2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.

3. It’s always darkest before dawn. So if you’re going to steal your neighbor’s newspaper, that’s the time to do it.

4. Sex is like air. It’s not important unless you aren’t getting any.

5. Don’t be irreplaceable. If you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

6. No one is listening until you make a mistake.

7. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.

8. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

9. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

10. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

11. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

12. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

13. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

14. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat & drink beer all day.

15. If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

16. Don’t squat with your spurs on.

17. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

18. If you drink, don’t park; accidents cause people.

19. Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield.

20. Don’t worry, it only seems kinky the first time.

21. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

22. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.

23. Timing has an awful lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

24. A closed mouth gathers no foot.

25. Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side & a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

26. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

27. Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your mouth is moving.

28. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it

29. Never miss a good chance to shut up.

30. We are born naked, wet, and hungry. Then things get worse.

It was February 1987, and Judith Neal, a manager at Honeywell’s Joliet, Illinois, ammunitions plant received what seemed like a routine assignment from her boss. There was a morale problem in the ballistics team, the ones who test the ammunition. There was a team of five, and they were all asking to be transferred. It was odd, because they were well paid, and the work was interesting. Neal was asked to be a mediator for the problem.

This was her greatest strength. She had earned a doctorate in organizational behavior at Yale 2yrs ago, and she was highly skilled in the latest strategies for improving workplace communication. She began interviewing members of the ballistics team about their grievances and she realized the underlying problem was something she wasn’t prepared for. Plant supervisors were falsifying test data, allowing substandard and potentially dangerous ammo to pass to meet production goals. The team members had saved incriminating documents to protect themselves.

The shells manufactured in Joliet went into the Air Force’s A-10 attack aircraft and the Army’s Apache helicopters and Bradley fighting vehicles. Soldiers and pilots staked their lives upon them. “

While blowing the whistle can be scary for anyone, for women it can be downright terrifying. The role of the female whistle-blower has been glamorized by last year’s hit movie on the subject, “Erin Brockovich,” in which the heroine uses her sexuality to her advantage. But the reality is that being a woman can be a whistle-blower’s biggest liability. In addition to losing their jobs and even their careers — according to one university study, approximately 60 percent of whistle-blowers are fired or forced to resign — women often also face sexual harassment, threats, and questions about their sexual history that male whistle-blowers rarely if ever encounter.

Outside the Old Boy Network

Despite the risks, more and more women are coming forward. Women certainly account for many of the highest-profile cases. Over the past few decades, scores of women have blown the whistle on workplace wrongs ranging from fraud on government contracts and environmental violations to racial and gender discrimination. In the 1970s, geneticist Beverly Paigen risked her supervisors’ ire at the New York State Department of Health by helping expose buried toxic waste at Love Canal. In the 1980s, two aerospace workers, Ria Solomon and Sylvia Robins, came forward with allegations about safety problems in the Space Shuttle program. In the 1990s, Bari-Ellen Roberts helped organize a successful class-action suit against Texaco for systematically discriminating against black employees. And last year, Dr. Nira Schwartz, a former senior engineer at TRW, made headlines and appeared on 60 Minutes after documents were unsealed revealing her charges that TRW covered up flawed test results of its controversial antimissile system. (This case is still pending.)

Since women are outside the old-boy network, they’re less inclined to look the other way and ignore a problem just because it’s the accepted way of doing things. John R. Phillips, one of the nation’s leading whistle-blower attorneys, “Initially, all the whistle-blowers with False Claims Act cases were in the defense industry, and they were all men. But we get more women now. One reason is there are a lot of cases coming out of the health-care industry, and a lot of women work in that field.” One of the highest-profile health-care cases currently pending was brought by Carolyne Gray, a medical social worker who charged her employer, IHS Health Services in Dallas, with bilking Medicare out of tens of millions of dollars.

Whistle-blowing can take many forms. Sometimes it’s done anonymously through tips to law enforcement or government regulators or to investigative reporters. But like Carolyne Gray, more and more women are taking the bold step of going public with their charges and filing lawsuits against their employers under the federal False Claims Act. The law, which began as a Civil War-era statute and was strengthened by Congress in 1986, gives citizens the right to sue companies and individuals for cheating the federal government — and if they prevail, to collect as much as 30 percent of the penalty as a reward for exposing the fraud. Thanks to the law, at least a few women have been well compensated for coming forward.

