Big-3 corporate CEOs arrived in Washington in

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Commentary: Larger-Than-Life Corporate Salaries are Unfair to Average American Workers

Despite slower-than-anticipated growth and lower-than-expected profits, many corporations have generously rewarded their leaders, while simultaneously reducing lower-level staff salaries and benefits in an attempt to control costs. This disturbing practice only serves to further widen the gap between America�s wealthy few and its working class and clearly demonstrates just how little this country values its workforce.

At a time when most American workers are struggling to make basic ends meet and worrying how they�ll manage to save enough for retirement, many of this country�s corporate chief executives are stuffing their pockets with larger-than-life compensation packages that include high base salaries, stock options and ample pension plans. In 2004, the average chief executive�s salary at a large company was more than 170 times that of the average worker�s pay. Last year, executive salaries grew 25 percent, while that of the average American worker grew only 3.1 percent.

Even when a company struggles, their CEOs are still rewarded. For example, the current CEO of a global manufacturing firm received over $11 million in compensation last year, despite the company�s $3.4 billion revenue loss, an 11-percent drop in stock value and a staff reduction of 17,000 workers. There are similar stories at corporations across the country. While worker pensions are frozen and many are asked to do without raises, CEOs manage to earn their multi-million dollar bonuses.

It�s no surprise that CEOs are cleaning up. Consider this: Corporations often use compensation committees to set their executive salaries. Many of these committees use outside consultants to help guide the process. These consultants are often already contracted to do other work for the company. The conflict of interest here is obvious: The consultant won�t upset the CEO -- and risk losing other contracts -- by setting a more realistic, performance based pay model.

Many corporate CEOs are, in short, getting over, and it is a slap in the face of every American worker. While it is understood that executive salaries would greatly exceed that of the average worker�s, there is no logical argument to explain why the growth rate between the two is so dramatically different. To protect its workforce, corporate America must ensure worker�s salaries grow at rates that keep pace with the cost of living, while slowing the rate of growth of CEO salaries. Corporate boards must stop rewarding CEOs with multi-million dollar bonuses. It is unacceptable for a company to lay off thousands of workers and then turn around and pay an executive for a job well done.

As a country, we often ask our government to think about the needs of the average American, and rightly so. However, if America is to truly prosper, the corporations that feed our local economy must also consider and respect the well-being of average worker.

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Judge Greg Mathis is national vice president of Rainbow PUSH and a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

How about this isn't a new story at all? How about the government lied to these poor parents, who lost their SON?! How about the COMMANDER IN CHIEF dishonored and disrespected Pat Tillman and his family? How about being so blind while unquestioningly idolizing a very false idol, a flawed, lying, devious, unethical, warmonging leader that you, as well, dishonor this woman and her son by still trying to use him as a Bush poster boy?

I have a feeling that when Fitzgerald is finished with his investigation (the crux of which is the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat/lie that Bush used to sell this country on an illegal, immoral war) and the facts are disclosed, Bush and his cronies and his followers will be headed down the toilet. Maybe the Tidy Bowl Man will throw you a life preserver, not that you'd take it. People like you would be honored to drown in the same S***T as Bush.

Pat Tillman and his parents deserve to be honored. How many of YOUR children were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan by this lying president? Until you've lost one, you're simply not qualified to demean and disrespect those who did. You think you're some sort of proud American who claims to support the troops? You're a fraud. You're nothing but a heartless war monger and deserve no respect whatsoever.

Tillman's Parents Are Critical Of Army
Family Questions Reversal On Cause of Ranger's Death

Former NFL player Pat Tillman's family is lashing out against the Army, saying that the military's investigations into Tillman's friendly-fire death in Afghanistan last year were a sham and that Army efforts to cover up the truth have made it harder for them to deal with their loss.

More than a year after their son was shot several times by his fellow Army Rangers on a craggy hillside near the Pakistani border, Tillman's mother and father said in interviews that they believe the military and the government created a heroic tale about how their son died to foster a patriotic response across the country. They say the Army's lies about what happened have made them suspicious, and that they are certain they will never get the full story.

Pat had high ideals about the country; that's why he did what he did, Mary Tillman said in her first lengthy interview since her son's death. The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting.

Tillman, a popular player for the Arizona Cardinals, gave up stardom in the National Football League after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to join the Army Rangers with his brother. After a tour in Iraq, their unit was sent to Afghanistan in spring 2004, where they were to hunt for the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Shortly after arriving in the mountains to fight, Tillman was killed in a barrage of gunfire from his own men, mistaken for the enemy as he got into position to defend them.

Immediately, the Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers. After a public memorial service, at which Tillman received the Silver Star, the Army told Tillman's family what had really happened, that he had been killed by his own men.

In separate interviews in their home town of San Jose and by telephone, Tillman's parents, who are divorced, spoke about their ordeal with the Army with simmering frustration and anger. A series of military investigations have offered differing accounts of Tillman's death. The most recent report revealed more deeply the confusion and disarray surrounding the mission he was on, and more clearly showed that the family had been kept in the dark about details of his death.

The latest investigation, written about by The Washington Post earlier this month, showed that soldiers in Afghanistan knew almost immediately that they had killed Tillman by mistake in what they believed was a firefight with enemies on a tight canyon road. The investigation also revealed that soldiers later burned Tillman's uniform and body armor.

