Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from December, 2011

A National New Year's Resolution

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Preamble to the Constitution of the United States While we as a nation have never completely achieved the high ideals outlined in the Constitution, we have got ever closer over the last 224 years. And why is that? Because as a people we have kept our eyes on the prize. And I think that although we still have our eyes on the prize, it has become more of a moving target, and it is moving away from us. Washington is following the new Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rule. An October report issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office spells out who is getting the gold: between 1979 and 2007 the top 1 percent of Americans with the highest

Executive Salaries.

     Much heat has been generated on the subject of the huge salaries received by the CEOs of major corporations. One popular method of illustrating the obscenity is by showing the CEO's salary as a multiple of a typical production worker's salary. It is not unusual for the CEO's salary to be equal to 300, 400 or even 600 times the hourly workers income.      The following table is a listing of the 2010 salary and other income paid to the heads of several of our largest corporations.* Much of the “other“ income is not taxed until it is actually received. Because much of it consists of stock options, it may be considerably more valuable at that time then as shown here; options will be taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.      Also shown is the executive's total earnings per minute, based on 40 hours per week for 52 weeks.    Company            Total          Salary         Other        Per Minute General Electric  21,428,765  7,300,000  14,128,765     171.20 Halliburton

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays

Meaning (m ë ‛ ning), n. what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated. (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary). At this season a large number of letter-writers to the editor of any newspaper express concern over the use of the term “Happy Holidays” instead of the traditional “Merry Christmas.” The writers feel that the holiday is somehow demeaned by the former greeting. The meaning of any expression is what the speaker intends it to be – nothing more, nothing less. If the listener takes some other meaning from the expression for any reason, e.g, the speaker has expressed it badly, the listener did not hear it correctly, or even if he disagrees with the speaker, it has no effect on the meaning. For this reason, the speaker should be careful to say exactly what he means. If he is a Christian, and Christmas has its usual deep meaning for him, he should say “Merry Christmas.” In return, if the listener truly intends for the speaker to celebrate the holid