8/28/2006

Promising UW researcher leaving over domestic partner benefits

A promising University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who has won millions of dollars in grants says he is leaving the school, citing its lack of health insurance benefits for his domestic partner.

Rob Carpick, associate professor of engineering, said he will depart for the University of Pennsylvania, which offers domestic partner benefits, at the end of the year. He's taking with him a research portfolio that has won $3.4 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, branches of the U.S. military and private companies since 2000.

"After six and one-half years of working very hard, I found it's problematic to work in an environment where you are not treated equally," Carpick, 37, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Fortunately there are other entities that are more enlightened than the state of Wisconsin on this issue and the University of Pennsylvania is one of them."


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21 comments:

Anonymous said...

really now is this an issue? the article says UW is the only Big 10 school that doesn't offer them. are there really that many people that want these benefits that require the amount of money they need to offer them?

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
This illustrates that you have one track mind. All roads lead to privatization.

Anonymous said...

How many domestic partners should get benefits? If there are multiple domestic partners over 2-3 years do they all get benefits. Can you change partners as often as your underware?

Anonymous said...

Then what happens if people start marrying their pets? Will the vet bills be included? Don't laugh, I heard the guy filling in for Rush ask this.

Anonymous said...

Actually 99.9% of the roads indicate the importance of the public good. Where would this country be with only private roads?

Anonymous said...

What's Italy about the size of Illinois? We use our interstate systems as part of our national defense system. That is what is keeping terrorists out of our country since 9/11/01.

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
FREEDOM MY ASS!

I'm not FREE.. When I have to spend all my waking hours guarding against the next scam artist around the corner.

I'm not FREE.. When I don't know what polluters are putting in my drinking water.

I'm not FREE.. When More and more power is concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer individuals who wield it to push wages down and divert peoples attention from the real issues.

I'm not FREE.. When I need gasolene to get to my work and the price is going so high I can barely afford it.

Your idea of FEEDOM Sucks.
(nothing personal)

Anonymous said...

We are a country of immigrants. You sound like a John Bircher. I thought you were a libertarian?

Anonymous said...

Cato:

How much goddamn freedom do you need? The US is the freest of the free countries in the world. What other freedoms are you looking for? What freedoms are you lacking? What freedoms have been taken away? We got wing nuts on the right and left bellowing about their freedoms being taken away and they got more freedom than they know what to do with.

Andy Rand said...

I'm plenty free to fail miserably.
I just don't need people like you making it harder and harder to succeed.
Your vision of freedom is nothing more than real life version of King of the Hill. The more people you can trample under you feet the more "sucessful" you are.
And yes, when I get old enough to need it, I want someone to change my diapers if I can't.

If you had a mature vision of Freedom, you'd know that it doesn't mean do what ever the hell you please!

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
I'll bet you don't have kids.

Here's the CATO:/Bush/Chaney personal responsibility future.

Healthcare: Personal savings account.
Retirement: IRAs
Education: Private Tuition
Add Housing, Food, Insurance, Gas Heat and Electricity to the family budget and your in the hole half way throught the month.
Then put your lower wages into the mix to pay for "higher" profits for
business bottom lines and you have an economy that will collapse because of the inevitable layoffs. and lessoning of demand from the middle class.
Bottom line: only the rich will prosper and get richer, the middle class will disappear and the poor will grow by leaps and bounds.

Groups and communities organized to accomplish together what individuals cannot accomplish alone. That's the purpose of government, not to limit your "Freedom".
There'd be no roads in Northern WI because there would be no profit motive to build them. The government roads create opportunities. Whenever there's a new road economic growth shortly follows. You only have to look at Hudson to see that. Before the interstate was complete. Hudson was sleepy hollow.

And whose gonna wipe your ass when your arms don't work?

Andy Rand said...

I forgot to point out the Private Economic stimulus package for Hudson.
The St. Croix Meadows Dog Track. Now that's how you succeed at building a better community, with a $39 Million pile of weeds.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see that Andyrand is so worried about price gouging. Since his wife is an art teacher for the Hudson Public Schools, you never hear him argue that the cost of a "public" education is too high! I noticed he didn't complain about the high cost of health care either since the taxpayers of Hudson pick-up the tab when any member of his family has a medical problem. How is it that you spell HYPOCRISY again Andy?

Andy Rand said...

Anon:
How do you spell HYPOCRISY?-- Luke N. Onimous. By the way, my wife couldn't draw a stick man to save her life. Your sluething skills are sorely lacking. I suggest you stick to your daytime non-job! Detective work is not your calling Columbo.
(A substantial number of expletives
deleted) .........

Andy Rand said...

CATO:

"Unfourtently the Bush/Cheney "responsibility" of the future is nothing like that and what you said is clearly ignoring the facts of the situtation."

I beg to differ. Why is it becoming that there will soon be no such thing as a company sponsored pension?
It's my contention that much of the wealth that corporarions create is skimmed away during the complex activity of mergers and acquisitions. This is wealth that could have remained with the company, funded pensions, and maintained worker loyalty.
These types of activities are indeed promoted by the Bush/Chaney Admin.
Add to that the scammers who unscrupulously milk Medicare to the detriment of those who really need the aid. I believe this is a great part of our health care crisis.
Creating personal accounts to replace traditional pensions etc. is just passing the cost from corporations to workers. Realistically, workers cannot afford to fund all these accounts adaquately and maintain a reasonable "middle class" lifestyle at the same time.

O.T. Question?
Why is it that you don't blog on OTBL since they'd tend to agree with you much more?

Anonymous said...

Luke, N Onimous, Columbo have no skills, other than having an overinflated sadistic ego. I haven't seen one issue that they have even been close to right. That's why they pathologically lie.

