Tag Archives: jobs

Obama administration needs to re-think mandate on contraception insurance

6 comments | Posted on February 6, 2012 at 5:45 pm by Linda Grist Cunningham

If the Susan G. Komen foundation board can reverse its tone-deaf decision to pull grant funding from Planned Parenthood, then the Obama administration can say “oops, we goofed” and rethink its decision mandating religious organizations include contraception in their employee insurance plans.

I think health insurance plans — public and private — should cover contraception. They didn’t “back in my day.” I am uneasy with this government vs. religion mandate.

You wanted “the pill,” you scrimped on the grocery money to buy it. Ditto with surgeries, though there was that oddity in which vasectomies were covered, but not tubal ligation. …

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Posted in Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Tuesday’s ballot box message: Get back to the middle

Leave a comment | Posted on November 10, 2011 at 8:08 am by Linda Grist Cunningham

Americans are Bell Curve people. We live happily along that 80 percent bulge in the middle of things, and we’re open to learning new things from the strident fan-folks farther down the curve and out to its edges.

For a while. Not forever. Just about the time fan-folks think the rest of us have become their true believers, we say “that’s far enough; time for a deep breath.”

The middle needs fan-folks to get us moving, to introduce us to new ideas and concepts, to keep us from staying too long in one place. We need those extreme points of …

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Posted in Economy, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Friday Five: Econ 101, capitalism, Euro bailouts and other money

2 comments | Posted on October 28, 2011 at 9:08 am by Linda Grist Cunningham

Friday Five: If yours is a family inclined to Sunday dinner conversations, then you know there are a handful of subjects generally off the table: sex, religion, politics and money.

That leaves precious little about which to chat, except for the weather and your sibling’s awful spouse, that last one guaranteed to have someone leaving the room unpleasantly.

Inevitably one of those “no-no” topics slithers onto the table. Those are subjects about which everyone has an opinion — and about which most of us know little more than a couple headlines worth of facts.

This week has been bewildering for …

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Part II: Save the middle class; or, stop being sucked into the class bashing

4 comments | Posted on October 12, 2011 at 12:33 pm by Linda Grist Cunningham

Two veteran teachers in a household push their income beyond middle class. A veteran firefighter has a darned good chance of having an upper class income.

Ditto for a slew of folks who think they’re making middle class incomes, when, in fact, they are playing on that much-maligned “rich” spreadsheet. That ubiquitous “Joe the Plumber” made a heck of a lot more than a middle class income.

The typical middle class household annual income today is about $97,000, reflecting the combined income of the “typical middle class man” in the high $50,000 and the woman in the very low $40,000….

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Posted in Economy, Education, Jobs, Politics | Tagged , , , , ,

Jobs: The pitchfork toddlers in Congress just don’t get it

9 comments | Posted on August 3, 2011 at 7:11 am by Linda Grist Cunningham

Phewww. Sigh. Well, that’s done. The debt ceiling, budget reduction debacle. You know, that one, the one that took over broadcast and web coverage with the same breathless celebrity of a bad reality show.

All that blathering, breath-holding, toddler fit-tossing mess and for what? No tax reduction. No tax increase. WE GOT ZIP TO CREATE JOBS.  Yes, I mean to shout, hence the all caps.

Let me say it again a bit quieter. We’re going to keep sliding into the economic abyss until those who don’t have jobs have them. And, we’re in trouble as long as those who have …

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Posted in Economy, Jobs, Politics, Real estate | Tagged , , , , , , ,