In 1996, for example, Jeanne Byrne, a Michigan lab sales rep, aided an investigation that nailed her company for submitting false claims to Medicare. Her share of the settlement: a breathtaking $9 million.

Retaliation

But occasional headlines about seven- and eight-figure rewards can be misleading. Most whistle-blowers who seek the government’s help don’t get it: The Justice Department declines to pursue 75 percent of whistle-blower suits filed, and it’s notoriously difficult to win False Claims Act suits without the government’s involvement. Those whistle-blowers who don’t get assistance — and those who aren’t covered under the act, which applies only to federal government fraud — often end up spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees as they become embroiled in court battles that go on for years and end with unsatisfying results. Instead of being hailed as heroines, whistle-blowers are often labeled as snitches, disgruntled slackers, or opportunists and sometimes are themselves accused of wrongdoing.

Women have one dubious advantage. And it may in part explain why more of them are coming forward. “Employers tend to underestimate women, which makes the employers more vulnerable,” Judith Neal says. “They don’t value your opinions and abilities, so they may not realize your tenacity, either. And tenacity is what it takes to win.” Being a woman in a male-dominated workplace actually made it easier for Neal to get away with investigating the faked data.

When she asked questions about how the ammunition tests were conducted, men at the company often assumed that they could talk over her head.

They assumed wrong. Neal’s ability to access incriminating evidence led to an internal investigation and a settlement in which Honeywell paid $2 million in damages and provided $400,000 worth of replacement ammunition to the federal government. In addition, two relatively low-level officials at the plant were indicted on federal charges related to the fraud, though no higher-ups were charged.

Such justification should have been the end of it for Neal. However, Neal’s ordeal began during the investigation when word got out that she was the informant. Although she received assurances that her identity would be kept confidential, investigators later told her that at least one manager at the plant knew about her role. Someone in upper management was even telling coworkers that she was “dead meat”. Neal took the threat seriously since employees routinely brought hunting weapons to work. She told Honeywell officials of her fears but the company took no action against the source of the threats. Eventually the man was transferred to another plant, a punishment that “bore an uncanny resemblance to a promotion,” as a federal judge would later note.

Playing Dirty

After the investigation, Honeywell told her a 2nd time to stay home for a month supposedly for her own safety. But when she returned, her boss took away most of her job responsibilities and Neal found herself staring out her office window most days, watching cows graze in a nearby field. Finally, five months after she’d blown the whistle, Neal quit in frustration. Neal felt like she was the one being penalized. She filed suit against her former employer under a part of the False Claims Act that makes it illegal to retaliate against whistle-blowers. In 1997, 10 years after she left Honeywell, she was awarded $390,000 in back pay and damages, plus $1.6 million in legal fees and costs

According to studies eight out of 10 whistle-blowers end up with stress-related illnesses, and 60 percent report that their spouse’s health suffers as well. That is, if the marriage survives. “When I found out what I was working for was a sham. It made me question everything,” Neal says, “my career choice, my marriage, my purpose in life.”

Neal ended up using the money she won to start the Association for Spirit at Work, a nonprofit that encourages values in the workplace. Though she’s gone on with her life, she will never fully let go of the pain of her ordeal. “I can’t think of a single example of a case in which a person has come forward and remained unscathed. The universal truth is that when you expose a wrong, they try to discredit the exposé by discrediting you,” says Brian of the Project on Government Oversight. In Neal’s case, the defense tried to discredit her by bringing up a brief romance she had with a former lover after she quit her job and separated from her husband. Honeywell, she says, tried to portray her as having left the company not because of retaliation, but because “I was just a slut, having affairs. They tried to make it the central part of their case.” During her deposition, she also had to hand over a diary of her dreams and answer questions about being molested as a child. “The first thing I had to do when I got home was to take a shower,” she recalls.

Employers have even been known to ask a whistle-blower to seek counseling and then use the person’s mental health records as evidence of instability. “It’s a common tactic to paint whistle-blowers as psychologically impaired,” explains Kris Kolesnik, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, a public interest organization. “When they want to go after someone, they send her to a shrink.” After Sherrie Farver, a radiological technician at the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, spoke out publicly about health problems that she and other workers were experiencing, a government-paid psychiatrist diagnosed her as suffering from paranoid delusions and her security clearance was revoked. Farver fought back by suing the psychiatrist for malpractice, and in 1999 a jury awarded her $600,000 in damages.

