(Fortune) — When radio was invented in the late nineteenth century by the likes of Marconi, Edison, and Tesla, government and industry faced a conundrum. Who would own the limited band of electromagnetic frequencies that made this new invention possible?
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Overlawyered linked today to a site called singlepayerlegal.org. And it’s amusing. So I sure hope that Overlawyered’s determination that it must be nothing more than parody/satire is correct.
The premise is the flip side of the argument for a single-payer health care system. The article (PDF) linked to on the front page of the site, written by a Matthew S. Rice, M.D., and apparently published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, makes clear that the concept is: A little bit of “turnabout is fair play”:
With attorney-legislators scrutinizing and planning the reform of medicine and the health insurance industry, it is only fitting that physicians apply the most current progressive healthcare reform principles to the legal profession.
The folks at singlepayerlegal do seem to have spent a fair amount of time and energy on this site though. They’ve set up a petition to Congress, calling for, among other things, the proposed legal system to be one “in which all attorneys are salaried, and are required to provide legal
services to all-comers, regardless of income or disparity-group status,
at fair and stable reimbursement rates determined by a Department of
Legal Services (DLS).” I am willing to bet that the $1,000/hour rate would appear nowhere on such a reimbursement schedule. Though I like the sound of “catastrophic felony protection.”
Reading through the site is entertaining, perhaps with the exception of the descriptions of the “victims” of the current legal system (wrongly convicted criminal defendants; there is even a link to the Innocence Project site). The overwhelming theme: Keep the lawyers and politicians out of our healthcare system. Not bloody likely.
But, if you really dig what you read, you can show your support for the organization by buying a bumper sticker.
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We all have obligations for different things during our lifetime. Whether it be providing for our family, including education of the children, or doing a civic duty helping the disadvantaged. In the democracy that we live in the jury system is a fair way to give all parties the chance to be heard, and finally judged by a panel of citizens drawn from all walks of life.
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When a person loses his or her job, finding a replacement may not be that easy to achieve and so he or she will need some financial help and this is where the unemployment compensation law applies. Even without employment, there are still bills to pay including food and rent which people need to abide by, and that is why this assistance is necessary. Unemployment is a serious problem to have as economic situations are not that flexible nowadays and this article will be providing relevant information in relation to unemployment compensation and how a person can be granted financial aid.
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Any kind of compensation law works to assist people in terms of their needs by giving them the necessary guidelines on how to apply and qualify for possible support. For a person to qualify for unemployment benefits, he or she must first have a record of minimum earnings over a set period of time. Unemployment benefits will only be given to those who were in a regular job for a certain amount of time before being unemployed.
A year’s employment prior to losing a job is crucial for a compensation to be granted under the unemployment compensation law. Other than this time factor, the person applying for the benefits should also be able, ready, and willing to work at the time of the application for unemployment compensation. Some information pertaining to the disapproval of claims will be provided as the article progresses.
It is a good decision to go for the option of applying for an unemployment claim at the local agencies. A person should not forget that relevant personal documents need to be filed as well when a compensation claim is in order. To avoid being caught in a financial problem then the paperwork should be sent out immediately for the money to arrive sooner.
What can qualify a person for significant compensation as stated under the compensation law for unemployment? If a person left his or her job then the person should have had good reasons to do so, and also he or she should not have been part of any mutiny or criminal charge that caused the loss of employment. An application can be deemed null and void if the applicant is ill or has any medical condition that may prevent him from getting employment.
The extent of the benefits one can gain from the compensation law is reserved for regular workers excluding the self employed or the independent workers for that matter. It is valid when people leave their work on the occasion of illegal activity inside the workplace, work related harassment and the like, as well as possible fear of injury. Quitting a job with a valid cause includes the following instances namely harassment, presence of illegal acts, and also poor working conditions.
When a spouse is to work for a company out of the state his or her spouse can seek and be granted for compensation benefits. Being drafted for military service is also an acceptable excuse, as is the case with the need to take care of sickly family members. There is a great need for local information pertaining to the compensation law to be distributed to the workers as these may differ from place to place.
Here are some reasons in the compensation law for unemployment where not all workers will be granted financial aid. A record of bad behavior, tardiness, absences, and insubordination will immediately eliminate a worker in this case. Workers should not have a history of alcohol and drug abuse if they would want to qualify for possible financial aid.