That information was slow to make it back to the United States, the report said, and Army officials here were unaware that his death on April 22, 2004, was fratricide when they notified the family that Tillman had been shot.

Over the next 10 days, however, top-ranking Army officials -- including the theater commander, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid -- were told of the reports that Tillman had been killed by his own men, the investigation said. But the Army waited until a formal investigation was finished before telling the family -- which was weeks after a nationally televised memorial service that honored Tillman on May 3, 2004.

Patrick Tillman Sr., a San Jose lawyer, said he is furious about what he found in the volumes of witness statements and investigative documents the Army has given to the family. He decried what he calls a botched homicide investigation and blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting outright lies to the family and to the public.

After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this, Patrick Tillman said. They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.

Army spokesmen maintain that the Army has done everything it can to keep the family informed about the investigation, offering to answer relatives' questions and going back to them as investigators gathered more information.

Army officials said Friday that the Army reaffirms its heartfelt sorrow to the Tillman family and all families who have lost loved ones during this war. Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, an Army spokesman, said the Army acts with compassion and heartfelt commitment when informing grieving families, often a painful duty.

In the case of the death of Corporal Patrick Tillman, the Army made mistakes in reporting the circumstances of his death to the family, Brooks said. For these, we apologize. We cannot undo those early mistakes.

Brooks said the Army has actively and directly informed the Tillman family regarding investigations into his death and has dedicated a team of soldiers and civilians to answering the family's questions through phone calls and personal meetings while ensuring the family was as well informed as they could be.

Mary Tillman keeps her son's wedding album in the living room of the house where he grew up, and his Arizona State University football jersey, still dirty from the 1997 Rose Bowl game, hangs in a nearby closet. With each new version of events, her mind swirls with new theories about what really happened and why. She questions how an elite Army unit could gun down its most recognizable member at such close range. She dwells on distances and boulders and piles of documents and the words of frenzied men.

It makes you feel like you're losing your mind in a way, she said. You imagine things. When you don't know the truth, certain details can be blown out of proportion. The truth may be painful, but it's the truth. You start to contrive all these scenarios that could have taken place because they just kept lying. If you feel you're being lied to, you can never put it to rest.

Patrick Tillman Sr. believes he will never get the truth, and he says he is resigned to that now. But he wants everyone in the chain of command, from Tillman's direct supervisors to the one-star general who conducted the latest investigation, to face discipline for dishonorable acts. He also said the soldiers who killed his son have not been adequately punished.

Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore, he said. Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has.

That their son was famous opened up the situation to problems, the Tillmans say, in part because of the devastating public relations loss his death represented for the military. Mary Tillman says the government used her son for weeks after his death, perpetuating an untrue story to capitalize on his altruism -- just as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was erupting publicly. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall. She again felt as though her son was being used, something he never would have wanted.

Every day is sort of emotional, Mary Tillman said. It just keeps slapping me in the face. To find that he was killed in this debacle -- everything that could have gone wrong did -- it's so much harder to take. We should not have been subjected to all of this. This lie was to cover their image. I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails.

If this is what happens when someone high profile dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else.

The thing that everyone is forgetting is that not everyone is in Washington right now working - there are some people there trying to work out the details and everyone else will just vote when it is handed to them.

In fact, they said that things were going better before McCain and Obama got there, that once McCain got there things started going downhill because there are a group of Republicans who do not want to support the package that their Republican President is wanting passed.

Now, I don't know if I would support it or not if I was there, but I don't think that it is a requirement that every Senator be in that room while they are working on the details.

I am not a Democrat, I am not a Republican - don't know yet for sure which way I am going - but I do not fault Obama for not automatically running to Washington just because McCain did. In fact, from all the information I have gather this morning, McCain did not contribute anything to the conversation yesterday anyway.

I found and joined resistnet.com because I love my country. It is a very sad, sad day to see it marching towards marxism/socialism, which has failed in every country it has been tried.

Do you love this country? Does the blood shed for our freedoms still matter to you? If so, then please take a moment and join the "We the People" March on Washington DC. This group is a grassroots planning and organizing effort to put on a peaceful demonstration on May 30, 2009. We are looking for conservatives to join us and assist us in preserving our Consitution and holding our elected officials accountable to the oath of office they have sworn to. We need you to join us and get involved on the State level marches that will also be held across the country. Every state is participating!

Don't you think it's time we fire any elected official who doesn't uphold, protect, and preserve our 'We the People's" Constitution?

Please join us and invite your friends and families also.

Draw your own conclusions on the state of the MT industry. Should we be worried? I would be as the gov't NEVER moves fast on anything unless it benefits them somehow. I had never heard of the HIMSS until I read the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503667.html?wpisrc=newsletter

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation
(1789)

Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted' for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have show kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand, at the city of New York, the 3rd day of October, A.D. 1789.

My math isn't wrong. Gov. Blago+Mrs. Blago (real estate agent, or did you forget?)+Rezko=Obama. Can I make it any clearer?

After C Span aired the 911 Scholars Symposium in LA for 3 days, the questions and information has started to flow. Looks like some are starting to do some CYA. There are articles in the NYT, Vanity Fair, and even the Washington Post. For a change, they are not calling skeptics names. It is only a baby step, but this has made my day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new

Big-3 corporate CEOs arrived in Washington in - sm

Commentary: Larger-Than-Life Corporate Salaries are Unfair to Average American Workers