You Think What?

Nearly two years ago we told you how  the once venerated Goldman Sachs Group, a full-service global investment banking and securities firm, is comprised of a bunch of piggies…greedy, smack-talking piggies.  We even told you how their behavior reminds us of the Beatles’ tune, penned by the late George Harrison, about greedy little piggies.

Earlier this month, Greg Smith, in his role as New York Times Op-Ed contributor, very publicly announced to the world, and his employer, Goldman Sachs,  he is leaving and his reasons why. We took to the article, authored by a financial insider, as confirmation of what we knew to be true and published in 2010. (more…)

Readers who live in the Washington, D.C. Metro area are familiar with news anchor Jim Vance, the man in the following video.

Vance is also known on the Internet for appearing in a video with the late sports anchor George Michael where they laughed at a model who fell, not once but twice, on a fashion show runway.

This time you will find him somber as he expresses his point of view on the matter of Trayvon Martin.

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In the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, writer Matt Taibbi has contributed a very strong investigative piece on everyone’s favorite banking institution Bank Of America. The article is
“Bank Of America: Too Crooked To Fail“.  Around here we affectionately refer to the bankster company as “Bank Of The UNIVERSE”,  for obvious reasons.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The  Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, Local 38010 of the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC, plans to fight layoffs of 19 Philadelphia journalists, after 21 take buyouts offered by Philadelphia Media Network, (PMN) owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com.

Photojournalist Sarah Glover decided to take the buyout rather than being laid off. Glover is president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. In a note to Facebook friends she stated her concern that “by the end of the staff reduction process at PMN this week that the newsrooms will take another step back to looking like 1962 rather than more like what a newsroom should look like in 2012.” (more…)

You may wondered , like many members of our staff at YouThinkWhat,  just what Sandra Fluke actually said to cause the popular fat windbag guy on the radio to call her out of her name. What in the world could she have said to cause the person who currently enjoys hosting the most listened to radio talk show in America, broadcast on over 600 radio stations nationwide, to say the hateful disrespectful things he has, and now attempt to apologize for saying them? Did he not arrive on this planet by way of a woman?

We present Part 2 of “What Sandra Fluke REALLY Said To The Democrats”, based on a report from Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner.com. This is the text of Sandra Fluke’s opening statement, given February 23, 2012, when she testified before a House Democratic panel in support of the HHS contraception mandate.

A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
<blockquote>One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’

These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.

In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?

We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.

We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.

We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.

Thank you very much.

You may be, like our staff at YouThinkWhat, wondering just what it is Sandra Fluke actually said to cause the fat windbag guy on the radio to call her out of her name.

According to Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner.com this is the text of Sandra Fluke’s opening statement, given when she testified before a House Democratic panel in support of the HHS contraception mandate.

My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

(Applause)

We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.

We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women. (more…)

Carole Simpson, broadcast journalist, news anchor, and author, has written a piece, her reaction, to the latest foot-in-really-big-mouth controversy involving radio’s popular windbag, Rush Limbaugh.

From Carole’s blog, a post dated March 2, 2012, “Limbaugh Wages New War On Women”:

Rush Limbaugh, a blowhard who has been going too far, for far too long, has now made it abundantly clear that he hates women. America’s highest rated and highest paid radio broadcaster is a dangerous misogynist. (more…)

If you must get hold of a brand new laptop or projector, then you need to give Los Angeles projector rentals and Los Angeles laptop rentals some pause for thought. Because of the abysmal financial conditions of these current days, it’s extremely difficult for people to purchase laptops and projectors, even via the internet. But there is excellent news: Los Angeles laptop rentals and Los Angeles projector rentals are services which might be widely provided throughout south Cali for people who can’t afford to purchase a brand new laptop or projector. The general area of southern California in which Los Angeles is located has in reality experienced a recent boom in these laptop and projector rental firms as a direct result of the big quantity of customers looking to have a laptop or projector to use, even if it is rental. In fact, Los Angeles laptop rentals and Los Angeles projector rentals services are excellent for single-time uses such as board meetings, corporate meetings, weekend volunteering services, and so forth.

In relation to the service rendered, once you apply for Los Angeles laptop rentals or Los Angeles projector rentals, the leasing place will offer you the mandatory help for you to configure the system to be used as well as set up any extra features if there are any. This way, you spend less time attempting to determine the right way to make your laptop or projector function and as a substitute spend more time really using them. Plus, the workers in the rental places are more than happy to aid you and are glad to answer any inquiries you could have regarding your Los Angeles laptop rentals or your Los Angeles projector rentals.

