JohnSmith2007

Here is an example. Don't beat on me about the source, read it. This is common knowledge on Capital Hill.

Gary Shapiro: Five Hidden Costs of Health Care: What the Government Doesnt Want You to Know

After a year of angst and agony, Congress passed and the president signed two major bills governing health care. The 2,800-page law will almost certainly provide more Americans with health insurance. But nothing is free. Our nations biggest flaw may be the unrealistic view that you can get something for nothing. In this case, more Americans may be insured, but this worthy goal will impose huge costs costs that some of the new laws most ardent supporters have intentionally obfuscated: 1. The new law will increase the federal budget deficit. Shortly before the penultimate vote, Democrats trumpeted the bill as reducing the deficit. They relied on last minute scoring from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO ) reporting that the bill will reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion over 10 years. As a result, proponents declared the bill as good for the deficit and the economy. History will prove whether this claim is true. But anyone who has even peeled back one layer of this onion knows the CBO was boxed in to giving a distorted picture. This law will be proven quickly to expand our bloated deficit and sadly the media was asleep at the switch and did not report on it. The big distortion occurred by the CBO assumption that the 21 percent cut in doctors Medicare reimbursements would stay in place. The 21 percent drop in doctors pay began April 1 (no April Fools) and was included by CBO scorekeepers as permanent. This allowed them to claim $450 billion in Medicare savings. Yet, the same politicians who voted for the bill have also promised doctors a fix and that they will restore the drastic cuts in Medicare reimbursement. Even before the 21 percent cuts, increasing numbers of doctors refused to take Medicare patients, as the Medicare reimbursements are tiny compared to private insurance reimbursements, not even factoring in the cost and time of the additional paperwork, audits and hassle of collecting from the government bureaucracy. With a 21 percent cut in Medicare reimbursement, tens of thousands more doctors will refuse Medicare patients and the goal of getting more Americans health coverage will be countered by fewer available doctors. Medicare patients, our oldest Americans, will suffer, and a marketplace form of rationing will be imposed. This real problem begins this month, and the promise to fix Medicare reimbursements puts both Democrats and Republicans in a pickle. If they dont reverse the Medicare cuts, thousands of doctors will close their doors to Medicare patients, depriving millions of needed health care and belying the promise of the health care bill. But if they vote to restore the doctors cuts, then the myth of deficit neutrality will be exposed for Democrats, and the promise of fiscal prudence will not be met for Republicans. In any case, either Americans will suffer or the myth of the new medical laws deficit neutrality will be exposed. Members of Congress from both sides expect a vote within weeks. That vote will transform the entire financial assumption underpinning the health care law. And if you are not convinced yet that the new health care law is not a deficit expander, here are two other tricks the CBO used to hide the true costs. First, the CBO used 10 years of revenue-raising and only six years of expenditures. Had the 10 years been based on both revenue and expenditures, it would cost $114 billion annually. More, the CBO was told to assume many plans would pay the 40 percent excise tax on plans and offset the costs of this new government benefit. This 40 percent tax will impact very few plans if any. If realistic assumptions were used for those two items, then the law clearly does not reduce the deficit. If thats not enough, other revenue assumptions have been labeled by fantasy. For example, The Hill notes that the $2.7 billion assumed to be raised by a tax on tanning salons would require tanning customers to make 3.9 billion visits to tanning salons over the next 10 years. The government takeover of student loan processing is assumed to save $70 billion and presents the questionable assumption that government can do something cheaper than private industry. Government scorekeepers rarely consider the true cost of government employee pensions, overhead, real estate, support by other government employees or supplies when calculating theoretical savings of insourcing. The calculations by Congress of every new entitlement program have been multiples off the mark. The 1965 Medicare program was supposed to cost only $9 billion by 1990. Instead it cost $67 billion in 1990 and it now costs $521 billion. This expansion of the deficit is an enormous cost that we are imposing on our children. 