It's just too easy -- the idea that keeping American jobs in America actually helping the economy

Nope, let's spend a few million and buy new furniture for homeland security and a few million more to buy hybrids for congress. 

Can they not deduce that keeping corporate America from offshoring jobs will actually create more jobs, thereby lower the unemployment rate, and put more money in American's pocket for them to spend?  Cut all tax cuts given to companies for offshoring and give the tax cuts to companies to strive to keep jobs in America?

And here's another V8 moment -- how about we buy American?  Maybe increase tariffs on imported goods to discourage American companies from importing so much crapy and thereby necessitating said crap be sold at higher prices in an effort to discourage Americans from buying imports? 

The ONLY way to help the American economy is to employ Americans and buy American!  It's that simple!

• Well, here ya go folks! - this sickens me.............sm
  • Eeew! I'd rather go on welfare and stay - right where I am. They can have India!
  • It's just too easy -- the idea that keeping American jobs in America actually helping the economy - Lu
  • they can afford them over there, just not to employ - them here.........

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lower income families really is a neighborly idea.  We should help others.  However, we need to look at the big picture here.  When you continually give free handouts at the expense of others, not only do you make the people actually earning the money bitter, but you create a whole new problem with people expecting the government to bail them out and give them free handouts.  Yes, it may help some people but on the whole it will only create more government spending because more people will become dependent on the goverment taking care of them.  It is like a huge snowball rolling down a mountain and it just gets bigger and bigger and faster and faster until it buries us all.  We cannot afford more government programs.  We cannot afford to pay for health care for everyone. 

People are so blinded by the slogan of change that they will jump on any bandwagon.  Open your eyes!  The last thing we need right now is bigger government.  Bigger government will only cause more government spending and our country will fail horribly!

being lost, then why hasn't he enforced E-Verify and stop letting illegals take American jobs?  Why hasn't he enforced closing the borders and deporting all the illegals locked up in our prisons right now, the ones I feed, clothe, and shelter while they sit in gangs and run the prisons.  Why hasn't he stopped all outsiders from entering this country to work and take ANY American jobs, even on a work visa?   Why isn't E-Verify being enforced?  He doesn't seem to worried about all the real issues, which is allowing illegals and foreigners on work visas to come and take the jobs.    Strange, no democrat is talking about that.  NO ONE is talking about that.   There is currently a bill on the Senate floor that will allow 300,000 illegals to take construction jobs in OUR country.....you know what bill that is?  The stimulus package..    funny how no one is talking about what few jobs will be developed will be given to illegals.  There will be absolutely no enforcement that will see that ONLY Americans get those jobs.

How come no O lovers are concerned about that?

You are not an African-American, Mexican-American, Chinese-American, etc.  If you were born in Africa, Mexico or China and you have moved to America and have become an American citizen THEN you are an African-American, Mexican-American, Chinese-American.

The fact that we are pushed to refer to black people as "African-American" is racist in and of itself.  I am not a White-American or Anglo-American.  I'm just an American.  I do not get a special distinction nor do I get special treatment.  Nobody has to tiptoe around me and make sure that every word out of their mouth is policitally correct.  Nobody is required by law to consider me before anyone else for a job based solely on the color of my skin.

I just don't get it.  Everyone says we shouldn't see race, we should just see people.  Yet, the labels that have been deemed "correct', point out skin color and divide society into groups.  By it's very nature, political correctness, breeds racism.

Yep, they'll be back when all the Lebanese are dead, because all us conservatives are evil like that.    

isn't about any of the things you name.  It comes from inside, a peace of spirit and soul. It needs no outside influence except, in my case, my love for God and his for me.  My glass has always been half full.  And it always will be because He is with me always.

It’s something of a tradition– administrations using their final weeks in power to ram through a slew of federal regulations. With the election grabbing the headlines, outgoing federal bureaucrats quietly propose and finalize rules that can affect the health and safety of millions.

