Insurance Claim1

You know what blows my mind (well, this week, anyway)?  It's the fact that there are still employers out in employment land that can't tell the difference between discrimination and non-discrimination.  I mean, really!  With all the litigation flying around, you'd think employers would know what not to do these days. Take, for example, the Lady who came up to me the other day.  Seems she is very religious and has been so all her life.   Her boss and fellow employees were not of her religious persuasion.  It seems that for the last several months, her coworkers have been discriminating against her because of her religious beliefs .   Both employer and employees have been berating her with anti-religious propaganda and literature and, have engaged in a pattern of "hostile proselytizing" to the point where she no longer feels safe going to work. Maybe you're thinking "hostile proselytizing?"  What the heck is that!?!  Wel...

In 2004, I was hired as a Librarian.  At the time, I was informed that I had the option (pay attention to that word "option;" it will come back to haunt you, later) to join the union.  I chose not to join. Three years ago (so, eleven years after I was hired), SEIU came knocking on my employers' door and informed us that we were required to be union members; that we never actually had the option not to join.   You WILL be a union member and you WILL pay union dues.  I don't like being compelled to do things so I really did not want to join. What bothered me most was the heavy handed tactics employed by the union.  As Justice Alito noted in the majority opinion: The plaintiff argues that he is not a free rider on a bus headed for a destination that he wishes to reach but is more like a person shanghaied for an unwanted voyage. ...and that's exactly what it felt like.  Union comes in and starts pushing everyone around.  You will do this;...

Do you remember the civil war?  Sure you do.  It was a battle between the northern and southern states that ran from 1861-1865.  The primary reason the Civil War broke out was because the southern states wanted to secede from the union because, I suspect, the Federal government was trying to ram its ideologies down the southern states throats.  Abraham Lincoln thought differently and by sending troops to prevent succession, the Civil War began. Fast forward 140 years to the year 2005.  The year after George W. Bush was elected POTUS, Congress passed what is known as The Real ID Act of 2005 .  California was, initially, one of the states that refused to bow to the requirements of this Act.  Fact is, there were a number of hold-out states that refused to adopt this federal mandate. It has recently come to my attention, however, that this is no longer the case and after only two weeks since I (a California resident) got my new Driver's License...

Do you know who (or what) you are?  Do you have a name?  An identity?  Are you animal or vegetable?  The thing is that most everyone is someone (or something). Their parents knew they were someone when they were born and the government recognized them as a type of person when they were born (i.e. male or female).  Heck, even the SCOTUS got into the act and says a fetus is human in the third trimester . Yet, even with all this, there is still someone out there who insists on relegating the individual as a non-element. Such was my thinking when I read an article (online, this time) about a hospital who left the identity of a newborn blank .  It was neither male nor female.  Forget the internal plumbing - we're going to call this thing an "it" for (at least) the first 8 years. The (or a) masalah with this is that when you deny a person's natural identity (be it gender or a human), you devalue that person's very existence.  Heck, labeling a hu...