I hope it passes. We seriously have some catching up to the rest of the world when it comes to parental leave.

Maternity/parental leave as a paid vacation is a hilarious idea. What could ever BE more vacation-like than taking care of a newborn who eats every two hours around the clock?

@1: So basically you are saying that employees will start having kids just to take advantage of this time off? Or are you saying that taking care of a newborn is basically a vacation?

You don't get much human contact, do you?

Basic parental leave needs to come through an expansion of Social Security instead of through a patchwork of the whims of individual employers. Large employers offering this benefit to professional, fulltime staff should be celebrated as a good thing, but it still does not help those who probably need this the most--employees working part time or for lower wages or for smaller organizations.

@1 You're predictably clueless.Taking care of a new born is anything but a vacation. It's probably harder than anything you've done your entire life from the look of things.

@7: So families with only one parent, or households that can not survive on one income just don't matter, or simply are not wealthy enough to be worth caring about in your eyes? Is your education about society solely based on Leave It To Beaver reruns?

Seriously, are you a child, or a complete shut in? Which is it?

If you can't afford the time off to take care of your newborn, you shouldn't have had the kid in the first place. To ask taxpayers to subsidize your poor choice is unfair to those taxpayers who weren't boneheads.

This doesn't seem like a very environmentally-friendly policy. Should we really be encouraging people to have more children? This will also lead to higher rents. Is that what we want?

I'm only somewhat kidding.

Fyi, let me explain the concept of an employee benefit. An employer, wanting to attract or retain employees sweetens the salary or wage pot. Vacation time, sick days, on or offsite exercise facilities, compensation for ongoing education, retirement funds and, yes, paid leave to bear or care for a child- these are benefits. The law doesn't require the employer offer them. They aren't your right as an employee. Except as the terms of your employment contract dictate, they can be reduced or eliminated as the employers will dictates.

Only, in this case, the incentive is needless. Applicants for government work outstrip demand for positions. Turnover isn't high. What need is the county or city to attract or retain applicants for their sinecure jobs trying to meet, for goodness sake?

"If you can't afford the time off to take care of your newborn, you shouldn't have had the kid in the first place"

Seattleblahs, just because that's the excuse your highly theoretical wife keeps using for not having sex with you, that doesn't mean it's true. She's just saying that because she's repelled by your touch

Seattleblues - What you don't seem to understand is that on the world stage, we are a giant international JOKE based on how we treat our poor, our children, families and our social safety net in general. Richest country in the history of our planet and we glibly let our citizens die of preventable diseases or languish in prison for being born poor in the name of personal responsibility. (go 'merika!) Your comments reflect our larger national lack of giving-a-shit for anything other than the almighty and apparently holy quest for individual wealth. What you are overlooking is that in all the countries where they put their money where their professed values are, the entire society benefits far, far over and above the costs. Countries that fund parental leave, support young families and fund programs like Head Start and full pre-K and full-day kindergarten have measurably better outcomes and spend a pittance compared to our option of fully funding prisons instead. Our country's real values are being shouted to the world here, and I for one am ashamed. The sentiment all your comments can be summed up as: I've got mine and if your luck was worse than mine I don't give a fuck, it means you must be stupid, ergo worthless. All your responses have a moral personal component to them that only seem to apply to everyone but you. Why is that? Why do you bother to live in a country where you feel like you're supporting undeserving deadbeats? Please, go or somewhere where your ideals and values are fully in force and their effects can be seen for how well they actually serve their populations and communities.

Next time some weather disaster hits, imagine yourself amidst the flood/hurricane/earthquake destruction having lost everything and everyone you have. If your professed values were the same for the entire country, the country would happily let you and all affected by the disaster perish 'cuz they didn't plan for the natural disaster. The logic you keep trying to apply to personal accountability only ever applies to others. You benefit daily in immeasurable ways from tax based things society has built. Strong families - healthy kids that are being well cared for, are safe and have enough to eat so they don't become a drain on society later - are a community asset. But they are one that if not tended and maintained (an expense...) become a liability. We pay for our shit as a society - we reap our values one way or another. Police are a social societal safety net; we could just tell victims of crime to bugger off, they must have brought the crime on themselves from lack of preparedness and planning, right? So what if you were robbed, you just didn't purchase the right protection or insurance or your alarm system wasn't good enough. So what if your family member was attacked and killed? It meant you didn't care enough about their personal security to pay someone to protect them, or your gun drawing skills too slow. So what if you were hit by a car? You must not have been looking or were walking too close to the road or didn't have bright enough clothes on ad infinitum. Why is it that your ideals of personal responsibility only apply to everyone else? Your professed values uniquely place you as a recipient of all of what society invests in. What I never hear is the the other side of the societal contract where your rights get balanced by your responsibilities as a citizen. How do you deserve any of society's benefits when you deny your responsibilities? Every post I've ever read by you reads like it was written from the perspective of my 9yo when he didn't want to have to do *his* chores yet everyone else was supposed to keep doing the ones that supported him...