The Bush administration has followed this tradition and expanded it. Up to 90 proposed regulations could be finalized before President George W. Bush leaves office Jan. 20. If adopted, these rules could weaken workplace safety protections, allow local police to spy in the “war on terror” and make it easier for federal agencies to ignore the Endangered Species Act.

What’s more, the administration has accelerated the rule-making process to ensure that the changes it wants will be finalized by Nov. 22.

That’s a key date, Nov. 22. It is 60 days before the next administration takes control — and most federal rules go into effect 60 days after they have been finalized. It would be a major bureaucratic undertaking for the Obama administration to reverse federal rules already in effect.

“The Bush administration has thought through last-minute regulations much more than past administrations,” said Rick Melberth, director of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that tracks federal regulations. “They’ve said, ‘Let’s not only get them finalized; let’s get them in effect.’”

So what are the new rules?

The Washington Independent has highlighted five regulations notable for their potential effect and the way they slipped through the regulatory process. Four could to be finalized by Nov. 22. One was already — on Election Day.

1) The Dept. of Labor proposed a regulation Aug. 30 that changes how workplace safety standards are met. Labor experts contend that the administration, which previously issued only one new workplace safety standard and that under court order, is trying to make it a bureaucratic nightmare for future administrations to make workplace safety rules.

Here’s what it would do:

Currently, if the Occupational Safety and Health Admin. or the Mine Health and Safety Admin. want to introduce a new safety standard on, say, the level of exposure to toxic chemicals, it issues what is called a notice of proposed rule-making. This notice is published in the Federal Register and then debated by labor, business and relevant federal agencies.

The new regulation would add an “advanced notice of proposed rule-making,” meaning OSHA and MSHA would have prove that, say, the said chemical was seriously harming workers.

This would open the door for industry to challenge the validity of the risk assessment and then, if necessary, the actual safety standard that may come from that risk assessment.

“The purpose of this sort of rule is to require agencies to spend more time on a regulation which gives them less of a chance to actually regulate,” said David Michaels, a professor of workplace safety at George Washington University, “You’re adding at least a year, maybe two years, to the process.”

The regulation has not been finalized.

2) The administration proposed a rule that changes the employer-employee relationship laid out in the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.

Here’s what it would do:

The Family and Medical Leave Act says that employers must give their workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave if they are sick or need to take care of a family member or newborn. The employer’s health-care staff can check the legitimacy of the family or medical leave claim with the employee’s doctor or health-care provider.

The proposed regulation would allow the employer to directly speak with the employee’s doctor or health-care provider. The employer could also ask employees to provide more medical documentation of their conditions.

Why such a rule — which may threaten an employee’s privacy– is needed is unclear. The only study the Labor Dept. has done on the act was in 2000. The department collected comments from employers before issuing the proposed regulation, but a report analyzing the comments was never issued.

The regulation also would gives employees the right to waive their rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act, making it the first national labor law to be optional. A worker, for instance, cannot waive his right to earn a minimum wage or get paid more for overtime.

The regulation was finalized on Election Day.

3) The Dept. of Health and Human Services proposed a rule Sept. 26 that would expand the reasons that physicians or health care entities could decline to provide any procedure to include moral and religious grounds. The language of the regulation says the department hopes to correct “an attitude toward the health-care profession that health-care professionals and institutions should be required to provide or assist in the provision of medicine or procedures to which they object, or else risk being subjected to discrimination.”

Here’s what it would do:

The rule change seems to apply to abortion. But they are already several rules that say physicians or health-care entities can deny an abortion request. Some women’s health advocates contend that the proposed regulation’s broad language is meant to increase the number of physicians who not only don’t provide abortions but don’t provide contraception.

“Contraception is certainly the target of this rule,” contends Marylin Keefe, director for Reproductive Health at the National Partnership for Women and Families. “The moral and religious objections of health-care workers are now starting to take precedence over patients.”

