Xtra News Community 2
March 29, 2024, 12:16:42 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Welcome to Xtra News Community 2 — please also join our XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP.
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links BITEBACK! XNC2-BACKUP-GROUP Staff List Login Register  

As the “Land of Trump” edges towards the Fascist States of America…

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: As the “Land of Trump” edges towards the Fascist States of America…  (Read 422 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« on: February 05, 2017, 01:08:49 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

In North Dakota, it could become legal to hit a protester with your car

By NINA AGRAWAL | 3:00AM PST - Friday, February 03, 2017

A giant prayer circle is formed over a highway in Morton County, North Dakota, in November 2016 in support of Dakota Access Pipeline protesters. — Photograph: Mike McCleary/Bismarck Tribune.
A giant prayer circle is formed over a highway in Morton County, North Dakota, in November 2016 in support of Dakota Access
Pipeline protesters. — Photograph: Mike McCleary/Bismarck Tribune.


FOR MONTHS, opponents of the proposed $3.8-billion Dakota Access pipeline waged protests. They established a prayer camp and strung banners between trees. At times, they blocked roads and construction sites. They faced attack dogs, pepper spray, tear gas, rubber bullets and water sprays that turned to ice on their skin.

“We wouldn't have been able to delay construction to this point if it wasn't for us taking to the streets,” said Dallas Goldtooth, an activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network who helped coordinate the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's months-long protests in North Dakota.

But a bill introduced last month in the North Dakota legislature could make the obstacles to protest even more formidable. The bill, still in committee, would make it legal for drivers to run over protesters who are standing in a roadway, clearing drivers of any liability, as long as their action was “unintentional.”

The bill is just one of a raft of new pieces of legislation that have been introduced around the country to discourage or criminalize protest — even as large demonstrations over environmental issues, police shootings and the policies of President Trump have been surging across the country.

Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Washington are all considering legislation that would variously impose stiffer civil and criminal penalties for protesters and award law enforcement broad discretion in dealing with them.

“We are at a moment of historical protest activity,” said Lee Rowland, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The idea that legislators' response would be penalizing that speech rather than engaging it in conversation is really troubling.”

Republican North Dakota state Representative Keith Kempenich said he introduced House Bill 1203 in direct response to the pipeline protests. He said relatives of his got caught in them while driving on roadways last fall.

“This isn't their issue,” Kempenich said, but “if something had happened, they'd wind up being accused of it.”

Lietenant Tom Iverson of the North Dakota Highway Patrol said he was not aware of any pedestrian-vehicle crashes involving protesters. Whenever the agency has become aware of protesters blocking roads, it has closed them down to ensure the safety of both them and drivers.

Kempenich said the bill would not allow drivers to target protesters intentionally, and that they still have to slow down to “see and avoid” any potential collision. “I don't see it being applied very often,” he said.

He also said he supports protesters' right to demonstrate on sidewalks, in ditches or on road shoulders, but “there's a line between protests and terrorism.”

When a protester “comes up on the roadway and challenges a motorist,” he said, “that's an intentional act of intimidation — the definition of terrorism.”

For his part, Goldtooth saw the bill as part of a “terrifying progression” of recent measures.

“What it effectively does is allow people to potentially murder another human being simply because they're standing in a public roadway with a sign,” he said.

Goldtooth called the bill and others like it “a knee-jerk reaction that carries the sour taste of racism.”

“Those in power are being challenged — whether it's Black Lives Matter, Native Resistance, the Fight for 15, or women's rights,” he said. “That challenge causes a lot of fear.”

Goldtooth conceded that taking over roadways is against the law but said it was necessary sometimes.

“We're out in the middle of nowhere fighting a pipeline where the only public space available is the road,” he said.

The right to protest is rooted in the 1st Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and of peaceful assembly. On the other hand, authorities can require a permit or impose narrow restrictions on very large or loud protests.

Protesters cannot obstruct pedestrian or vehicular traffic without a permit, though federal courts have ruled that the lack of a permit cannot be used to prevent protests in response to breaking events, said Rowland.

“Every city, town and county already has ordinances to deal with obstruction,” she said. “These bills may be dressed up as bills related to obstruction or insurance or public safety, but make no mistake about it, these bills are about one thing and one thing only: silencing dissent.”

