Wal-Mart fired a cancer patient in Michigan (who had been named Associate of the Year in 2008) after they discovered that he was authorized by his doctor to use marijuana. That occurred back in November. Wal-Mart is now even going so far as to try to challenge his eligibility for unemployment compensation.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
This exactly why the republicans are on the worng side of history and the American People.
Having corporate interest come between a you and your doctor is why we need HCR if not a single payer Public Option.
BTW, out of principle I expect that no conservative will ever use ObamaCare, right?
Dori! Dori! Come quick. We got another one for ya’ to eliminate. Bring your big fucking mouth and your gun.
@1: Nah. They’ll use it like everybody else so they can stay healthy enough to criticize Al Gore for ever sitting in a limo. These are the same people who wink, wink, nod, nod, write off their personal vehicle as a “business expense” and fall for “tax avoidance” schemes, but will put war, war, war on the national credit card without batting an eyelash. Then they will get in your face about “personal responsibility”.
WalMart is one of the worst but certainly isn’t the only one. You’ve heard of ‘too big to fail’. how about ‘too big to care’.
WalMart knows that most of its customer base will shop there anyway. There is either no alternative or the customers are too ignorant to do anything about it.
I stay out of WalMart here on this side of the mountains, but back home in Okanogan Co. there’s little alternative. Multiply that by a few thousand and you have the reason WalMart can be the assholes they are.
Didn’t we have anti-trust laws once upon a time?
Ahh, those were the good ol’ days.
If it’s legal there in Michigan, I would side with Mr. Casias. However, since Lee’s continuing obsession with pot has nothing to do with a medical condition he does not have, but rather the fact that he is just a plain chronic stoner that uses the drug to get high; he is hardly of a weighted opinion of it’s use for medical purposes. Just sayin’. :)
Cough! Hack! Whoa! Dude!
Re 1
Can’t speak for anyone else, but on the day the government forces me to buy a private product I’ll drop my insurance. It isn’t the business of government what personal choices I make regarding my health care.
On the day we have Single Payer the US will begin to be the joke that British or Italian health care is. Innnovation will slow drastically in medical equipment and pharma, as government will tell them what to charge regardless of profit. Lines in hospitals for simple procedures will be the law rather than the exception. BTW, ever thought about the loss of productivity in your socialist nightmare as people spend whole days getting routine care rather than working?
During his five years at WalMart, Casias says he went to work every day, determined to be the best. “I gave them everything,” he says. “110 percent every day. Anything they asked me to do I did. More than they asked me to do. 12 to 14 hours a day.”
(From the article linked by Goldy)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: If you’re loyal to an employer, and work your ass off, don’t expect anything in return. As Boone Pickens famously said when one of his executives questioned letting go a man who had worked for his company for 30 years, “He was paid, wasn’t he?” Employers don’t give a rap about their workers. That’s why American workers need to transition from employment to entrepreneurship. If this guy had been a “retail consultant” instead of a “sales associate,” he could charge B2B consulting fees of $50 to $100 an hour, instead of being paid minimum wage, and as a self-employed consultant he couldn’t be fired.
@5 “It isn’t the business of government what personal choices I make regarding my health care.”
It sure as hell is, for the same reason we have laws requiring cyclists to wear helmets. The rest of us are tired of paying the medical bills of people who don’t carry health insurance or wear helmets. When your actions affect others, we have a right to legislate a change in your behavior.
@3 Wal-Mart is a freeloader on the taxpayers. They save big bucks on employee health care by dumping tens of thousands of their employees on Medicaid, paid for by you and me.
@4 Assuming this was at-will employment, the company had a right to terminate him for any reason, including a bad reason or no reason, and the unemployment appeal in any case doesn’t have jurisdiction to return him to their employment. But I don’t think WalMart will win that unemployment appeal. The guy didn’t quit, he was fired, so the only way he can be denied benefits is if the company proves misconduct. If medical marijuana is legal in Michigan and he had a prescription, then using a legally prescribed drug for a medical condition is not misconduct.
Re 7
Not really. The government can pass a law saying that all financial obligations from those without insurance be borne by those people. (However I refuse to ride my bicycle with either a helmet or those silly shorts that make a person look like an alien or an exhibitionist. I have yet to have a cop pull me over.)
The government can, as stupid as it would be, change the laws and force insurerers to cover pre-existing conditions.
Don’t bother with the vehicle insurance anaology though. Driving a car is a priviledge, for which I owe certain obligations. Failing those I can choose not to accept the priviledge.
Last I checked life, with the health risks this entails is a Constitutional right. The government can say that I can’t pass my burdens on to others, but wouldn’t that fly in the face of progressive thought?
Re 1
I’d MUCH rather have a government employee who can’t be fired for incompetence, stupidity or really anything short of criminal behavior come between me and my doctor. Yeah.
Re 8
I agree with you completely. Walmart has a valid but somewhat repugnant business model, though.
If people don’t like it they are free to shop elsewhere I don’t shop Target or Walmart because I don’t want low prices with attendant low quality. I want to support American industry, not cheap Chinese trash. I want living wage jobs in my community, not Walmart races to the bottom. Even if one only has a little there are alternatives to these stores for everything from food to clothes. My local hardware store gives me only slightly higher prices and service miles better than the Home Desperate for instance. Dunn Lumber isn’t that much more than Lowes for material, and the quality is miles better.
It isn’t a regulatory scheme that will fix the Walmart problem. It’s the consumer letting Walmart know they don’t like the model.
lost @ 11- I am a government employee and I have personally fired a number of others for a range of offences short of criminal behavior. The myth government employees cannot be fired is a lie, pure and simple.
@13…would depend on if they are part of a union or not, I would suppose.
