Linda Weltner's speech at Boston Globe picket 7/24/00
Ron Newman
This is a copy of Linda Weltner's speech there, forwarded by
a friend.
-------------------
MY SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL WRITERS' UNION PROTEST AGAINST THE BOSTON GLOBE
By Linda Weltner
July 24, 2000
I wrote "Ever So Humble" for the Boston Globe for 20 years before I found
out something I didn't know until I refused to sign over to the
Boston Globe the right to "brand" and sell 20 years of my work over the
internet as theirs, with no compensation to me.
I discovered I was expendable.
It didn't matter to the New York Times Company, which owns the
Globe, that, unlike three other Boston Globe columnists whose names I will
not mention, I had never been accused of plagiarism, of making up stories,
of deliberately misquoting anyone, or of "borrowing" material from the
Internet.
Not even by my family!
It didn't matter to the powers in charge that Regis College had
given me an honorary doctorate; or that the New England Women's Press
Association had named me Best Columnist; or that my columns had been
reprinted in 9 college writing texts as examples of outstanding writing;
or that Mayor Menino and 600 other people at a fund-raiser for the Pine
Street Inn had given me and my readers a standing ovation for our work with a
homeless woman.
It didn't matter that I was a bargain, either. As a freelancer, I
could only earn $18,500 a year and hadn't been given a raise in 15 years.
Yet I'd agreed to let my column go out on the New York Times Wire Service
to newspapers all over the country, without any additional compensation.
It didn't even matter that At Home readership levels had risen so
high. and thus become so attractive to advertisers, that the Globe is in
the process of planning a new, expanded At Home section for the fall.
Certainly the newspaper knew that readers were not turning to At Home in
droves to find out where to buy $99.99 wind chimes. I've been told that at
the time I was dismissed, I was the second most-read columnist in the
newspaper.
But all that didn't matter. Nor did reader loyalty, which had
gotten me reinstated years ago when I'd been cut back to twice a month.
None of that mattered when measured against the hundreds of millions of
dollars at stake. Before long, it is estimated that more than 80% of all
newspaper profits will come from Internet license fees and database
royalties and it is crucial to the huge and powerful corporations which
own most of today's media to separate those who create the value from those
who profit from it.
They must do that now -- before anyone realizes just how much
money is at stake because today's corporate leaders don't want one penny
of those profits to go to the workers who create it.
This is who we freelancers are to the Globe: geese who lay golden eggs.
Henry Ford knew that he had to pay his workers enough so that they
could buy his cars, but today's corporate leaders can't see beyond the
glint of our gold. They want the eggs without having to nourish the geese,
and they want it so badly that they are willing to coerce us, impoverish
us, and yes, dismiss every one of us, if they have to. They believe that
no matter what happens to us they will somehow still be able to seize all
that gold for themselves.
Gandhi's first rule of non-violence is that one must never
cooperate in one's own exploitation, and certainly that means that we also
must not cooperate in the exploitation of future generations of freelance
writers, photographers, and graphic artists, many of whom may be our
children or our grandchildren. It is not right for corporations to be the
only ones to profit from the creative output of those who work for them.
That is why I am here today.
That is why I am a plaintiff in the National Writers' Union class
action suit contesting the "deceptive, unfair, and unconscionable"
contract offered to freelancers by the Globe.
That is why I have gladly given up my career.
History has shown us we must resist injustice whenever we have the
power to do so. There is such a thing as right action, and we have no
choice but to choose it, if we can. If we do otherwise, our brief lives
here on earth will become a sad and compromising dance with evil.
Dave Quinn
Weltner needs to get over herself in a big way. Her writing is really not
that good -- the Globe was doing her a favor even asking her to renew.
Ron Newman <rne...@thecia.net> wrote in message
news:rnewman-2707...@ppp225-4.thecia.net...
Charles Demas
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>Weltner needs to get over herself in a big way. Her writing is really not
>that good -- the Globe was doing her a favor even asking her to renew.
>
I don't know if her writing is good or bad [1], but it was good enough
that they renewed her for a long time, and still wanted her, but on
very unfavorable terms, terms that are unfavorable to any writer,
good or bad.
Those terms were the terms for any free-lance writer, and have nothing
to do with the quality of the work.
Didn't you understand the point that was really being made, ... or why
the Globe was being picketed?
Chuck Demas
Needham, Mass.
[1] I don't recall ever reading her column, but I don't read the Globe
much.
>
>Ron Newman <rne...@thecia.net> wrote in message
>news:rnewman-2707...@ppp225-4.thecia.net...
>> The National Writers' Union picketed the Boston Globe on Monday.
>> This is a copy of Linda Weltner's speech there, forwarded by
>> a friend.
>>
>> -------------------
>> MY SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL WRITERS' UNION PROTEST AGAINST THE BOSTON GLOBE
>> By Linda Weltner
>> July 24, 2000
>
>
>
--
Eat Healthy | _ _ | Nothing would be done at all,
Stay Fit | @ @ | If a man waited to do it so well,
Die Anyway | v | That no one could find fault with it.
de...@tiac.net | \___/ | http://www.tiac.net/users/demas
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>Weltner needs to get over herself in a big way. Her writing is really not
>that good -- the Globe was doing her a favor even asking her to renew.
She doesn't write to the Angry White Male -- which is enough to ensure
that she'll never be "that good" in the eyes of so many Boston-area
readers.
--
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Mary Malmros Very Small Being mal...@shore.net
"I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
for the joys of the multitude"
Rich Carreiro
suing over.
It would be one thing if they were suing over the Globe's using their
stuff on the Globe web site without permission/compensation (which it
is, but as I understand it, that's not what the suit is over).
It would be one thing if the Globe was re-selling things written in
the past by the freelancers without compensation/permission (which I
believe it is, but I undestand it, that's not what the suit is over).
However, it seems to be that the Globe has said "if you want to do
freelance work for us, sign this contract. If you don't like the
contract, fine, work for someone else," the freelancers don't like the
contract being offered and THAT is what the freelancers are suing
over.
If so, tough toenails for the writers. Where on earth did they come
up with the laughable idea that the Globe is somehow required to offer
them a contract that they like? Pretty amusing if you ask me.
Hopefully the freelancers get bounced out of court with their butts
handed to them on this one. As for the other issues, THOSE appear to
me to be what they should be spending their legal resources on.
And yes, not seeing Linda Weltner's column in the Globe is hardly
a big loss.
Of course, that's true of just about any Globe columnist these days :-)
--
Rich Carreiro rlc...@animato.arlington.ma.us
Roger Williams
> She doesn't write to the Angry White Male -- which is enough to ensure
> that she'll never be "that good" in the eyes of so many Boston-area
> readers.
If her page (and archived columns) at shore.net are any indication, no,
she doesn't (didn't?) write to the "angry white male". Her audience seems
to be the light in the loafers suburban white female, with heavy doses of
"Chicken Soup for the Ditzy Soul". I'm not saying her column was bland
pablum, but it was bland pablum. Imagine a typical column written for
"Martha Stewart's Living" or "Ladies Home Journal", but neutered and
declawed. It's Oprah's "Oxygen", without all the investigative journalism
and steely insights.
Linda, it's a shame the Globe screwed you. Honest. But it also doesn't
help that your column truly, and genuinely sucked.
--
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} \|/
{} RogerW rog...@newsguy.com {} 0< -- parrot.net!
{} http://www.parrot.net ad...@parrot.net {} ^^^^(*)^^^^
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ^^ / \ ^^
dph...@my-deja.com
Roger Williams <ad...@parrot.net> wrote:
> Also spracht Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net>:
>
> > She doesn't write to the Angry White Male -- which is enough to
ensure
> > that she'll never be "that good" in the eyes of so many Boston-area
> > readers.
>
> If her page (and archived columns) at shore.net are any indication,
no,
> she doesn't (didn't?) write to the "angry white male". Her audience
seems
> to be the light in the loafers suburban white female, with heavy doses
of
> "Chicken Soup for the Ditzy Soul". I'm not saying her column was bland
> pablum, but it was bland pablum. Imagine a typical column written for
> "Martha Stewart's Living" or "Ladies Home Journal", but neutered and
> declawed. It's Oprah's "Oxygen", without all the investigative
journalism
> and steely insights.
>
> Linda, it's a shame the Globe screwed you. Honest. But it also
doesn't
> help that your column truly, and genuinely sucked.
>
That's a bit harsh. Obviously she had some sort of following --
probably the same people who read 'Confidential Chat.'
The issue is obviously about receiving compensation for her work,
it doesn't matter who her work appealed to.
--
--dph.
(preferred email: dhayes AT iname DOT com)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Adam Kippes
> She doesn't write to the Angry White Male -- which is enough to ensure
> that she'll never be "that good" in the eyes of so many Boston-area
> readers.
I guess there aren't enough Placid Black Females around to keep her
employed since the Globe didn't hesitate to drop her.
-- AK
--
adam....@pobox.com
PGP keys available from servers
Ron Newman
<m3bszib...@animato.arlington.ma.us>, Rich stated...
>It would be one thing if the Globe was re-selling things written in
>the past by the freelancers without compensation/permission (which I
>believe it is, but I undestand it, that's not what the suit is over).
Actually, I think that's the heart of the suit. The Globe wants
freelancers to hand the Globe a royalty-free license to resell
all of their *past* work, if they want to continue writing for the Globe today.
--
Ron Newman rne...@thecia.net
http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/home.html
Ron Newman
all about the Globe freelancer controversy:
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/features/00/07/27/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html
Mary Malmros
>In article <8ls2g...@enews4.newsguy.com>,
> Roger Williams <ad...@parrot.net> wrote:
>> Also spracht Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net>:
>>
>ensure
>> > that she'll never be "that good" in the eyes of so many Boston-area
>> > readers.
>>
>no,
>> she doesn't (didn't?) write to the "angry white male". Her audience
>seems
>> to be the light in the loafers suburban white female, with heavy doses
>of
>> "Chicken Soup for the Ditzy Soul". I'm not saying her column was bland
>> pablum, but it was bland pablum. Imagine a typical column written for
>> "Martha Stewart's Living" or "Ladies Home Journal", but neutered and
>> declawed. It's Oprah's "Oxygen", without all the investigative
>journalism
>> and steely insights.
>>
>> Linda, it's a shame the Globe screwed you. Honest. But it also
>doesn't
>> help that your column truly, and genuinely sucked.
>>
>
>That's a bit harsh. Obviously she had some sort of following --
>probably the same people who read 'Confidential Chat.'
Wow. Some of y'all REALLY need to learn to read for content.
Alan Grossberg
otherwise -- clearly deserve fair compensation for their work.
2) I also agree with R.W. on the smaller issue (as usual, his post hit the mark
with stinging accuracy): her columns, while well-written and fairly
entertaining, always have that nagging ring of "Philosophy Lite" about them.
Regardless of topic, they all read as if they've just been been sauteed in that
unmistakeable blend of New Age, formulaic schmaltz which conjures up a line from
an old Woody Allen movie (Annie Hall?).....viz., "Did it achieve total
heavy-osity?"
P.S. I'm surprised that Weltner, who never misses a chance to connect the dots
and relay how wise in the ways of the world she's become with each new
enlightening encounter, only _just_ "discovered I was expendable." Surely she
must know that everyone is.
