DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on September 05, 2014, 07:28:18 PM
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US-Iranian military, intelligence cooperation
in war on ISIS reaps first successes in Syria and Iraq
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
September 5, 2014
(http://www.debka.com/dynmedia/photos/2014/09/05/src/IraqSyriaBombing.jpg)
At least 18 foreign ISIS fighters including Americans and Europeans were killed Thursday, Sept. 4, in a Syrian air raid of the Al Qaeda-ISIS' northern Syrian headquarters in the Gharbiya district of Raqqa. The raid caught a number of high Al Qaeda commanders and a large group of foreign adherents assembled at the facilty.
A second group of high ISIS officers were killed or injured in another Syrian air raid over their base in Abu Kamal near the Iraqi border.
DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report that top men of the Islamist terrorist group were holding meetings at both places Thursday to coordinate IS strike plans in Syria and Iraq. For Syria, these plans center on the Deir a-Zor and Al Qaim areas, while in Iraq, they focus on targets in the east and center of the country.
The twin Syrian air offensive coincided with the opening of the two-day NATO Summit outside the Welsh town of Newport .
The information about the two Al Qaeda meetings at Raqqa and Abu Kamal could have come from only two sources: US surveillance satellites and aircraft or Iranian agents embedded at strategic points across Syria.
Syria does not have the necessary intelligence capabilities for digging out this kind of information. Nor does its air force normally exhibit the surgical precision displayed in the two strikes on Al Qaeda bases.
It is therefore more than likely that they owed their success to the widening military and intelligence cooperation between the United State and Iran in Iraq and Syria.
President Barack Obama will have taken his seat at the NATO summit to discuss ways of fighting ISIS after word of the successful Syrian strikes was already in his pocket. While they must be credited to top-quality US aerial surveillance over Syria and Iraq, they were undoubtedly made possible by the Obama administration?s deepening military and intelligence ties with Iran.
Many of the allies present at Newport will not welcome these tidings, Britain, Germany and Australia, in particular. They deeply resent being displaced as America?s senior strategic partners by the Revolutionary Republic of Iran, after their long partnership with the US in fighting terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But they will find it hard to argue with success.
On Aug. 31, our military sources reveal, US and Iranian special forces fighting together, broke the 100-day IS siege of the eastern Iraqi town of Amerli, 100 km from the Iranian border, to score a major victory in their first joint military ground action.
Then, Wednesday, Sept. 3, US jets struck an IS base in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, killing its commander, Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, and two lieutenants of the IS chief Abu Baker Al-Baghdadi.
While President Obama has denied having a strategy for fighting ISIS, a working mechanism appears to have been put in place to support a trilateral military offensive against al Qaeda's Islamist State. The successful attacks in the last 24 hours were apparently made possible by this mechanism: Iranian intelligence collected US surveillance data from the Americans and passed it on to Syria for action.
http://www.debka.com/article/24246/US-Iranian-military-intelligence-cooperation-in-war-on-ISIS-reaps-first-successes-in-Syria-and-Iraq
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You criticize him if he does not do the right thing. If he does and it works, you criticize HOW he does it.
Debkafiles has predicted a war with Iran about a dozen times now. At some point, a wise person drills holes in his crystal ball, paints it black and takes up bowling.
Debka is not the world's best source of intelligence.
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You criticize him if he does not do the right thing. If he does and it works, you criticize HOW he does it.
Huh?
You criticize him if he does not do the right thing.
yes that would be logical no?
If he does and it works, you criticize HOW he does it.
Not always....lets see your list praising some President Bush actions
i praised Obama for killing Bin Laden
i praise Obama repeatedly for killing more people
with drones than any President in world history.
i praised Obama for nomination choice of his first sec of defense
i praised Obama for extending the Bush Tax cuts
and actually under Obama they have become permanent.
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ok that is true if we were to keep tally the conservatives has been better sports about things than liberals. (the very reason I`m a designated conservative) but who keeps score
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ok, now I'm really confused ???