In Minnesota, where protesters shut down Interstate 94 following the police shooting of Philando Castile last summer, and again after the election of Trump in November, lawmakers have introduced bills to categorize obstruction of roadways and public transit as a gross misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a $3,000 fine. An ordinary misdemeanor carries a penalty of up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

They have also introduced legislation that would make it a felony to knowingly obstruct any legal process, including an arrest, and that would enable local governments to sue convicted protesters to pay for law enforcement costs.

“If you want to violate a law, if you want to close a freeway, you ought to go to jail,” said Republican state Representative Nick Zerwas, who introduced two of the bills. “And when you get out of jail, I think we ought to give you the bill for the riot that you caused.”

Zerwas said he had been contacted by a constituent who reported being unable to take her asthmatic daughter to the hospital during an I-94 closure because of protests; another lost the chance to say goodbye to a loved one because of a protest at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that delayed flights.

He said the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington had racked up $2.5 million in overtime costs for their police departments over the last 18 months.

“In Minnesota, we've gotten to the point where shutting down a freeway is just kind of the go-to move for protests,” Zerwas said. “There's two things a law should do: It should deter somebody from committing a crime, and it should punish them if they have committed a crime. [The current law] certainly is not a deterrence,” he said.

Jordan Kushner, a civil rights attorney in Minneapolis who has represented Black Lives Matter protesters, disagreed.

“People don't generally want to get arrested and charged with crimes,” he said. “There's already deterrence in effect. How much retribution do you need?”

Kushner said the bills introduced in Minnesota reflect the broader racial tension in the state between white, suburban districts and the Republican lawmakers who represent them, and Black Lives Matter activists, who have been the driving force behind the major protests of the last two years.

He said the bills under consideration would cut off one of the last remaining outlets such activists have to express their grievances peacefully.

“What options are they leaving people who are dissatisfied?” Kushner said.


__________________________________________________________________________

Related story:

 • Supporters say Dakota Access pipeline is back on. Activists counter: See you in court.


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-bills-protest-criminal-20170201-story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #1 on: February 05, 2017, 08:17:42 pm »

Hitler was a leftist
Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazi Party.

america was fascist under obama

legal to hit a protester with your car
well they need to learn the hard way that roads are for cars

I hope they have bullbars on their cars so they dont scratch their paint
while running down some fascist left wing nazi brown shirt george soros rent a mob
i hope he offered them a good healthcare plan,he can afford it being a billionaire lol
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #2 on: February 05, 2017, 08:37:27 pm »


A bullet through the windscreen could fix any stupid white-trash clowns who think running into protestors is a good idea.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #3 on: February 05, 2017, 08:46:13 pm »

lucky people in the us have guns and can defend themselves against morons

a better idea would be your train flying over a cliff with you running for the rear door
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #4 on: February 09, 2017, 03:09:43 pm »


Mark Morford

“Nevertheless, she persisted”

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist | 11:24AM PST - Wednesday, February 08, 2017

Still causing trouble with the scared white male establishment, all these years later.Like this.
LEFT: Still causing trouble with the scared white male establishment, all these years later. | RIGHT: Like this.

AND THEN came the surreal, extraordinary moment when the sneering old Republican male senator silenced his smart, uppity female colleague from reading, on the Senate floor, the words of Coretta Scott King, wife of one of the greatest civil rights leaders in American history, words that dared to call into question the integrity of the incoming, famously racist old white male Attorney General-to-be of the United States.

It was, of course, corrupt gasbag/Trump ring-licker Mitch McConnell who decided it was a good idea to shut down the indomitable Dem hero Elizabeth Warren, a woman who had the nerve to simply read aloud from King's 1986 letter criticizing Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions' obviously racist views and tactics, a letter that ended up blocking Sessions' then-appointment to a federal judgeship.




Would you like to hear that again? An old white male conservative just told one of the most fearless women in the senate that she is hereby barred from speaking the words of Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor. During Black History Month. And then the senate took a vote, and every other (white, male, Trump-fearing) senate Republican voted in agreement with McConnell, thus barring Warren from speaking at all for the rest of Sessions' evaluation.

Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech,McConnell said.She had appeared to violate [Rule XIX]. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.


Fearless, increasingly….
Fearless, increasingly….

And lo, the Internet exploded. McConnell could not have chosen a more apt rallying cry for the increasingly furious, radicalized, feminist-supercharged Left than “Nevertheless, she persisted,” an instantly famous phrase rivalling Trump’s own “nasty woman” anti-Hillary slur that became the unofficial slogan for the Women’s March. (See also #ShePersisted and #LetLizSpeak).

