Charleston Medical Center Tells Employees to Get Vaccine or Lose Jobs

Michelle Saxton
Charleston Daily Mail
August 26, 2009

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston Area Medical Center employees must get seasonal flu shots this year or risk losing their jobs.

All CAMC Health System workers must get vaccinated by Dec. 15 or their employment will be terminated, CAMC said in its August newsletter Vital Signs.

“The strongest recommendation that’s out there is to take the vaccine every year,” CAMC Director of Epidemiology Terrie Lee said Tuesday. “Our board of trustees and administrators had been discussing this for a couple years. We decided this year to make it a mandatory process for all of our employees.”

Employees may submit a request for accommodation due to health reasons, such as allergies to a component of the flu vaccine. They have until Sept. 15 to do so, and if requests are confirmed, those employees would have to wear a mask over their nose and mouth while at work during flu season, the newsletter said.

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Americans working much harder – for less pay

John W. Schoen
MSNBC
August 12, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Feel like you’re working a lot harder these days, putting in longer hours for the same pay — or even less? The latest round of government data on worker productivity indicates that you probably are.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that the American work force produced, at an annual rate, 6.4 percent more of the goods they made and services they provided in the second quarter of this year compared to a year ago. At the same time, “unit labor costs” — the amount employers paid for all that extra work — fell by 5.8 percent. The jump in productivity was higher than expected; the cut in labor costs more than double expectations.

That is, despite the deep job cuts of the past year, workers who remain on the payroll are filling in and making up the work that had been done by their departed colleagues. In some cases, that extra work came with a smaller paycheck.

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The Expiring Economy

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars
August 8, 2009

Tent cities springing up all over America are filling with the homeless unemployed from the worst economy since the 1930s. While Americans live in tents, the Obama government has embarked on a $1 billion crash program to build a mega-embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, to rival the one the Bush government built in Baghdad, Iraq.

	A homeless tent city in Reno, Navada, 2009.

Hard times have now afflicted Americans for so long that even the extension of unemployment benefits from 6 months to 18 months for 24 high unemployment states, and to 46 – 72 weeks in other states, is beginning to run out. By Christmas 1.5 million Americans will have exhausted unemployment benefits while unemployment rolls continue to rise.

Amidst this worsening economic crisis, the House of Representatives just passed a $636 billion “defense” bill.

Who is the United States defending against? Americans have no enemies except those that the US government goes out of its way to create by bombing and invading countries that comprise no threat whatsoever to the US and by encircling others—Russia for example—with threatening military bases.

America’s wars are contrived affairs to serve the money laundering machine: from the taxpayers and money borrowed from foreign creditors to the armaments industry to the political contributions that ensure $636 billion “defense” bills.

President George W. Bush gave us wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are entirely based on lies and misrepresentations. But Obama has done Bush one better. Obama has started a war in Pakistan with no explanation whatsoever.

If the armaments industry and the neoconservative brownshirts have their way, the US will also be at war with Iran, Russia, Sudan and North Korea.

Meanwhile, America continues to be overrun, as it has been for decades, not by armed foreign enemies but by illegal immigrants across America’s porous and undefended borders.

It is more proof of the Orwellian time in which we live that $636 billion appropriated for wars of aggression is called a “defense bill.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Who is going to pay for all of this? When foreign countries have spent their trade surpluses and have no more dollars to recycle into the purchase of Treasury bonds, when US banks have used up their “bailout” money by purchasing Treasury bonds, and when the Federal Reserve cannot print any more money to keep the government going without pushing up inflation and interest rates, the taxpayer will be all that is left. Already Obama’s two top economic advisors, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers, are floating the prospect of a middle class tax increase. Will Obama be maneuvered away from his promise just as Bush Sr. was?

Will Americans see the disconnect between their interests and the interests of “their” government? In the small town of Vassalboro, Maine, a few topless waitress jobs in a coffee house drew 150 applicants. Women in this small town are so desperate for jobs that they are reduced to undressing for their neighbors’ amusement.

Meanwhile, the Obama government is going to straighten out Afghanistan and Pakistan and build marble palaces to awe the locals half way around the world.

The US government keeps hyping “recovery” the way Bush hyped “terrorist threat” and “weapons of mass destruction.” The recovery is no more real than the threats. Indeed, it is possible that the economic collapse has hardly begun. Let’s look at what might await us here at home while the US government pursues hegemony abroad.

The real estate crisis is not over. More home foreclosures await as unemployment rises and unemployment benefits are exhausted. The commercial real estate crisis is yet to hit. More bailouts are coming, and they will have to be financed by more debt or money creation. If there are not sufficient purchasers for the Treasury bonds, the Federal Reserve will have to purchase them by creating checking accounts for the Treasury, that is, by debt monetization or the printing of money.

More debt and money creation will put more pressure on the US dollar’s exchange value. At some point import prices, which include offshored goods and services of US corporations, will rise, adding to the inflation fueled by domestic money creation. The Federal Reserve will be unable to hold down interest rates by buying bonds.