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MORE KUDOS TO OBAMA!
US confirms Shabaab emir Godane killed in airstrike
By BILL ROGGIO
September 5, 2014
The US military is certain that Shabaab emir Ahmed Abdi Godane was killed in a targeted airstrike in southern Somalia that took place earlier this week.
"We have confirmed that Ahmed Godane, the co-founder of al-Shabaab, has been killed," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that was released today.
Godane, also known as Sheikh Mukhtar Abu Zubayr, was the target of an airstrike that took place at a training camp between the villages of Dhay Tubako and Haway along the Shabelle River south of Mogadishu on the night of Sept. 1. The US military confirmed on Sept. 2 that "US special operations forces using manned and unmanned aircraft" targeted Godane and "destroyed an encampment and a vehicle using several Hellfire missiles and laser-guided munitions."
Other Shabaab leaders said to have been with Godane at the time are Muhammad Abu Abdallah, the group's shadow governor of Lower Shabelle; Muhammad Abu Sham, Godane's aide; Ali Muhammad Gulled, a logistics officer; Muhammad Husayn Nur (a.k.a. Abu Hamza Al Ayman); Sheikh Muhammad Dulyaden; Iqri Ubayd, a Sudanese operative; and Mubarak Abdallah, a Yemeni. It is unclear if they were killed or survived the strike.
Shabaab has yet to officially comment on reports of Godane's death.
Godane presided over the official merger with al Qaeda in early 2012. Shabaab and al Qaeda intentionally obscured the close working relationship between the two groups long before announcing the merger with al Qaeda.
Godane also ruled Shabaab during a leadership dispute that resulted in the group's intelligence branch, the Amniyat, killing American jihadist Omar Hammami, Ibrahim al Afghani, and a handful of other leaders. Hammami accused Godane of bypassing sharia, or Islamic law, and ruling with an iron fist. Godane had Hammami killed after the latter's appeal to al Qaeda for intervention went unanswered. The internal leadership dispute petered out after Hammami and the rebel terrorist leaders were killed.
Godane was one of the world's most wanted terrorist leaders. The US State Department's Rewards for Justice offered a $7 million bounty for information leading to his capture and prosecution.
Jihadist groups have withstood loss of emirs
Kirby claimed that the death of Godane will strike a major blow against al Qaeda's branch in Somalia.
"Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabaab," he said.
Al Qaeda and its branches and other jihadist groups have weathered the deaths of top leaders in the past, however. The killing of Osama bin Laden did not cause the group to collapse; in fact al Qaeda has expanded its footprint and controls more territory today than prior to bin Laden's death in May 2011.
Al Qaeda in Iraq survived and thrived after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2006 and withstood the loss of his successors, Abu Ayyub al Masri and Abu Omar al Baghdadi, in 2011. Today, its successor organization, the Islamic State, control vast areas of Iraq and Syria.
Groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Turkistan Islamic Party have grown even after their leaders were killed in US drone strikes in Pakistan.
The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan became a more dangerous organization under the command of Hakeemullah Mehsud after its founder and emir, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike in August 2009. After Hakeemullah was killed in a drone strike in November 2013, the group split over the selection of Mullah Fazlullah to lead the group. But a splinter group, known as Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, appears to be well organized and just as dangerous as its predecessor.
Shabaab has also lost some of its top leaders to previous US counterterrorism operations. Among those killed have been Aden Hashi Ayro, the group's military commander, and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, al Qaeda's former leader in East Africa and a top official in the group.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/09/us_confirms_shabaab.php
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I do not think that any tax cut or tax increase ever becomes "permanent". Nor do I think it is logical that they should.
Taxes are part of an economic system that is only partially dependent on governments.
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I do not think that any tax cut or tax increase ever becomes "permanent". Nor do I think it is logical that they should.
Taxes are part of an economic system that is only partially dependent on governments.
When taxes or tax cuts are referred to as permanent it means they don't have an expiry date.
The Bush Tax Cuts under Bush had expiration dates, under Obama the expiration dates were done away with.