But as it was for Neal, the money was small compensation for what she went through. The amount Neal won was barely noticeable for a corporation with more than $1 billion in annual sales. “My reaction was, was this all worth it?” she says. “Money can never compensate you for loss of privacy, the humiliation of having your personal life dredged up. Or for the nightmares, the anxiety of wondering if something is going to happen to you because you’ve spoken out.” Nevertheless, like more than half the whistle-blowers in Soeken’s research, Neal says she’d do it again. “The important thing is what you believe in,” she explains. “In my life, I had to take a stand.” But for all of those would-be heroines who don’t want to risk it all to do the right thing, the question is: If we won’t protect the whistle-blower, who will protect us?

Whistle Blower Profiles

These three women went head-to-head against their high-profile employers.

Maureen Ayral, stockbroker

The case: In 1997, a group of female Merrill Lynch employees filed a class-action gender-discrimination suit against their employer that Ayral, a broker at the firm’s Tampa, Florida, office, later joined. The women charged, among other things, that their male colleagues got first dibs on lucrative accounts redistributed when a broker left.

What she went through: Ayral says male co-workers stopped socializing with her when they learned about the suit. In addition, “I was constantly being interrogated by my colleagues as to what I hoped to gain by suing the firm, and how I could ever believe I would have a future there when the case was settled. I began to ask myself the same thing. I wondered if I was really going to effect any positive change or if I was just going to end up shooting myself in the foot.” In 1999, with the suit still pending, Ayral left for another firm. But she says Merrill then tried to put her out of business. She was barely out the door when the firm sought a restraining order that would have barred her from serving any of her longtime customers.

The result: Merrill settled the class-action suit in 1998, agreeing to establish new nondiscriminatory policies and to set up a mediation process that allowed women employees to pursue individual claims for damages. Ayral turned down an offer to settle her claim, instead opting for arbitration that is still pending. Merrill disagrees with Ayral’s account of events. A spokesman adds that as a result of the class-action suit, the firm has changed its practices and is working on resolving all outstanding claims.

Bari-Ellen Roberts, consultant

The case: In 1994, Texaco senior financial analyst Bari-Ellen Roberts and a co-worker, Sil Chambers — both subjected to racial taunts and repeatedly passed over for promotions — organized a class-action discrimination lawsuit against their employer. The suit charged that blacks’ career advancement was systematically sabotaged by Texaco’s “old-boy network.”

What she went through: “The hardest part of the suit was deciding to do it,” Roberts recalls. “I’d worked so hard to get to where I was, and I had to risk all of that. Then I had to deal with loneliness and isolation. Even some of the other African-Americans viewed me as a troublemaker. When you’re standing up and calling for change it makes people fear for their own security.” During the discovery process, the scrutiny was excruciating. “Texaco was saying, ‘You had a child before you were married, you once got an ‘F’ in chemistry. You’re not worthy.’”

The result: In 1996, Texaco settled the suit, paying $141 million to its black workers and agreeing to spend $35 million to eradicate its discriminatory practices. Roberts, who says she left Texaco after it objected to her writing her memoir Roberts vs. Texaco, now runs a Stamford, Connecticut-based firm that works with companies on diversity training and curbing workplace violence and sexual harassment. A Texaco spokesman says that Roberts “resigned voluntarily” and declined to comment on the scathing portrait of the company in her book, except to say that Texaco has made “significant progress” with its diversity program.

Michele Girard, ecologist

The case: Girard, a U.S. Forest Service employee, documented alleged violations of timber-cutting and cattle-grazing regulations at the Big Horn National Forest, near Sheridan, Wyoming. By doing so, she ran afoul of a superior whom she charges was overly friendly to logging and ranching interests, and in 1996 her position was eliminated. Girard fought back by filing a complaint under the federal Whistleblower Protection Act, a 1989 law meant to protect federal employees who expose wrongdoing. In addition, she filed a gender-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “They said there wasn’t enough money to fund me, but all the men kept their jobs while I lost mine,” says Girard, who holds a Ph.D. in botany. “I qualify in range, wildlife, soils, botany, and ecology. Most of them had only one discipline.”

What she went through: After losing her job, Girard managed to find another U.S. Forest Service position in Arizona. But it meant giving up a house that she spent 10 years renovating and leaving behind scores of close friends in Sheridan. Girard, who recently took a second U.S. Forest Service position in Arizona, also lost her faith in the laws that she thought would protect her. Five years after she filed her claim, her case remains unresolved. “It shook my view of the system,” she says. “The system doesn’t work.”