Stop replying to trolls. Ban the trolls.

JonnoN - Too right -sorry, but that one on particular was a long time in coming:p

@13

First, I couldn't possibly care any less what other nations think about how we Americans choose to govern ourselves. Seeking no input into myself how they do so, I respectfully suggest they likewise mind their own business.

Second, you have it backwards. The half or so filing taxes who actually pay any taxes,
like me, are the ones paying for government. And that has not a single damn thing to do with being lucky. When scum like Obama tell me I didn't build my business, his essential unfitness for presidential authority in this country is made crystal clear.

Should we help those truly less fortunate? Should we give kids the fairest chance to overcome poor upbringing by layabouts professionally on public assistance? Absolutely. I just disagree with most of what you call help, since all it does is confirm generational poverty and bad life choices. I'd far rather teach someone to fish than how to steal fish from those.who worked to catch them.

Oh Seattleblahs. I love it when you get all huffy and start throwing cliches around.

I think the employer has to give the single person, married person, or person with kids to the same compensation for the same amount of work. Same health benefit stipend for everyone. Or, compensate the sick or well person equally, so unused sick days should be bought back at 80%.

How would the city government use taxes to help all children in the city? Give everyone who has a baby a $1,000 to help out, buy a free carseat, pay for preschool? I don't know, but if the taxes come from everyone, it better benefit everyone.

See, you are a bad person, so to you it matters why the person needs time off to raise a child, not that it is simply needed. It is like making sure that only people who never made bad decisions at the soup kitchen get fed.

Since you are fundamentally a bad, selfish, spiteful person, you will simply never see the value in a provision that helps people raise better families just for the sake of helping. You need to personally approve why that person get help, which makes you a bad, selfish person

Hey, Seattleblues! Remember that time you proposed a bet regarding the demographics of white victims of hate crimes? As I recall, you are so INSISTENT that hate crime laws are only used to give special rights to minorities that you suggested that the victims of anti-white hate crimes are disproportionately queer. (The implication being that if straight people are attacked for being white, the justice system processes it as simple assault and doesn't invoke hate crime laws in their defense.) You then offered me a bet on that, a bet which I intend to accept.

@22: And yes, I will happily bet my next paycheck on the percentage of overlap. I'll bet you US$500.00 that you CANNOT find reliable evidence that:
-nationwide, the victims of anti-white hate crimes are significantly (p<0.10, one-tailed t-test) enriched in homosexuals relative to the white (non-Latin@) American population as a whole.

Do we have a deal, Seattleblues? I'll give you, say, one calendar week in which to find the evidence, which should be more than sufficient for a simple bit of searching. Heck, we can even make it a whole calendar month if you don't want to be rushed. I figure if you're so certain that you're telling the truth, you should have no problem putting your money where your mouth is. So are you going to put up, or are you going to shut up?

p<0.10 is a pretty generous confidence level, too. Plenty of people will only reject H0 in favor of Ha at p<0.05, or even p<0.01. And if you don't know what any of this means, well, maybe you should study some very basic statistics before you go on about how all statistics are lies.

(original)
One month, US$500.00, even-odds payout, a simple wager on the facts. Seattleblues, do we have a bet? Or do you not believe the things you pass off as fact? Put up or shut up.

@Kid vl

Nope. You're right. There's a nationwide rash of thought crime directed against Caucasians. Why, I myself was assaulted by a black purse wielding fag yelling honkey at me just today! The day before a Mexican waiter called me racist names while throwing the burrito I ordered at me. It's damned dangerous out there!