Keith Carangelo
: However, it seems to be that the Globe has said "if you want to do
: freelance work for us, sign this contract. If you don't like the
: contract, fine, work for someone else," the freelancers don't like the
: contract being offered and THAT is what the freelancers are suing
: over.
: If so, tough toenails for the writers. Where on earth did they come
: up with the laughable idea that the Globe is somehow required to offer
: them a contract that they like? Pretty amusing if you ask me.
Can't you apply this same argument to end protections of minimum wage,
sexual and racial discrimination, and other workers' rights? Hey, Rich,
you don't like our policy against people who use
Arlington-based ISP's? ...well go work somewhere else!
I realize that might be a stretch, but in this world of consolidated
multi-multi-multi-billion dollar media conglomerates, there *has* to
be some basic rights and protections given to the labor force. To
say that the N.Y. Times Corporation should screw poor (in the
financial sense) writers and artists and steal their work
*BECAUSE THEY CAN* isn't amusing... it's scary and it's disgusting.
Keith
Isn't the old saying that you start out liberal and end up conservative
in your old age? I fear I'm going the other way!
dph...@my-deja.com
I beg your pardon. Are you referring to the content of LW's
speech ? I understand her point, I was just addressing the
topic-drift-issue of whether or not there was any point in
expending ink on printing any of her columns.
I think the Globe's plan is sleazy and that they will probably
end up modifying it. As for Weltner's column, I won't miss it
all.
tonyp
Alan Grossberg <snow...@mediaone.net> wrote
> 1) I agree with Weltner on the larger issue here: writers -- freelance
or
> otherwise -- clearly deserve fair compensation for their work.
What say you about Stephen King's latest approach to compensation? To me,
it's equivalent to that most honest of all forms of commerce: the way
street musicians "sell" their work.
It used to be that the only way to distribute "intellectual property" was
to embody it in manufactured products, e.g. newspapers, CDs, books. As
disembodied IP takes over, I say that it's the manufacturers (publishers)
who will become superfluous. But it may also turn out that the market
value of disembodied IP will be much lower than writers, musicians, etc.
consider "fair".
-- Tony Prentakis
Mary Malmros
>In article <8lsicn$2...@northshore.shore.net>,
> mal...@shore.net (Mary Malmros) wrote:
>> Wow. Some of y'all REALLY need to learn to read for content.
>>
>> --
>
>I beg your pardon. Are you referring to the content of LW's
>speech ?
No, I was talking about her columns, actually. I can't say I've
read every one of 'em, or even the majority, but while a lot
of them were rambling, some of them were pretty inspired IMO.
For instance, I particularly liked one she wrote about reading
one of the American Girl books with her granddaughter, the one
about the girl who lived during WWII, and how she'd gotten
to telling stories of her own life at the time to her
granddaughter, and how the stories ended up being more interesting
than the book for both of them...moral of story, people (especially
folks who've been around a while) have their own stories to
tell, fascinating stories, which mean as much or more to a kid
as something you buy off a shelf. Now, right about now some of
you are probably making rude noises and hitting the R key, giving
yourselves RSI pounding out a snappy retort about, "Oh so what,
EVERYBODY knows that!!!" Well, no, they don't. Look at how people
raise kids, and how they buy their children's entertainment rather
than making it, and you can see that they don't. So what if she's
reminding us of an old truth -- if we need reminding, as we do, it's
a good thing.
>I think the Globe's plan is sleazy and that they will probably
>end up modifying it. As for Weltner's column, I won't miss it
>all.
Chacun a son gout. I doubt they'll significantly modify their plan.
Why should they? Popular opinion? Don't make me laugh. They care
about the money, and they won't lose much over this. It only has
a chance of succeeding if the writers organize effectively.
Dave Quinn
news:8lsicn$2...@northshore.shore.net...
>
> Wow. Some of y'all REALLY need to learn to read for content.
I did, thank you very much -- and her column s u c k e d. "light in the
loafers" is a much too kind description.
Y'know, this Boston Globe thing is ridiculous -- they laid down the terms
for a contractual arrangement with the various freelance columnists. If the
columnists don't like the terms, then they don't work for them. It's
simple. Tough for Weltner and all her cronies. Much to do about nothing.
You write about the "Angry White Male" -- what about the "Dumb White
Female", whose Weltner's insipid column cultivated? Please: let's call a
spade a spade here.
Dave Quinn
news:xvrg5.256$NH2....@typhoon.ne.mediaone.net...
> As she's quick to tell us, she "had never been accused of plagiarism, of
making
> up stories, of deliberately misquoting anyone, or of 'borrowing' material
from
> the Internet. Indeed. But I'll be the first to accuse her of unsolicited,
tacky
> spamming.
"Spamming" is the act of sending an e-mail for purposes of commerical
advertisement to multiple individuals you have never had a previous
communication with. You sent her e-mail first, therefore the previous
communication had been established. Tacky, yes -- but definately not spam.
Alan Grossberg
prior. Earlier in '99 or '98 I wrote Weltner and told her that I enjoyed/agreed
with one of her columns (rather than the usual sap it was about the effects of
pesticides and other pollutants on the environment, particularly in Salem and
Marblehead). She thanked me for the feedback and said something about it being
unusual to hear from a male reader.
End of story. Not! Sometime during the Xmas season I received an e-mail from
her, with at least a dozen Cc's, trumpeting the availability of her columns in
compilation which, naturally, would make a wonderful gift.
Michael Zarlenga
: Y'know, this Boston Globe thing is ridiculous -- they laid down the terms
: for a contractual arrangement with the various freelance columnists. If the
And then changed those terms.
--
-- Mike Zarlenga
Marcin Mankowski
>
>Weltner needs to get over herself in a big way. Her writing is really not
>that good -- the Globe was doing her a favor even asking her to renew.
Are you saying that if your wallet "is really not that" valuable - the mugger
does you a favor by taking your money?
Interesting logic.
Dave Quinn
news:3982fc45...@news5.bellatlantic.net...
Now you are certainly someone that is utterly without a clue.
The Globe set the terms for renewal of contracts, and Weltner and her
cry-baby cronies didn't like it. Tough -- then go sell your trash to
someone else, I say. Stop wasting the legal system's time (and my tax
dollars) trying to circumvent a businesses' legitimate right to negotiate
contracts to their benefit. She has the freedom to say no and go elsewhere.
Bye-bye, and good riddance.
Betsy Schwartz
introspective. And, I often disagreed with her. But, she very often made me
think, and especially made me think about what sort of things are most
important to me, and that's valuable. As she points out on her web page,
she's being replaced, not by another intelligent columnist, but by more
column inches devoted to expensive home furnishings. That is truly a loss.
--
bet...@shore.net http://www.shore.net/~betsys
Betsy Schwartz
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>Y'know, this Boston Globe thing is ridiculous -- they laid down the terms
>for a contractual arrangement with the various freelance columnists. If the
>simple. Tough for Weltner and all her cronies. Much to do about nothing.
Easy to say when it's not you being affected. Easy to say when it's happening
to some other writers at some other newspaper, and if you don't like it,
you can simply go to some other newspaper that has better terms.
Not so easy to say when, gosh, it turns out that all of a sudden, an awful
lot of newspapers are owned by the same media conglomerate, that -- surprise,
surprise -- all of a sudden have the same gouging policies. Not so easy to
say when, gosh, it turns out that all of a sudden, a whole lot of newspapers
everywhere -- all the significant "media markets" -- are owned by one of
a few media conglomerates, who all have the same set of gouging policies.
Why wouldn't they? The leverage this gives them over their potential labor
pool is worth much, much more than any competitive hiring advantage they
might gain by offering better terms to potential workers.
Wake up. This is happening all over. It's happening in white-collar,
high-tech jobs, where people who don't carry firearms or operate forklifts
or city buses or aircraft as part of their jobs are increasingly required
to take drug tests as a condition of employment. Don't want to go work
here? Then go work somewhere else. Oh...surprise! THAT other company
has the same policy! And so does THAT one, and THAT one, and THAT one...
You're not getting it, and so it'll be a big surprise to you when this
phenomenon creeps up on you within your job, and you find that it's not
just your job but your entire corporation, and when you go to exercise
your much-ballyhooed right to work elsewhere, you find that it's your
entire industry. Some "right". Ptui.
Adam Kippes
> It's happening in white-collar,
> high-tech jobs, where people who don't carry firearms or operate forklifts
> or city buses or aircraft as part of their jobs are increasingly required
> to take drug tests as a condition of employment
Huh?
Dave Quinn
> Wake up. This is happening all over. It's happening in white-collar,
> high-tech jobs, where people who don't carry firearms or operate forklifts
> or city buses or aircraft as part of their jobs are increasingly required
> to take drug tests as a condition of employment. Don't want to go work
> here? Then go work somewhere else. Oh...surprise! THAT other company
> has the same policy! And so does THAT one, and THAT one, and THAT one...
The policies you describe are NOT illegal. You wake up.
> You're not getting it, and so it'll be a big surprise to you when this
> phenomenon creeps up on you within your job, and you find that it's not
> just your job but your entire corporation, and when you go to exercise
> your much-ballyhooed right to work elsewhere, you find that it's your
> entire industry. Some "right". Ptui.
Oh I got it, allright: more liberal, bleeding-heart, meadow muffin nuggets
from Cambridge. It's getting a tad old, don't you think? Companies have a
right to run a business the way they want, and as long as they don't
discriminate against people then there is no issue. Is it fair? Maybe not,
but it's about business and it's not supposed to be fair. If you don't like
it, then start your own business and run it how you think it should be run;
otherwise -- butt out.
Alan Grossberg
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:hKXg5.7069$Q7.2...@news-east.usenetserver.com...
> Oh I got it, allright: more liberal, bleeding-heart, meadow muffin nuggets
> from Cambridge. It's getting a tad old, don't you think? Companies have a
> right to run a business the way they want, and as long as they don't
> discriminate against people then there is no issue. Is it fair? Maybe not,
> but it's about business and it's not supposed to be fair. If you don't like
> it, then start your own business and run it how you think it should be run;
> otherwise -- butt out.
Hey, leave her alone......she's connecting the dots and seeing the B-I-I-I-G
picture here as few others can. It's Weltner-speak at its finest :>)
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote in message
>news:8m1fdo$m...@northshore.shore.net...
>
>> Wake up. This is happening all over. It's happening in white-collar,
>> high-tech jobs, where people who don't carry firearms or operate forklifts
>> or city buses or aircraft as part of their jobs are increasingly required
>> to take drug tests as a condition of employment. Don't want to go work
>> here? Then go work somewhere else. Oh...surprise! THAT other company
>> has the same policy! And so does THAT one, and THAT one, and THAT one...
>
>The policies you describe are NOT illegal. You wake up.
Dave, nobody said they were illegal. But remember that once it was
perfectly legal to put 10 year old children down mineshafts to work
all day. Just because it's legal now doesn't mean it's a good idea,
or that we should just roll over for it. And if your employer
decided to survey everything you do down to your bodily fluids, I'm
sure you wouldn't simply shrug and say, "Ohwell, there's not _exactly_
a law against it, so I suppose it must be okay."
>> You're not getting it, and so it'll be a big surprise to you when this
>> phenomenon creeps up on you within your job, and you find that it's not
>> just your job but your entire corporation, and when you go to exercise
>> your much-ballyhooed right to work elsewhere, you find that it's your
>> entire industry. Some "right". Ptui.
