Kryten, if you look at the fine print on the H-1B and H-2B visas – they are indentured servitude, no other way of interpreting them.

We had a large influx of Brazilians into my area who had been taken to New Orleans on H-2Bs and were looking for construction jobs here to pay for a ticket home. They claimed that if they went to the immigration guys, instead of getting deported, they would get shipped back to the contractors who were ripping them off in New Orleans. I don’t know that that is true, but they really believed it.

but the idea holds a certain appeal. all those special interests would deposit their $$$$$ directly into the u.s. treasury instead of 527s, attack ads, whatever. we’d probably still end up with the same person in office.

also, the idea of reverse robocalls, finally a good use for that.

Things like this, for example:
Business Week: Consumer Credit Arbitration — you lose!

Some current and former NAF arbitrators say they make decisions in haste—sometimes in just a few minutes—based on scant information and rarely with debtor participation. Consumers who have been through the process complain that NAF spews baffling paperwork and fails to provide the hearings that it promises. Corporations seldom lose. In California, the one state where arbitration results are made public, creditors win 99.998% of the time in NAF cases that are decided by arbitrators on the merits, according to a lawsuit filed by the San Francisco city attorney against NAF.

“NAF is nothing more than an arm of the collection industry hiding behind a veneer of impartiality,” says Richard Neely, a former justice of the West Virginia supreme court who as part of his private practice arbitrated several cases for NAF in 2004 and 2005.
…
[T]here were 89,560 total bankruptcy filings (of all types) in the month of May. With 21 business days in May, that is a daily rate of 4,266. That figure represents an increase of 34% from the daily rate in May 2007. This is no one-month blip in the data. The daily bankruptcy filing rate for the first five months of 2008 (4,026 per day) is 30% higher for the first five months of 2007 (3,093 per day). So far, there have been almost 423,000 bankruptcies filed in 2008. … We are still on pace for 1,000,000 bankruptcy filings in 2008.

What was that about abolishing slavery? The only difference now is, you can’t see the chains, and it’s not just Negro’s and Asians.

There are so many inequalities in the USA (and growing in the World generally) now, that I’m damned if I can see a way to fix it( well I can, but it’s not a way anyone wants to know about!) LOL

OTOH, we could probably pay off some of the debt if we used telephone voting and charged a buck a call. Just a thought. 😈

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Few people understand that Bush was going to get Florida’s electors no matter what happened in the Supreme Court, because the state legislature was already planning to call a special session to appoint a slate of electors for Bush to replace those at dispute. If they had done it, it would have been totally legal. The method of elector selection for President is a law, not part of the Florida constitution, and as a law, the legislature can change the method with a majority vote.

I doubt it will go anywhere, because too many states benefit in one way or another from today’s screwed up system.

Will we see the end of the Electoral College?

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College on Friday, less than a week after the Democrats settled on how to handle delegates from Florida at their national convention.

“It’s time for Congress to really give Americans the power of one-person, one-vote, instead of the political machinery selecting candidates and electing our president,” Nelson said in a release announcing the amendment.

Nelson had announced he would offer the legislation in an address to his state’s senate in March.

Seeing this proposal (not the first, by the way) come out of the state of Florida is no surprise. With the Sunshine State being the scene of the 2000 electoral debacle and, more recently, the botched Democratic primary race, feelings have long been running high about the relative merits of the “one person, one vote” concept vs. our antiquated electoral college system. But is it even possible?
…

Getting rid of the Electoral College would be good. But it’ll take a lot more than that, and I doubt it will happen anyway.

Ouch! You are a danger to yourself! Maybe you should buy some personal body armor? 😮

Glad you enjoyed your salad. You made me sneak out to the local bakery and take little missy (the Jack Russel) for a walk! Now I got treats! Yummm…

Cheers. 😀

Ahem. 😉