The laptop computers rented out to individuals via high-quality Los Angeles laptop rentals are in a position to run the newest OS’s from both Microsoft and also Apple (though Apple may be a little iffy since they’ve recently introduced OS X Lion). They have got a very speedy processor in order to deal with these brand new operating systems and sometimes include additional options like blu-ray video players and even superior graphics cards for the movie and video game junkies.

The projectors offered through a lot of the Los Angeles projector rentals are in fact very good when it comes to quality. they largely come with DVD player plugs with the capability of displaying HD images. If needed, you can even demand further equipments from Los Angeles projector rentals services to go along with your projector. Accessories incorporate tripods, audio system, and sometimes even AV carts.

Clearly, when acquiring these services, take into account that whenever you shut down the PC you obtained from a Los Angeles laptop rentals service, all the work that you’ve finished will most likely be deleted on account of the auto formatting utility installed on these rental laptops. Therefore, these machines should not be used to replace your own personal PC. Los Angeles projector rentals offer items that can be reserved for quite a few months, but you have to bear in mind that the longer you’ve got the projector, the more money you’ll be anticipated to shell out for it. Even so, both Los Angeles projector rentals and Los Angeles laptop rentals may be terrific amenities if you want a laptop computer or projector immediately and you haven’t got money for a new one.

This article was authored by attorney Sheryl L. Axelrod, of  The Axelrod Firm, PC.
The Axelrod Firm, PC  is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania law firm established for the purpose of assisting individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations with  commercial, real estate and employment issues.  Sheryl L. Axelrod  is the owner of the three attorney, state-certified, woman owned law firm.  As few as 5% of lawyers per jurisdiction are recognized by their fellow lawyers as Super Lawyers,  Sheryl L. Axelrod has been recognized as a Super Lawyer for the third year in a row.  Attorney Axelrod is the President of the Temple Law Alumni Association (TLAA), its 4th female President in its over 95 year history.

It frequently happens. A business owner purchases an insurance policy to protect the business. You pay your premiums in a timely manner, year after year. Then one day, your business is at the wrong end of a lawsuit. You quickly submit the claim to your insurance carrier and expecting they’ll cover it. They’ll hire a lawyer at their cost (after you pay any deductible), and the lawyer will defend your company. After all, that’s why you’ve been paying all those premiums, to get that coverage. However, a few weeks later,  you receive a letter s in the mail. Your carrier is rejecting the claim and now you’re the one who must foot the bill to pay for, defend and fight the lawsuit. This is what you should do to effectively fight back. (more…)

Millions of people spend the vast majority of their working lives in offices, so when you’re thinking about the best way to design your office, you want to be certain that it’ll be a space your employees like to be in. This will increase worker satisfaction and therefore productivity levels. For this reason, it’s really important to consider your office needs – think about how many people you need to accommodate, how many different spaces you need, whether you need break out areas and so on.

Your employees are probably the most important aspect of your business, so it’s vital that you plan your interior space to suit their needs. Think about the sort of amenities you want to have available for them, such as a small kitchen or a relaxation area. Things such as this can be great for job satisfaction. Also consider how they are going to be positioned in the office as this will massively impact on your interior design as well as the welfare of your staff.

The public spaces of your office are just as important as the private, so consider the image you would like to present to visitors to your premises. Most of what they see of your office will be the meeting rooms and reception area, so make these feel welcoming, light and airy to give a good first impression. Also make sure you sufficiently cater for the number of visitors you expect to deal with. For example, you may find that one client meeting room is not enough for your needs.

Another really important aspect of interior design is your office furniture. This can go a long way to making your employees feel comfortable in their work and in reducing the number of sick notes you receive, so you might want to consider investing in some ergonomic chairs. You should also think about whether you want all your furniture to be the same or if you would prefer to have different styles of furniture in some areas of your office such as the reception area or meeting rooms.

The color scheme of your office is another vital thing to consider as you need to make sure the color you choose won’t be distracting for your employees. Popular colors for office décor include green, yellow and blue. Also, more serious firms such as solicitors often like to go for more muted colors whereas creative firms often like to represent their style of business with bold colors, so your choice might depend on what you do. Lighter shades with flashes of bold color tend to work well, though.

Now Try – Office Interior Design