is tainted money and you will sleep better every night. More clients will come.

I won't compromise my principles by writing marketing content for companies that engage in things I find unethical. Not for any amount of money. I also won't write for right-wing politicians, porn sites, and any sites that promote products that can harm customers. I don't need the money that much, and other clients will appear.

What kind of writing do you do? We're still struggling to make our website fly.

always working with a web designer. The process is quite expensive, but it works for our clients. Really small businesses, though, generally can't afford the website packages we produce.

Since I'm the designer (not the tech) it's quite a learning experience.

than anyone. Do some research on SEO on the Internet and put what you learn into practice. You can also find some tips on website content at the link to my web content blog in my signature line. Finally, don't be afraid to create longer content on your site. Google likes that, and that's perhaps the most important factor.

But I struggle and I learn. Having worked in news for so many years, I learned brevity and I can pare a sentence to a word; I'm learning to fill with adjectives and hopefully the right ones.

Linking is a total mystery to me. How to have others link to me and how to link to the right sites. Little by little (the birdie builds its nest--my mother's favorite saying)

that teach how to write code for free. A good one is Tizag, another is the W3 school. Worth checking out. You can teach yourself.

computer literate. Thanks. I'll check them both out!

You don't have to be computer literate. These websites teach from scratch. I checked them out just because I was curious. It turned into a hobby. But you can look up how to do specific things if you're not into learning a lot.

I have a free website on Google--for things like linking I just go to html on my site, and look up specific html coding on the web. Pretty cheap! Very nice of Google to give away websites for free.

I am having issues right now of my various website names linking to google. What a drag! Need to get back into it and fix that.

You don't have to be computer literate--just be able to search, experiment, and follow directions on the web.

I do not consider myself to be computer literate.

so you have a website on google just for linking? Or you are linking all your websites to google site? Thanks for the tip!

It's an evil practice. Your refusal proves that you are an honorable person with a true conscience.



Back during the Vietnam War era, many who opposed the war refused to work for companies connected to the defense industry.

Or does the employee have a go-no-go option? I can't see why an employee would elect to take this "insurance."

Sometimes, they do that by providing a smaller benefit to the employee, but that benefit ends if the employee no longer works for the company, but the "death insurance" still pays the company whenever that person dies.

Ugly stuff, IMO.

It's coercive, but costs the employee no money, so most agree. They want the job, after all.

so a bank insures people that it employs and hopes they die young?
-
bank vs insurance company?
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must be a tax write off somewhere too.
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Gives new meaning to an employee who is "willing to die for his company".

Payouts from life insurance are non-taxable. And the cost of the policies is quite low, giving the banks a very, very high return on their investment.

associated with a couple of banks. Suicides, mostly. Odd, huh?

on their various life insurance policies. Wonder if there even is a suicide clause in those types of life insurance policies.

in most life insurance policies, usually on a 1-year basis. If the insured commits suicide within the first year, there is no payout. Beyond the limit, the cause of death has no effect on the payout. I suppose that varies from policy to policy and maybe state to state.

Those Greeters you might see as you enter that hands you your shopping cart are the cash cows for them. Their bragging about hiring the elderly has a dark side most people are unaware of.

I am not trying to argue it doesn't happen - I just don't understand something about how it works.

If these policies on the greeters are a cash cow for walmart, then they must be a loss for the insurance company. So why would the insurance companies offer policies that are going to consistently lose themselves money?

Might be a blanket policy for all store employees. With 1,000 in the organization a few deaths among the eldery may not even show up on the insurace companies screen as being unusal.

that they exploited the tax law. Companies could deduct the cost of the policies but
any payment received by the company in the event of an employee death was tax-free.
This provided companies with a way to effectively shield some corporate income from
taxes. This loophole was largely but not completely fixed for policies starting in 2006
by the COLI Best Practices provision of the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

For a more extensive discussion of the issue see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate-owned_life_insurance

and call it deadpeasants.com
use it to expose their shitty practice

The major problem our society faces is the lack of the courage of their convictions. Congratulations.

And then lets the person know why you made the decisions you did. There are so few people who really do that -- whether by conscious choice or by need.

I'm that way, and my family doesn't really understand it. To them it's "just a business deal" or "just a job". They can't (or refuse to) see the impact of anything past the end of their nose.

hiring people or giving insurance policies to people you hope or think will die.
-
edit: or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller

No defense contractors, no health insurance companies, no prisons. Probably doesn't amount to shit, but if everyone cleaned up his/her own little corner of the world...

If it has other benefits, so much the better.

good job:

Being able to hold your head high and look yourself in the mirror = Priceless.

rob the poor, give to the rich. Trickle down? More like trickle on.

...in fact they invented it by financing both sides of their wars for fun and profit. But this is particularly ghoulish though. How can it be legal to require an employee to sign such an insurance policy as a condition of working there?

- Good on ya!

K&R

were made in 2006, but there is still plenty of profit and tax savings in using these practices. Now that I've learned some more about it, I'll be paying more attention to it.

I have done the same thing for the same reaso more than once in my career.