The regulation is notable for another reason. A rule involving an employee’s religious rights must be referred to the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission, yet the commission was never told of this proposed regulation.

A bureaucratic battled erupted when EEOC’s legal counsel, Reed Russell, wrote a regulation comment (pdf) blasting both the substance of the proposed rule and its disregard for the rule-making process.

The regulation has not been finalized.

4) On July 31, the Justice Dept. proposed a regulation that would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to collect “intelligence” information on individuals and organizations even if the information is unrelated to a criminal matter.

“This is a continuum that started back on 9/11 to reform law enforcement and the intelligence community to focus on the terrorism threat,” said Bush homeland security adviser Kenneth L. Wainstein in a statement.

Critics say it could infringe on civil liberties.

Here’s what it would do:

“It expands local law enforcement’s ability to investigate criminal activity that it deems suspicious,” said Melberth of OMB Watch. “But what’s suspicious to you may not be suspicious to me. They could be investigating community organizations they think are two or three steps away from a terrorist group.”

The regulation has not been finalized.

5) Before a federal agency approves any construction project– anything from building a dam to a post office — government officials must consult the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. These two agencies enforce the Endangered Species Act, and they can veto any project that adversely affects an animal on the endangered species list.

Here’s what it would do:

A regulation proposed by the Interior Dept. Aug. 12 would end this approval process. “It destroys a system of checks and balances that have been in place for two decades,” claimed Bob Davison, senior scientist at Defenders of the Wildlife. “[A federal agency] wants to go forward with a project that [it wants] to do. So you need an independent agency to look at the decision.”

Davison is not the only conservation advocate up in arms. The Interior Dept. has received 200,000 public comments, which may affect the final rule.

Or not — the department shortened the comment period from 60 to 30 days in its effort to get the regulation finalized.

In May, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten vowed that the administration would propose no regulations after June 1. He and White House spokesman Tony Fratto have repeatedly stated their contempt for what they call “midnight regulations.”

Yet with the exception of the Family and Medical Leave changes, each of these regulations were proposed after June 1. And if finalized, they will effect worker’s safety, women’s health-care choices, local police powers and endangered species.

“It was a pretty resounding election,” said Keefe of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “But this administration acts like it still has a mandate.”

What about providing them the tools to deal with and live a productive life with their handicap or mental illness?  The problem with the liberals and their idea of helping humanity is that throwing money at the problem doesn't make it go away.  Do you know how many homeless people out there suffer with mental illness?  Do you know how many people with mentally ill family members weren't able to get their loved one the help they needed?  I'm talking tangible help, not just a monthly stipend that doesn't even cover the meds they require!

Do you realize that your husband, mother, father, sister brother, who ever can slice their wrists and take a handful of pills in an attempt to commit suicide, admit to their family they don't want to live, but when they show up to the ER and say "I didn't really want to kill myself" they just let them walk away with stitches in their wrists and after they've pumped their stomachs?  Did you know that even if they holler in the ER to the doctor, nurse, and social worker that they don't want to live and the most a family member can do to help their loved is an affadavit for a 96-hour hold in most states?  After 96 hours, they are deemed "okay" and released again to go on their merry way.

The liberal lawmakers have passed laws that say a mentally ill person has the right to be mentally ill.  They have a right to decide not to take their meds and they have a right to be homeless.  They are allowed to make decisions on their own which are detrimental to their well being, both physically and mentally!  A family member pleading to the court that this person is incompetent and cannot take themselves is virtually ignored.  I dare anyone to try to go to a court of law and get POA over a mentally ill loved one and see just how difficult it really is.  It's impossible thanks to the liberals.

You said:

America is becoming a very scary place indeed.  I believe, as you do, that there are people who are eagerly awaiting the *Rapture* and indeed believe they have the *inside track* to heaven.  Unfortunately, it look as if this country might actually suffer from their self-fulfilled prophecy if it continues going backwards in time under Bush's completely inept leadership.