Maszman Speaks!

Maryland’s leg­is­la­ture has passed a bill requir­ing com­pa­nies with more than 10,000 employ­ees to spend at least 8% on health care or put the money into a state fund for poor res­i­dents’ health care. Peo­ple have been call­ing it the “Wal-Mart Bill” because they’re the only Mary­land employer who has enough employ­ees to qual­ify. And they don’t pay most employ­ees enough to let them pur­chase their own health care. I guess some­thing has to give to enable them to offer those low prices. That is, some­thing beyond Amer­i­can jobs, of course.

Damn, if today’s User Friendly is any indi­ca­tion, I’m a D-list blog­ger (at best).

Read Dear Elena, start­ing here. I can’t think of any­thing else to say.

O’Reilly’s Meerkat is being shut down, effec­tive March first. Sure, there are other alter­na­tives, but Meerkat freed you from hav­ing to do much setup and just worked. Oh well.

There are fewer and fewer peo­ple who want to be vol­un­teer fire­fight­ers every year. Recruit­ing and reten­tion efforts help but they’re up against a num­ber of fac­tors out­side their sphere of influ­ence. If you live in an area served by vol­un­teers, you can expect your taxes to go up as they are replaced by paid staff.

Ever see some­thing at work that you know is ille­gal? While there may be laws that pro­tect you from retal­i­a­tion by your employer if you blow the whis­tle, you can still be pros­e­cuted. You’re prob­a­bly bet­ter off just black­mail­ing your CEO.