You know at some level of cognition that hate crimes, or more accurately thought crimes, were invented to protect traditionally discriminated against people. And faggots and other deviant perverts. This is true whatever your ability to fit hints of reality into the twisted narrative liberals must tell themselves merely to keep half believing their infantile ideas. Believe whatever cooked up data you erroneously require to support your reality deficient worldview boy. No skin off my nose.

@22: So...what you're saying is that you ARE too much of a wuss to take me up on the bet you initially offered. Either that or you KNOW that your insinuation (that anti-white hate crimes are only prosecuted as such if the victim is queer) is a filthy despicable lie. How very like a little bitch of you, Seattleblues. Ah well, if you ever do wish to put your money where your mouth is, I'll happily take you up on that bet. You know, if you ever do grow the balls necessary to do that.

You know, just because YOU PERSONALLY have never been the victim of a hate crime doesn't mean that they don't happen to people like you. (And remember, the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.) According to the FBI, in 2013 there were 728 anti-white hate crimes, 116 anti-Christian hate crimes, and 24 anti-heterosexual hate crimes reported. You'd ADMITTED THAT previously and played it off as being in accordance with your "only minorities get protected" opinion. It seems that your memory is so feeble that if I fail to post the same facts in every post I make, you conveniently forget them and proceed to make me cite them again in order to correct you.

It is true that hate crime laws were originally devised to protect minorities from persecution, just the same way that exceptions for religious headgear were originally for the benefit of Jews, and the same way that the Establishment Clause was originally intended to prevent Christians of one denomination from being privileged over any other. But because our traditions of pluralism and equal protection mandate that everyone must be treated equally under the law, those same rights and protections were given to ALL groups, not just the ones who particularly needed them. And thus Sikhs and Pastafarians can get their driver's license photos taken while wearing turbans and colanders, and ALL religions, not just Christian ones, are given equal footing in America, and it is just as much a crime to attack someone for being white as it is to attack someone for being black. This is equality, Seattleblues!
Now we can debate whether hate crime laws are a good idea, whether the nature of a criminal's mens rea should be interpreted as a threat against an entire demographic group. We can have that discussion if you so choose, though I suspect we may disagree. However, the claim you have made is that hate crime laws give unfair privileges to minorities, privileges which majority demographics are denied, and this claim is categorically false by any measure. The evidence has been very clear in this regard, and yet you refuse to accept it because it goes against your opinions, which brings me to my final point.

It seems you have fallen back on ignoring any data or evidence you dislike by asserting that it is false or faked or doctored in some way, without providing any reasoning or evidence that this should be so. This is where I must again say to you: CONTRA PRINCIPIA NEGANTEM NON EST DISPUTANDUM. That is Latin for "against those who deny the principles there can be no debate". We cannot have a civilized debate on the facts if one of us insists on denying any facts he finds distasteful.
It is quite strange indeed that the one who claims to be a defender of civilization fighting against the "reality deficient" is the one who is denying facts, ignoring evidence, and generally insisting that all records, numbers, and statistics are lies. Empiricism is the foundation of the scientific tradition; civilization was not built on the premise that we should ignore any evidence we don't like. Perhaps our different understandings of this principle are why I am a scientist and you are a contractor-cum-landlord.

To all persons in this comment thread who feel like paid parental leave will somehow make people have tons of poorly planned progeny - You are all idiots.

One thing we know about human civilizations is that when the standard of living goes up, fertility rates go down. You want people to stop having unplanned or poorly planned children? Easy: make comprehensive sex education mandatory, offer free access to abortion (free not only as in regulation but also as in money), subsidize higher education so that poor people can afford it and make sure everyone gets paid a living wage for all jobs and forms of employment. Poor people will be less poor, crime rates will go down and they will have fewer children. It's a win for all but we all know that 'Murika would rather continue to punch itself repeatedly in the nose and complain when it hurts rather than fix the problem.

"Why, I myself was assaulted by a black purse wielding fag yelling honkey at me just today! The day before a Mexican waiter called me racist names while throwing the burrito I ordered at me. "

Poor Seattleblahs. Always under attack. Yet I, who is about as "Caucasian" as they come, am able to negotiate Mexican restaurants and black men of indeterminate gender identity just fine.

Could it just be that you are a jerk?