(All credit, btw, to Warren's social media team, who posted the video of McConnell's sneer within minutes, along with immediate follow-ups, including those of San Francisco's own Warren prodigy Kamala Harris, among others).


Your new meme.
Your new meme.

So then. With Warren leading the charge and senators like the newly minted Harris finding her voice in record time (via what has to be one of the most intense trials-by-fire of any liberal female senator, ever), and with even old-school slowpoke Dems like grandpa Chuck Schumer getting the hang of this anti-Trump social media thing, and with the tens of thousands of galvanized progressive Americans calling their senators and pushing every button and signing every protest form and pouring millions into the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the rest, the Dems appear to be unifying, rallying, finding a way through the nightmare.

Will it be enough? To have significant effect? To block, derail, impeach? Impossible to measure. Nothing is normal now. Everything is whipsaw ridiculous melodramatic, every Trump statement a lie, every GOP move a stunning insult and a gross embarrassment, every presidential appointment seemingly aimed at a furious destabilization/destruction of the economy, the environment, foreign relations, the social safety net, all tied to an enthusiastically puerile, white nationalist humiliation of the nation's highest office.




The dynamics are hugely unpredictable. Dems know they don't have the votes to block Sessions, or disasters like Betsy DeVos or Scott Pruitt, but they do, increasingly, have a megaphone. They have social media, they have unstoppable firebrands like Warren, they have angrily empowered senators like Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth and Tom Udall, many of whom stood up in Warren's place and read King's letter anyway.



Rest assured: Trump (and McConnell, and Paul Ryan, et al) will do everything in their white-supremacist power to curtail, mock, demean and shut down every vote, every hint, every voice of resistance, especially if that resistance dares comes from a female. Which will, as evidenced by #ShePersisted, only galvanize the resistance further.

The downside is, no matter how fired-up the Dems get, the party simply doesn't have the sadistic, bloodthirsty, shamelessly illegal, lie-strewn cruel streak that has now so saturated and overtaken the GOP. The Republicans will, quite literally, kill their own mothers for more of the gross, unchecked power Trump is peeing pouring all over them. The Democrats, AKA the party of inclusion, progress and open-mindedness, are now being asked to battle the devil, and the devil has no rules whatsoever.


The banned words.
The banned words.

Did you know the House Republicans just voted to eliminate the one federal agency that makes sure voting machines aren't hacked? They are already planning how to steal the next election.

Did you hear those same House Republicans just blocked voting on a resolution stating that the Holocaust targeted Jews?

The GOP is not merely drunk with power. They are engorged by it, blinded by it, most whiningly terrified of Trump's thin skin and his sociopathic, child-like temper and what defying him might do to their shaky careers if they dare speak, or think, for themselves. Thus, they are worse than cowards. They are cowards in service of hate, white nationalism, and fear. And like Trump, they mean America ill.

Nevertheless, she persisted.




Email: Mark Morford

Mark Morford on Twitter and Facebook.

http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2017/02/08/nevertheless-she-persisted
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #5 on: February 18, 2017, 12:40:32 pm »


from the Los Angeles Times....

ICE raids and White House schemes provoke fear in Latino families

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Friday, February 17, 2017



DONALD TRUMP pledged in his campaign that, upon taking office, he would unleash U.S. immigration agents to chase down the “bad hombres” among the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country. Well, they have been unleashed, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers are sweeping up mothers and young people with no major crimes or terrorist activities on their records.

Guadalupe García de Rayos, a mother of two American-born children who had been in the United States herself since she was 14, was sent back to Mexico last week. She hadn't robbed a bank or sold drugs or blown up any buildings. In fact, for the last eight years she had been checking in regularly with immigration officials. Nevertheless, she was taken away from her husband and children and her Phoenix home and deported.

García de Rayos is no hardened criminal; she just had the bad luck of living in a country with a heart that has hardened.

Jeanette Vizguerra is not a nasty crook either. She is just another Mexican mother who has been checking in faithfully with immigration authorities. Vizguerra and her husband have been living in the U.S. since 1997. Of their four children, three are American citizens. Their eldest daughter is part of the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) program, a group of young undocumented immigrants often called “Dreamers” who have lived most of their lives in the United States.

