. I'm probably also better off than most because, IIRC, the hospital I work for has both private and public funding or something obnoxiously complicated.

Merit-based raises, fine, although you seem to have a pretty odd view of what exactly it is teachers and police officers can do all day long without getting fired (you can still be fired for incompetence, y'know). And automatic raises that keep pace with inflation (and any additional costs the company is going to saddle on employees through "benefits") really ought to be mandatory in any environment.

I actually agree with you on the staffing thing, to a certain extent. If nothing else, the department in question is better qualified to determine its own staffing needs. I wouldn't mind taking hiring requests off the table as long as they're still allowed to negotiate over layoffs. The numbers-padding thing is a bit specious, though, given that union membership is not mandatory upon employment.

And, again, removing all these things needs to come with a tradeoff to return whatever the union gave up in exchange for it in the first place. It's not as if public unions can dictate terms to the state (for one thing, they've already traded away their ability to go on strike) - all these nice things people are complaining about were gotten by accepting a heaping pile of crap in some other area. I'm not comfortable with legislation that amounts to making only half of that agreement enforced.

My response to the PETA thing is much shorter, mostly because I'm near speechless at how ridiculous that is. Really, guys?

[RedKing]

PETA ceased to be a relevant voice quite some years ago. The ASPCA is a sane, rational animal-rights organization whom I fully support. PETA is a bunch of loony fucktards.

[kaijyuu]

PETA's exceptionally bad at making coherent sense. I'm all for animal rights activism. You don't convince people of that by telling them they're evil and murderers and whatnot. And I don't even know what the hell they're trying to say with the ads featured in that article. If their message is "animals should have as many rights as people thus caging them is no different from caging her" they're doing a horrific job of communicating that.

[Sheb]

And also, I think crying out for misogyny because they supposedly support bare vagina is a bit ridiculous too. Can't we make any comment about women's appearance without being a bastard? Are epilated women less deserving of respect?

[Vector]

And also, I think crying out for misogyny because they supposedly support bare vagina is a bit ridiculous too. Can't we make any comment about women's appearance without being a bastard? Are epilated women less deserving of respect?

When you have products marketed to make your junk "smell right" because you are naturally dirty and abhorrent and smell like a fishmarket, products to change the color to a more "natural" pink, pushes from supposedly progressive organizations to order you to remove your hair, have your parts described as a swamp or cesspool with some frequently, and are badgered on every single fucking inch of your appearance, toenails to ankles to the shape of your foot to calves to knees to muscle mass to the curve of your ribs to the shape of your chest to your lips and eyes and hair color and eye color and eyelash length and curliness of your hair and its length and your cheekbones and your ears (heaven help you if you, as a woman, have some mosaicism in your background and are not perfectly symmetrical), and you see one more fucking product or instruction telling you how to FINALLY make your body right, because it doesn't matter how beautiful you are, you're never going to be beautiful enough...

And when your entire value in society until you get married is based pretty much solely on your looks and the high premium for your reproductive organs, which are currently being vied for as an issue of state property...

Then talk.

But not before then.

[MonkeyHead]

Dont remember if it has surfaced in this thread yet (apologies if it has, its a bit tricky to scan read the many hundreds of pages here and my search-fu is weak - had less than the usual caffine today and a rough work day), but PETA apparently have purchased an .xxx domain, and either have or are going to set up a porn website to attract hits, and interspersed with the porn there are animal rights based items of propaganda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9856316%20ForceRecrawl:%200 - news story about it.

 
Dont know how much cross over there is between the habitual porn browser and animal rights activist.

[Sheb]

Vector, would you have the same problems if they had decided that hairy vagina were cool? ("You like your hairs? Why do you want to take theirs?")

[RedKing]

I'll agree that I don't think *this* particular instance is necessarily misogynist as much as lolwut. But it is part of an overall pattern of PETA ads that seem to place women somewhere below animals in a hierarchy of things.

The logic seems to be
Fur = murder
Pubic hair = fur, thus
Pubic hair = murder, thus
Women should wax themselves or they support the murder of ermines.

At which point, we should all just point and laugh at PETA and hope they get devoured by a million "liberated" ferrets. Seriously, they've become a *parody* of Liberal Crime Squad.

products to change the color to a more "natural" pink,

This is a thing? This actually exists? 
Y'know what...nobody really needs to answer that question. I'm happier not knowing.

Dont know how much cross over there is between the habitual porn browser and animal rights activist.

Or exactly where their fetishes would lie. 

[Vector]

Indeed.  They also sell an object somewhat like a shoehorn to shove down your pants in order to prevent cameltoe.  Of course, for many women this issue is caused by the terrible cuts of pants already on the market, anyhow, and for others--why the hell is that anyone's business?

[MonkeyHead]

products to change the color to a more "natural" pink,

This is a thing? This actually exists? 
Y'know what...nobody really needs to answer that question. I'm happier not knowing.

Just like anal bleaching - I mean, who in the hell gets to observe that closely anyway?