The result: Both of Girard’s claims are still pending. A Forest Service spokesperson declined to comment on the charges.

Patrick J. Kiger is a freelance journalist specializing in business investigative reporting. He lives in the Washington area.

Originally published in Working Woman magazine, May 2001.

If I have offended Working Woman’s magazine, I do apologize, I am just trying to make the workplace better for us.

A Woman’s Life is a Human Life

Question Authority

Sisterhood is Powerful

Women Hold up Half the Sky

Keep Your Laws Off My Body

Take Back the Night (one of my personal favorites)
Lael Senior WWWomen Member Registered: Oct 2001 Location: Long Beach, California Posts: 253
Take Back the Night…
Making the night, ie, streets, safer for women and children. Most major US cities have Take Back the Night marches where women and kids walk through the streets, bringing awareness of the dangers we face at night. Most of us are scared and with good reason to walk around our streets at night. The marches feature speeches and rallies where statistics of crimes commited against women are discussed as well as remedies for safety.

When I was an undergraduate, I was part of a group called the Women Against Violence Coalition. Each semester, we’d walk through the campus at night and find the dark spots and then ask the administration to light that area. We also helped to start an escort service for women, to be walked or driven to their cars from anywhere in the campus. It was a biiiig campus. So that’s how we participted in the Take Back the Night concept. When I lived in Chicago in the early ’90′s, I remember going to a few marches sponsored by women’s and gay/lesbian groups.

The take ‘back’ part I’m not actually sure where that came from. Did we ever feel safe at night? Perhaps it’s part of our myth/legends when Goddesses ruled

A Woman’s Place is Everywhere

It’ll be a great day when the schools have all the money they need, and the army has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber

Thousands of workers witness wrongdoing at work. Most remain silent. They decide that it’s not their concern; that nothing they can do would improve things, or they can’t afford problems at work.
Other workers choose to speak out. They “blow the whistle” on unethical and illegal conduct in the workplace. Whistleblowing means disclosing information that a worker believes is evidence of illegality, gross waste, gross mismanagement, abuse of power, or substantial and specific danger to the public health and safety.
Whistleblower actions may save lives, money, or the environment. However, instead of praise for the public service of “committing the truth” whistleblowers are often targeted for retaliation, harassment, intimidation, demotion, dismissal and blacklisting.

Deciding to blow the whistle
Deciding whether and how to blow the whistle may be among the most significant choices you ever make. Understand the risks before proceeding. Talk to an attorney experienced in whistleblower law.

Before whistleblowing ask yourself:

Is the wrongdoing at issue substantial enough to warrant the risks of reprisal and the investment of human and financial resources to expose it?

Are your allegations reasonable and can they be proven?

Can you make a difference in resolving the wrongdoing if you blow the whistle, or will you be beating your head against a bureaucratic wall?

Studies show that over 90 percent of whistleblowers report retaliation. The record shows that employers do not want to be told what is wrong with their operations. Many employers will try to “shoot the messenger” in order to avoid liability, bad publicity, or simply to continue to benefit from the ongoing misconduct. Whistleblowers commonly face harassment, social ostracism, demotion and being fired.
You must also have a realistic view of the law and the degree to which you will be protected for speaking truth. Theoretically federal government workers have protections for whistleblowing, but federal workers who try to defend their whistleblowing activities before administrative law judges often find these rights exist on paper only. Private sector whistleblowers have even weaker legal defenses to retaliation.
Beyond the risks of job loss and weak legal protection there is also an emotional and mental price to pay for whistleblowing. Friends may turn against you; co-workers may treat you as an outcast.
Do not blow the whistle unless you are prepared to follow through on your charges. It will be difficult to stop in mid-stream and as a general rule it is better to have looked the other way than to have blown the whistle half way.

Where & how
If you decide to blow the whistle you will be faced with another dilemma: where do you take your story? What approach will best protect you while exposing and correcting the wrongs you have revealed?