I have fired union members. There are standards which must be upheld. Union contracts have procedures which must be followed, but if they violate the standards and you follow the procedures, employees, union or non-union, can be terminated.
@10 “Not really.’
Yes, really.
“The government can pass a law saying that all financial obligations from those without insurance be borne by those people.”
Get fucking serious!!! Those financial obligations are already being passed on to those of us who pay insurance premiums — to the tune of $1,300 a year. (Rep. Jay Inslee’s estimate based on federal data.) Why should voters like me put up with this one day longer?
“(However I refuse to ride my bicycle with either a helmet or ….)”
Now we know how you came to be so stupid.
@11 Don’t worry, gummint bureaucrats can’t do anything to you that you haven’t already done to yourself.
To THE DUMB BUNNY… Didn’t you say you smoked?
Should Puddy be forced to “pay” for your sorry ASS? Nope you DOPE!
BTW Tiffany Owens was overweight and she smoked. See the Poor Choices thread THE DUMB BUNNY. The kid had nothing to do with his mother’s poor health choices like Puddy has nothing to do with your cancer stick use.
Of course facts to a libtardo causes exploding head syndrome!
@5
So, you’ll be droppin’ your auto insurance then?
I like this idea. It ought to work for auto insurance too, right?
So that when some “rugged individualist” retard like Cyn Cyn gets drunk and plows into the back of my car, I can bail out and draw down on him and his cousin-wife with my Desert Eagle and just keep firing until he coughs up his wallet.
Sure.
That oughta work real nice.
Anyone who is against the use of marijuana to ease the suffering of cancer patients (and others who may benefit from using marijuana) is a fucking idiot.
As far as recreational use is concerned, the government has no business as to what you do in the privacy of your own home. It’s time to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana to bring it into the light as a substance to be enjoyed by adults who choose to do so.
P.S.
I urge all of you to support I-1068 so we develop a sensible attitude towards marijuana in Washington.
GOP Pervert #010-46882310-02
“GOP leader’s skinny-dip confession stuns Utah
“A late-night confession by Utah’s House majority leader about sitting nude in a hot tub with a minor 25 years ago has shocked this conservative state’s political establishment but has not prompted calls from party leaders for him to resign.
“Rep. Kevin Garn, 55, acknowledged the indiscretion late Thursday immediately after the Legislature adjourned for the session. He said he paid the woman, Cheryl Maher, now 40, $150,000 to keep quiet about the episode when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2002.”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ssion.html
(Emphasis added)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Of course they won’t ask him to resign! He’s the GOP majority leader! Resigning for touching little girls (or boys) isn’t something Republicans are expected (or required) to do in GOP-controlled legislative bodies.
Glenn Beck finally sat down and listened to Bruce Springsteen, yet LostinNarcissism accuses liberals of not comprehending irony. Too rich!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....97360.html
Wal-Mart sucks.
Keep comparing apples to oranges. It just shows how little understanding you have of the issue.
But to do my part to educate a liberal everyday(sort of like a Boy Scout doing a daily good deed)-
As I wrote before, driving is a priviledge. It isn’t a right, so imposing reasonable restrictions on the priviledge violates no rights.
Telling me to buy something against my better judgement absent such an exception is pure government heavy handedness. Already a number of legal defense groups are considering how a test case would be established if this idiotic corporate welfare is passed.
I agree though that if I choose not to purchase insurance I have no claim on the wallets of my fellow citizens. Why, out of curiosity does poverty, poor mortgage choices, poor life choices etc establish this right in the progressive mind?
Why do you libtardos trust anything from THE DUMB BUNNY?
“Although we did not have any sexual contact, it was still clearly inappropriate – and it was my fault,” said Garn, of Layton.”
What a dipshit!
Put simply, progressive policy objectives are generally pragmatic in nature and oriented toward minimizing real harm / maximizing general welfare irrespective of narrow moral constructs. Whereas conservative policy objectives are generally moralistic in nature and oriented toward punishing “badness” and rewarding “goodness”, without regard to real financial and social costs.
Thus, in the case of indigent health care, it really isn’t a question of rights, but rather of costs to society. But that can be very hard to see from a righteously moralistic point of view.
The government forces people to purchase auto insurance, yet I’ve never heard of a conservative who found that to be morally repugnant.
Shouldn’t WalMart take personal responsibility for the poor choice it made in hiring a person who subsequently got cancer?
re 29
I’m curious if you can’t read English or if it’s a problem with comprehension. An ESL course might be in your best interests.
On 2 occasions I explained the difference. You have a priviledge to drive. If you don’t want to give up certain liberties to obtain the priviledge, you can elect not to drive. This doesn’t mean I think mandatory insurance a good idea. I don’t. It doesn’t stop people driving without insurance or even valid licenses. It just lines the pockets of insurance companies.
We have a right to life with all the risks that entails. If I don’t ask you to bear the burden of my choices you don’t have a right to limit my risks.
Simple enough for even a hardened liberal?
Re 29
Additionally, what was written at 28 is morally repugnant. The person who wrote this has bough lock stock and barrel into moral relativism and is in fact a sociopath.
I just think a government mandate to purchase a service I neither want nor need is unconstitutional.
re 31: The people opting out of paying for medical insurance would obviously be the young and the healthy who don’t expect to need the insurance.
I’m sure that a compromise on this issue could be reached wherein those who refuse to buy health insurasunce are simply turned away when somehing happens to them so they don’t waste our time and money.
The collusion of all Republicans and some Democrats to protect the prerogatives of big business and thwart the growth of real competition and a free market are the type of politics combined with big business that Ayn Rand railed about through the character of Hank Reardon.
How are the actions of big oil different than the fictional account of big steel that Rand dislikes?
None>
As always, the consrvative mindset responds the the slogans of ‘free market’ but fail to see that they and their ilk are the main obstacle to its creation.