>
>Oh I got it, allright: more liberal, bleeding-heart, meadow muffin nuggets
If you were capable of seeing beyond your labels and stereotypes, you
might understand that people of your political stripe don't have some
kind of exclusive lock on figuring things out. You're blinded by
labels, knee-jerking at what you perceive to be my politics -- about
which you know next to nothing, since I've said next to nothing about
it here; you're just ASSuming -- and failing to read what's being said.
I'm not a fan of workplace drug testing. Where does that put me on
the political spectrum? Good luck figuring that one out! You'll find
people of all political leanings who think that workplace drug testing
is a stupid policy that violates fundamental rights.
>from Cambridge. It's getting a tad old, don't you think? Companies have a
>right to run a business the way they want, and as long as they don't
>discriminate against people then there is no issue.
Waitasecond. Once upon a time, THAT was legal too. I suppose that people
at the time should have simply shrugged and said, "ohwell"?
Maybe you're a fan of the status quo. Nothing wrong with that, but the status
quo doesn't represent perfection. You may argue against changing it
because, in your opinion, it works well...but please don't argue against
changing it simply because it _is_ the status quo. If change hadn't
happened in the past, you'd never have had the things that you value
today.
>Is it fair? Maybe not,
>but it's about business and it's not supposed to be fair. If you don't like
>it, then start your own business and run it how you think it should be run;
>otherwise -- butt out.
I did start my own business, thanks. It's worked out real well. And
as for "butting out" -- until someone manages to make it illegal for
people to express opinions in a public forum, I'll do so, or not, as
I choose.
John R Levine
> terms for a contractual arrangement with the various freelance
> columnists. If the columnists don't like the terms, then they don't
> work for them. It's simple. Tough for Weltner and all her cronies.
> Much to do about nothing.
Not really. This is just the latest skirmish in a long-running war between
the New York Times, the Globe's parent company, and all of its freelance
writers.
Several years ago the Times unilaterally decided that it had the right
to resell the electronic rights to all of the material it had bought
from freelancers to Nexis and others, even though the contracts it had
didn't grant those rights. Jonathan Tasini, a freelancer who also
happens to be the head of the National Writer's Union, sued them and
won, the Times then appealed, and Tasini won again. You can read all
about this on the NWU's web site at
http://www.nwu.org/tvt/tvthome.htm. I'm not normally a great fan of
the NWU, but this time they're right and the web site is reasonably
factual.
The Times is trying to reverse their court defeat by telling
frelancers that they have to grant electronic rights retroactively
without compensation to everything the freelancer ever wrote, if they
ever want to write for the Times again. That's despicable. If they
want to use the stuff, they can pay for it just like everyone else
does.
--
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
jo...@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl,
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail
Dave Quinn
>
> Maybe you're a fan of the status quo. Nothing wrong with that, but the
status
> quo doesn't represent perfection. You may argue against changing it
> because, in your opinion, it works well...but please don't argue against
> changing it simply because it _is_ the status quo. If change hadn't
> happened in the past, you'd never have had the things that you value
> today.
This is not about status quo: this is about the right for companies to
decide what is best for them within the framework of the rule of law.
Weltner bitched and moaned because the terms for her continued assocation
with the Globe were not to her liking. Rather than lick her wounds and go
@home, she decided "that's not fair" and started her pathetic tirade that is
<yawn> -- well -- rather boring and sad. The good new is: no more Linda
Weltner in the Boston Globe.
FWIW: what if someone came along and demanded that your business hire
someone to work and be paid on terms not favorable to you? How would you
like it?
John F Carr
>> high-tech jobs, where people who don't carry firearms or operate forklifts
>> or city buses or aircraft as part of their jobs are increasingly required
>> to take drug tests as a condition of employment
>
I write computer software. I worked for a company that was bought by
EMC a couple years ago. The first thing they did was tell everyone
"take a drug test or you're fired". Programmer, salesman, accountant,
and manager all got the same treatment. (I accepted their offer not to
employ me for the next year in return for my not taking a drug test, and
like the other person who refused to be tested quickly found a better job
at higher pay.)
The rumor was that government contractors had to test their employees,
but that was just a rumor spread to make people think they had no choice.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote in message
>news:8m1lm1$4...@northshore.shore.net...
>>
>> Maybe you're a fan of the status quo. Nothing wrong with that, but the
>status
>> quo doesn't represent perfection. You may argue against changing it
>> because, in your opinion, it works well...but please don't argue against
>> changing it simply because it _is_ the status quo. If change hadn't
>> happened in the past, you'd never have had the things that you value
>> today.
>
>This is not about status quo: this is about the right for companies to
>decide what is best for them within the framework of the rule of law.
And that, in this case, is about the status quo. The law gives the
NY Times, or other employers, the right to make any number of ridiculous
demands on employees, and to say, "If you don't like it, tough." The
law gives YOUR employer the right to demand that you start showing
up every morning with espresso drinks and biscotti for the entire
office, at your expense, as a condition of your continued employment.
That's the status quo.
>FWIW: what if someone came along and demanded that your business hire
>someone to work and be paid on terms not favorable to you? How would you
>like it?
That's not even close to analogous here, and you know it. The NY Times
is demanding that the freelancers sign over rights to them, not for
work to be performed in the future, but for work already done under
contractual terms that assigned the rights to the writers, not the NY
Times. The NY Times wants to force the writers, as a condition of
continuing employment, to basically void that contract for no compensation
whatsoever. To require the Times to adhere to the terms of an existing
contract is hardly "demand[ing] that [they]hire someone to work and
be paid on terms not favorable to [them]".
Dave Quinn
news:8m1uik$fvm$1...@xuxa.iecc.com...
>
> The Times is trying to reverse their court defeat by telling
> frelancers that they have to grant electronic rights retroactively
> without compensation to everything the freelancer ever wrote, if they
> ever want to write for the Times again. That's despicable. If they
> want to use the stuff, they can pay for it just like everyone else
> does.
The Times is not trying to reverse anything; they are correcting what they
saw was a disadvantage to their business model and plans. It is true they
lost in the courts, but it was over a contractual issue, not a violation of
any law. It is not illegal for the Times to insist on contractual terms
they feel are to their advantage.
If the freelance writers want their columns printed in the New York Times
and Boston Globe, then they are going to have to play ball. If they won't
agree to the terms, they will no longer be published by the Times -- it's
that simple. The Times will easily be able to find talented freelance
writers hungry for exposure who will agree to their terms. "Being fair"
does not apply here: it's business, it's competitive, and it's about making
money. Half a loaf is better than no loaf at all, at least in this
situation.
The Times is in a win-win situation here: is the Globe's circulation going
to be hurt because Linda Weltner's column no longer appears? I seriously
doubt it, although if it did translate into a negative effect I would have
to question the IQ of a typical Boston Globe reader.
Dave Quinn
news:3984865e$0$94...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
> I write computer software. I worked for a company that was bought by
> EMC a couple years ago. The first thing they did was tell everyone
> "take a drug test or you're fired". Programmer, salesman, accountant,
> and manager all got the same treatment. (I accepted their offer not to
> employ me for the next year in return for my not taking a drug test, and
> like the other person who refused to be tested quickly found a better job
> at higher pay.)
>
> The rumor was that government contractors had to test their employees,
> but that was just a rumor spread to make people think they had no choice.
Regardless of why, you chose not to comply with the terms of the new owner
and found employment elsewhere, and that's exactly my point: You were free
to accept the terms or move on. You had a choice, and you exercised it.
That's what it's all about: freedom of association and choice.
John F Carr
Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote:
>That's not even close to analogous here, and you know it. The NY Times
>is demanding that the freelancers sign over rights to them, not for
>work to be performed in the future, but for work already done under
>contractual terms that assigned the rights to the writers, not the NY
>Times. The NY Times wants to force the writers, as a condition of
>continuing employment, to basically void that contract for no compensation
>whatsoever.
Interesting way to put it...I wonder if a creative lawyer will be able
to void the retroactive grant of rights as being void for lack of
consideration. (Continued employment is not sufficient consideration
for all contracts. I have no clue if it is in this case.)
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Mary Malmros
He had a choice...but not if he chose to go to work at Lucent, or Nortel,
just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have. Anyone
have any idea what the actual number is?
Dave Quinn
> He had a choice...but not if he chose to go to work at Lucent, or Nortel,
> just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have. Anyone
> have any idea what the actual number is?
Wake up and smell the latte, Mary. Are you stating that companies do not
have the right to set their own policies and procedures regarding
employment? Just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it wrong,
which is a typical liberal knee-jerk reaction to such things.
John R Levine
>> frelancers that they have to grant electronic rights retroactively
>> without compensation to everything the freelancer ever wrote, if they
>> ever want to write for the Times again. That's despicable. If they
>> want to use the stuff, they can pay for it just like everyone else
>> does.
>
>The Times is not trying to reverse anything; they are correcting what they
>saw was a disadvantage to their business model and plans. It is true they
>lost in the courts, but it was over a contractual issue, not a violation of
>any law. It is not illegal for the Times to insist on contractual terms
>they feel are to their advantage.
Ahem. Had you read my note, you would have noticed that I never said
the Times' behavior was illegal. I said it was despicable to demand
that people retroactively grant the rights to their past articles as a
condition of future employment. The computer biz equivalent would
sort of to be for a company for whom you'd been consulting for ten
years to tell you "oh, we decided that we paid you too much, so if you
want to work for us in the future, first you have to refund 15% of
everything we've paid you in the past."
There is an unfortunate tendency these days for some people to claim
that anything that doesn't land you in jail is moral and ethical.
It's not, but I despair of persuading the "I've got mine so the hell
with you" crowd otherwise.
Mary Malmros
Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote:
>In article <8m2hgh$i...@northshore.shore.net>, mal...@shore.net (Mary
>
>> In article <qo1h5.659$mv.6...@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
>> Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> >John F Carr <j...@mit.edu> wrote in message
>> >news:3984865e$0$94...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
>> >
>> >> I write computer software. I worked for a company that was bought by
>> >> EMC a couple years ago. The first thing they did was tell everyone
>> >> "take a drug test or you're fired". Programmer, salesman, accountant,
>> >> and manager all got the same treatment. (I accepted their offer not
>> >> to
>> >> employ me for the next year in return for my not taking a drug test,
>> >> and
>> >> like the other person who refused to be tested quickly found a better
>> >> job
>> >> at higher pay.)
>> >>
>> >> The rumor was that government contractors had to test their employees,
>> >> but that was just a rumor spread to make people think they had no
>> >> choice.
>> >
>> >Regardless of why, you chose not to comply with the terms of the new
>> >owner
>> >and found employment elsewhere, and that's exactly my point: You were
>> >free
>> >to accept the terms or move on. You had a choice, and you exercised it.
>>
>> just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have.
>
>
Well, I don't want to head off too far into the weeds about what's messed
up about workplace drug testing in the hi tech biz -- that's a whole nother
discussion. Nor do I want to belabor the point that these policies have
a funny way of not being mentioned until the 11th hour, which strikes me
as a little bit slimy -- if a company isn't ashamed of having these policies,
they ought to put it in big letters on the employment page of their website,
IMO. That's another discussion, too.