Vizguerra got word that, like García de Rayos, she was about to be deported. Forced to leave her family, she has taken sanctuary at Denver's First Unitarian Church.

A couple of days ago in a suburb of Seattle, 23-year-old Daniel Ramirez Medina was taken into custody by ICE, even though he is covered by DACA. Immigration agents allege that Ramirez confessed to being a gang member. His friends insist that the confession was coerced. Reportedly, Ramirez has no criminal record of any kind.

Representative Linda Sanchez, a Los Angeles County Democrat, said in an interview with Free Speech Radio News that it is obvious ICE is not going after just bad guys. “Instead of focusing on the removal of hardcore criminals, a quarter of the people detained in the ICE raids are innocent people, including the arrest of a Dreamer in Seattle,” Sanchez said. “We've heard that some parents aren't sending their kids to school because they're afraid to. People are not answering the door, they're not leaving their homes to go to work, because of the fear that these raids have incited.”

Among the items Trump addressed in his free-wheeling news conference on Thursday was DACA. He talked about the “incredible kids” who have been protected as Dreamers, but said “DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me.”

The difficulty he faces is that, on one side, he has Latino Republicans — many of them evangelical Christians — who have pleaded with him to give the Dreamers a path to legal status. On the other side he has immigration hardliners — including two of his closest advisors, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller — who want mass deportations with no mercy for young people who have never really known another country as home.

The Los Angeles Times has reported that an executive order that would end DACA has been drawn up by Trump's staff, but, because of Trump's ambivalence, senior Trump aides are now looking at two indirect ways to kill the program, either by encouraging states to bring court challenges or by getting Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime foe of any immigration compromise, to make a determination that DACA is not legal.

The ICE dragnet that is catching many people who are not “bad hombres” and the reports of draconian schemes being hatched in the White House have sent a shiver of fear through many homes. At a gathering at the L.A. Times building on Thursday night, a group of student journalists and artists from Los Angeles-area high schools shared those worries, as well as their hopes, in stories and poems. One Latino boy summed up his feelings this way:

“We are humans with the same unalienable rights, no matter where we come from. Whether or not we have documentation, it is the inside that counts; the values that we share and the ideals we believe in. And that's what makes us American. That's what makes us human.”

Those are words worth pondering seriously before our government starts driving away many thousands of fine people who, far from being criminals, exemplify the American dream.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-ice-latino-20170216-story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #6 on: February 19, 2017, 11:51:47 am »


from The Washington Post....

Trump called the news media an ‘enemy of the American People’.
Here's a history of the term.


Once, it was used to describe bad leaders. Not anymore.

By AMANDA ERICKSON | 3:44PM EST - Saturday, February 18, 2017

Reporters raise their hands at President Trump's news conference on February 16th. — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.
Reporters raise their hands at President Trump's news conference on February 16th.
 — Photograph: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post.


PRESIDENT TRUMP is not known for his subtlety. But even by this standard, his tweet on Friday night was extreme. Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People”.



The New York Times, which among others was called out specifically, labeled it “a striking escalation” from a leader who “routinely castigates journalists.”

Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor at New York magazine, described it as “full-on dictator speak.”

They're not being pedantic.

Enemy of the people is a phrase “typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments or subversive organizations,” The New York Times wrote. “It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.”

Where did the expression come from? In its original incarnation, enemy of the people wasn't code for “enemy of my regime.” In one of its earliest uses, the phrase was used to describe a leader himself — Nero. The Roman ruler was a disastrous emperor, and a careless one to boot. As his country fell into ruin, strained by construction costs and a massive devaluation of the imperial currency, Nero vacationed in Greece. He enjoyed musical performances and theater. He took a chariot to some Olympic Games. He considered whether to build a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth.

When he got back home, the political class was angry. And he didn't do himself any favors by ignoring a revolt in Gaul. The Senate grew so infuriated that they declared Nero an enemy of the people and drew up plans for his arrest and execution. Nero took his own life after a failed attempt to flee.

The term fell out of fashion among the political class, though it popped up in literature and art. Most famously, Henrik Ibsen wrote an 1882 play called “An Enemy of the People”. It features a doctor who's almost run out of town because of an article he's written bashing the government. The idea came to Ibsen after his own brush with infamy — his play “Ghosts” challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, and was deemed indecent.