2. The new law will reduce jobs in private industry. Every employer with over 50 employees soon must provide health insurance for every employee or face stiff penalties. This mandate will impose new costs on those employers that now do not provide insurance. Simple economics means these companies will reduce jobs to pay the costs of the new law. Less visible are the millions of starter and entry-level jobs it will eliminate. For example, my company now hires about a dozen paid interns every summer and we use seasonal employees for our big annual event, the International CES. Both types of jobs and the entry level full-time positions to which they are designed to lead could now be discouraged because of the new mandate that every employee have employer-provided health insurance. The legislation also includes new taxes on medical equipment, passive income for millions of Americans, and new Medicare taxes all costs to those making investments in job-creating businesses. It is a zero-sum game and every dollar of new costs means a dollar not invested in a business or paid to an employee. More, the law also removed thousands of jobs from the banking industry that provided student loans. This last minute add-on to the bill had nothing to do with health care but it does kill a private industry and turn it into a government-run industry. The millions of private jobs lost will be only partially offset by new jobs created for additional health care professionals. And of course the heath care law creates new work for lawyers who litigate over the hastily drafted and often ambiguous language. 3. The new law will increase government jobs. Estimates are that 17,000 new IRS agents will be hired to make sure the new complex laws for hiring and buying insurance are followed. More, the federal takeover of student loans will create a new bureaucracy with thousands of new government jobs. These will be jobs with good pay and lifetime benefits and they will further expand the deficit. 4. The new law will hurt health care for those with critical needs. The American health care system is the envy of the world as almost every innovation now comes from the United States, and the wealthiest people from around the world come here when they are very sick. The bills supporters claimed that the legislation is necessary as we have poor health care in the United States, and the present system needed to be changed. They pointed to our low ranking in the developing world on various measures of health care, such as infant birth rate and average mortality rate. These rankings are cause for alarm as they reflect unhealthy lifestyle choices. Americans eat more, consume unhealthy food, and exercise less. More, many American girls have babies at a young age. But on measures where our doctors have influence, like cancer survival rates, we top the world. If there is any doubt that the legislation will hurt quality of care, I suggest following the membership of the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA supported the legislation even though the AMA doesnt represent most American doctors and most doctors had serious concerns with the proposals. If you learn soon that many doctors quit the AMA you can conclude that the doctors voted on the bill with their feet. Indeed, every major specialist group opposed the bill as bad for patients with critical and thus highly specialized needs. 5. The new law will reduce American innovation. The new law will reduce innovation in several ways. First, specific taxes on innovative medical devices and new costs for drug companies mean a special tax on innovation. New taxes will be added to the overall cost of treatment and innovation thus will be discouraged. Second, innovative medical treatments will be discouraged in America. Articles by American doctors dominate almost every medical journal in the world. Todays system encourages breakthroughs and creativity. Yet the new health law encourages cookie-cutter treatments and punishes deviation from treatment norms thereby discouraging innovation. Third, the bill imposes several new taxes on investment. This means less money will go to new businesses and taking risks. The result will be less money for research, development and innovation. Sadly, the costs of insuring the uninsured using the methods in the new law are real and not speculative. In my ideal world, we would have reached national consensus on the problem (uninsured Americans), agreed on facts (we are innovators and innovation should be preserved) and then brainstormed solutions (cut malpractice, encourage healthy lifestyles, encourage competition in health care). Indeed, at several points in the last year good faith, bipartisan efforts were heading in this direction. But politics got hold and any solution was viewed as preferable to a well-considered bi-partisan solution. At the end, recalcitrant Democrats were then purchased with special favors (Michigan airport repairs, water projects, special state Medicare payments, to name just a few). Some legislators were even convinced that this was a necessary vote to preserve the historic presidency or their majority in Congress. These legislators went for ego and a person who is president rather than what was best for America. Some may challenge this recognition of reality as sour grapes. Perhaps. But there would be fewer sour grapes if we could agree on the facts and that this new sweeping mandate imposes costs. Even with the factual mirage described above, this is the first time in our history Congress imposed a major change opposed by a majority of Americans. The factual cloud Congress sought to obscure will blight the result and challenge the credibility of those who imposed it. As our economy sags under the weight of this newest mandate, we must learn and approach every future proposal with a long-term, honest view of its impact on our nations deficit, jobs and innovation and investment. Gary Shapiro is the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association.

