Outside of the Bank of America branch at 95 Wall Street, a man in a robot costume did the Robot during yesterday's lunch hour. He danced along to the chants of the protesters walking in a circle outside of the branch. They were there to protest the new video teller ATMs that the company started rolling out this fall, which the new 95 Wall Street branch has recently installed. As they sang, “Outsourcing ain't the way, community tellers are here to stay,” an employee who'd been hovering in the lobby with a tablet computer on his arm joined several more bankers in suits and a burly security guard. The group of 30 or so protesters was from the Committee for Better Banks, a labor-community coalition that includes the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN), Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change (NYCC) and the Communications Workers of America union (CWA).
As they sang, “Outsourcing ain't the way, community tellers are here to stay,” an employee who'd been hovering in the lobby with a tablet computer on his arm joined several more bankers in suits and a burly security guard.
The group of 30 or so protesters was from the Committee for Better Banks, a labor-community coalition that includes the Alliance for a Greater New York (ALIGN), Make the Road New York, New York Communities for Change (NYCC) and the Communications Workers of America union (CWA).
*Crockett works for a pro-abortion news outlet. I couldn’t find any direct links between big labor and her news outlet, but, you know, they’re probably there.
The word "because," in standard English usage, is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects two parts of a sentence in which one (the subordinate) explains the other. In that capacity, "because" has two distinct forms. It can be followed either by a finite clause (I'm reading this because [I saw it on the web]) or by a prepositional phrase (I'm reading this because [of the web]). These two forms are, traditionally, the only ones to which "because" lends itself. I mention all that ... because language. Because evolution. Because there is another way to use "because." Linguists are calling it the "prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun." You probably know it better, however, as explanation by way of Internet—explanation that maximizes efficiency and irony in equal measure. I'm late because YouTube. You're reading this because procrastination. As the language writer Stan Carey delightfully sums it up: "'Because' has become a preposition, because grammar."
I mention all that ... because language. Because evolution. Because there is another way to use "because." Linguists are calling it the "prepositional-because." Or the "because-noun."
You probably know it better, however, as explanation by way of Internet—explanation that maximizes efficiency and irony in equal measure. I'm late because YouTube. You're reading this because procrastination. As the language writer Stan Carey delightfully sums it up: "'Because' has become a preposition, because grammar."
The Republican proposal tried to put this insight into policy by ending the huge tax break given to employer-based plans and replacing it with a $2,300 tax rebate for individuals and a $5,700 rebate for families. This change would have made it much more costly for employers to offer health insurance. As a result, many would have ended or downgraded the policies they provided. Tens of millions of Americans would have lost their insurance plans, whether they liked them or not. The rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been an utter and complete disaster, leading to a flowering of schadenfreude among Republicans who predicted Obamacare would be an utter and complete disaster. But the failure of the federal exchange Web site, and widespread confusion among consumers, isn’t the particular disaster Republicans had predicted. And it’s not a particularly auspicious one for Republican policy interests. Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, for instance, is going perfectly well in states that chose to accept it. Take Oregon, which has emerged as perhaps the worst disaster zone in Obamacare’s implementation: Oregon’s state-run exchange is simply broken. More than six weeks after it was supposed to open, not a single person has successfully enrolled for insurance through it. Yet at the same time, the state has signed up more than 70,000 people for Medicaid -- reducing Oregon’s uninsured population by more than 12 percent.
The rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been an utter and complete disaster, leading to a flowering of schadenfreude among Republicans who predicted Obamacare would be an utter and complete disaster. But the failure of the federal exchange Web site, and widespread confusion among consumers, isn’t the particular disaster Republicans had predicted. And it’s not a particularly auspicious one for Republican policy interests.
Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, for instance, is going perfectly well in states that chose to accept it. Take Oregon, which has emerged as perhaps the worst disaster zone in Obamacare’s implementation: Oregon’s state-run exchange is simply broken. More than six weeks after it was supposed to open, not a single person has successfully enrolled for insurance through it. Yet at the same time, the state has signed up more than 70,000 people for Medicaid -- reducing Oregon’s uninsured population by more than 12 percent.
Walmart caught redhanded engaging in internet astroturfing. Webstroturfing? Can that be a thing?