Hotlines and other disclosure programs
Most federal agencies have employee hotlines for reporting of fraud, waste or abuse. Unfortunately, government hotlines have proved neither effective nor safe. Confidentiality is a problem. It’s hard to give enough details to support your allegations without identifying yourself. Some hotlines have reported callers’ identities to the callers’ boss.
Corporate voluntary disclosure programs are the private sector equivalent of government hotlines. The conflict of interest is obvious. In-house investigators, often attorneys, have a duty to protect the corporation, not the public.
Neither government nor corporate in-house disclosure programs can be considered safe or effective.

Inspectors General
For federal employees the primary conventional channel for investigation of concerns is the Office of Inspector General (IG) in each federal agency.
IGs have a mixed record, at best, of responding to whistleblowers. Even IG Offices with statutory independence are often grounded in the “old school” traditions that the IG is the eyes and ears of management. When an agency chief wants to get the facts and act against wrongdoing the IG acts as a law enforcement agency. But when the agency head wants to cover up a problem the IG engages in damage control.

The False Claims Act
This is a way for whistleblowers to expose fraud in federal contracts. Individual “realtors” – employees or non-employees who are original sources of evidence of fraud – can challenge government contract fraud before a jury of taxpayers. There are specific requirements for filing and the process can be long and expensive. A false claims suit imposes limitations on the whistleblower, including a prohibition on discussing the evidence publicly.

Congress/State Legislature
Whistleblowers have sometimes gotten legislative oversight of executive branch abuses. But legislators are pressured by a range of constituents including major donors with things to hide. Legislators also want good relations with the executive branch so many will simply pass information to the agency involved. You must carefully research a politician before blowing the whistle this way.

The News Media
The news media can be an effective outlet for whistleblowers. Or it can lead to disaster.
To protect yourself you must research and choose a reporter carefully. It is important to understand what a reporter can and cannot do for you. Before giving any information to a reporter be sure to clarify the terms of your working relationship. The news media, like the legislature, is owned by and beholden to wealthy people with things to hide.

Advocacy Groups
Non-profit advocacy organizations with interests similar to those driving you to blow the whistle can provide advice, share their own research and knowledge, act as allies, and serve as conduits for anonymous disclosures. Some organizations, such as the Government Accountability Project, specialize in helping whistleblowers.
Unions can provide valuable assistance and there is strength in solidarity.

Legal protections & their limits
Whistleblowers often think they are legally protected from retaliation. That’s somewhat true. It is your right under the Constitution and numerous laws to blow the whistle and not be discriminated against for doing so. Government employees have protection under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit governments from retaliating against workers who express reasonable dissent on public concerns. Protections for private sector workers have developed in recent years through statutes and common law.
But these protections are neither comprehensive nor well enforced.
The chances of winning a lawsuit claiming you were wrongly retaliated against are not good, but they are improving. The rate of winning in administrative hearings under federal whistleblower laws has risen from under 10 percent to about 25 percent in recent years in “reported decisions”. However, many cases are thrown out on procedural grounds and “unreported decisions” tend to go against whistleblowers.
The legal protections that exist will not stop your employer from retaliating. The best the law can do is some day provide redress for illegal retaliation.
Before blowing the whistle you should know the legal protections – and their limits.

Finding legal help
Referrals
Contact public interest groups, unions, the National Lawyers Guild, and the American Bar Association for suggestions. Ask for attorneys who have expertise in wrongful discharge. If that doesn’t work ask about specialists in employment law.

Summarize your story in writing
Write your story in two pages. Stick to the facts. Mention special circumstances. Include a list of potential witnesses. Compile a list of supporting documents currently or potentially available.
Take your time preparing this statement. It will give the lawyer a first impression of you and your communications skills.

Confirm application of attorney-client privilege and check for conflicts of interest
Before the first meeting check the list of “representative clients” in the Martindale Hubbell lawyers guide. Before sharing information confirm that the lawyer will not reveal information without your consent. If your research revealed potential conflicts, ask the attorney about them.

Find out the track record the attorney has in similar cases
Ask about the win-loss record and significant precedents or benefits the attorney has gotten for other clients. You could also look at public court records such as briefs or judicial decisions in similar cases.

Make clear your goals and objectives
Be clear about your expectations. Attorneys vary widely in values, priorities and style. One firm may be good if you want to settle things quietly, a different firm if you are focused on getting your day in court or before the public.

Clarify financial & time commitments
Find out if there is a fee for the initial consultation. Once you decide on an attorney be sure to discuss and agree on financial obligations. Find out how much time the attorney will put into your case. Find out how much time is expected of you.