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Xo likes to infer that when the right talks about tax cuts, its along the lines of abolishing taxes. That's why he then jumps into the mode of how the Government needs those taxes to function, with the warped idea that more taxes means more revenue. Of course, its yet another deflection effort, as when we talk about tax cuts, its never along the lines of abolishing. It's just simple economics....that has demonstrated itself every time its been done......decrease the tax burden, thereby incentivizing those getting the benefit, be it buy more things, expand businesses, increase employment, which creates more income tax producing jobs, and increase purchasing of sales tax items --> whalaaa MORE tax revenue for the government to function
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Of course, sirs, governments never need taxes to operate. The complete abolition of taxes is the only way to guarantee full employment.
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LOL.....see what I mean? Priceless. Despite my clear reference as to the need for taxes, simply a lessening of a burden, immediately there's xo declaring how sirs thinks government never needs taxes to operate. Complete abolition he claims. As I said, priceless ;D
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The US ran and ran well for more than a century without any income tax.
For a few years in the late fifties there were some paying income tax above 90%.
Kennedys tax reforms reduced this load and employment did improve, so did tax receipts to the government.
When XO states"....governments never need taxes to operate. The complete abolition of taxes is the only way to guarantee full employment.
he is not far off the mark.
If we abolished the IRS and the minimum wage , why wouldn't the result be full employment and a generally higher wage level?
We import so much that a tariff would pay for everything essential , wouldn't it?
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actually I thought minimum wage has been extremely beneficial to the U.S. economy. because the primary complaint was it increase not decrease wages. increased wages always means increase spending and the type of spending. it`s a hard sell to believe an employer can`t pay higher wages because of minimum wages. the fact we went through several waves of corporate layoffs of workers who were paid well above minimum wage proves jobs numbers not directly effected by the wage minimum. Any kinds of businesses who depends on such low cost labor should get questioned if it should continue.
now on the issue of taxes. it`s not true the U.S. has existed without taxes. it`s the type of taxes that`s different, it`s did very well on alcohol tax but events changed to make it switch to income taxes then expenses grew to the point that incomes taxes will never go away. but if somebody proposes a viable income stream to lower taxes than maybe the burden to businesses will lessen. ex. national parks charge higher rates to pay for it`s maintenance. etc.
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Abolishing the minimum wage would probably result in people working 90 hours per week and still not making it. Abolishing the IRS would necessitate a similar agency to collect the same amount or more than the IRS collects now. The government cannot run on air.
Raising the taxes on mining and minerals and the rent on government land would work a lot better than charging Disney prices to visit Smokey the Bear.
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the price increase I propose is to limit the amount of visitors going in. I often hear how extremely saturated these parks are and those crowds do incur some damages. so the price increase is to help with that issue.
but renting government land sounds good to me I thought that was already been done??
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necessitate a similar agency to collect the same amount or more than the IRS collects now. The government cannot run on air.
Not really....a national sales tax....
(that by the way would expose how much the thieves in Washington are really taking)
would not necessitate an agency as large as the current IRS.
And it would not allow anyone to escape paying taxes that the current scheme allows.
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actually I thought minimum wage has been extremely beneficial to the U.S. economy.
Oh no way. because the primary complaint was it increase not decrease wages. increased wages always means increase spending and the type of spending. it`s a hard sell to believe an employer can`t pay higher wages because of minimum wages. the fact we went through several waves of corporate layoffs of workers who were paid well above minimum wage proves jobs numbers not directly effected by the wage minimum. Any kinds of businesses who depends on such low cost labor should get questioned if it should continue.
That is a strange attitude. Do you believe that someone with low skill levels should not be allowed to have a job at all?
now on the issue of taxes. it`s not true the U.S. has existed without taxes. it`s the type of taxes that`s different, it`s did very well on alcohol tax but events changed to make it switch to income taxes then expenses grew to the point that incomes taxes will never go away. but if somebody proposes a viable income stream to lower taxes than maybe the burden to businesses will lessen. ex. national parks charge higher rates to pay for it`s maintenance. etc.