Adolf Hitler was allegedly an Ibsen fan. (Some historians say they believe that he read the plays as prophecy of the Third Reich.) He reportedly read “An Enemy of the People” closely, even weaving some key lines into speeches. His administration deployed this rhetoric to describe Hitler's main enemy: the Jews. “Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people,” Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1941. “… If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a Jew and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.”

Around the same time, leaders of the Soviet Union were transforming enemy of the people into a major tool for oppression and silencing enemies. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolsheviks, used “the peoples' enemies” as a label to stigmatize anyone who didn't fall into line when the revolution happened. Enemies of the people were ostracized and even their friends were under suspicion.

For foes of Joseph Stalin, being branded an enemy of the people was a death sentence. The Soviet leader deployed that language against politicians and artists he didn't like. Once branded, the accused were sent to labor camps or killed. Best case? An enemy would be denied education and employment. “It is one of the most controversial phrases in Soviet history,” Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told Voice of America.

“For both Lenin and Stalin, journalists and intellectuals who didn't share their point of view were among the most hated enemies,” University of Washington professor Serhiy Yekelchyk told VOA. “In attacking them, both appealed to the people.”

Chinese dictator Mao Zedong deployed the phrase against people critical of his policies and dictates. The leader, who created a famine that killed 36 million Chinese, was obsessed with identifying and rooting out his enemies. As Zhengyuan Fu explained in Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics, every member of Chinese society, even children, were called on to root out the landlords, teachers, intellectuals and artists who opposed Mao. He wrote:

Members of society are divided into two major categories: the people and the class enemy. People describes the in-group, within which are workers, poor and lower-middle-class peasants, soldiers and cadres. The class enemies of the people refers to the out group … a highly arbitrarily assigned group whose members are defined by the party state.

While the
people are described in terms of warmth, friendliness, candor, courage, and everything that is good, the class enemies are depicted as cruel, cunning, morally degrading, always scheming, and evil, Fu writes. In the enemies camp were who often were imprisoned.

Today, enemy of the people is still deployed. But mostly, you hear it from dictators. (Heads of former Soviet countries are particularly fond of the construction. Old dog, new tricks, etc.) It's never before been uttered by the leader of the free world. One more way in which Trump's presidency truly is unprecedented in U.S. history.




• Amanda Erickson writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Previously, she worked as an editor for Outlook and PostEverything.

__________________________________________________________________________

More on this topic:

 • Trump calls the media ‘the enemy of the American People’

 • Memo to Donald Trump: Thomas Jefferson invented hating the media

 • That's how dictators get started: McCain criticizes Trump for calling media ‘the enemy’

 • Trump attempts a reset with a rally, new staff and a renewed fight with the media

 • VIDEO: Trump attacks ‘very fake news’

 • VIDEO:Trump — Media is ‘out of control’ with dishonesty


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/18/trump-called-the-news-media-an-enemy-of-the-american-people-heres-a-history-of-the-term
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2017, 01:01:07 am »


from The Washington Post....

Employees who decline genetic testing
could face penalties under proposed bill


A House bill would allow bosses to ask workers to undergo genetic
testing as part of voluntary wellness programs. Critics said the
legislation would undermine basic privacy provisions.


By LENA H. SUN | 6:20PM EST - Saturday, March 11, 2017



EMPLOYERS could impose hefty penalties on employees who decline to participate in genetic testing as part of workplace wellness programs if a bill approved by a U.S. House committee this week becomes law.

In general, employers don't have that power under existing federal laws, which protect genetic privacy and nondiscrimination. But a bill passed Wednesday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce would allow employers to get around those obstacles if the information is collected as part of a workplace wellness program.

Such programs — which offer workers a variety of carrots and sticks to monitor and improve their health, such as lowering cholesterol — have become increasingly popular with companies. Some offer discounts on health insurance to employees who complete health-risk assessments. Others might charge people more for smoking. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers are allowed to discount health insurance premiums by up to 30 percent — and in some cases 50 percent — for employees who voluntarily participate in a wellness program.

The bill is under review by other House committees and still must be considered by the Senate. But it has already faced strong criticism from a broad array of groups, as well as House Democrats. In a letter sent to the committee earlier this week, nearly 70 organizations — representing consumer, health and medical advocacy groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, AARP, March of Dimes and the National Women's Law Center — said the legislation, if enacted, would undermine basic privacy provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the 2008 Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA).