The point is that the theoretical right to seek employment elsewhere
ceases to have much value when the large majority of employers in
an industry all follow the same objectionable policies. Further,
the time to be concerned about it and to raise the flag about it is
_not_ when things have got to that point, but when they seem to
be moving in that direction. There is freedom, and there is choice,
and they're not the same. You can have the "freedom" to "seek
employment elsewhere", but if you don't have the choice of another
employer whose policies you can live with, the value of that
"freedom" is pretty severely diminished.
Please don't trivialize this by creating bunch of bogus strawman arguments
about how next thing you know, people will be complaining that their
employer doesn't offer them ice cream sundaes for breakfast, or
some such nonsense. The invasion of personal privacy represented by
drug testing -- for WHAT??? -- or the pressuring of employees to sign
over intellectual property rights _that you had already agreed they
could retain_, are not trivial things.
Dave Quinn
news:ct4h5.398507$MB.62...@news6.giganews.com...
>
> I'll say that companies don't have a blanket right to their employees'
> private medical information -- and drug use history is in that category.
Wrong. Someone doesn't use heroin because their doctor prescribed them to.
Use of pot for medical reasons is a joke, since study results vary widely as
to its use for medical purposes -- most people abuse that privilege in
states that allow it anyway; I think I'd want to know if I was hiring a
potential time-bomb.
> A company doesn't have a right to insist on a medical test unless the
> presence of the condition for which they are testing has a reasonable
> chance of impacting the employee's job performance.
Wrong again. Companies can set forth whatever criteria they like in
determining a suitable employment candidate, so long as it is not against
any law. Drug testing is not illegal.
> Do you disagree, Mr. Quinn, or do you feel that a company has an
> unrestricted right to information about its employees?
Anything that might pose a risk to other people in the workplace or impair
one's ability to perform a job function should be uncovered by an employer
when at all possible and legal to do so -- period. Employment is a
business transaction, not a handout. Employers like to know what they are
investing their money in.
> Do employees have a right to privacy from their corporation?
Does anyone have any privacy anymore? Look, it goes like this: if you don't
like what the company's employment policies are, then don't seek a job
there. If someday every company conducted drug testing, then I guess a lot
of people would be unemployed as a matter of principle.
Those rose-colored glasses are looking a bit smudged there, Xiphias.
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote in message
>news:8m2hgh$i...@northshore.shore.net...
>
>> have any idea what the actual number is?
>
>Wake up and smell the latte, Mary. Are you stating that companies do not
>have the right to set their own policies and procedures regarding
>employment? Just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it wrong,
>which is a typical liberal knee-jerk reaction to such things.
And just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it a "typical
liberal knee-jerk" anything, Dave -- if, in fact, you can even honestly
say that you do disagree with it. It seems rather obvious that you
haven't been reading carefully enough to even know what's being
said, so how you can disagree with it is beyond me. I already said
that yes, companies DO have the legal right to set these policies --
how many times am I going to have to type that before you get it?
Forget this. You're just going in circles and repeating arguments
that I've already answered. This is a waste of time.
Dave Quinn
>
> Ahem. Had you read my note, you would have noticed that I never said
> the Times' behavior was illegal. I said it was despicable to demand
> that people retroactively grant the rights to their past articles as a
> condition of future employment.
Oh well -- tough luck for them, I guess. There are always other newspapers.
> The computer biz equivalent would
> sort of to be for a company for whom you'd been consulting for ten
> years to tell you "oh, we decided that we paid you too much, so if you
> want to work for us in the future, first you have to refund 15% of
> everything we've paid you in the past."
And you would walk out the door, correct? Despicable or not, who cares? Go
find another job then, for the love of Bob. Standing at the doorway of a
company screaming ""NO FAIR!", jumping up-and-down with your fists in the
air makes for good sound bites at 6 and 11, but still leaves you employed at
the end of the day.
> There is an unfortunate tendency these days for some people to claim
> that anything that doesn't land you in jail is moral and ethical.
> It's not, but I despair of persuading the "I've got mine so the hell
> with you" crowd otherwise.
"Moral and ethical" are subjective terms. What's moral and ethical to you
may seem high-handed and provincial to me -- and vice-versa.
Give up caffeine, live and learn to get along, and always remember that no
one else can look out for your interests as well as you can.
Dave Quinn
>
> Forget this. You're just going in circles and repeating arguments
> that I've already answered. This is a waste of time.
>
And everytime I look behind me I see you straggling along, huffing and
puffing and trying so very hard to take the lead.
Dave Quinn
news:01bffa95$a6eec440$0f02000a@chucktop...
> if there's no market for the stuff, what's to argue about?
Bingo.
Xiphias Gladius
> John R Levine <jo...@iecc.com> wrote in message
> news:8m2kl4$gtv$1...@xuxa.iecc.com...
>>
>> Ahem. Had you read my note, you would have noticed that I never said
>> the Times' behavior was illegal. I said it was despicable to demand
>> that people retroactively grant the rights to their past articles as a
>> condition of future employment.
> Oh well -- tough luck for them, I guess. There are always other newspapers.
Are there? That brings up another point: the centralization of media
outlets. How many independent newspapers with circulations over 10,000
are there in the US? If the NYT implements a policy, how many venues do
people who don't want to work for the NYT have to choose from? In other
words, who's hiring columnists except this one outlet?
- Ian
--
Marriage, n: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master,
a mistress, and two slaves, making, in all, two. -- Ambrose Bierce
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/ian
SSBB Diplomatic Corps; Boston, Massachusetts
Adam Kippes
wrote:
> As ex-president Carter said ("life's not fair"
I believe that was supposed to be JFK regarding WWII, i.e., some got
shot at and some spent the whole war in San Francisco.
Dave Quinn
>
> Are there? That brings up another point: the centralization of media
> outlets. How many independent newspapers with circulations over 10,000
> are there in the US? If the NYT implements a policy, how many venues do
> people who don't want to work for the NYT have to choose from? In other
> words, who's hiring columnists except this one outlet?
And your point is?
Adam Kippes
> most people abuse that privilege in
> states that allow it anyway; I think I'd want to know if I was hiring a
> potential time-bomb.
No one has ever run amok as a result of smoking pot; booze, yes, but
pot? - no way.
Xiphias Gladius
> And your point is?
Your argument is, "These people shouldn't even bother trying to get the
NYT to change its policies, because they can just go work somewhere else."
That argument loses a lot of validity when there *is* nowhere else to
work.
tonyp
Xiphias Gladius <i...@io.com> wrote
> Are there? That brings up another point: the centralization of media
> outlets. How many independent newspapers with circulations over 10,000
> are there in the US? If the NYT implements a policy, how many venues do
> people who don't want to work for the NYT have to choose from? In other
> words, who's hiring columnists except this one outlet?
Well, _this_ brings up several more points.
1) Who is it that annoints (dubs? canonizes?) someone a "columnist"?
2) What makes someone _need_ to be a columnist?
3) Will "publishers" or "columnists" survive longer in the digital age?
-- Tony Prentakis
Adam Kippes
> And your point is?
The point, I believe, is that it is pointless to say you can go
elsewhere when there is no elsewhere.
Ed Foster
> In article <qo1h5.659$mv.6...@news-east.usenetserver.com>,
> Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >John F Carr <j...@mit.edu> wrote in message
> >news:3984865e$0$94...@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu...
> >
> >> I write computer software. I worked for a company that was bought by
> >> EMC a couple years ago. The first thing they did was tell everyone
> >> "take a drug test or you're fired". Programmer, salesman, accountant,
> >> and manager all got the same treatment. (I accepted their offer not
> >> to
> >> employ me for the next year in return for my not taking a drug test,
> >> and
> >> like the other person who refused to be tested quickly found a better
> >> job
> >> at higher pay.)
> >>
> >> The rumor was that government contractors had to test their employees,
> >> but that was just a rumor spread to make people think they had no
> >> choice.
> >
> >Regardless of why, you chose not to comply with the terms of the new
> >owner
> >and found employment elsewhere, and that's exactly my point: You were
> >free
> >to accept the terms or move on. You had a choice, and you exercised it.
>
> He had a choice...but not if he chose to go to work at Lucent, or Nortel,
> just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have.
So what, I don't see your point. Anyone want to work for a high tech
company and not sign an agreement that your employer has the right to
any idea/invention you come up with even outside of working hours?
Tough luck, because you won't get hired. Is that fair - depends on
which side of the corporate engineer/management division you're on.
Anyway, if you don't want to sign such an agreement then that's a lot
more than three choices you won't have.
--
erfo...@nospam.MediaOne.net
(remove the word before
MediaOne.net to reply)
Xiphias Gladius
>> He had a choice...but not if he chose to go to work at Lucent, or Nortel,
>> just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have. Anyone
>> have any idea what the actual number is?
> Wake up and smell the latte, Mary. Are you stating that companies do not
> have the right to set their own policies and procedures regarding
> employment?
I'll say that companies don't have a blanket right to their employees'
private medical information -- and drug use history is in that category.
A company doesn't have a right to insist on a medical test unless the
presence of the condition for which they are testing has a reasonable
chance of impacting the employee's job performance.
Do you disagree, Mr. Quinn, or do you feel that a company has an
unrestricted right to information about its employees? Do employees have
a right to privacy from their corporation?
- Ian
tonyp
John F Carr <j...@mit.edu> wrote
> Interesting way to put it...I wonder if a creative lawyer will be able
> to void the retroactive grant of rights as being void for lack of
> consideration. (Continued employment is not sufficient consideration
> for all contracts. I have no clue if it is in this case.)
This is the _only_ valid point, IMHO. For the future, the Globe can offer
minimum wage, or pay by the word, or
stand-on-your-head-and-squawk-like-a-chicken, or any other terms it likes.
But if the dispute is really about rights to past contributions, that's a
legal issue. What's the exact story? If some freelancer, e.g. Weltner,
says "OK, stuff it, I won't write for you any more, but I never signed
over the rights to my past columns, and I'm not doing it now," what's the
position? If she chooses to publish her own past columns as an E-book,
can the Globe stop her? I recognize, of course, that this may be a moot
point: if there's no market for the stuff, what's to argue about?
-- Tony Prentakis
Ed Foster
Malmros) wrote:
> In article <erfoster-D30396...@news.ne.mediaone.net>,
> Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote:
> >> He had a choice...but not if he chose to go to work at Lucent, or
> >> Nortel,
> >> just as a f'rinstance. So there's three choices he didn't have.
> >
> >
> >So what, I don't see your point.
>
> Well, I don't want to head off too far into the weeds about what's messed
> up about workplace drug testing in the hi tech biz -- that's a whole
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> nother discussion.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Nor do I want to belabor the point that these policies have
> a funny way of not being mentioned until the 11th hour, which strikes me
> as a little bit slimy -- if a company isn't ashamed of having these
> policies,
> they ought to put it in big letters on the employment page of their
> website,
> IMO. That's another discussion, too.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Then why do you keep bringing it up? Actually drug testing wasn't my
point, just that there are lots of company policies that limit one's
choice of employment. I chose intellectual rights just because it
bothers me more than drugss - my drug of choice is socially acceptable,
so far :-)
> The point is that the theoretical right to seek employment elsewhere
> ceases to have much value when the large majority of employers in
> an industry all follow the same objectionable policies. Further,
> the time to be concerned about it and to raise the flag about it is
> _not_ when things have got to that point, but when they seem to
> be moving in that direction. There is freedom, and there is choice,
> and they're not the same. You can have the "freedom" to "seek
> employment elsewhere", but if you don't have the choice of another
> employer whose policies you can live with, the value of that
> "freedom" is pretty severely diminished.
