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HaitianDivorce posted:(do we have a bigger psyduck?) Don't worry, the forums has you covered And it all very much deserves that
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:14 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:36 |
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I haven't tried this, but I think a good response to "Statistics suck, let me tell you another anecdote" is to respond with your own completely contradictory anecdote. "I have a friend who lives in UK and UHS saved his life." Seems like doing that would show someone how frustrating stupid anecdotes are. I actually had my insane grandma pull that "statistics mean nothing! now my friend martha..." poo poo. I only thought later of saying "My friend tony disagrees entirely."
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:14 |
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HaitianDivorce posted:So we can vent about crazy relatives here even if we don't have text to post, right? Sorry if this isn't the right place to put it but it's just kinda bugging me right now. If all they care about is anecdotes, show them this website: http://www.pluralofanecdote.com/ It's an incredible tool that's completely useless for statistical purposes but which will lineup a 'private plan/uninsured' anecdote next to a 'public option' anecdote and let you read them both.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:23 |
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Amused to Death posted:Don't worry, the forums has you covered And it all very much deserves that Oh hell yes it does. XyloJW posted:I haven't tried this, but I think a good response to "Statistics suck, let me tell you another anecdote" is to respond with your own completely contradictory anecdote. "I have a friend who lives in UK and UHS saved his life." Seems like doing that would show someone how frustrating stupid anecdotes are. I guess. It just bugs me a lot more than it should. They're my housemates, they're both decent people and I'm glad to know them... I just don't understand how they can think like that. How you get to believe the head of the Democratic party, the most milquetoast 'leftist' party in the developed world and one of the most heavily scrutinized jobs on the planet, literally wants and is working towards putting every man, woman and child in America in a Communist dictatorship is simply beyond me. vyelkin posted:If all they care about is anecdotes, show them this website: Aaaand that's now bookmarked. Thanks folks! HaitianDivorce fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jan 30, 2013 |
# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:31 |
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DarkHorse posted:It's not charts or sources, but this is a very accessible primer into why it's not a huge problem while still validating their opinion that it is at least a problem. The guy responded with this: "Did you catch that, at 3:30? He touched on it, but in the end dismissed it...interest rates. We have artificially low interest rates right now, which is driving huge borrowing. Interest rates WILL rise. And we are at severe risk of not being able to finance our own debt. Not only will interest payments skyrocket, but they will skyrocket at the same time that Medicare/Medicaid and SS costs are skyrocketing. Those three things will consume our entire national budget, and we will have nothing left to spend on the actual, legitimate operations of government. What is government going to do? Print more money? Massive inflation, and massive destruction of the wealth of the private sector. The end is not good, no matter how you look at it." Ugh
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:39 |
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Kro-Bar posted:Apologies if this isn't the best thread to post this in, but I figured people in this thread have the most ammo in their chambers for stupid arguments. If you want to get him on your side about something you could go into how he doesn't like one major thing about his senator (and I presume candidate), but does like another. If the Libertarian party were viable, he could probably vote for a candidate that he actually fully supports. You could go into wedge-issue politics, using one thing to get another in (like being anti-gay to get a plutocratic agenda through); and the fact that our electoral system virtually guarantees a two-party system. But that's changing the subject, going into a problem with the framing of the debate. He may not be able to comprehend the importance of that, but if he is that would be a good first step to conversion. China comes knocking every day. As for arguments against his stupid, could you be more specific?