Congress passed GINA to prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes. There is an exception that allows for employees to provide that information as part of voluntary wellness programs. But the law states that employee participation must be entirely voluntary, with no incentives for providing the data or penalties for not providing it.

But the House legislation would allow employers to impose penalties of up to 30 percent of the total cost of the employee's health insurance on those who choose to keep such information private.

“It's a terrible Hobson's choice between affordable health insurance and protecting one's genetic privacy,” said Derek Scholes, director of science policy at the American Society of Human Genetics, which represents human genetics specialists. The organization sent a letter to the committee opposing the bill.

The average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage in 2016 was $18,142, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Under the plan proposed in the bill, a wellness program could charge employees an extra $5,443 in annual premiums if they choose not to share their genetic and health information.

The bill, Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, HR 1313, was introduced by Representative Virginia Foxx, (Republican-North Carolina), who chairs the Committee on Education and the Workforce. A committee statement said the bill provides employers “the legal certainty they need to offer employee wellness plans, helping to promote a healthy workforce and lower health care costs.”

The bill's supporters in the business community have argued that competing regulations in federal laws make it too difficult for companies to offer these wellness programs. In congressional testimony this month, the American Benefits Council, which represents major employers, said the burdensome rules jeopardize wellness programs that improve employee health, can increase productivity and reduce health care spending.

A House committee spokeswoman told CNBC that those opposed to the bill “are spreading false information in a desperate attempt to deny employees the choice to participate in a voluntary program that can reduce health insurance costs and encourage healthy lifestyle choices.”


• Lena H. Sun is a national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on health issues, including public health and health-care delivery. She has previously covered a variety of beats, including the Metro transit system, immigration and education.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/03/11/employees-who-decline-genetic-testing-could-face-penalities-under-proposed-bill
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2017, 01:11:39 am »


Is that all you have
the washington post needs to start putting out real news

Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2017, 02:17:41 am »


Yes, well we know you'd pull your pants down, bend over, and beg your employer to NOT stick it into your anus too far if you were ever confronted with a demand to submit to genetic testing, because you'd be too stupid to resist fascist tactics of force.

I guess the proof will be in the pudding....if Trump signs this act into law, then he is a fascist and you and your elk won't be able to deny it.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #10 on: March 13, 2017, 11:24:03 pm »

so the government is saying people can do it if they want to ?

maybe you need a genetic test to find out if your a retarded inbred
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2017, 12:39:44 am »


Face facts....if you lived in America and Trump asked you to bend over and take it up the arse, you'd bend over and take it up the arse.

You are a weak-minded simpleton individual.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Im2Sexy4MyPants
Absolutely Fabulously Incredibly Shit-Hot Member
*
Posts: 8271



WWW
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2017, 09:34:51 am »

It's funny you have a thing about bending over and taking it in the arse

Now we know what's in your mind you're a racist white homophobe
Report Spam   Logged

Are you sick of the bullshit from the sewer stream media spewed out from the usual Ken and Barby dickless talking point look a likes.

If you want to know what's going on in the real world...
And the many things that will personally effect you.
Go to
http://www.infowars.com/

AND WAKE THE F_ _K UP
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #13 on: September 25, 2017, 01:41:23 pm »


from The Washington Post....

The civil rights and Vietnam protests changed America.
Today, they might be illegal.


More than 20 states are considering laws that restrict free speech, with more to come.

By MARGARET SULLIVAN | 4:00PM EDT - Sunday, September 24, 2017

In this scene from the PBS documentary “The Vietnam War”, college students protest in Boston on October 16th, 1965. — Photograph: Frank C. Curtin/Associated Press.
In this scene from the PBS documentary “The Vietnam War”, college students protest in Boston on October 16th, 1965.
 — Photograph: Frank C. Curtin/Associated Press.


WHAT'S THE STATE OF FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA?

Sanford Ungar, who teaches about it at Harvard and Georgetown, has a simple, depressing answer.

“It's a mess,” he says.

It's not just the problems on college campuses where high-profile speakers haven't been allowed to talk. It's not just what happened in Charlottesville, where a counter-protester was run over and killed. It's not just President Trump's insistent call for the firings or suspensions of NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence.

An insidious problem also is developing in dozens of states where legislatures are considering — and sometimes approving — new laws that restrict free speech.

“They are criminalizing things that are pretty routine,” Ungar told me. “Much of the activism of the Vietnam and civil rights era would be completely illegal” under the new laws.