No part of US economic policy addresses the systemic crisis in American incomes. For most Americans real income ceased to grow some years ago. Americans have substituted second jobs and debt accumulation for the missing growth in real wages. With most households maxed out on debt and jobs disappearing, these substitutes for real income growth no longer exist.

The Bush-Obama economic policy actually worsens the systemic crisis that the US dollar faces as reserve currency. The fact that there might be no alternative to the dollar as reserve currency does not guarantee that the dollar will continue in this role. Countries might find it less risky to settle trade transactions in their own currencies.

How does an economy based heavily on consumer spending recover when so many high-value-added jobs, and the GDP and payroll tax revenues associated with them, have been moved offshore and when consumers have no more assets to leverage in order to increase their spending?

How does the US pay for its imports if the dollar is no longer used as reserve currency?

These are the unanswered questions.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/the-expiring-economy/

Another Hurdle for the Jobless: Credit Inquiries

JONATHAN D. GLATER
The New York Times
August 8, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Digging out of debt keeps getting harder for the unemployed as more companies use detailed credit checks to screen job prospects.

Out of work since December, Juan Ochoa was delighted when a staffing firm recently responded to his posting on Hotjobs.com with an opening for a data entry clerk. Before he could do much more, though, the firm checked his credit history.

The interest vanished. There were too many collections claims against him, the firm said.

“I never knew that nowadays they were going to start pulling credit checks on you even before you go for an interview,” said Mr. Ochoa, 46, who lost his job in December tracking inventory at a mining company in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. “Why would they need to pull a credit report? They’d need something like that if you were applying at a bank.”

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Martial Law Under the Cover of Bush Era Quarantine Regulations

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
August 5, 2009

It didn’t fly under Bush, but it might under Obama. “The Obama administration is quietly dusting off an effort to impose new federal quarantine regulations, which were vigorously resisted by civil liberties organizations and the airline industry when the rules were first proposed by the Bush administration nearly four years ago,” reports Politico.

Under the plan, the feds will have the authority to lock down cities or even entire areas of the country under “provisional quarantine.” In addition, the plan cooked up under Bush would have required airlines and cruise lines to store information about domestic and international passengers, such as e-mail addresses, traveling companions and return flight information. The information would be subject to review by federal officials in a health emergency.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Critics say Obama and crew will attempt to sneak through the unconstitutional regulations while Congress is in recess this month.

“The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has set a September target date to complete the first major overhaul of the quarantine regulations in about three decades. That would have at least some of the rules in place if swine flu returns with a vengeance later this year, though officials are reluctant to make that link publicly,” writes Josh Gerstein for Politico.

The plan is backed by the CDC. “It’s important to public health to move forward with the regulations,” said Christine Pearson, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We need to update our quarantine regulations, and this final rule is an important step.” The Office of Management and Budget has confirmed the lock-down plan is currently in “an interagency review process.”

As the flu outbreak approaches — promised to hit this autumn — we are beginning to see the full extent of the government’s plan to declare martial law and further violate the Constitution, or sideline it completely.

An outbreak of the flu is only a convenient pretext. According to Politico, analysts said the administration may want to hold new quarantine powers in reserve, for “unforeseen situations” or for diseases other than the flu.

In other words, the government may use the new lock-down regulations for political reasons. Late last year, the IMF said U.S. troops may need to be used to quell protests and bank runs during an economic crisis, according to the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute.

In December, trends forecaster Gerald Celente predicted “food riots, squatter rebellion, tax revolts and job marches” in response to a crashing economy.

It was revealed at the time by Sen. James Inhofe and Rep. Brad Sherman that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson considered the possibility of civil unrest while he pushed for September’s Wall Street bankster bailout and even suggested martial law might be required.

The government’s consideration of new federal quarantine regulations is merely a cynical ploy to exploit fears of a flu pandemic in order to push for a martial law option. There is absolutely no difference between the Obama and Bush administrations – both have put into place plans long ago drafted by our globalist rulers.

It is not al-Qaeda or a flu bug they fear but rather the people who will naturally rise up, as Celente and others predict, in response to tyranny.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/martial-law-under-the-cover-of-bush-era-quarantine-regulations/

People Working for Free During Economic Crisis

Michelle Nichols
Reuters
July 20, 2009

Editor’s note: After the engineered crash of the Soviet economy, Russian workers did the same thing — they worked for free.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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With U.S. unemployment at a 20-year high, some Americans are working for free while looking for a job, but experts are split over whether it is a sign of dedication or desperation.

Unpaid job seekers can keep their resumes fresh by boosting their experience and learning new skills, experts say, but others warn businesses may take advantage of the jobless and that it is illegal for commercial companies not to pay workers.

Dana Lin, 22, is one of the 14.7 million unemployed workers in the United States. She lost her marketing job at a technology company near San Francisco in April and since then has been working for free for about five hours a week for Internet company Jobnob.com.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/people-working-for-free-during-economic-crisis/

Unemployment Worse with Stimulus than Without

Matt Cover
CNSNews
July 6, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Unemployment hit 9.5 percent in June, according to the Department of Labor, putting the figure 2.5 percent higher than the White House had predicted it would be if a government stimulus spending program went into place. Moreover, the new figure is nearly one percent higher than where the White House said it would be without any stimulus spending at all.