Pin down your role in any negotiations
Most legal cases settle before trial. Settlements are, by definition, a compromise in which both sides will be partially disappointed. Request advance notice of proposals before they are made and notice of offers from the other side before any response is issued.

A retainer is a contract
Read the terms carefully. Make sure any informal agreements are included. If you do not understand a term ask for a plain language translation that you understand. If the attorney balks, consider that a warning.

Recognizing retaliation
If you plan to challenge the agency or corporation that employs you, you should know the tactics of retaliation most often used against whistleblowers. Many are like tactics used against workers who organize unions.

Spotlight the whistleblowers
This common retaliation strategy tries to make the whistleblower, instead of message, into the issue. Employers attack the whistleblower’s motives, credibility, professional competence, or virtually anything else that will work to cloud the issues raised.

Manufacture a poor record
Employers sometimes spend months or years building a record to brand a whistleblower as a chronic problem worker. To prepare for firing, employers may compile records about any incident, real or contrived, that conveys inadequate or problematic performance. Whistleblowers who previously got positive job performance evaluations may begin to receive poor ratings.

Threaten them into silence
Threats may be direct or indirect. The boss may say, “You’ll never work again in this town/industry/agency.” Or an employer may issue gag orders forbidding the whistleblower from speaking out under threat of firing.

Isolate or humiliate them
Employers may make an example of a whistleblower by separating her from co-workers. This tactic is often combined with stripping the whistleblower of duties in order to facilitate eventual firing.

Set them up for failure
As common as stripping duties away is the opposite – overloading the whistleblower with unmanageable work and taking away the resources needed to fulfill the tasks.

Prosecute them
Attacking whistleblowers by accusing them of “stealing” the evidence is becoming more serious and frequent. The employer will claim the evidence is stolen private property. Government workers have been threatened with prosecution under a McCarthy era law for being “disloyal” after participating in meetings with environmental groups suing the government for illegal activity.

Eliminate their jobs
Employers may lay off whistleblowers even while other hiring is going on. “Reorganization” may move whistleblowers into marginal jobs.
Those who manage to avoid termination may find they are left to rot in their jobs never able to transfer or be promoted. Bad references for future jobs are common.

So they consciously attempted to create a major sensory defect in their child. She believes deafness is a culture, not a disability. A deaf lifestyle is a choice she wishes to make for her son, they are merely expressing the natural tendency to want children “like them.”

But if deafness is to be considered a cultural choice, let it be the choice of the child, not the parents. Let a child with all five senses decide to renounce or relinquish one of them in order to embrace what may be a richer life. If a child is rendered incapable of deciding “yes” or “no,” then in what manner is it a choice?

Wendy McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com. She is the author and editor of many books and articles, including the forthcoming anthology Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century (Ivan R. Dee/Independent Institute, 2002). She lives with her husband in Canada.

I have edited this to avoid copyright infringement. Please read the article.

I trust that the child will sue the parents AND the medical team who allowed this to happen. An utter disgrace to mankind as we once knew it…..
Life is hard enough, why in the he ll would you strive for a child with a disability as that child gets older, it may not share the joy it’s idiot parents did in having a disability.

The plan will make a fetus eligible for health care under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Because CHIP is aimed at kids, it does not typically cover parents or pregnant women.

Abortion rights supporters complain that there are other ways to include coverage for pregnant women in CHIP. They see Thursday’s action as a backdoor attempt to establish the fetus as a person with legal standing, which could make it easier to criminalize abortion.

Thompson promotes these waivers as an excellent way of expanding health coverage to people without insurance. He regularly brags about speeding the time it takes for them to be approved by federal officials. But in his statement Thursday, he said automatically including the fetus is the quickest way to get prenatal services to the most women.

The new policy will not take effect until after it is published in the Federal Register and the
department considers public comments.

I am very pro-choice and many of my pro-choice friends are against this bill but let them pass it. In today’s day and age, if a woman wants to abort a baby against the government’s will, there are drugs that can kill it that you can buy over the Internet from foreign countries. Same as drugs, put regulations on drugs…making it illegal does absolutely nothing towards stopping people from using them.

I want unborn babies to be viewed as fetuses but you have to remember who the host is and her decision counts more than anyone else. I also hate parents who decide that a young woman is aborting her baby just b/c she is under 18. Scientifically, her earlier eggs are healthier babies than the ones she will have at age 40.