>
> Please don't trivialize this by creating bunch of bogus strawman
> arguments
> about how next thing you know, people will be complaining that their
> employer doesn't offer them ice cream sundaes for breakfast, or
> some such nonsense.
Huh? Did I bring up "sundaes for breakfast, or some such nonsense?"
Are you sure you haven't confused my post with someone elses? Have you
forgotten to take your meds?
> The invasion of personal privacy represented by
> drug testing -- for WHAT??? --
Our lives are full of the invasion of personal privacy. Smoking, for
example. Various cities/municipalities have prohibited their employees
from smoking, even when off duty. I didn't notice your squaking about
that. But again, that's not the point. You don't like their drug
policies, don't deal/work/buy from them.
Actually I think companies' drug policies are driven by US law. If the
federal and state governments had more sane drug policies, company
policies would follow. If you don't like company drug testing get the
states and feds to lay off those companies.
> or the pressuring of employees to sign
> over intellectual property rights _that you had already agreed they
> could retain_, are not trivial things.
I thought that was my point. As I said, it not fair, so what? As
ex-president Carter said ("life's not fair" and it's maybe the only
thing he got right) What's also "not fair" is the "mariage penalty" in
the US tax laws, but we have a president who's eager to veto a
correction of this. I haven't noticed your complaining about that. If
I can live with my "not fair" the rest of you whiners can live with your
"not fair."
Xiphias Gladius
>>
>> I'll say that companies don't have a blanket right to their employees'
>> private medical information -- and drug use history is in that category.
> Wrong. Someone doesn't use heroin because their doctor prescribed them to.
Well, that's not actually true. Heroin is a prescribable drug in the
United States, although heavily controlled, and finding someone willing
to fill the perscription would be a challenge. However, I've known some
people, generally in Europe, who *were* on a dosage of heroin by
perscription, and, with that perscription, were able to function
absolutely normally in the workplace -- which they *weren't* able to do
without it. Given that the heroin was taken responsibly and under a
doctor's care, and affected their work abilities *positively*, would their
companies have any reasonable right to know about it?
> and
> Use of pot for medical reasons is a joke, since study results vary widely as
> to its use for medical purposes
Yes -- there are the ones which state that it works, and the ones which
are rigged to make it look like it fails.
> -- most people abuse that privilege in
> states that allow it anyway;
Cites?
> I think I'd want to know if I was hiring a
> potential time-bomb.
How does someone smoking pot make them a potential time bomb?
>> A company doesn't have a right to insist on a medical test unless the
>> presence of the condition for which they are testing has a reasonable
>> chance of impacting the employee's job performance.
> Wrong again. Companies can set forth whatever criteria they like in
> determining a suitable employment candidate, so long as it is not against
> any law. Drug testing is not illegal.
There's a difference between being *able* to do something and having a
*right* to do something. A company is *able* to insist on a small
number of stupid medical tests, but it has no *right* to do so.
>> Do employees have a right to privacy from their corporation?
> Does anyone have any privacy anymore?
Yes. I do, anyway. If you don't, how much do you make, who do you have
sex with, what are you afraid of, do you believe in god, what's the most
recent sexual fanatasy you've had, and what diseases do you have?
> Look, it goes like this: if you don't
> like what the company's employment policies are, then don't seek a job
> there. If someday every company conducted drug testing, then I guess a lot
> of people would be unemployed as a matter of principle.
I would be.
> Those rose-colored glasses are looking a bit smudged there, Xiphias.
*Shrug*. I'd rather *have* ideals and a vision of what an acceptible
world would look like than not. It gives me something to work towards.
Roger Williams
> Wow. Some of y'all REALLY need to learn to read for content.
Disliking Linda Weltner's middle-of-the-road, platitude laden columns
is not synonymous with being unable to read "for content". I suppose we'll
have to agree to disagree about it.
--
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} \|/
{} RogerW rog...@newsguy.com {} 0< -- parrot.net!
{} http://www.parrot.net ad...@parrot.net {} ^^^^(*)^^^^
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} ^^ / \ ^^
Michael Zarlenga
: Use of pot for medical reasons is a joke, since study results vary widely as
: to its use for medical purposes -- most people abuse that privilege in
: states that allow it anyway; ...
MOST people?
Can you provide any substantiation for that claim?
--
-- Mike Zarlenga
John F Carr
Ed Foster wrote:
>So what, I don't see your point. Anyone want to work for a high tech
>company and not sign an agreement that your employer has the right to
>any idea/invention you come up with even outside of working hours?
>Tough luck, because you won't get hired. Is that fair - depends on
>which side of the corporate engineer/management division you're on.
I negotiated substantial changes to such an agreement for my current job.
When the company was bought the new owners gave us a nonnegotiable
intellectual property contract, but it is subject to California law
protecting employees' inventions made on their own time that are not
work-related. One thing I didn't have to do in either case was give
them rights to everything I had ever written or agree that the new,
broader contract was retroactive.
Should I ever want more intellectual property freedom, I can go back
to doing contract work.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Rich Carreiro
So the _Globe_ is acting fine, or it is acting rephrehensibly, or
anything in between.
But in all the smoke and fire, no one has yet answered my original
question -- where on earth does the alleged cause of action lie?
Since no one has a right to work for any particular employer,
where/what is the freelancers' LEGAL (not moral, not ethical, etc)
cause of action to sue the _Globe_ because (AFAICT) the freelancers
don't like the terms of contracts for new work the _Globe_ is
offering? No one has answered this one yet.
--
Rich Carreiro rlc...@animato.arlington.ma.us
Roger Williams
> I found some of Weltner's writing really annoying, and sometimes way too
> introspective.
I've been perusing her archived columns more thoroughly in the course
of reading this thread. What really strikes me about her writing is how
banal it is. Voltaire, Proust, and Thomas Aquinas were introspective.
Linda Weltner's brand of "introspection" is navel gazing at best, with an
affinitiy for self-help pop psychology lite, laden with overly sentimental
"touching" anecdotes; full of syrup and sugar, but signifying nothing.
As a disclaimer, I will note that her contemporaries at the Globe
were (and still are), for the most part, equally bland and insipid.
Where were the real insights? Or genuine analysis? Or the relevant
commentary? Weltner's column was trite where it should have been profound,
and cliched where it should have said something fresh. I couldn't help but
feel that I was reading a textual version of a "Lifetime" TV drama.
Mary's comment of columns that pander to the generic "angry white male"
(ie, Howie Carr, Mike Barnicle, etc.) has some merit. However, Linda
Weltner didn't offer a unique voice in rebuttal as much as a mushy mirror
image. Where Carr and Barnicle make a stereotype of their (largely white
and male) fanbase, Linda Weltner does much of the same for her (largely
white, and I would imagine almost entirely female) fanbase.
> As she points out on her web page, she's being replaced, not by another
> intelligent columnist, but by more column inches devoted to expensive
> home furnishings. That is truly a loss.
I agree with that. Regardless of Linda Weltner's innumerable
shortcomings as a writer, she wasn't a shill. I still maintain that bad
writing is better than a commercial.
Roger Williams
> That's a bit harsh. Obviously she had some sort of following --
> probably the same people who read 'Confidential Chat.'
Well, she must have had a fanbase judging by her longevity at the
Globe.
> The issue is obviously about receiving compensation for her work,
> it doesn't matter who her work appealed to.
Indeed. I commented on the smaller issue of her actual column, and left
the meatier matter of the legal brouhaha to other people.
Mary Malmros
That was my point too, which was why I didn't want to go into drug
testing per se, and the arguments for or against it. IOW, we're
talking about a meta-issue, not a specific one. That's all.
>I chose intellectual rights just because it
>bothers me more than drugss - my drug of choice is socially acceptable,
>so far :-)
Hee hee! Now let me guess -- is it one that would get you frowned
upon in Saudia Arabia, or in Utah? ;-) I'm guessing the latter.
But it is still legal!
>> The point is that the theoretical right to seek employment elsewhere
>> ceases to have much value when the large majority of employers in
>> an industry all follow the same objectionable policies. Further,
>> the time to be concerned about it and to raise the flag about it is
>> _not_ when things have got to that point, but when they seem to
>> be moving in that direction. There is freedom, and there is choice,
>> and they're not the same. You can have the "freedom" to "seek
>> employment elsewhere", but if you don't have the choice of another
>> employer whose policies you can live with, the value of that
>> "freedom" is pretty severely diminished.
>>
>> Please don't trivialize this by creating bunch of bogus strawman
>> arguments
>> about how next thing you know, people will be complaining that their
>> employer doesn't offer them ice cream sundaes for breakfast, or
>> some such nonsense.
>
>
>Huh? Did I bring up "sundaes for breakfast, or some such nonsense?"
>Are you sure you haven't confused my post with someone elses?
No, I was confusing you with a Usenet poster ;-) You know the
type; we've seen a lot of them in this thread, getting all worried
about how the socialists are coming over the wall just cuz some
of us looked at some employment policies and said, "well THAT
sucks."
>Have you
>forgotten to take your meds?
My only "med", as you call it, right now is ibuprofin, and I wish
I wasn't even taking that. I suppose windsurfers occasionally
need ibuprofin on a Monday morning, too, if they've been enjoying
their sport with sufficient vigor ;-)
>> The invasion of personal privacy represented by
>> drug testing -- for WHAT??? --
>
>Our lives are full of the invasion of personal privacy. Smoking, for
>example. Various cities/municipalities have prohibited their employees
>from smoking, even when off duty. I didn't notice your squaking about
>that.
I don't notice me "squaking", as you call it, about anything. As for
that particular issue, my old grand-dad would have said, "This isn't
a competition to see who's the worst." IOW, the (non-) argument,
"Oh YEAH?? Well THIS sucks too!!!" is pretty meaningless. Yeah, it
does suck too. Yeah, it is an invasion of personal privacy. But
no, you don't get to go around saying I'm in favor of it just because
you didn't hear me say anything against it.
BTW, isn't it interesting how _other_ people, who have other POVs,
always "screech" or "squak"? Amazing.
>But again, that's not the point. You don't like their drug
>policies, don't deal/work/buy from them.
I've already explained why this solution may work just fine some
of the time, and may fail miserably in others. I'm not going to
explain it again.
>Actually I think companies' drug policies are driven by US law. If the
>federal and state governments had more sane drug policies, company
>policies would follow. If you don't like company drug testing get the
>states and feds to lay off those companies.
I think the reality is the opposite: it's companies' policies that
are driving US law, in this particular matter. If you really want,
I've got a boatload of URLs I can send you.
>> or the pressuring of employees to sign
>> over intellectual property rights _that you had already agreed they
>> could retain_, are not trivial things.
>
>I thought that was my point. As I said, it not fair, so what?
"So what" implies that it's trivial, and it's not.
Mary Malmros
Xiphias Gladius <i...@io.com> wrote:
>Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Xiphias Gladius <i...@io.com> wrote in message
>> news:ct4h5.398507$MB.62...@news6.giganews.com...
>>>
>>> I'll say that companies don't have a blanket right to their employees'
>>> private medical information -- and drug use history is in that category.
>
>> Wrong. Someone doesn't use heroin because their doctor prescribed them to.