http://industry-news.org/2010/04/02/gary-shapiro-five-hidden-costs-of-health-care-what-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-know/

The CBO is nonpartisan and has traditionally been regarded as reliable by both Republicans and Democrats. You'd have to show a longer track record that demonstrates they're accuracy rate as dismal to make your argument valid.

The CBO is non partisan, this isn't about that. The CBO only uses the numbers given them. The author of the bill can get whatever result he wants by giving the CBO distorted or incomplete numbers. It is like a computer, garbage in - garbage out.

Sorry man, the CBO is useless. They only use the numbers given to them. They are more often than not totally wrong. Case in point, the health care bill. The congress gave them numbers that left out major parts of the bill. That is how they got it in the green. In reality the health care bill will increase the debt when all factors are taken into account.

flag pole

I have a question that someone here may be able to answer. I have debit cards from two different banks. Each one of them have some sort of reward for using them, one being cash back and the other being points that can be used to by stuff. If I use my card as a debit and input my pin I do not get a reward but if I use it as credit I get the award. Why is that? What is the difference. To me there is no difference other than putting in my pin or signing my name. It all comes out of my checking account with no fee involved.

$5 says I don't give a #######. Thanks for the history lesson though. All that matters is what it means today. It has nothing to do with race.

FYI Redneck started during the unionisation of the coal mines in West Virginia. The union workers were going to confront the big coal bosses in the western part of the state and demand that they allow the workers in those mines to unionize. They marched through the woods to the mines and to show who they were they tied red bandanas around their necks. Hence the term redneck. For a long time it was a badge of honor among coal miners. The predjudgest people from the east just looked at any hardworking person from the mountans as rednecks and used the term as an insult.

I wonder if GM is going to start buying back the 61% position the taxpayers hold in GM.

How do you think they paid the loans back? Not by selling cars, we paid it back!

BY - That's a troll ID. Lesotho is just a placeholder.

Actually its the country surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. And this is my one and only ID. Perhaps you would like Ewok to verify that? PM him and find out.

Hey dumbazz, where in what I wrote am I dissing the US? If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I've dealt with lowlifes like you for a while now, hence know your strategy inside out. When you have nothing legitimate to say, you resort to get out idiocy.

PS Where the #### is Lesotho anyway?

GFY

Here is my favorite "myth" about capitalism.

• Goldman Sachs pays out 16 billion in bonuses in 2009
  
• Goldman Sachs is charged with deliberately defrauding investors.
  
• Goldman Sachs just announces $5.1 billion dollars in bonuses.
  

Dannos and co throught this great union are silly enough to actually support this. All while waving their flag and sleep with the constitution, claiming they love the country and the most important thing of all in the Constitution, hence it being in the preamble and about three times the size of regular text "We the People"

Why are you here in such a terrible place? Good God, to hear you rail against the US you would think you would swim back to your beloved Australia. I invite you to do so asswipe.

winter coat

Amen and thank you Mr Stossel

I saw your post. There's nothing amazing about it. Imagine that!

You posted an article which claims that the SEC's charges are flimsy and that Goldman is on pretty solid ground. From what I'm reading I don't think that's the case, but we shall see. The evidence and charges will either stick or they won't.

But that's not what THIS thread was about, or what I posted above, or what you still haven't offered a SHRED of evidence in refutation.

Namely: the title of this thread is Goldman Sachs Bought Both Democrats and Republicans . The OP lists all the campaign donations made by Goldman to members of both parties. I'm not disputing that. It's common knowledge that both parties are on the take in a big way, and the sleaze coming from K Street and the revolving doors leading to it is galling.

However, at least in this particular case, Goldman's money didn't buy them the influence they wanted from Democrats. The SEC panel voted 3 Democrats to 2 Republicans to file charges. At the very same time the Senate is trying to get a reform bill that will reign in these excesses, and we have 41 Republicans lined up to vote no while Democrats will need to hang onto every vote to pass a bill.

Since all are on the take, but for whatever reason only Republicans are voting the wishes of their paymasters while Democrats are not, I stand by my statement: the cashola going from Goldman to Democrats was wasted money. They'd be better off splurging more on Republicans next time.

I don't see how this is "blindly partisan". I'm sickened by the lobbying dollars, and I have no illusions that the usual pattern is that BOTH parties participate in "pay to play". I'm not naive- these guys don't kick out millions in graft without expecting favorable legislation and regulation in DC. My comments are directed at this one very specific instance. The SEC charges against Goldman are a shocker, if for no other reason than 3 Democrats stood up to the lobby.

I guess you didn't really read what I posted. Yes they bought both sides but your implication that the Dems are cracking down despite the payoffs and the Reps are staying bought is naive in the extreme. I will highlight the pertinent area again since your blinders are getting in the way.

So let's walk through this step by step. First, the SEC files a lawsuit alleging fraud against Goldman Sachs, the timing of which simply reeks of politics.