Consumption taxes encourage saving and investment, what behavior does an income tax encourage?
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I'm not sure denial of work will the the end result. Less jobs at the beginning possible but the issue I'm focusing is the the economic benefits ,increased types of spending wll spur growth . Low wage pay will only increase growth in dollar stores types business.
Note the growth rate before and after minimum wage came into effect also notice how our economy started to slow around the time our minimum wage started to fall behind cost of living.
But you brought up denial to have a job. Thats actually happening now by employers who are demanding higher requirements for lower pay. But notice no outrage for that so why are we concern at all about anyone else who can't get a job?
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The government does in fact rent land for pasture. From what I have read, they should be charging more. Mineral rights and radio/TV/ cellphone wavelength rental rights are also set too low.
The national parks belong to all Americans, and admission should not be prohibitively expensive. I don't have any idea whether the fees paid cover the cost of running the parks or not, nor do I have information on maintenance. Maybe they could raise fees a bit, maybe not. Some parks get a lot more visitors than others.
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I'm not sure denial of work will the the end result.
Oh yes this happens early. Imagine you have a business with two employees , one more skilled than the other, the skilled worker works so well that he produces for your business more than $60 in product or service every hour, you can pay this guy $25 an hour and feel that the deal is worth it. The guy that you are paying minimum wage is much less skilled and produces for you about $16 dollars each hour with his work. When the minimum wage rises to $15 an hour will you keep him around just for decoration? Right now a person must be able to create at least $16 each hour for his employer to justify his being employed , all persons able to create only less than that are entirely forbidden from working by the minimum wage law. Less jobs at the beginning possible but the issue I'm focusing is the the economic benefits ,increased types of spending wll spur growth . Low wage pay will only increase growth in dollar stores types business.
Note the growth rate before and after minimum wage came into effect also notice how our economy started to slow around the time our minimum wage started to fall behind cost of living.
But you brought up denial to have a job. Thats actually happening now by employers who are demanding higher requirements for lower pay. But notice no outrage for that so why are we concern at all about anyone else who can't get a job?
Those low wage jobs evaporate in the US, but they condense in other countries where there is more willingness to work for very low wages, when I was young there were a lot of women sewing garments in Georgia, this work is happening at a distance now, and the economic benefit of these thousands of jobs is where?
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But if thats not whats going on if the business can't handle minimum wage. If a Business is cannot function from the eage increase tha. Thats mean it was not sustainable . Remember mimimum wage increase is a correction from it behind massively behind present times. If anything the saving a business has made from underpaying it's should make it easier to pay for the increase.
The thing about those low wage jobs is i don't recall very many people complaining and till now connecting it minimum wage. If i remember that was a time people fear people willing to work for less pay . My mom did that but the pay was so low its not much of a hardship to not work for awhile. Were talking 1.25/hr. Here .
Today you 'll be hard press to get food
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So you think that people who produce for their employer about $5 per hour deserve a job that pays their mortgage?
It is just so simple it is irreducible, supply and demand determine price.
There is no more to the story except how it applies in particular to a person.
If you can mine 16 tons of coal a day you really do deserve twice as much pay as the guy that loads 8 tons of coal a day.
The minimum wage is exactly forbidding people who do not have highly profitable skills from work. The guy that can load four tons of coal a day can't have any of this money at all.
This includes kids who have no need for work except as a learning experience, You may not meet anyone who is getting paid $4 an hour for real and legal, but we see more unpaid interns than ever.
For real and for ever, supply and demand determine price.
This includes the price of an hour of my time, laws that try to repeal the law of supply and demand are in the nature of installing a pump that pumps from the deep end to the shallow end of the same pool hoping thereby to make the shallow end deeper.
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No one who is paid $5 an hour is likely to have a mortgage or a house. It would be difficult for anyone earning so little to be able to afford to live indoors.