>
>Well, that's not actually true. Heroin is a prescribable drug in the
>United States, although heavily controlled, and finding someone willing
>to fill the perscription would be a challenge.
I don't know about heroin, but injectable demerol, I'm told, is basically
synthetic heroin. It is highly addictive and thus not easy to get a
prescription for, and many pharmacies will not deal in it, but it is
available.
Elisabeth Anne Riba
> What's also "not fair" is the "mariage penalty" in
> the US tax laws, but we have a president who's eager to veto a
> correction of this. I haven't noticed your complaining about that.
Less than half of married couples suffer a "marriage penalty" The
majority of couples pay the same or LESS taxes upon marrying.
From the New York Times, July 23rd:
A study last year by the Treasury Department found that of 51.4
million tax returns in 1999 from couples filing jointly, 24.8 million, or
48 percent, had a marriage penalty, averaging $1,141. Couples paying the
penalty tend to be those in which both partners work; the penalty is most
pronounced when husband and wife make about the same amount of money.
Another 21 million couples, or 41 percent, had a marriage bonus --
that is, they paid less as a couple than they would have if they had
remained single. The bonus averaged $1,274. Couples receiving a bonus
tend to be those in which only one spouse works.
Face it. It is cheaper for two people to share a residence than for
those two people to live separately. That's why so many people have
roommates. Because it is less expensive for two people to live together,
it makes sense that the standard deduction for a couple is less than that
of two singles.
It's only recently that romantically-involved couples live together
before marriage, so could actually compare tax rates before and after.
What's more, the "penalty" primarily affects couples where both parties
are working and earn about the same amount. Marriages with one primary
wage-earner actually benefit from the current tax code.
From the Washington Post, July 11:
The tax code does not penalize married couples. To the contrary, as a
matter of long-standing policy it is tilted in their favor. A married
couple at a given income level owes less income tax than a single
taxpayer at the same level. The so-called penalty arises when two single
people, each with income, marry. Their combined income is likely to move
them into a higher tax bracket. That's what the fight is about; the issue
is not the treatment of marriage but the progressive nature of the income
tax. The marriage issue is a veil. If the sponsors succeed, you can bet
their next target will be the "singles penalty" that they themselves will
have helped to accentuate by lowering the taxes of married couples
relative to single payers. The widow's penalty, they'll call it.
The Republican-sponsored bill does not make the tax-code more equitable.
Instead it tilts the balance the other way, penalizing single adults.
An article in the Boston Globe this weekend pointed out that under this
new bill, a married couple with no children would pay less taxes than a
single parent earning the same income.
There may be ways to make the tax code more fair to both married and
single taxpayers. This bill isn't it.
--
---------------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * l...@netcom.com <---------------
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a
master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Alan Grossberg
Roger Williams <ad...@parrot.net> wrote in message
news:8m3ul...@enews4.newsguy.com...
[snipped]......
> I agree with that. Regardless of Linda Weltner's innumerable
> shortcomings as a writer, she wasn't a shill. I still maintain that bad
> writing is better than a commercial.
Well, she was a shill in one respect. As I mentioned in a previous post, around
Xmas '99 or '98
she e-mailed me (with a dozen or more Cc's), proudly announcing the availability
of her columns in
compilation which, naturally, would make a wonderful gift. I was amazed at her
tackiness.
Xiphias Gladius
> Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote:
>> What's also "not fair" is the "mariage penalty" in
>> the US tax laws, but we have a president who's eager to veto a
>> correction of this. I haven't noticed your complaining about that.
> Less than half of married couples suffer a "marriage penalty" The
> majority of couples pay the same or LESS taxes upon marrying.
[ . . . ]
> are working and earn about the same amount. Marriages with one primary
> wage-earner actually benefit from the current tax code.
In other words, the tax code was designed to encourage two-parent families
with one primary breadwinner and one primary homemaker. Deliberately.
Because the people who drafted that part of the tax code felt that they
should encourage two-parent families with one primary breadwinner and one
primary homemaker.
Now, I don't know if I agree with that or not, but I find it amusing that
most (not all) of the people I've personally noticed talking about the
"marriage penalty" are social conservatives, many of who also feel that
two parent families with a primary breadwinner and primary homemaker are
about the best model for families.
So what has me shaking my head is that I'm pretty sure that, if this bill
passes, some of the *exact same people who are arguing for it are going to
be against it.*
Of course the people who *drafted* the bill aren't social conservatives,
or at least didn't draft the bill for socially conservative reasons --
they just want to lower taxes for two-higher-income-families. But they're
*selling* it as a pro-marriage, pro-family bill, which, of course, it
isn't.
I still am a little shaky on what benefit people will realize from this:
can't married people still file seperately?
Mary Malmros
Paul Ciszek <pci...@antiabuseworld.std.com> wrote:
>In article <8m477m$alf$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
>>before marriage, so could actually compare tax rates before and after.
>>What's more, the "penalty" primarily affects couples where both parties
>>wage-earner actually benefit from the current tax code.
>
>refuse to fill out any government forms pertaining to marriage, change
>their names through a non-marriage legal proceedure, and start begetting
>children? Can they still insist that since the IRS cannot show a
>marriage certificate, it cannot tax them at a married rate? Or can the
>IRS tell people that they are married whether they like it or not?
Well, there's common-law marriage, which I think still exists in
some states and which AFAIK does exactly that (i.e., the state
tells people they're legally married even though they never filled
out the forms).
Rich Carreiro
> What happens if two people get married in a purely religious ceremony,
> refuse to fill out any government forms pertaining to marriage, change
> their names through a non-marriage legal proceedure, and start begetting
> children? Can they still insist that since the IRS cannot show a
> marriage certificate, it cannot tax them at a married rate? Or can the
> IRS tell people that they are married whether they like it or not?
The IRS is obliged by federal law to follow the determination of
the state the people reside in. If the state of residence considers
them married, the IRS considers them married. If the state of residence
considers them not married, the IRS considers them not married.
If the people in question did what you said in a state that recognizes
common-law marriage, they probably are legally married, like it or not
(the 7 year thing is an old wives tale -- people in a state that
recognizes common-law marriage can be considered married immediately).
The usual test is if they live their lives as/hold themselves out as
man and wife. In the scenario you lay out, they would certainly be
doing so. Furthermore, since all states that do not have common-law
marriage recognize common-law marriages that occurred in states where
such marriages are recognized, they couldn't get out of it that way.
If they did what you said in a state that does not recognie common-law
marriage, they are not married.
An interesting question is what happens if (say) on a cross-country
trip they pass through a state that does recognize common-law marriage
and act in ways that meet that state's test of common-law marriage. Will
state state consider them married? If so, they'll be married back at home,
too (though then could then get a legal divorce back home, I imagine).
--
Rich Carreiro rlc...@animato.arlington.ma.us
John F Carr
>Presumably, if gay marriage is ever recognized in a particular state,
>gay couples in that state might find themselves victims of such involuntary
>common-law marriage.
I think the Defense Of Marriage Act makes this an unlikely problem.
--
John Carr (j...@mit.edu)
Dave Quinn
news:h1t9os0lpeqbtpir1...@4ax.com...
> In <zQ5h5.1994$mv.1...@news-east.usenetserver.com>, Dave Quinn wrote:
>
> > And your point is?
>
> The point, I believe, is that it is pointless to say you can go
> elsewhere when there is no elsewhere.
>
Then why all the fuss then? If *every* newspaper in the USofA conducts
business the way the Times does, Weltner and her whining crowd have no
issue -- it is the way things are.
Dave Quinn
>
> I think the reality is the opposite: it's companies' policies that
> are driving US law, in this particular matter. If you really want,
> I've got a boatload of URLs I can send you.
>
capitalistic way of life, while your armpit braids vigorously sway in the
breeze?
Mary Malmros
Dave Quinn <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
>Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote in message
>news:8m447b$o...@northshore.shore.net...
>>
>> are driving US law, in this particular matter. If you really want,
>> I've got a boatload of URLs I can send you.
>>
>capitalistic way of life, while your armpit braids vigorously sway in the
>breeze?
Nut.
*PLONK*
Ozgur
> I still am a little shaky on what benefit people will realize from this:
> can't married people still file seperately?
>
> - Ian
Currently, on a given income, married people filing separately pay a
higher rate of tax than single people filing individually. So if a
married couple determines that they would pay less tax if they were
allowed to file as single, that advantage is reduced or eliminated when
they file as "married filing separately". There are some married
couples who find that "married filing separately" saves them money but a
lot more couples would save more money if they were allowed to file as
single. I am not endorsing the legistlation proposing to eliminate the
marriage penalty, just clarifying the current system.
Ozgur
David Meyers
> I still am a little shaky on what benefit people will realize from this:
> can't married people still file seperately?
Yes, but married-filing-separately and married-filing-jointly
both have distinct standard deductions and tax brackets from
singles. Whether married file separately or jointly, there's
still a marriage penalty/bonus.
--d
David Chase
>Then why all the fuss then? If *every* newspaper in the USofA conducts
>business the way the Times does, Weltner and her whining crowd have no
>issue -- it is the way things are.
Just curious, but do you ever step back and think about
what you are writing? One issue that Weltner et al might
have is *how* these newspapers managed to arrive at such
similar business practices; it could just be that this is
the only way to run a newspaper, or it could be that there's
been some collusion. That could be illegal ("if *every*
lysine manufacturer prices their product they way ADM does,
then we have no complaint, it is the way things are.")
In addition, the particular contract that was proposed for
Weltner (retroactive contract modification) might not even be
legal all by itself. In a world where it costs nothing to
hire a lawyer and takes no time or mental effort to go to
court, sure, sign the contract, and ignore it, but in
practice, that's a major pain, and I am sure that the
Globe is gambling on just that. As a practical matter,
only big companies and total assholes get to speculatively
bend the law like this; the rest of us lack the money,
time, and inclination to spend so much time in a state of
(potential) litigation.
Finally, the status quo sometimes sucks, and even though
it is the status quo, people still want to change it,
and sometimes they succeed. It makes no difference to me
whether this particular status quo results from business
(monopolies) or nature (malaria); sometimes the status quo
needs changing.
--
David Chase
David Chase
I thought that because of this, the DoMA was trending on thin
constitutional ice (as if that mattered nowadays), something about
contracts in one state having legal force in another, and the
contractual nature of "marriage". In particular, Vermont's
"civil union" looks quite contractual -- fill out this form,
you get these explicit rights as a couple, even though it
isn't called "marriage".
--
David Chase
Ron Newman
> Currently, on a given income, married people filing separately pay a
> higher rate of tax than single people filing individually. So if a
> married couple determines that they would pay less tax if they were
> allowed to file as single, that advantage is reduced or eliminated when
> they file as "married filing separately".
So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
--
Ron Newman rne...@thecia.net
http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/
Marc Dashevsky
> In article <3986D0F3...@ultranet.com>, Ozgur <oz...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
> > Currently, on a given income, married people filing separately pay a
> > higher rate of tax than single people filing individually. So if a
> > married couple determines that they would pay less tax if they were
> > allowed to file as single, that advantage is reduced or eliminated when
> > they file as "married filing separately".
>
> So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
One reason would be if they are separated but not divorced.