In fact, the White House never predicted that unemployment would rise above nine percent regardless of whether Congress spent the nearly $800 billion in so-called economic stimulus spending it recommended at the time.

The predictions came from a Jan. 10, 2009, report issued by Christina Romer, now chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, and Jared Bernstein, currently Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist. The administration used the report as both a blueprint and a justification for the $787-billion spending package Obama signed in February.

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Payrolls Fall More Than Forecast, Unemployment Rises

Shobhana Chandra
Bloomberg
July 3, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
• 

Employers in the U.S. cut 467,000 jobs in June, the unemployment rate rose and hourly earnings stagnated, offering little evidence the Obama administration’s stimulus package is shoring up the labor market.

The payroll decline was more than forecast and followed a 322,000 drop in May, according to Labor Department figures released today in Washington. The jobless rate jumped to 9.5 percent, the highest since August 1983, from 9.4 percent.

Unemployment is projected to keep rising for the rest of the year just as the income boost from the stimulus package fades, undermining prospects for a sustained rebound in household purchases, analysts said. As companies from General Motors Corp. to Kimberly-Clark Corp. cut costs, the lack of jobs will restrain growth.

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America’s Effective Unemployment Rate at 18.7%?

Steve Clemons
The Washington Note
July 2, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on “America’s effective unemployment rate” which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate “jobs, jobs, jobs!”

But now, I have been hearing more and more from senior Obama economic team members about the jobs they hoped for coming at the very tail end of an economic recovery. Others are talking about a GDP recovery — but not a jobs recovery. They are admitting as well that they underestimated the severity of this recession and its impact on unemployment levels.

And all this while Goldman Sachs and other financial houses have seen their balance sheets get cleaned up and bonuses surge.

Hindery writes:

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the “labor force reserve” because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are “part-time of necessity” (i.e., 8,989,000) or “otherwise marginally attached” (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers – 13,290,000 – have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

It’s important to see the entire picture of America’s jobs profile — no matter how unpleasant.

I recognize that credit bubble related recoveries are hard to work out and are usually quite slow — with job growth at the back end. This all makes sense — but with Christina Romer out raising expectations again with giddy talk predicting a V-shaped recovery and given the “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra of President Obama himself — the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential.

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/americas-effective-unemployment-rate-at-187/

Montana City Stops Requiring Facebook, MySpace & YouTube Logins/Passwords During Background Checks

June 24, 2009 10:15 by Tom Ahearn

Until recently, Bozeman, Montana required jobseekers looking to work for the city to reveal all of their passwords and logins to social media networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube – and to email accounts such as Google and Yahoo – during background checks. News of the requirement created such a controversy over privacy rights that the city’s practice of reviewing information found on password-protected sites has since been suspended pending “a more comprehensive evaluation.”

According to reports, a news station in Montana was informed about Bozeman’s background check policies from an anonymous individual. Jobseekers for Bozeman city posts were required to sign a background check waiver requiring applicants – in addition to undergoing usual criminal records search and past employment reviews – to list their involvement with online websites “to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.” The city form then offered three lines for applicants to list websites, their user names and login information, and their passwords.

Not surprisingly, the requirement raised questions concerning the privacy rights of applicants. Bozeman officials were receiving an e-mail a minute about the background check policy while an online poll tallying more than 5,000 votes found 98 percent of the respondents thought the policy was an invasion of privacy. In addition, Article 2, Section 10 of the Montana Constitution reads “the right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.”

Initially, the Bozeman City Attorney was quoted as defending the background check policy: “We have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity for those positions, all the way down to the lifeguards and the folks that work in city hall here. So we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the city.” The city has since ended the policy which “appears to have exceeded that which is acceptable to our community.”

Regarding the city’s former background check requirement, officials from online social networking website Facebook.com – which currently has more than 200 million active users worldwide – were quoted as saying the Bozeman policy “is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which received feedback from users and was ultimately approved in a site-wide vote.” This proves once again that while some employers favor using social media sites for employment background checks, the process does come with certain risks and liabilities.

Whatever their opinion on privacy issues, jobseekers in today’s job market should expect a thorough background check that could include a criminal record search, resume validation, and even a credit report. While social networking sites probably should stay off limits, employers will have plenty of information left in the background check to ponder. Jobseekers should do their best to make sure that the information found in background check reports is current, accurate, and secure from identity theft.

One way to accomplish this goal is with a Self Background Check – a background check that is ordered by an individual and for the individual. Self background checks help jobseekers keep the information that will be viewed by potential employers mistake-proof and error-free. While most background check companies only service employers, MyBackgroundCheck.com specializes in personal background checks for individuals to use as jobseekers, tenants, students, volunteers, and everyday consumers. For more information on self background checks, please visit www.mybackgroundcheck.com, email info@mybackgroundcheck.com, or call 1-800-503-2364.

URL: http://www.mybackgroundcheck.com/blog/post/2009/06/Montana-City-Stops-Requiring-Facebook2c-MySpace–YouTube-LoginsPasswords-During-Background-Checks.aspx