Your Shrinking Social Security Check After the Government Shutdown

Millions of Americans, who have inadequate or no income, rely on monthly Social Security payments to pay for their basic living needs.  When the government faced a shutdown, earlier in October, new applicants faced the reality of a delayed process.  According to a Providence Social Security Disability Attorney, more than half of all Social Security cases are denied due to a tough application process.  With the government shutdown, many hopeful applicants, in desperate need of assistance, feared that they may never receive the assistance when they needed it.  However, prospective applicants were not the only ones worrying about the fate of Social Security.  Active recipients of government benefits worried that their assistance would be delayed while the government fought to come to an agreement on federal spending.  Fortunately, Americans who receive Social Security continued to receive their month checks on time.  With the shutdown over, many questions are still left unanswered, including the amount of next year’s Social Security.

The Dot-Com Boom: Perils and Promise of Rapid Growth through Incorporation

The year was 2008 and a new startup called Groupon took the Web by storm.
Groupon’s introduction into the marketplace spawned countless copycats and by 2011 it had already raised more than $1 billion in funding. However, as quickly as it grew … it just as rapidly fell.
The rise and fall of Groupon is but one of the many instances of a business growing too quickly in this dot-com era. Rapid expansion without a firm revenue method has seen the demise of many exciting tech startups but troubles in profitability are but one element of the equation.

Rapid growth often leads to quick, brash decisions in areas such as:

Killing Them Softly: Assisted Suicide

Is Assisted Suicide the Most Humane Way to End Unwanted Life?

Even though suicide is against the law in most of the United States, there are a few places – Oregon, Vermont and Washington – where that law has been turned on its head, providing for physician-assisted suicide (AS) for those victims of terminal and highly painful diseases.

One state, Montana, currently allows AS via a court ruling – what some would consider a legal precedent known as the Baxter decision. The physician responsible for this precedent-setting decision is Dr. Eric Kress, a family practitioner for 26 years. The incident itself, which ended the life of a terminally ill but mentally alert adult via prescription, has passed into history.

Unfair Labor Practices: Starbucks Lawsuit

             

Starbucks, one of the world’s most successful and largest coffee chains, is a customer favorite from the West to East Coast.  A corporation that started out in Seattle as a single retail store in 1971 expanded by great leaps and bounds in 40 plus years looks like a true success story for many business minded individuals.  The multi-million dollar corporation, with over 17,000 stores located internationally, offers numerous work opportunities for budding baristas and coffee aficionados, alike.  Many might think that Starbucks, keeping their small beginnings in mind, may make their employees their number one priority.  However, many Starbucks employees feel the brunt of a money hungry corporation rather than the “employee comes first” approach.  Employees, eager to fight for the respect they deserve are filing lawsuits against Starbucks to receive the workers’ compensation they are owed and rightly deserve; without baristas, Starbucks would not be what they are today.

Weird and Strange Laws

          


Did you know that in Illinois it is illegal to have sex with a corpse? Or that in Michigan it is illegal to sell a duckling that has been dyed? Or that in New Mexico idiots are not allowed to vote, while in South Carolina a man can go to jail for a year for breaking a promise to marry a woman? There are hundreds of state laws that many might find to be weird, causing some to wonder about the story behind their passage. Every law was passed to solve a societal concern. In some cases that concern is shared by a large part of the population, while in other cases the law addresses an issue known to only a few. In still other cases the law was passed to address a concern once shared by many, but now shared by few.

Temperature In Relation To Coal Mining Accidents

Coal Mining History

Coal mining used to be a dirty, dangerous, soul-destroying job. It has since morphed into a dirty and dangerous but rather well-paid job whose toll on the environment has increased even as its toll on the health and well-being of miners has decreased.  

The American coal-mining industry began in the latter half of the 18th century, in Pennsylvania, which was even as late as 1995 the fourth largest coal-producing state in the United States. Miners were typically immigrants, though commonly from countries which also had mining operations, like Wales or Germany. Men who did not know how the mines worked were not welcome because their lack of experience usually ended up killing others in addition to themselves. The only certainty in a coal miner’s life was the ubiquitous presence of coal dust and “gob”; that is, high-potency methane gas. Both, though mitigated by various modern ventilation and filtering methods, remain a constant.

U.S. Lacks Alternative Power Compared to UK

As the climate continues to warm, and normally cool or even cold places like Alaska break records during what is only the first month of summer, U.S. policy makers turn – belatedly – to the idea of alternative power.

It’s far too late to prevent some of the devastating effects of global warming, also known as climate change. In fact, it’s very likely that the planet will not only reach the unimaginable 2-degree increase in temperature predicted by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), but exceed it. This, at least, is the message from James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a highly reputable (if singularly disturbing) scientist in his own right.