The story has played out often under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Designed to protect employee benefits, the law has been used by employers as a shield against suits.
Federal appeals courts, interpreting Supreme Court decisions dating to 1993, consistently have said companies that offer health, life and retirement benefits under ERISA cannot be sued for large amounts of money, or damages. Instead, they can be sued only for typically smaller sums such as Amschwand's insurance premiums.
Employers use federal law to deny benefits
Bush-Cheney Crony Got Iraq Oil Deal
Ray Hunt, the Texas oil man who landed a controversial oil production deal with Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, has enjoyed close political and business ties with Vice President Dick Cheney dating back a decade – and to the Bush family since the 1970s.
“Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that contrary to the denials of Administration officials, advisors to the President and officials in the State and Commerce Departments knew about Hunt Oil’s interest in the Kurdish region months before the contract was executed,” Waxman wrote.
Waxman said the Hunt-Kurdish case also raised questions about the veracity of similar administration denials about its role in arranging more recent contracts between Iraq and major U.S. and multinational oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.
Plus, there’s the longstanding suspicion that oil was a principal, though unstated, motive behind the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, which sits on the world’s second-largest oil reserves.
Administration officials – and much of the mainstream U.S. media – have ridiculed the oil motive charge as a conspiracy theory.
Journalist Charges Censorship by US Military in Fallujah
"I made them copies, but then one of the Marines came in and told me to delete my memory card after I give them the photos, and I refused," Miller told IPS, "I told the NCIS that if they forced me to delete them, I would stop sharing them. So they stopped pressing that issue."
Vendor Misinformation in the E-Voting World
At this point, the scientific evidence is in, it's overwhelming, and it's indisputable. The current generation of DRE voting systems have a wide variety of dangerous security flaws. There's simply no justification for the vendors to be making excuses or otherwise downplaying the clear scientific consensus on the quality of their products.
The United States Constitution
TVNL Comment: On this so called "Independence" Day the majority of Americans who feel there is cause to celebrate will most likely to continue to wrap the flag around their eyes and ears as not to see what their nation actually stands for...or how it actually conducts itself in real life. Well here is my comment about the flag...screw the damn flag...it is a symbol of something that no longer exists. People should not honor a flag or a symbol. America's so called greatness is based on one thing and one thing alone...the US Constitution. We have a person occupying the office of US President who referred to this sacred document as a "goddamned piece of paper". A real American would have made a noose out of the nearest flag and hanged George W. Bush for saying that...and for his 8 year assault on the Constitution. So today...put the damn flags down...stop celebrating...stop drinking...stop pigging out...and read the Constitution for a change. Then maybe you will understand why the people who now occupy and control the U.S. government are the absolute enemies of our so called great nation. Wake up...and join real American patriots...like me...in fighting against their criminal assault of our true independence, freedom and liberty! - Jesse Richard - Editor, TvNewsLIES.org.
Iraq oil deals fulfill Cheney’s goals
In Ron Suskind’s 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, O’Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council (NSC) meeting. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.
At that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.
TVNL Comment: This is one reason why Cheney delivered 9/11 to to the world. Yes...we are pointing a finger at Dick Cheney as a key player in the false flag operation known as 9/11.
Waxman: White House Knew Of Iraqi Oil Deal
In September 2007, the Kurdish Regional Government, which runs the semi-autonomous region of Northern Iraq, announced that it had entered into an oil contract with U.S.-based Hunt Oil. The deal complicated negotiations over a revenue-sharing agreement and the Bush administration declared itself shocked at the news. “I know nothing about the deal,” said President Bush.
Documents uncovered by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform indicate that the White House probably shouldn’t have been so surprised.
It Was Oil, All Along
No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except ... guess who?
Fast forward to Cheney's first heady days in the White House. The oil industry and other energy conglomerates were handed backdoor keys to the White House, and their CEO's and lobbyists were trooping in and out for meetings with their old pal, now Vice President Cheney. The meetings were secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq - and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.
Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days.
TVNL Comment: We have been saying from the first day our website was published, that Dick Cheney's secret oil meetings hold the proof that 9/11 was part of the plan all along. Without 9/11 the Dick Cheney energy plan could not have gone forward. For the first time in history energy policy meetings were held in secret. Why do you think that is? Why was a shredding company truck spotted outside Cheney's residence?
Iraq by the numbers: key figures in the war
-Iraqi deaths in May from war-related violence:
At least 554 Iraqis were killed or found dead in June in war-related violence, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press. That was a slight increase over the May figure of 515, according to the AP tally.
-Assassinated Iraqi academics: 374.
-Journalists killed on assignment as of June 30, 2008: 129.
Page 930 of 965