"I find this to be a predatory business practice and oppose it on principle. That's what I told my client,"

I did learn, however, and learned it the hard way, that it is better to simply turn it down without making an issue of why you are doing so. Giving offense to others in the business community is simply not a good idea. It doesn't matter that you are right and he is wrong, which I agree was the case with your incident, you still made an enemy when you did not need to do so, since he was almost certainly offended to be told that he was a "predatory business" and will not be doing you any good in the business community.

If he is capable of predatory business practices he may decide that you, having offended him, should become his prey.

My communication was with my web designer client. I can promise you that he did not pass my comments on to the primary client. He may find someone else to do the writing.

That web designer knows me very well. I'm candid and blunt in my communications with him. I also make him money, so he keeps right on offering me work. Most of the time, I take it. Occasionally, I do not, and I always explain why. He didn't listen to me for one website, which gave him lots of work and then stiffed him, as I suggested it might.

He's learning to trust my instincts about clients. I have turned down quite a few projects over time. I have plenty more I can do.

I aplologize for offering you advice.

especially when it affects your livelihood. Each of us, in our own way, can stop supporting these terrible practices. While the businesses who continue these practices will eventually find someone to sell them, it shouldn't be easy for them nor should they have the best. As consumers, we too can negatively affect their bottom line.

While that's basically the free market approach, for now it's all we have and it works to some extent. What we need are some real regulations against these practices and a healthy raise in the minimum wage.

We need about 300 million more people that think like that in this country.

Truly.

Unfortunately, you can't pay your bills with ethics, but it sure makes it easier to look at yourself in the mirror, doesn't it? And we can hope that there are others out there like you who will help get the word out that people with TRUE values still exist.

how about taking the job and be a whistle blower later on? You not taking the job just results in someone else, probably someone with lower ethical standards, taking the job.

Progress!!

the companies murder their employees, are you? And how does the company profit? Are the insurance companies losing money on the policies? Doesn't sound like insurance companies I know of to lose money. The only way for the company and the insurance company to make money is for other people to be subsidizing the cost of the policies.

This kind of sounds like a plus for older people looking for work to me.

So what's the harm to the employee, how is it predatory, what am I missing?

but if the tax advantage to the bank is greater to the bank than the cost of coverage..... the insurance company can be paid a little more than would be the case without the tax advantage. Win, win. except for the employee

I've turned down contracts on principle, too. It does suck about needing the money, but you'll be rewarded with better conscience.

Not nearly enough people with principles left. So many people turning a blind eye is what allows this kind of despicable behavior to go forward.

Here's what I linked:

I detailed the list of egregiously antidemocratic and in many cases even fascistic policies that I cannot in good conscience support...

policies up to and including mass surveillance, imprisonment and even murder of human beings without due process, and direct assaults on the Constitution of the United States of America....

...and you automatically concluded, based on THAT list, that I won't be voting for...the Democrat.

in your sig line.

the practice is foul any way you look at it.

however, to find that they have been legalized by the raidcally Republican State Legislature in the last ten or so years.

Unfortunately, the rulers keep most people so financially desperate that they can't see any way to refuse evil work.

Still, an awful lot of people who *could* make such choices don't, because they are lured by the fact that doing evil usually pays way better than doing good or than at least doing only what is relatively neutral.

Well done!

And thanks for being you.

that companies take out on their employees without the employee's knowledge or permission. Supposedly it covers the cost of training a new employee if the old one has inconveniently died.

This is a little more egregious since the policies continue once the peasant is no longer working for the bank and has retired. It's just another money grab.

Good for you anyhow, for turning them down.

still being done, and in large numbers, by banks and other corporations.

they had been made illegal. Imo, they should have been. Betting on people dying, the younger they die the better for the gamblers is ghoulish, and sick which seemed to be the general consensus of most rational people at the time. Shameful they are still betting on people dying. Says something about this country that isn't particularly good.

change things, but the bad guys seem unstoppable.

It was in that doc. that I first saw Elizabeth Warren.

got to deduct premiums paid on the policies and the benefit when paid was not taxable.

Therefore their purpose in many cases was to avoid corporate income tax.

Rules was changed to close this 'loophole'.

I, too, write web content and there are some companies that I have refused to write for.

Thanks for refusing to abet sociopathology.

unimaginably despicable.

Is the employee still productive enough to keep alive or will the employer tell their health insurance company to deny medical care to a sick or injured employee so that they can receive the financial windfall as a beneficiary?

My oldest son just started a new job. And one of the reasons it was easy for
him to be wooed away from his previous company (which designs apps for smart phones) was that they accepted a job
to design an app for a company that practiced predatory lending at usurious rates.
He asked the company why they were accepting a job like that--and was given the option
not to work on the project, but it still bothered him. So, it made it a lot easier to
accept the new job for another company when it came along.

How does this disadvantage the employee?

Presuming the employee doesn't pay for the policy, how are they hurt? I can see arguing that the business could use the premiums in better ways — like compensating their employees better — but that would still be at the business' option (and one they'd probably not take up).

It may be ghoulish, but it's still a shell game between the business and the insurance company.

What am I missing here?

from taxes. See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5085445

And I enjoyed the web talk too.