Next, Chris Dodd (and other members of the administration), use the SEC suit to try to force through regulatory reform which they claim will end future bailouts but which critics say will actually institutionalize "too big to fail" by effectively turning big Wall Street banks into quasi-government backed entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And it's not just Republicans who think this. In an interview with Politico yesterday Democrat Brad Sherman, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, put it in blunt terms: "there are serious problems with the Dodd bill. The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That's something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn't dare ask for. The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority."

But this seems to be something you just don't want to admit.

We also know that, despite their tough on Wall Street rhetoric, Democrats were on the receiving end of $12.7 million in contributions from Wall Street in the most recent campaign cycle, nearly twice as much as Republicans. President Obama alone raised $3.4 million from Wall Street - including nearly a million from Goldman Sachs.

In fact, Dodd's bill appears to be riddled with "carve-outs" - provisions written into the bill to appease certain special interests. One Republican K Street lobbyist told the Huffington Post, "Obtaining a carve-out isn't rocket science. Just give Chairman Dodd [D-Conn.] and Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] a sh*tload of money."

And the bill is now coming under fire from the left as well, with a coalition of former Democratic officials and regulators arguing in a letter to Harry Reid that Dodd's bill will do nothing to prevent a future crisis.

Yesterday afternoon Chris Dodd told a group of reporters that the issue of financial regulation boils down to a simple question: "Whose side are you on?" Dodd, of course, was suggesting anyone who disagrees with his bill is on the side of Wall Street, but the more dots you find to connect the easier it is to come to the conclusion that this is a bill that Wall Street would absolutely love to see pass.

This is a gift to Wall Street paid for by Wall Street. Goldman is getting their monies worth.

Connecting the Dots: Does Wall St. Want Dodd Bill?

By Tom Bevan

After witnessing all the back room wheeling, dealing, political and media manipulation that was used to pass health care, it's no wonder people are questioning not only the method but the motives of the Democrats and the Obama administration when it comes to financial regulatory reform.

So let's walk through this step by step. First, the SEC files a lawsuit alleging fraud against Goldman Sachs, the timing of which simply reeks of politics.

Next, Chris Dodd (and other members of the administration), use the SEC suit to try to force through regulatory reform which they claim will end future bailouts but which critics say will actually institutionalize "too big to fail" by effectively turning big Wall Street banks into quasi-government backed entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

And it's not just Republicans who think this. In an interview with Politico yesterday Democrat Brad Sherman, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, put it in blunt terms: "there are serious problems with the Dodd bill. The Dodd bill has unlimited executive bailout authority. That's something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn't dare ask for. The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority."

This morning we learned another disturbing coincidence: that Barack Obama's former White House Counsel, Greg Craig, will represent Goldman Sachs in its lawsuit with the FEC.

We also know that, despite their tough on Wall Street rhetoric, Democrats were on the receiving end of $12.7 million in contributions from Wall Street in the most recent campaign cycle, nearly twice as much as Republicans. President Obama alone raised $3.4 million from Wall Street - including nearly a million from Goldman Sachs.

In fact, Dodd's bill appears to be riddled with "carve-outs" - provisions written into the bill to appease certain special interests. One Republican K Street lobbyist told the Huffington Post, "Obtaining a carve-out isn't rocket science. Just give Chairman Dodd [D-Conn.] and Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] a sh*tload of money."

And the bill is now coming under fire from the left as well, with a coalition of former Democratic officials and regulators arguing in a letter to Harry Reid that Dodd's bill will do nothing to prevent a future crisis.

Yesterday afternoon Chris Dodd told a group of reporters that the issue of financial regulation boils down to a simple question: "Whose side are you on?" Dodd, of course, was suggesting anyone who disagrees with his bill is on the side of Wall Street, but the more dots you find to connect the easier it is to come to the conclusion that this is a bill that Wall Street would absolutely love to see pass.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/04/20/connecting_the_dots_does_wall_st_want_dodd_bill_105240.html

I posted my evidence. Feel free to post your counter-evidence. I'm all ears. You do have some counter-evidence, right?

Wow, you really are that blind partisan! Ok, your loss for walking around with blinders on. BTW, I did post something but amazingly enough it went un-replied to. Imagine that!