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:40 |
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VideoTapir posted:If you want to get him on your side about something you could go into how he doesn't like one major thing about his senator (and I presume candidate), but does like another. If the Libertarian party were viable, he could probably vote for a candidate that he actually fully supports. You could go into wedge-issue politics, using one thing to get another in (like being anti-gay to get a plutocratic agenda through); and the fact that our electoral system virtually guarantees a two-party system. But that's changing the subject, going into a problem with the framing of the debate. He may not be able to comprehend the importance of that, but if he is that would be a good first step to conversion. To clarify, the original reference was to Tom Coburn (I live in Oklahoma), but the thread has since devolved into me trying to explain why worrying about the national debt isn't as important as caring about social services.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:45 |
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Kro-Bar posted:The guy responded with this: Most government bonds are issued with fixed interest rates. It's not like credit card debt where you have interest to pay back each month. Instead, a one year $1M government bond purchased at 1.5% interest will simply be redeemed for $1.015M one year later. The US is not in danger of having interest rates skyrocket like Greece (which is what people are afraid of) because borrowers trust the US to pay back its debts, even if the credit rating was downgraded. Not to mention the fact that interest rates right now are lower than inflation, which means if the government spends that $1M on stimulating the economy and then one year later has to pay back $1.015M, if inflation was, say, 3% during that same period then that $1.015M has generated $1.03M's worth of economic activity. Investors are actually losing money relative to inflation by buying US bonds, but they're willing to do this because that bet is a sure thing--the reason why Greece's rates are so high is because there's a real risk your bond won't be repaid, so they charge high rates to balance out that risk. The US is in no way comparable to that situation. That's before you even get into the problem of the deficit. The reason why America's deficit is so high is because of the recession. In a recession two big effects happen on government budgets: revenues decline because people lose their jobs or have hours/wages cut, and therefore those people pay less taxes; when the economy is bad, corporations may also make less profit, which means less corporate tax as well. Second, government spending necessarily has to rise because those people who lose their jobs or hours or wages are suddenly put in a position where they have to take advantage of programs like welfare, food stamps, unemployment, and so on. So revenues decline and spending increases, naturally, in a recession, before you even get to stimulus spending. The right answer as to how to fix this is to get out of the recession, so those people go back to work and pay their taxes again, and so that the people who hit hard times no longer need government assistance, and the budget returns to where it was pre-recession. Austerity does not do this. What austerity does is take the recessed state of the economy and prolong it by cutting spending which is necessary to both help people and stimulate the economy. It's also grossly unfair. Picture this situation: you work for twenty years at a job, then get laid off when the economy tanks. You go on unemployment and food stamps to get by until you can find another job in your field. Then suddenly the government slashes unemployment and food stamp spending because the recession pushed the budget into deficit, and suddenly you have no way to survive. As well, you are no longer stimulating the economy by spending your welfare and food stamp money, and the businesses that might have hired you aren't able to because the economy isn't picking up the way it might with stimulus. You end up starving to death in the streets, but it's okay because the deficit shrank a little. If you want evidence that austerity doesn't help in a recession, just look at the UK: their economy tanked just like everyone else's, and in response they elected a Conservative government which imposed austerity, made severe budget cuts and... put the economy back into a 'double dip' recession, completely squandering all of the recovery that Britain had made by spending government funds.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:52 |
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Kro-Bar posted:The guy responded with this: What is an artificial interest rate? Where is this field where I can go pick natural interest rates from the trees? e: And it's also private borrowing. Interest rates on treasury bonds are determined by demand, so I guess that is somewhat more natural.(but again, there is no such thing as a free and natural market because a market is an artificial construction with artificial rules.)
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 05:57 |
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I don't even know how to respond at this point: I'm so sorry I'm asking you guys for so much help, but I just feel stuck in a quagmire trying to deal with people like this, especially when they're the norm in my state. I'm probably being dumb in this situation, but I can't find any good links that point out that gov't debt isn't really a good reason to retard federal spending in a time of high unemployment. Kro-Bar fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jan 30, 2013 |
# ? Jan 30, 2013 06:21 |
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vyelkin posted:If you want evidence that austerity doesn't help in a recession, just look at the UK: their economy tanked just like everyone else's, and in response they elected a Conservative government which imposed austerity, made severe budget cuts and... put the economy back into a 'double dip' recession, completely squandering all of the recovery that Britain had made by spending government funds. Actually they are entering a triple dip recession now! Idiot wanna-be economists are everywhere. I'm doing an IT contract for the federal reserve and somehow got into a conversation with a fellow contractor who wouldn't stop espousing the tenants of Austrian economic theory. Thankfully all the actual economists are sane.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 06:27 |
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Kro-Bar posted:I don't even know how to respond at this point: There are about a million different definitions of money and debt, some of which refer to one another (which is okay as long as the conversation remains strictly about the relation between the two). Some of them are not compatible with one another without some serious explanation. I get the feeling that no matter how you define debt to this guy he will just say "nope." Either he gives you his definition of debt, under which his ideas make sense, get him to accept, for the sake of argument (a phrase most people don't really understand) your definition, or end the conversation.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 06:47 |
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Well, this is circulatingquote:The following letter was disseminated and signed by over 1,000 current and former Army Special Forces soldiers (Green Berets) in support of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, specifically as a defensive measure against tyranny. The letter was compiled through the joint efforts of current and former Special Forces personnel over at https://www.professionalsoldiers.com and quietly disseminated for signatures among secure, vetted circles.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 06:51 |
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pillsburysoldier posted:Well, this is circulating This makes it sound like states don't actually have governments. There's nothing stopping states from fighting the drug war within their borders right now--in fact, many city police departments are fighting it on the ground level right now! Of course, the whole reason the DEA is involved in drug efforts is because the import, transportation, distribution and use of drugs can cover many different states' jurisdictions, but lets ignore that because STATES' RIGHTS! THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN!