Unpaid interns are basically suckers, at least if they do not get on the payroll within several months.
Your comparisons are way off. Being as I know what students paid in tuition to take my classes, I can say that I was never paid more than 20% of what students paid to sit in my classes. The administrators made the big salaries and most of them were unnecessary, since they had no actual power or budget. The VP, the president and the Board of Trustees made all the decisions.
Your ideal seems to be some sort of ghastly piecework system in which many people do not deserve to be paid even enough to afford to eat and live indoors, and anyone is subject to being thrown out the door if they do not produce what the boss has determined they should.
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What i'm mainly talk about has nothing to do with the worker paying a mortgags or if can live with the pay. It's about the peoples ability to spend and what kind of spending. Our businesses is dependant on this factor. Making us a nation of walmart customers will not be very good. China itself is hurting that it's populous does not spend enough
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If we have a nation of people who cannot earn enough to support themselves, we have a serious problem. In recent years, robots and computers have caused productivity to increase greatly, but in the system we have, wages have not increased as a result except for the few people at the top.
China would perhaps be better off if the people spent a greater share of their income, but the fact is that China has managed to maintain a growth rate far higher than any other large country. Basically, China is divided into a Third Word part, in which people earn very little and many are very close to subsistence agriculture, and a First World strip along they coast and the rivers where the growth rate is very high. Essentially, the people of the hinterlands are colonies of the people of the coast.
In the US, you could say that West Virginia is economically the colony of Pittsburgh and several other large cities that use its resources and its people as a source of cheap labor. Mississippi is a colony of Memphis, New Orleans and Chicago in the same way.
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If we have a nation of people who cannot earn enough to support themselves, we have a serious problem.
Yes. But is this serious problem solved by putting people who can't earn enough to meet an arbitrary standard on the dole?
If we use this means to distribute the problem , and also reduce participation in the workforce this way , we are becoming dependent on an ever shrinking circle of productive people.
Unpaid Interns are NOT suckers, they are just coping with the minimum wage the best way they can.
After some months of unpaid labor they enter the paid workforce with a work history and experience, their alternative being a few months of unpaid idleness , or even worse, paid idleness to show a prospective employer .
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I was once called into the college VP's office and asked if I would consider teaching two courses at an extension campus for free. The classes were held in Baptist Church about 20 miles from my home. The College was paying a could of Cuban preachers, who resembled Mutt & Jeff, $4000 each to use the facility. They did not pay the Church, just the preachers. Their job was to stand around while the faculty taught the classes and act like they were in charge. My job was to teach English composition to Cubans who barely knew English. The college did not provide books, or even a place to buy the books, so I paid for the books and sold them to the students, some of whom never paid me. The salary mentioned to teach the course was $500. I had 30 students, and the college was getting $900 a head from them or perhaps the government for each one of them.
When I was asked to teach the course for free, I had already taught half the semester. So I told the VP, "If I work for free, that means that my work is of no value to you. But even if that is so, it is of value to me, so no, I won't work for free. "
Later, a colleague said that the rumor was that I was "uncooperative".
No one should be allowed to have unpaid interns.
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That is not you refusing to be an intern.
That was you refusing to be cheated, and defending the worth of your profession.
I salute your uncooperativeness , it seems fully warranted.
All the professors of the world should thank you .
An Unpaid intern is not in the situation of being offered less than his work is really worth.
An Unpaid intern is obeying the minimum wage law , because what his work is really worth is less than the government allows him to collect, he works for free instead.
I wonder if there was such a thing as an unpaid intern before the minimum wage got over $5 and hour?
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/01/12/unpaid-internships-are-they-doomed/vi8MVMlqfeJQHlMY3vlBpJ/story.html
[/quote]“I think we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the unpaid internship in the for-profit sector,” says Ross Perlin, a New York City-based author who put a spotlight on the issue with his 2011 book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. “I think you’re beginning to see a culture change.” For now, Fox Searchlight is appealing the judge’s decision, while Conde Nast made a move that surprised the business world?—?simply shuttering its 2014 internship program, possibly a gloomy harbinger for many.