--
Marc Dashevsky (remove "_" from address to reply by e-mail)
David Meyers
> So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
To take advantage of certain deductions which allowable
depending on one's income. For example, medical expenses
which are deductible to the extent that they exceed
(what was it?) 7.5% of one's income.
--d
Mary Malmros
Paradoxically, it almost seems the reciprocity thang in the constitution
was what rammed the DoMA through. Someone said, "Hey, if Hawaii [which
looked to be the hot prospect at the time IIRC] legalizes same-sex marriages,
all the other states will have to recognize 'em!" This was immediately
followed by a cholera-like flush of legislation through state legislatures
and the US Congress, effectly saying, "No we won't, so there, la la la,
we're not listening!"
IOW, the DoMA was the US Congress's statement that it does not intend to
honor the reciprocity clause when it doesn't choose to do so, and the
state laws were the state legislatures' statement to the same effect.
Carl Witthoft
wrote:
->Xiphias Gladius <i...@io.com> writes:
->
->> I still am a little shaky on what benefit people will realize from this:
->> can't married people still file seperately?
->
->Yes, but married-filing-separately and married-filing-jointly
->both have distinct standard deductions and tax brackets from
->singles. Whether married file separately or jointly, there's
->still a marriage penalty/bonus.
->
->--d
->
You bet. Back in the pre-Republican days (you know, before Reagan fooled all
of you into thinking he was bringing taxes down) the marriage penalty was not
so bad. Not to mention there used to be income averaging, a deduction for
local/state sales taxes, and various other tax REDUCTION items that the
Republicans took away.
--
Carl Witthoft c...@world.std.com ca...@aoainc.com http://world.std.com/~cgw
Got any old pinball machines for sale?
Carl Witthoft
->In article <3986D0F3...@ultranet.com>, Ozgur <oz...@ultranet.com>
->wrote:
->
->> Currently, on a given income, married people filing separately pay a
->> higher rate of tax than single people filing individually. So if a
->> married couple determines that they would pay less tax if they were
->> allowed to file as single, that advantage is reduced or eliminated when
->> they file as "married filing separately".
->
->So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
Because sometimes, generally if there's a wide disparity in income, it pays
off. Example: because Schedule A deductions are phased out as taxable income
grows from around 110k to 250k (I forget the exact range), you may get better
treatment by putting all the deductions on one income and taking the hit on the
other income, filed separately.
Carl Witthoft
<dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
->Mary Malmros <mal...@shore.net> wrote in message
->news:8m447b$o...@northshore.shore.net...
->>
->> I think the reality is the opposite: it's companies' policies that
->> are driving US law, in this particular matter. If you really want,
->> I've got a boatload of URLs I can send you.
->>
->Is this where you get up on your soapbox and spew condemnations of the
->capitalistic way of life, while your armpit braids vigorously sway in the
->breeze?
->
Fuck you Quinn. Your blanket hatespew only serves to demonstrate your
knee-jerk hatred of that which you cannot comprehend.
Ron Newman
<MPG.13f0c54c1...@nntp.ne.mediaone.net>, Marc stated...
>> So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
>
>One reason would be if they are separated but not divorced.
I don't understand -- why would filing separately rather than jointly
be advantageous to either or both parties in this situation?
--
Ron Newman rne...@thecia.net
http://www2.thecia.net/users/rnewman/home.html
adrian...@hotmail.com
to someone who made *exactly* as much money as I did.
(We were grad students at the same university.) The
first year after we were married, we ran the numbers for
"married filing separately" and "filing jointly." For the
federal return, our total tax would be the same. For New
York State, filing jointly saved us the grand sum of $2,
not counting the stamp or bother associated with an extra
return.
Ron:
>>> So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
Marc:
>>One reason would be if they are separated but not divorced.
Ron:
>I don't understand -- why would filing separately rather than jointly
>be advantageous to either or both parties in this situation?
I'm not married anymore. That's why I bothered to read the
fine print about separation and divorce. One may file as "single"
if one is legally separated according to the laws of one's state
of residence during the tax year.
Married couples often choose to file separately when they do not
own all the same property. Investments, or a small business, or
a farm, can complicate taxes enormously. One spouse may be eligible
for different deductions that make the separate filing advantageous.
Or it might just be a way for them to emphasize that he (not they)
owns this and she (not they) owns that.
The question of whether a married couple wishes to file separately
or jointly has nothing to do with the "marriage penalty." If they
had a third choice of filing as "single," it would be different.
I think that would be best for taxpayers, but the IRS would perceive
it as a tax cut (as each couple would choose the option that cost
the least), and it would mean that bit of the tax code wasn't being
used for any kind of social engineering. Even though it would be a
pretty small tax cut overall, I doubt it would be politically
feasible. Politicians like to use taxes to encourage or discourage
behavior they don't quite dare legislate outright.
Adrian
adrian...@hotmail.com
Opportunity knocks once. Temptation leans on the doorbell.
Rich Carreiro
> >One reason would be if they are separated but not divorced.
>
> I don't understand -- why would filing separately rather than jointly
> be advantageous to either or both parties in this situation?
The parties to a joint return are jointly and severally
on the hook for what's on the return and for paying the
tax. So if your spouse cooked the numbers or never paid
the tax, the IRS can come after you.
It is true that there are so-called "injured spouse"
and "innocent spouse" laws to help out in some of the
worst cases, but getting relief under them is by no
means automatic.
On the other hand, each return in a married-filing-separate
filing stands totally alone. Neither party is on the hook
for the other.
So if a relationship is breaking down, it can make a
helluva lot of sense to file MFS to avoid getting
screwed by your soon-to-be ex.
--
Rich Carreiro rlc...@animato.arlington.ma.us
mathew
> In other words, the tax code was designed to encourage two-parent families
> with one primary breadwinner and one primary homemaker. Deliberately.
Right. But the problem is that these days, that discourages a lot of
people from marrying at all -- notably, couples who are cohabiting, who
both have jobs. Whether one of them stops working or not, marriage
means a hit of several thousand dollars a year.
They don't need to marry to live together, they don't need to marry to
have sex, and they don't need to marry to have children -- so if you
make it also cost them a ton of money to get married, why would they
bother?
mathew
[ Disclaimer: I thought it was worth it. ]
--
Wanted: Disk image of "Lemmings" graphics disc for Mac.
Dave Quinn
news:cgw-8781DB.1...@news.std.com...
> In article <1_ph5.1952$a61.1...@news-east.usenetserver.com>, "Dave
Quinn"
> <dav...@pobox.com> wrote:
> ->>
> ->capitalistic way of life, while your armpit braids vigorously sway in
the
> ->breeze?
> ->
>
> Fuck you Quinn. Your blanket hatespew only serves to demonstrate your
> knee-jerk hatred of that which you cannot comprehend.
> --
Sorry Carl -- I didn't know you had such a strong affinity for armpit
braids.
Xiphias Gladius
> I thought that because of this, the DoMA was trending on thin
> constitutional ice (as if that mattered nowadays), something about
> contracts in one state having legal force in another, and the
> contractual nature of "marriage". In particular, Vermont's
> "civil union" looks quite contractual -- fill out this form,
> you get these explicit rights as a couple, even though it
> isn't called "marriage".
I was thinking about this, and I see an entirely seperate problem to this:
a contract can only bind signatories to the contract. Now, of course, if
two or more parties sign a contract in Vermont, that contract is
enforcable on the other parties in other states. But that contract can't
bind anyone else -- including those parties' employers, and the
governments of the states in which they live.
In other words, as I see it, if two people get CUed in Vermont, they're
still CUed back home in, say, Arizona, but Arizona doesn't have to do a
damn thing about it, because Arizona didn't sign a contract.
I think someone's going to need to grant same sex marriage licenses before
this *really* comes to a head.
--
Marriage, n: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master,
a mistress, and two slaves, making, in all, two. -- Ambrose Bierce
Or two or more masters, or two or more mistresses, and it might involve
more than two people, because why not? Oh. It's less pithy that way,
isn't it? -- Ian Osmond
tonyp
mathew <me...@pobox.com> wrote
> Right. But the problem is that these days, that discourages a lot of
> people from marrying at all -- notably, couples who are cohabiting, who
> both have jobs. Whether one of them stops working or not, marriage
> means a hit of several thousand dollars a year.
>
> They don't need to marry to live together, they don't need to marry to
> have sex, and they don't need to marry to have children -- so if you
> make it also cost them a ton of money to get married, why would they
> bother?
Presumably because "marriage" is a personal, religious sort of thing.
But doesn't this say that "marriage" would best be left to religion rather
than civil law? As far as tax law is concerned, we could define domestic
partnerships just as we define business partnerships -- as a matter of
legal contract, with certain benefits and certain obligations, no
religious connotation involved. We explicitly don't care whether any
church recognizes or approves a business partnership. Taxes are (to
paraphrase The Godfather) "business, not personal", so why should the tax
law take any interest whatever in the personal, religious side of
marriage?
Which reminds me: some religions solemnize the "godparent" relationship,
and take it very seriously. Isn't it time to repeal the godfather
penalty, so that I can get a tax break for contributing to my godson's
college fund?
-- Tony Prentakis
David Hayes
> mathew <me...@pobox.com> wrote
>
> Presumably because "marriage" is a personal, religious sort of thing.
>
> But doesn't this say that "marriage" would best be left to religion rather
> than civil law?
Sounds good to me.
--
--dph
(dhayes AT iname DOT com)
mathew
> mathew <me...@pobox.com> wrote
> > They don't need to marry to live together, they don't need to marry to
> > have sex, and they don't need to marry to have children -- so if you
> > make it also cost them a ton of money to get married, why would they
> > bother?
>
>
> But doesn't this say that "marriage" would best be left to religion rather
> partnerships just as we define business partnerships -- as a matter of
> legal contract, with certain benefits and certain obligations, no
> religious connotation involved.
I'm an atheist -- but my desire to get married had nothing to do with
finance or any other practical concern. It certainly wasn't out of any
desire for a "business partnership" type of arrangement.
In short, "religious" or "businesslike" is a false dichotomy. From a
strictly secular point of view, there's still more to marriage than tax
arrangements.
mathew
Ozgur
in which the total earnings of the couple is $100,000 in all cases. In
the first 3 cases, one spouse earns $20K, the other earns $80K. In the
next 3 cases, both spouses make $50K each. Let us compare their tax
bill if both are single, married filing jointly or married filing
separately.
Let us assume they each have 1 child, they use standard deduction and
they have no other complications (no house, no mutual funds, no IRAs
etc.).
Note: Last year std deduction for single people was $4,300, for married
filing jointly $7,200 and for married filing separately $3,600.
Exemptions per person was $2,750.
Here is the total tax bill for the couple in each case:
1) Two single people earning $20K and $80K: $18,059
2) Married couple filing jointly earning $20K and $80K: $17,301
3) Married couple filing separately earning $20K and $80K: $19,243
4) Two single people earning $50K each: 15,804
5) Married couple filing jointly earning $50K each:17,301 (same as 2)
6) Married couple filing separately earning $50K each: 17,294
If you look at the above 6 cases, the marriage penalty pretty clearly
occurs when the two people earn the same money. If they get married,
regardless of who makes how much of the money, together they pay
$17,301. However, if they are single, the total tax bill depends on who
makes what share of the total income. If one makes much more money than
the other, they pay more taxes than a married couple filing jointly.