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 07:07 |
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XyloJW posted:I got this one from my Buddhist aunt. One of the last people I'd expect to forward this kind of garbage. The Facebook group she got it from is full of Dees photoshops, WND, and infowars links. http://www.mta.info/news/stories/?story=55 quote:The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) launched the now-famous tag line in 2003. It has licensed its use, free of charge, to 54 organizations around the world for use in public awareness campaigns about security. Or it wasn't the Obama administration that came up with that campaign.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 07:56 |
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pillsburysoldier posted:Well, this is circulating Assuming this is real, is this what happens when The Troops start believing email forwards?
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 08:18 |
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pillsburysoldier posted:Well, this is circulating Super sick of this particular "argument". If it's not literally a machine gun it's not an assault weapon! Here's someone throwing 60 rounds downrange in ~15 seconds with his notassaultrifle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELqaZa9Rt04 Also, here's some footage of two dudes holding off the entire LA police force with their "impossible to configure...to fully automatic" fully automatic AR's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oqfrr26yTSY
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 08:47 |
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vyelkin posted:If all they care about is anecdotes, show them this website: This is a really useful site, but holy poo poo it's terrifying. It really reminds you of how screwed you can be in the US just because of something small that probably wasn't even your fault. And the worst part of it being that my parents would still vote a Republican ticket, even when they know their son could potentially be in debt for the rest of my life if something happened to me in this current system.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 09:04 |
800peepee51doodoo posted:Super sick of this particular "argument". If it's not literally a machine gun it's not an assault weapon! Here's someone throwing 60 rounds downrange in ~15 seconds with his notassaultrifle: Quick, what's the definition of an "assault weapon?"
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 09:22 |
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Guilty Spork posted:I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me could pick apart most of the individual points there, and a lot of the ones that seem to have merit are ones where I want to say, "Why the gently caress weren't you complaining about this during the Bush years?" Please don't do this. I understand that it's tempting, but policies are good or bad regardless of whose team is implementing them. "You weren't complaining about debt during the Bush years" is just as disingenuous as "you're not complaining about war crimes when Obama does them!" If you think that Obama's fiscal policy is sound, make a case for it. If you want to argue that it's a non-issue that's only raised as an attack on a Democratic President, then you'd do better to state that plainly than get at it through implication. (But if you're trying to educate someone on a policy issue, you probably don't want to go after the entire disingenuous edifice of the modern GOP anyway.)
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 09:45 |
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Ho Chi Mint posted:Quick, what's the definition of an "assault weapon?" A scary-rear end self-loading rifle, usually black, possibly including a bayonet mount, actual bayonet optional. As much as I'm in favor of some sensible, moderate gun control, it'll never happen because the people who write the bills don't know enough to write good bills, and the people who know enough don't support it.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 09:45 |
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Didn't see this one posted in the past few pages:ChainMail posted:Most everyone suspected fraud, but these numbers prove it and our government and media refuse to do anything about it. Seemed like absolute bullshit and it took 20 seconds of Google-Time to find the Snopes page shooting the whole thing down: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/2012fraud.asp The "Ohio County" claim is especially hilarious since Romney won in every "Ohio County" that exists in the United States. (And by a wide margin each time to boot.) Some of the bullet points are outright lies, and some of them are willful misrepresentations of the truth. I wish I could find the bullshit valve that stuff like this flows out of and weld that bastard shut.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:00 |
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quote:NOTE: Obama won in every state that did not require a Photo ID and lost in every state that did require a Photo ID in order to vote. Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, all states won by noted GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney....................................... in Romney's dreams at night
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:19 |
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Also Florida has voter ID and Obama won there, too. Edit: BEAT
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:20 |
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This is not exactly an email, but thematically appropriate. A friend of the family who works as a waitress attended an all-hands meeting at her restaurant last week. She and her co-workers were told that because of Obamacare, they were no longer legally able to accept tips and gratuities from their customers. I suggested that if the tips were going into the company's pockets, they were just being greedy fucks and lying to try to offset their costs. I haven't found anything on Snopes or anything anywhere about this to help her debunk it, and I'm not sure what I could do to help even if I could.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:20 |
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That sounds kind of illegal since waitresses are paid below minimum wage because they are tipped.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:22 |
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Merrill Grinch posted:This is not exactly an email, but thematically appropriate. Have her contact the labor board of her state and find out if what her employer is doing is legal and, if not, file a complaint. As far as I can tell, that's straight up theft of wages, wages she is taxed on.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:29 |