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/252858-goldman-charge-looks-more-like-politics-than-fraud/

head games

Goldman charge looks more like politics than fraud

Paul Krugman, Nobel economist, calls it "looting." The media, spoonfed a story line by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, regurgitated the claim that Goldman Sachs had sold a $1-billion mortgage derivative product that was "designed to fail." The case against Goldman, said the Financial Times of London, "is damning."

It would indeed be damning if true - and if the SEC's story line on the evidence were to hold up before a jury, should it ever get to a jury, which is doubtful.

There's barely a thread holding it all together, and one of the thinnest bits is in an email from one Fabrice Tourre, a 31-year-old Goldman vice-president who put the alleged fraudulent deal together. On Jan. 23, 2007, Mr. Tourre wrote to a friend: "More and more leverage in the system, The whole building is about to collapse anytime now ... Only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly liveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implicaions of those monstrosities."

Very flip and savvy, in a juvenile way. But good enough for SEC investigators who spent 18 months on the Goldman file. They must have been desperate. Even in the SEC's version, the Goldman scandal looks far from being a fraud and a lot like a move on behalf of Democrats and the Obama administration to boost support for radical financial reform.

The commission's 22-page rap sheet, in a quick read, is like following the plot of a Quentin Tarantino film. It's complicated and scary, but what the hell's happening? Remove the blood and gore created by the SEC's screenwriters, and a different story emerges. The deal that is now rattling world financial markets turns out to have been a complicated piece of financial work to be sure, but it fails to live up to claims of massive deception and breach of U.S. securities law. It is telling that the charge is a civil fraud, not a criminal fraud, indicating a lack of hard evidence of deliberate malfeasance.

The SEC's version of the deal, stripped of incriminating assumptions, shows Goldman Sachs acting as middle-man in putting together a financial transaction in early 2007 between big-time mortgage-market players who had different views as to the future of the U.S. housing market.

Gambling that the market would stay strong were ACA Capital and ACA Management, subsidiaries of a U.S. bond insurer and experienced mortgage-backed risk analysts and players. Also taking the positive long position was IKB Deutsche Interbank, a commercial bank headquartered in Dusseldorf, Germany. In the years before 2007, IKB had become involved as an expert investor in derivative products based on U.S. mortgage securities. These were not small unsuspecting investors wandering in off the street.

Betting that the U.S. housing market was set to crash was Paulson & Co., the hedge fund which in the SEC's words "developed an investment strategy based upon the belief that, for a variety of reasons, certain mid-and-subprime [mortgage-backed securites] rated ‘Triple B' ... would experience credit events." A smart strategy, in retrospect.

According to the SEC, Paulson had compiled a list of Triple B-rated mortgage-backed securites and bonds that it expected to self-destruct. Paulson aimed to short (sell) a hypothetical portfolio of these mortgage-based products, thereby making money when and if the market crashed. In early 2007, Paulson approached Goldman Sachs asking it to find counterparties to its plan. It wanted someone to take up the other side of the bet.

Goldman Sachs, through Mr. Tourre, found two: IKB in Germany and ACA Management. IKB had already become nervous about the U.S. housing market, and it wanted future investments in the market to be vetted in advance by a more experienced player. ACA fit the description. The SEC says ACA had by 2006 come to specialize in mortgage-based investment deals and had "closed on 22 CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) worth $15.7-billion."

And so, for a relatively small fee of $15-million, Mr. Tourre and Goldman Sachs mediated a negotiation between the two bets on the future of the market. In early January, 2007, Paulson produced an initial list of 123 residential sub-prime mortage-backed securites that it wanted included in the portfolio. After about eight weeks of negotiations, various securities were added and others were removed. On February 26, Paulson and ACA "came to an agreement on a reference portfolio of 90" mortgage-backed securites.

Not that there were any securities to buy. The deal, ABACUS 2007-AC1, would contain a "reference portfolio" rather than an actual portfolio of mortgage-backed securites. It was to be a "synthethetic" collateralized debt obligation (CDO). In all, the deal contained more than $1-billion in make-believe securities. For its share, IKB in Dusseldorf put $150-million into ABACUS, a bet on the positive future for the mock portfolio. The investor on the other side of the transaction was Paulson & Co., betting on the negative.

Among the SEC's claims is that ACA somehow did not actually perform the official "selection" of the securities in the portfolio, even though its own summary makes it clear that ACA - a veteran in the business and a known expert in the field - signed off on the final selection. The SEC also claims that ACA was "misled" by Goldman into believing that Paulson would be investing on the same side of the bet that ACA was on.

