Dear Editor,

  Employers and injured workers should be able to deal with BWC directly. There is no need for employers to work through insurance companies which charge high fees, for them to get into a favorable groups. These companies make big profits and pay their executives high salaries. When a worker gets injured, another for profit company administers the case, overseeing the costs of hospitals, physicians etc. To many injured worker must sue to get their just benefits. Often the employer is penalized because the injured worker is allowed to not work for a longer time than necessary. Often if the employee works for cash on another job during his “recovery”, no action is taken even when the BWC and the company administrating the case know it. When an employer has one or more injury to his employees, the premiums go so high that small companies sometimes must go out of business.It also causes businesses to go to other states. 

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thailand's new constitution should boost the right to strike and form unions, end discrimination against politicians without Bachelor's degrees, nationalize public and security infrastructure, and allow people to vote from any ballot box in the country, reformists said.

After crushing free speech, banning political activity, detaining former elected officials, and clamping Thailand under military rule, Bangkok's new coup leaders promised to install an interim prime minister within two weeks, write a new constitution to replace the now-trashed 1997 charter, and stage a nationwide election in one year.

The coup leaders cited alleged "loopholes" in the previous constitution, written with idealism and expectations for democracy after a brutal 1991 military coup ended in a bloody, popular insurrection.

The new coup leaders ordered people to call the junta, The Council for Democratic Reform under Constitutional Monarchy (CDRM), giving people fresh hope the constitution would be reformed to benefit the masses.

The world is in tumult, but here in the heart of Empire, the level of creative political energy runs flat along the bottom of the graph. As Iraq disintegrates amid frightful slaughter, U.S. generals propose to bring to life the mad plan they once ascribed to Saddam Hussein, to dig a defensive ditch round Baghdad, one of the larger cities on the planet. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are once again on the rise. Amid these vivid implosions of the "war on terror," the U.S. antiwar movement is near dead.

Here in the homeland, the mightiest names of the auto-industrial age have their backs to the wall. Tens of thousands of men and women face grim times as Ford and GM shutter plant after plant. Yet the pulse of organized labor amid this devastation is feeble. From the environmental movement there is an even fainter heartbeat, even as an actual conspiracy -- official concealment of the toxic toll on New Yorkers from the 9/11 attack -- finally comes to light. There's no convincing energy plan beyond posturing about a nature reserve in Alaska; no protest at the giveaways of public lands.

New, from the I-hate-government crowd: mandatory voter ID!

The last time fiscal and moral folly merged so shamelessly with political opportunism, we invaded Iraq.

The primary question in my mind, as I ponder the latest assault on rationality to emanate from our GOP-controlled Congress (how much longer, Lord?), is to what extent these radicals believe they're doing the right thing - as they set about methodically circumventing the principles that define who we are as a nation - and to what extent they're just cynically serving their short-term interests. Or has that line simply vanished?

HR 4844, which passed the House along party lines last week, is, unfortunately, more than just sputter and bluster about the peril of illegal aliens invading our voting booths, i.e., another piece of fantasy legislation to "protect" Americans from one more right-wing bugbear, like smoldering flags and gay wedding cakes.