The lunch-counter sit-ins that were a staple of civil rights protests in the '60s would, under some new legislation, be punishable because they “disrupt commerce”. And the demonstrations that brought thousands into the streets of major cities to protest the Vietnam War would be a crime because they blocked traffic.

Twenty-seven states have considered such legislation, he said. Twelve bills have become law, and many others remain under consideration.

Some of the bills sound perfectly acceptable at first because their purported aim is tranquility.

But here's the problem: Meaningful protest isn't always as mild as milk. The new laws have little tolerance for the tumultuous reality of dissent.

In Iowa, for example, the legislature considered a bill to punish protesters who block highway traffic with up to five years in prison.

In North Dakota, the governor signed a bill that would punish masked individuals in any public forum who are trying to conceal their identity.

In Arizona, the state Senate approved a bill that would add “rioting” to organized crime statutes, making participation in a protest that turns into a riot a possible criminal racketeering offense.

Florida even considered a bill that, in some cases, would exempt drivers from liability if they struck a protester.

Traci Yoder, National Lawyers Guild director of research and education, predicts that whether this wave of bills ends up passing or not, the effect may be the same — to tamp down dissent.

“Few people would be as willing to protest if they thought they could easily be arrested, fined, imprisoned or even killed,” Yoder wrote. And most regular citizens aren't keeping track of the details, she said, but may know that the penalties have been vastly toughened.

It amounts to a nationwide movement to chill speech.

And while it might be convenient to blame it on Trump's hard-line views on law enforcement, much of this movement predates the Trump administration. A substantial amount of the proposed legislation stems from protests over the Dakota Access pipeline and from the Black Lives Matter movement.

While countering this trend won't be easy, Ungar is making a start with the Free Speech Project, based at Georgetown, with funding from the university and the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. (The former president of Goucher College in Baltimore, Ungar is a journalist, a former host of “All Things Considered”, and the author of an acclaimed book on the Pentagon Papers.)

One element is a Free Speech Tracker, which has more than 50 entries for troubling incidents or legislation around the country. That's likely to grow dramatically over the next few months, he said.

A journalistic reality is part of the problem: There are far fewer state-government reporters around the nation than there were a decade ago. A Pew Research study showed a 35 percent decline from 2003 to 2014; it's undoubtedly worse now.

That means that some state legislatures are freer to act at will without the watchdog function — and the public reaction to it — that once was routine.

At the root of these laws, Ungar believes, is a false narrative: “Spoiled students and liberal faculty shutting down speech because they don't want to hear and confront the truth.” And, at the same time, the idea that protests of various kinds are “getting out of hand”.

So conservative lawmakers are stepping in to, in their view, fix it.

It's not so simple, he says, and the stereotypes translate quickly into a political diatribe about free speech in which nobody wins.

His effort will not only keep track of what's happening — useful in itself — but find ways to promote civil discussion across political divisions.

Protecting this basic American right sounds like it should be simple enough, but it's often a minefield. (Or, at the moment, a football field.)

“Everybody believes in free speech,” Ungar notes, “until you get to the topic on which they don't.”


• Margaret Sullivan is The Washington Post's media columnist. Previously, she was The New York Times' public editor, and the chief editor of The Buffalo News, her hometown paper.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-civil-rights-and-vietnam-protests-changed-america-today-they-might-be-illegal/2017/09/22/ae57f778-9ed9-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Kiwithrottlejockey
Admin Staff
XNC2 GOD
*
Posts: 32232


Having fun in the hills!


« Reply #14 on: September 25, 2017, 01:42:57 pm »


Yep....American righties have ALWAYS hated free speech.

Because they are too intellectually-challenged to come up with rational answers to the stuff intelligent people say when they are indulging in free speech.

If all of the righties in America were culled, the collective, average American IQ would rise by thousands of percentage points as the rightie dumbarses were killed-off/exterminated.
Report Spam   Logged

If you aren't living life on the edge, you're taking up too much space! 
Donald
Part-Of-The-Furniture Member
*
Posts: 898



« Reply #15 on: September 25, 2017, 01:46:41 pm »

Yes..I agree...the Vietnam war is over....welll spotted...you are on top of your game today😉
Report Spam   Logged

Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Open XNC2 Smileys
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum


Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy
Page created in 0.045 seconds with 16 queries.