Regular benefits under the unemployment compensation law settle payments for twenty six weeks at the most in most countries. Compensation will only be granted to those workers who are active job seekers at the time that they are unemployed. Unemployment compensation is a privilege to encourage people to look for work and not simply slack off.
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Attorney General Eric Holder says Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
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Possibly spurred on by the looming threat of Judge Carton ruling in their cases, three matters recently discussed on Legal Blog Watch have come to interesting conclusions.
Louisiana judge issued a TRO requiring a publisher to take down a clearly satirical story about fictional killer giraffes. Yesterday, however, common sense was restored in the Pelican State when a district judge struck down the TRO and ordered the wildlife preserve that had obtained it to pay $500 in attorney fees and court costs. The court found that the story was satire and protected speech.
2. Allergy-Inducing Perfume: Last month, a Detroit civil servant reached a $100,000 settlement agreement with the city after her supervisor failed to address her complaints that her coworker’s perfume bothered her
allergies. This week, the city of Detroit announced that it will soon install placards in three city buildings instructing employees to refrain from “wearing scented products, including … colognes, aftershave lotions, perfumes, deodorants, body/face lotions … (and) the use of scented candles, perfume samples from magazines, spray or solid air fresheners …”
to demands from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood advocacy group that it offer refunds to all purchasers of its “Baby Einstein” videos because, in short, the videos will not make your child
into an Einstein or a genius. This month, Disney may have quietly gained some payback, however, when CCFC was “evicted from the Harvard-affiliated children’s mental-health center in Boston that had housed and sponsored it for more than a decade” after Disney allegedly “made contact” with health center officials.
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One of the best ways of conducting background check on people is to perform a search for arrest records. This kind of search shall give you the records containing the names of people being issued with warrants of arrest. This database belongs to the public records where anyone can gain access for free; hence, one of the best ways of conducting this search is to visit the concerned government agencies in charge of keeping the archives on warrants of arrest.
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Background checks are all the rage these days, but do people really know what they are and what they reveal? Most do not so let’s take a look at what is involved.
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How popular and perhaps over hyped are background checks these days? I was lazily watching the Winter Olympics one night when I was assaulted by an interesting commercial. It was touting background checks and that I should pretty much have one done on anyone that I could possibly meet during the day. This included my mechanic, date, co-workers, boss, student teacher and so on. This would appear to be a bit of overkill, but it does raise the interesting prospect of why background checks are so popular.
These checks started out as a fairly rare thing. They were usually run only when someone was in line for a position that required some sensitivity. Such positions would include jobs involving national security information, working for the CIA and FBI and so on. The use of background checks certainly made sense since we really didn’t want members of organized crime running the FBI.
So, how did background checks become such a trendy thing these days? The first reason is employers started using them to make sure they were not hiring people with sketchy histories. The creation of large databases that could easily be tapped soon led to the offering of background checks online and the position we now find ourselves in.
Are online background checks valuable? Well, sure. The more you know about someone, the better you can judge how you want to interact with them. That being said, it is important to remember that the information is only so good as the data it is drawn from. This is why free background checks are not worth a lot they don’t draw from many data sources. If you really want to know what is what, you really need to look to more sophisticated paid checks that access important databases.
Whether you are seeking a background check on someone or having one done on you, knowledge is the key to dealing with them. Only then can you know if you really want to deal with it.
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Published: Monday, March 15, 2010 at 7:50 a.m. Last Modified: Monday, March 15, 2010 at 7:50 a.m. PORT ORANGE A toddler who was thrown against a wall earlier this month has been released from an Orlando hospital.
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Please pause a second from what you are doing to reflect on this bit of news:
Yesterday, law firm Quinn Emanuel changed its name to Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. The newly-added “Sullivan” is Kathleen Sullivan. And Sullivan is … a female!
Sullivan’s gender doesn’t seem so earth-shattering until you learn that yesterday’s name change marks the first time in history that a woman’s name is on the door of an Am Law 100 firm, the Am Law Litigation Daily reports here. Sullivan’s background is extremely impressive. She began practicing law about 30 years ago at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and has had stops along the way as a Harvard Law School professor and the dean of Stanford Law School.
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