Whether those allegations hold up remains to be seen. Goldman Sachs, in response, has issued its version of events and, among other things, categorically rejects the claim that it said Paulson was gambling on the same side as IKB and ACA. "Goldman Sachs never represented to ACA that Paulson was going to be a long investor," said Goldman in a note to clients last Sunday.

Goldman also has a more than plausible answer to the charge that documents did not disclose that Paulson was on the other side of the transaction. Goldman says it is being accused of fraud in part "because it did not disclose to one party of the transaction the identity of the party on the other side," something that market makers never do.

Goldman, moreover, says that - even though it knew who was on the other side - it invested a bit of money of its own directly in the ABACUS deal, and lost about $90-million. Did Goldman defraud itself?

ABACUS was also an easy investment call, at least on paper. The portfolio, full of Triple-B mortage junk, was rated AAA by Moody's and Standard and Poors. That reflects the theory at the time that while some mortgages may go bad, it was highly unlikely that all Triple-B mortgages would turn to junk simultaneously. Was Moody's defrauded too?

The SEC's portrayal of ACA as something of an innocent victim is hard to figure. After having worked on and approved the selection of securities, ACA took up more than $900-million of the deal when it closed on April 26. ACA would have been at risk on ABACUS for weeks until it eventially unloaded its position to ABN AMRO Bank, the Dutch bank, in late May of 2007. When the securities went bad, ABN - later controlled by Royal Bank of Scotland - paid out the $900-million loss, the money going to Paulson.

The SEC claims, without providing any hint of evidence, that ACA was snookered. "It is unlikely that ACA Capital would have written protection on the super senior tranche if it had known that Paulson, which played an influential role in selecting the reference portfolio, had taken a significant short position instead of a long equity stake in ABACUS 2007-AC1."

This is certainly a reach. Even if ACA were now to claim that it had been tricked, it was itself part of the trick. ACA agents approved the portfolio that ACA invested in. No blame can be passed on to Paulson or others.

These are the Goldman charges. If that's all there is to the case, they are unlikely to go far and were likely never intended to go very far beyond creating an environment that favours massive new regulatory reform for U.S. banks and investment houses. The vote at the SEC to press the charges split along party lines, with the Democrats on the panel approving the action.

In the ABACUS deal, Paulson & Co. made the right bet. Making the wrong bet were a top market insurance player (ACA), a sophisticated German bank (IKB), a world-class Dutch bank (ABN) and the world's leading investment bank (Goldman Sachs). Loot changed hands, to be sure, but there was no looting.

http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/financials/story.html?id=2926436

club house

House band

Canadian Heritage

Canadian Club.

Too bad for Goldman only Republicans stayed bought, and Democrats insisted on doing the people's will, not their paymasters. I suppose you find fault with Democrats for this too.

Next time Goldman should stop wasting its contributions on Democrats, and put it only on the party that supports big banks running away with our money - the Party of No.

Come on, you can't be that naive. Well, maybe you can, or at least that partisan.

I promise you that he would lose both of his if that happend to me.

I get 23 PTOs + holidays. I have no idea how many holidays, I never counted.

I get 3 weeks (15 days) vacation and any "reasonable" number of PTO days I need plus 12 paid holidays. I am not sure what the limit is on PTO days but last year I took 9 without any questions.

There's a similar scheme in Spain for senior citizens; I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I heard about it from time to time while I lived there.

Given that Europeans get 25 weeks of vacation a year, I'm not surprised some beaurocrat is declaring it a human right.

25 weeks?? Come on now. I am thrilled that I just got 3 weeks.

MC did raise a fair point. So far all we have are the words of a bureaucrat, no actual legislation exists yet.

That said, the words are alarming (and stupid) enough.

I know, and I have doubts if this ever makes it to law. But I find it interesting that they doubt the story itself even after several different sources. I have seen several times when a story is posted it is dismissed out of hand because of where it was reported. There is nothing wrong with sceptisism but it is taken to an extreme here.

travelweekly.co.uk - Murdoch?

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2010/04/19/33525/eu-plans-subsidised-holidays-for-the-less-well-off.html

The EU has proposed plans to subsidise holidays for pensioners, young people and those who cannot afford to travel, after declaring that an overseas holiday is a “human right”.

This seems to be one of those times where some people just don't want to believe something. It doesn't matter how many sources you give them they will still doubt it.