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
1. I didn't ask you not to post here, I asked you why you do? You still haven't answered, and I didn't think I asked in a mean spirited way. I'm curious why you don't cavort with bloggers that share your views?
If I didn't want you posting, I would have deleted your comments long ago even though that would go against my belief in allowing everyone to express their opinion.(within some very broad limits. Having ideas contrary to mine not being one of them.)I often find your comments interesting, and at times educational.

You said:
"You go on about corporations not paying what you think they "ought" to pay their workers, when in reality they can choose to work SOMEWHERE ELSE that has benefits (as explained in THIS VERY ARTICLE)."


Benefits paid by corporations are the fruits of the political activities of Unions for the last 100 years. As Unions erode so to do benefits, wages and the American standard of living. The concept of a 5 day workweek, vacations, unemployment insurance, workman's compensation, penions and employer paid health benefits and disability insurance are all the result of labor's struggle thoughout the last century. At the turn of the last century factory workers worked 6 days a week 12hr.s a day for $1/day.They were shot for demanding better wages. The rise in the American standard of living for workers had absolutely nothing to do with competition, it had to do with the political power gained by unions, and if you consider that socialist I don't give a shit. People in this country are too stupid to see that they are voting their own standard of living down the toilet by electing clowns like Bush and Chaney.
I blame the unrestricted glut of mergers and acquisitions during which millions are stolen due to insider trading on the policies of these clowns and people like you who support those policies.
Very soon you will be hearing how the "Free" Oil market was manipulated by BP and others. Once hugh multinational corporations start calling the shots, democracy is out the window, as they own the government. Even now we have the best government money can buy.
I will say this. So far, at least in theory, I have a say in what government does because I can vote.
I can't vote on the Board of Exxon, Shell or British Petroleum.
Something in an earlier comment of your even lead me to believe that you don't believe in Democracy, you believe in the Republic. So this talk of spreading Democracy and Freedom around the world is just one big farce.

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
Check out the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press today. See which side of the argument the article supports!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andy Rand said...

CATO:

You said:

"Fascists seek to bind the country together, and uses as means corporatations to accomplish their ends. Why do it yourself when you can pay/force others to do it for you? The trains ran on time under Benito if you recall."

I guess I'd agree with the first sentence and that would make my friends Dick and George Fascists.
But where they differ is they pay corporations to make things no work
like Haliburton in Iraq, and the FEMA contractors they failed to instruct properly in Katrina.
So were paying corporations to make government not work.
No trains on time under Bush Chaney.
Nothing works under Bush/Chaney except the corporate gravy train.

Andy Rand said...

What's the DU?

This I know. Halliburton was busy running empty trucks around Iraq a couple years ago because the were paid by the mile.
And what about the Billions is cash that are missing?'
CATO said:
"The no bid contracts were dependent on whether or not there were oil fires. We actually didn't pay them much at all since there was little work to do."

CATO: you need to do some fact checking of your own. I don't know who your propaganda supplier is.

This following was not Halliburton but a company that received less than Halliburton in contracts.
"
(CBS) This story originally aired on Feb. 12, 2006.

The United States has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during its three years in Iraq, and more than $50 billion of it has gone to private contractors hired to guard bases, drive trucks, feed and shelter the troops and rebuild the country. "
"The $2 million given to Custer Battles was the first installment on a contract to provide security at Baghdad International Airport. The company had been started by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger and Mike Battles, an unsuccessful congressional candidate from Rhode Island who claimed to be active in the Republican Party and have connections at the White House. They arrived in Baghdad with no money. Yet within a year they landed $100 million in contracts."
"Complaints about Custer Battles performance at the airport began almost immediately. Col. Richard Ballard, the top inspector general for the Army in Iraq, was assigned to see if the company was living up to its contract, such as it was.

"And the contract looked to me like something that you and I would write over a bottle of vodka," Ballard says. "Complete with all the spelling and syntax errors and annexes, to be filled in later. They presented it the next day, and they got awarded a — about a $15 million contract."

In a memo obtained by 60 Minutes, the airport's director of security wrote to the Coalition Authority: "Custer Battles has shown themselves to be unresponsive, uncooperative, incompetent, deceitful, manipulative and war profiteers. Other than that they are swell fellows."

See http://tinyurl.com/bzxrf

Update to story:
" But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, in a ruling made public Friday, ruled that Custer Battles’ accusers failed to prove that the U.S. government was ever defrauded. Any fraud that occurred was perpetrated instead against the Coalition Provisional Authority, formed shortly after the war to run Iraq during the occupation until an Iraqi government was established.

Ellis ruled that the trial evidence failed to show that the U.S. government was the actual victim, even though U.S. taxpayers ultimately footed the bill.

It is quite apparent that Judge Ellis sees the blatant wrongdoing by Custer Battles but because the CPA, in his opinion, was not shown to be a U.S.-entity, he overturned the decision. The New York Times noted today that the Justice Department "said that some of the Custer Battles invoices were indeed claims against the American treasury and that the False Claims Act applied." That was from Bush’s Justice Department in a flash of honesty.

From the Boston Globe:

In his ruling, though, Ellis makes clear that he is overturning the verdict only on the technical question of whether the CPA is a U.S. entity.

"If the CPA was a U.S. entity, the result differs dramatically," Ellis wrote."
http://tinyurl.com/j86wz

Why don't I ever hear about this kind of Government waste from you?


Again I don't know what DU is?
Democratic ????

Andy Rand said...

CATO:
I have to plead innocent to parroting DU talking points since I've never heard of the DU.

For once I see your point about the connection of corporate welfare and big government. But I fear your minimalist solution would create far greater problems that it would solve.