Conceited individuals are annoying because they have an excessively high opinion of their abilities, appearance and material things. These people like to show off and brag about their possessions and skills. They tend to be very rude, self-centered, arrogant and extremely insecure.

Confident people are aware of their attributes and do not have the need or desire to tell the world about them. They are comfortable in their own skin and never feel threatened by other individuals’ talents or accomplishments. Traits commonly found in confident people include eye contact during conversation; clear, audible speech patterns, without yelling; firm handshake; and tall, straight posture.

2) Grimness vs. A sense of Humor

I call this characteristic the “party-pooper trait,” as grim people seem to be unhappy or angry about everything. They complain and find fault in every person, place or thing and are just no fun to be around. These people are usually gloomy because they have not mastered the ability to be happy with themselves. They are not clinically depressed, just miserable.

Humorous, witty people are entertaining and fun. Often, their humor is self-effacing and good-natured when joking with others. They don’t try to be hurtful with their jokes. Humor can be used to defuse angry situations and is always helpful when making a first impression.

3) Selfishness vs. Honest Interest In Others

Selfishness denotes an excessive or exclusive concern with oneself and goes beyond normal self-interest or self-concern. These people demonstrate a disregard for others and openly express their need to devote all their energy to their own agenda. Selfish people have a great, inherent desire to control situations and people and are unwilling to reach compromises with others.

Individuals with honest interest in others are extremely likable. The interest must be genuine; otherwise the charade is obvious and offensive. They have the ability to coax people to talk about themselves or share interesting experiences. They are curious, ask questions and listen intently to the answers. They have the amazing ability to allow people around them to the feel important, a powerful attribute!

4) Cynicism vs. Optimism

These bad-tempered people have a dim worldview. Their pessimistic nature often is linked to a failure to achieve personal goals. They are tiring because their cynical views can be depressing.

Optimists look at a difficult situation and realize that things can be much worse. Numerous studies have suggested that optimism is an effective tool in overcoming trauma, illness and depression. It is simply more desirable to spend time with positive individuals.

5) Narcissism vs. Healthy Vanity

Narcissists are like conceited individuals on steroids. They have an inflated sense of their own self-importance and the deep need for admiration. They monopolize conversations and have controlling personalities.

“Healthy vanity” is a positive trait in which a person has a realistically high self-esteem and is modestly confident. People with healthy vanity have a level-headed view of themselves, good and bad.

Each of these personality flaws can be changed or altered in a positive fashion. Doing so will make you a happier, more beautiful person… or should I say “less ugly”?
“It is beauty that captures your attention; personality which captures your heart.”
–Anonymous

SOCIALIST:
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow,
which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows but you don’t know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 12 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION:
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s private parts. At night when no one is looking, you have sex with both of them. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital.

NORTH DAKOTA CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

FLORIDA CORPORATION:
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can’t figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.

NEW YORK CORPORATION:
You have fifteen million cows.
You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas.

I love this movie. Watch it one time and you will never want to do heroin ever.

Wilson’s original sentence, for aggravated child molestation, was widely criticized on the grounds it was grossly disproportionate to the crime, and state lawmakers later passed a law to close the loophole that led to the 10-year sentence.

Wilson, now 21, has already served more than 27 months. He could remain behind bars while the appeal proceeds.

A jury found the honor student guilty in 2005 of aggravated child molestation for having oral sex with a 15-year-old girl during a 2003 New Year’s Eve party involving alcohol and marijuana. Although the sex act was consensual it was illegal under Georgia
law.

Wilson was also charged with rape for being one of several male partygoers at the Douglas County hotel to have sex with a 17-year-old girl, but was acquitted. The party was captured on a videotape that was played for the jury.

Several influential people, including former President Jimmy Carter, stepped forward to support Wilson.

Wilson’s lawyers could be heard applauding in their office after the order was released.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ATLANTA (AP) — A judge on Monday voided a 10-year sentence for a man accused of having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17. Genarlow Wilson was instead given a 12-month misdemeanor sentence with credit for time already served.

The state is likely to appeal the ruling.

Wilson’s original sentence, for aggravated child olestation, was widely criticized on the grounds it was grossly disproportionate to the crime. State lawmakers later passed a law to close the loophole that led to the 10-year sentence.

Wilson, now 21, has already served more than 27 months. He is expected to remain behind bars while the appeal proceeds.