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Amused to Death posted:That sounds kind of illegal since waitresses are paid below minimum wage because they are tipped. Probably, yeah. DoL on the subject. Simplest answer I suppose would be to tell the boss that they'll trade tips for a $5/hr raise plus the Obamacare benefits. That, those links, and asking where Obamacare says they can't take tips should shut him up a bit.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:31 |
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800peepee51doodoo posted:Have her contact the labor board of her state and find out if what her employer is doing is legal and, if not, file a complaint. As far as I can tell, that's straight up theft of wages, wages she is taxed on. They crack down on this poo poo hard too. It happened here for an Italian restaurant that wasn't paying employees minimum wage, and those employees were undocumented workers, and non illegal workers as well as other groups in the city managed to stir up a big campaign against the restaurant until they finally paid and apologized.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:37 |
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Merrill Grinch posted:This is not exactly an email, but thematically appropriate. We're going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of bullshit. Some people will use any excuse to get out of spending money.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:53 |
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Amused to Death posted:They crack down on this poo poo hard too. It happened here for an Italian restaurant that wasn't paying employees minimum wage, and those employees were undocumented workers, and non illegal workers as well as other groups in the city managed to stir up a big campaign against the restaurant until they finally paid and apologized. Yeah, I've filed a complaint with the labor board against an employer and the threat alone was enough to get the pay owed to me. A friend of mine got a judgement against a former employer that ended up costing the business about three times the wages they owed in fines and punitive costs. This was in CA so ymmv in labor hostile states but in general I think the DoL is pretty loving awesome. gently caress wage theft and the scumbags who try to get away with it.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 18:56 |
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800peepee51doodoo posted:This was in CA so ymmv in labor hostile states but in general I think the DoL is pretty loving awesome. Yeah, my story was also from CT, so again ymmv. At the same time though, stolen wages is pretty straight forward and makes the DoL and everyone else involved look like a bunch of bribed buffoons if they don't do anything, so I think even in more hostile states they'd be eager to make the employer make this problem go away.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 19:01 |
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Merrill Grinch posted:This is not exactly an email, but thematically appropriate. Bullshit. I've read the thing front to back, been involved in countless discussions on PPACA over the last few years, and lost count of all the articles I've read on it from places like Kaiser. There's nothing in there that would even remotely resemble this. And just for good measure, I went back and searched both the primary legislation and the Reconcilliation Act; absolutely no mentions of tips or gratuities. Like others have suggested, she should contact the DoL.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 19:04 |
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XyloJW posted:Also:
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 19:07 |
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Merrill Grinch posted:This is not exactly an email, but thematically appropriate. Aside from what everyone else said, is this a chain or a local place?
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 19:21 |
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Gourd of Taste posted:Aside from what everyone else said, is this a chain or a local place? I'm not sure which restaurant she's currently employed at. I've asked my wife to contact her and get more information and possibly point her at these posts, though. This is in Texas which is not very high on the personal liberties scale on anything that doesn't have to do with guns or motorcycles. Merrill Grinch fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jan 30, 2013 |
# ? Jan 30, 2013 20:02 |
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Pretty sure most Department of Labor issues are handled and run at a Federal level, so they should be able to help even in Texas. I could be wrong, though. I know Insurance Commissioners are state level, so some States can't do poo poo, while others can be a big help when dealing with insurance disputes. But I think Labor should be pretty standard in all States.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 20:37 |
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Texas is a shithole labor-wise, but still has some of the basic protections, like if your pay date is missed for whatever reason they have 72 hours to rectify it (not 3 days, 72 hours) and non-compete clauses are basically dead on arrival here.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 21:24 |
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I'm no expert, so correct me if I'm wrong, but if the DoL fails to come through there's always the local news. "Local Business Stealing Tips From Wait Staff" seems like the kind of story that local-news "investigative journalists" like, and definitely not the kind that a restaurant wants to be on the receiving end of. (Unless they have good enough PR to spin it and get a bunch of loving assholes to throw an Appreciation Day in their honor.)
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 23:22 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:36 |
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Merrill Grinch posted:I'm not sure which restaurant she's currently employed at. I've asked my wife to contact her and get more information and possibly point her at these posts, though. This is in Texas which is not very high on the personal liberties scale on anything that doesn't have to do with guns or motorcycles. Find out who it is, as another Texas goon I would like to avoid this business.
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# ? Jan 30, 2013 23:37 |