However, if they both make the same amount of money, they actually pay
less in taxes than a married couple earning the same money (whether they
file jointly or not). So if a professional couple making $50K each
decide to get married, they pay a whopping $1,500 more in taxes. So it
pays to live in sin :-) This is why the congressional republicans
represent this situation as discouraging to the institution of marriage.
As far as married people filing jointly vs. separately: Usually, filing
jointly is more advantageous. In cases, where a married couple doesn't
want to mix up finances (a pending divorce or separation, pre-nuptials
or other reasons), filing separately may be the only choice. However,
even for couples who are comfortable with sharing finances, there are
cases where filing separately saves money. I don't know if there are
general rules of thumb for when it may be advantageous to file
separately vs. jointly but clearly in the above example, when each
person in the marriage union made very different amounts of money,
filing separately cost an additional almost $2000 compared to jointly.
On the other hand, when the two people made %50K each, filing separately
saved them $7. Of course, this is a small amount of money but sometimes
it may be much more. It is always a good idea for married couples to
calculate taxes both ways.
I hope the above example makes some sense into our complicated federal
tax system which may be about to get even more complicated and not much
fairer.
Ozgur
Ron Newman wrote:
>
> In article <3986D0F3...@ultranet.com>, Ozgur <oz...@ultranet.com> wrote:
>
> > Currently, on a given income, married people filing separately pay a
> > higher rate of tax than single people filing individually. So if a
> > married couple determines that they would pay less tax if they were
> > allowed to file as single, that advantage is reduced or eliminated when
> > they file as "married filing separately".
>
> So why does any married couple file separately instead of jointly?
>
guy f klose
>You bet. Back in the pre-Republican days (you know, before Reagan fooled all
>of you into thinking he was bringing taxes down) the marriage penalty was not
>so bad. Not to mention there used to be income averaging, a deduction for
>local/state sales taxes, and various other tax REDUCTION items that the
>Republicans took away.
Short memory there, Carl. If you back up to those pre-Reagan tax cut days,
you'd see that the original plan was the Bradley-Gebhart plan (as in,
Democrats) who had such brilliant ideas as counting employer-paid
benefits as taxable income. Although I don't remember where they
officially rolled out their plan, I do remember seeing it on the
Phil Donahue show (y'know, back when daytime talk shows actually
covered issues).
Now before you claim that has nothing to with Reagan, let me claim it
does. Bradley-Gebhart was almost a flat tax, except that it had
three brackets. No deductions. Along the way Congress had at it
(you know, a Democratically-controlled Congress) and brackets
were raised and some deductions were added back in.
BTW, my taxes did go down in the mid-80s. Didn't stay down though,
thanks to all those Democratically-controlled Congresses that never
met a tax they didn't like.
Guy
--
Guy Klose
g...@world.std.com
Ed Foster
Malmros) wrote:
> In article <erfoster-2D140F...@news.ne.mediaone.net>,
> Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote:
<snip>
> >I chose intellectual rights just because it
> >bothers me more than drugs - my drug of choice is socially acceptable,
> >so far :-)
>
> Hee hee! Now let me guess -- is it one that would get you frowned
> upon in Saudia Arabia, or in Utah? ;-)
Actually it's easier to get a drink in Utah than a rare hamburger.
> >Have you
> >forgotten to take your meds?
>
> My only "med", as you call it, right now is ibuprofin, and I wish
> I wasn't even taking that.
Good idea, a friend at work convinced me that there are problems (liver
damage?) from frequent use of ibuprofin so now I just deal with the
aches and pains.
> I suppose windsurfers occasionally
> need ibuprofin on a Monday morning, too, if they've been enjoying
> their sport with sufficient vigor ;-)
>
> >> The invasion of personal privacy represented by
> >> drug testing -- for WHAT??? --
> >
> >Our lives are full of the invasion of personal privacy. Smoking, for
> >example. Various cities/municipalities have prohibited their employees
> >from smoking, even when off duty. I didn't notice your squaking about
> >that.
>
> I don't notice me "squaking", as you call it, about anything. As for
> that particular issue, my old grand-dad would have said, "This isn't
> a competition to see who's the worst." IOW, the (non-) argument,
> "Oh YEAH?? Well THIS sucks too!!!" is pretty meaningless. Yeah, it
> does suck too. Yeah, it is an invasion of personal privacy. But
> no, you don't get to go around saying I'm in favor of it just because
> you didn't hear me say anything against it.
>
> BTW, isn't it interesting how _other_ people, who have other POVs,
> always "screech" or "squak"? Amazing.
>
> >But again, that's not the point. You don't like their drug
> >policies, don't deal/work/buy from them.
>
> I've already explained why this solution may work just fine some
> of the time, and may fail miserably in others.
Sure it sometimes fails, that's the system, but everyone has to live
with it. What's the cure? What would you do to prevent this sort of
thing from happening?
> >Actually I think companies' drug policies are driven by US law. If the
> >federal and state governments had more sane drug policies, company
> >policies would follow. If you don't like company drug testing get the
> >states and feds to lay off those companies.
>
> I think the reality is the opposite: it's companies' policies that
> are driving US law, in this particular matter. If you really want,
> I've got a boatload of URLs I can send you.
I gotta disagree with you there. I think companies don't care about
drugs, but they are worried about being sued by someone who can convince
a jury that he was injured because the company wasn't tough enough on
drug use by its employees. And it's US law that allows that sort of
jury decision. Do you really think companies want to spend their money
and their employees' time testing their employees for drugs? I think
they're just covering their asses.
> >> or the pressuring of employees to sign
> >> over intellectual property rights _that you had already agreed they
> >> could retain_, are not trivial things.
> >
> >I thought that was my point. As I said, it not fair, so what?
>
> "So what" implies that it's trivial, and it's not.
No, "so what" implies that it's the way the system works and you'll just
give yourself ulcers if you get too worked up about it. It's not
trivial, but I long ago gave up beating my head against a wall getting
worked up about those things. I agree that what the Globe is doing is
lousy, especially when they pretend to be for the common man, just as
Kennedy and Clinton claim to be. I also believe that the Globe, like
Kennedy and Clinton, are total hypocrites. But I can't do a thing about
it and I'm not going to get an ulcer over it. But I like to zing them
when I can.
--
erfo...@nospam.MediaOne.net
(remove the word before
MediaOne.net to reply)
Ed Foster
<l...@netcom.com> wrote:
> Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote:
> > What's also "not fair" is the "mariage penalty" in
> > the US tax laws, but we have a president who's eager to veto a
> > correction of this. I haven't noticed your complaining about that.
>
> Less than half of married couples suffer a "marriage penalty"
Yeah, only 24.8 million couples, so it's not worth worrying about, right?
> The majority of couples pay the same or LESS taxes upon marrying.
If I read the article below correctly, only 41 percent pay less. Not
exactly a majority.
> From the New York Times, July 23rd:
> A study last year by the Treasury Department found that of 51.4
> million tax returns in 1999 from couples filing jointly, 24.8 million,
> or
> 48 percent, had a marriage penalty, averaging $1,141. Couples paying
> the
> penalty tend to be those in which both partners work; the penalty is
> most
> pronounced when husband and wife make about the same amount of money.
> Another 21 million couples, or 41 percent, had a marriage bonus --
> that is, they paid less as a couple than they would have if they had
> remained single. The bonus averaged $1,274. Couples receiving a bonus
> tend to be those in which only one spouse works.
>
> Face it. It is cheaper for two people to share a residence than for
> those two people to live separately. That's why so many people have
> roommates.
So they should pay the "mariage" penalty too, right?
> Because it is less expensive for two people to live together,
> it makes sense that the standard deduction for a couple is less than that
> of two singles.
Good, then let's tax cohabitors like married couples.
> It's only recently that romantically-involved couples live together
> before marriage, so could actually compare tax rates before and after.
> What's more, the "penalty" primarily affects couples where both parties
> are working and earn about the same amount. Marriages with one primary
> wage-earner actually benefit from the current tax code.
What do you mean by "recently?" Cohabitation has been going on for 30
years or more. Similarly for two income couples.
> From the Washington Post, July 11:
> The tax code does not penalize married couples. To the contrary, as a
> matter of long-standing policy it is tilted in their favor. A married
> couple at a given income level owes less income tax than a single
> taxpayer at the same level.
Well, of course, two people tend to make more than one person, and it
costs more for them to live.
> The so-called penalty arises when two single
> people, each with income, marry. Their combined income is likely to move
> them into a higher tax bracket. That's what the fight is about; the
> issue
> is not the treatment of marriage but the progressive nature of the
> income
> tax. The marriage issue is a veil. If the sponsors succeed, you can bet
> their next target will be the "singles penalty" that they themselves
> will
> have helped to accentuate by lowering the taxes of married couples
> relative to single payers. The widow's penalty, they'll call it.
>
> The Republican-sponsored bill does not make the tax-code more equitable.
> Instead it tilts the balance the other way, penalizing single adults.
> An article in the Boston Globe this weekend pointed out that under this
> new bill, a married couple with no children would pay less taxes than a
> single parent earning the same income.
The deduction for children has been rediculously low for decades, under
both republican and democratic presidents and congresses. Is that
really your only objection to the bill? And remember, Bill Clinton
isn't necessarily against signing the bill, he just wants to hold it
hostage to get some concessions on one of his pet projects. That's
politics at its slimiest.
> There may be ways to make the tax code more fair to both married and
> single taxpayers. This bill isn't it.
But you haven't shown that.
tonyp
Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote in part:
> The deduction for children has been rediculously low for decades, under
> both republican and democratic presidents and congresses. Is that
> really your only objection to the bill? And remember, Bill Clinton
> isn't necessarily against signing the bill, he just wants to hold it
> hostage to get some concessions on one of his pet projects. That's
> politics at its slimiest.
What would be an appropriate deduction for children, in your view? How do
you arrive at that number?
BTW, if quid-pro-quo is "slimy" politics in your view, I wonder what you
think of Republicans when they attach anti-abortion amendments to defense
spending bills. Most people are not as pure of principle as you are, Ed.
Compromise is not a bad word to them. So they understand that "I'll give
you this if you give me that" is all that politics is about, in a
democracy.
-- Tony Prentakis
Ed Foster
<to...@world.std.com> wrote:
> Ed Foster <erfo...@nospam.mediaone.net> wrote in part:
>
> > The deduction for children has been rediculously low for decades, under
> > both republican and democratic presidents and congresses. Is that
> > really your only objection to the bill? And remember, Bill Clinton
> > isn't necessarily against signing the bill, he just wants to hold it
> > hostage to get some concessions on one of his pet projects. That's
> > politics at its slimiest.
>
> What would be an appropriate deduction for children, in your view? How do
> you arrive at that number?
Pick some base year, 1950, 1960, 1970? and then adjust that year's
deduction for the inflation since then.
> BTW, if quid-pro-quo is "slimy" politics in your view, I wonder what you
> think of Republicans when they attach anti-abortion amendments to defense
> spending bills.
Equally slimy.
> Most people are not as pure of principle as you are, Ed.
> Compromise is not a bad word to them.
That's not compromise. Compromise is finding some middle ground on a
issue so that each side gives a little and gets a little. Trading one
favor for another is quite different. It's called logrolling, and
that's a somewhat derogatory term.
> So they understand that "I'll give
> you this if you give me that" is all that politics is about, in a
> democracy.
Maybe that's why so many people look down on politicians.