Humphrey, who graduates in June, sympathizes with her peers bringing suit?—?to a point. “Unpaid internships really devalue our work,” she says. “The fact that they won’t pay is like a slap in the face.” However, she fears these cases may end up blocking the professional path for those coming up behind her. “I knew going in it was going to be difficult financially, so I planned for that. It seems dishonest to knowingly go into an unpaid internship and then at the end decide it wasn’t fair.”
***[/quote]
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http://business.time.com/2012/05/02/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-unpaid-internship-as-we-know-it/
Around the 1930s, education and business leaders started advocating for a more seamless transition from school to the workplace in areas other than medicine. Internships began spreading into other fields, first in public administration and later publishing, marketing and banking.
As more internships sprouted across the country, Congress passed a number of laws regulating them, including the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which specifically lays out a 6-point test, still in use today, for hiring unpaid interns:
1. The internship must be similar to training that would be given in an educational environment;
2. The internship must be for the benefit of the intern;
3. The intern does not displace regular employees;
4. The employer derives no immediate advantage from the intern;
5. The intern is not entitled to a job at the end of the internship; and
6. The intern understands that he or she is not entitled to wages.
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Ah ha!
Businesses began unpaid internships , coincident with the early minimum wage , and the practice has increased along with increases in minimum wage.
I call this highly suspicious coincidence.
The first attempt at establishing a national minimum wage came in 1933, when a $0.25 per hour standard was set as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act. However, in the 1935 court case Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (295 U.S. 495), the United States Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional, and the minimum wage was abolished.
“ No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. ”
—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933, Statement on National Industrial Recovery Act.[102]
The minimum wage was re-established in the United States in 1938 (pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act), once again at $0.25 per hour ($4.10 in 2012 dollars[103]). In United States v. Darby Lumber Co. (1941), the Supreme Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act, holding that Congress had the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate employment conditions.
The minimum wage had its highest purchasing value ever in 1968, when it was $1.60 per hour ($10.79 in 2014 dollars[103]). From January 1981 to April 1990, the minimum wage was frozen at $3.35 per hour, then a record-setting wage freeze. From September 1, 1997 through July 23, 2007, the federal minimum wage remained constant at $5.15 per hour, breaking the old record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States
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I seriously doubt that internships follow all those regulations.
Labor laws are enforced with puny fines, and even these are seldom paid.
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I seriously doubt that internships follow all those regulations.
Labor laws are enforced with puny fines, and even these are seldom paid.
True , this system seems to be getting abused, there are some lawsuits happening.
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Actuallly these internships are getting to be a serious issue. Some colleges require these interhships which means in some case are students actually paying to work due to the tuition cost.
Also unpaid internship has been label as a weening process to rid lower income class applicant since they can't possibly afford this. The final insult about unpaid internship those programs actually has the worst hiring rate. Businesses tend to give the most base grunt work to these interns task that has nothing to do with thier career goals so thiers no reason to hire them.
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Very good points. Only those with serious financial backing can work for free. Hospitals abuse their interns with long hours, but they do pay them something.
I was going to do some volunteer work in South America once, until they told me that in addition to my airfare, I would have to pay them $2000 a month. Nuts to that!
My guess is that the school was run as some sort of business for the benefit of the directors.
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As a person who grew up around con artist. Lets just say that service will have my old friends highest respect and envy.
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It is not hard to sniff out con jobs for me.
As a rule any charity that calls you on the phone for donations, any that use professional fundraisers, and any that do not reveal on their pleas for money what percent goes to the actual cause I avoid.
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I got to be honest ALOT of charities activates my BS alarms even thought some I`m pretty sure are legit. meaning I suspect some may of unknowingly lost their objectives.
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There are unbiased evaluation sites that reveal the differences between various charities.
I don't buy crap I have never seen over the phone, why should I donate money to the Police Benevolent Assiciation when they are so damned lazy they have to hire paid fundraisers?