Daily Archives: February 5, 2014

Economy, Obamacare, Politics

Obamacare, So Much For Building The Middle Class

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Remember the meme last week coming from The White House? Income inequality, needing to grow the middle class. Oh, and raising the minimum minimum wage cartoon2wage. Today? Not so much. Today, everything most conservatives knew would happen under Obamacare, was confirmed by the CBO. The director of the Congressional Budget Office said today that Obamacare will cause the loss of 2.5 million jobs, and, will cause people to migrate from full-time positions to part-time positions. Obama and his media aren’t too concerned about that. In fact, they are saying this is good news. This is a new “freedom.” Americans now have “new choices, new options.” Americans now have the freedom to choose either not to work, or to work less. And, the less they work and the less they make,  the more government subsidies they will get. And conversely, the more they make, the less government subsidies they will get. And higher taxes for richer households also reduce the incentive to work. So now, faced with the possibility of moving up that economic ladder, and because of the consequences of making more money, people will now weigh whether it is worth it for them to take that new job or promotion that pays a few thousand dollars more if it means losing more than that in subsidies. Paul Ryan nailed it by calling it a “poverty trap.”

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said the nonpartisan report does find that the healthcare law creates a disincentive for working. “The act creates a disincentive to work relative to the case were the law not in place,” he said.

Does that sound like a plan to build the middle class? Does it sound like a plan to encourage moving up the economic ladder? Of course it doesn’t. And worse, Obamacare is doing exactly as it was designed to do. Aside from ruining the private sector health insurance and health care industries, it is  building and enlarging the dependent class. Effectively killing the American Dream. Or, replacing it with the progressive version of the American Dream. Which is, for the government to control as much of our lives as it can get away with, and, to grow the number of people dependent on the government, insuring votes from whoever promises them the most.

Sorry to say this, but Barack Obama and his party are overseeing the destruction of this country. Which is why the ACA must be repealed, if not replaced.

Organized Labor, Politics

Government Labor Unions, And You

In real life, when an employer that pays bonuses to its employees does so, it is a reward for either goals met or a job well done. In either case, it is performance based. In government life, that employer-employee relationship is much different. In fact, that kind of relationship does not exist, because of Labor Unions and their contracts.IRS-Building1

Government (public sector) labor unions instead have an incestuous relationship with their employer. Public sector unions provide the greatest percentage of union employment, more than five times higher than private sector. Not surprisingly, Big Labor also supports and provides the greatest percentage of campaign contributions, including boots on the ground, to democratic candidates and incumbents. In short, that relationship becomes a huge money laundering operation, quid pro quo, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. The difference is, the employer, the government, doesn’t pay for it all. You do.

If you already know how this scheme works, it should come as no surprise then that the IRS union, the National Treasury Employees Union, will be getting bonuses. Not based on performance like you and I would expect. The IRS is supposedly under investigation for targeting political opponents of the democrat administration, and, there’s not a whole lot to crow about where the performance of our country is concerned. Nothing seems to be working, including its people.

us-department-of-homeland-security-office_tombstoneBut the union ridiculousness doesn’t stop there. The union that has its grip on Homeland Security (a Labor Union in Homeland Security should make you feel really, really safe) is fighting the the halting of “administratively uncontrollable overtime” for headquarters and training personnel, as well as workers who have been found guilty of abusing the overtime system, responding to a federal investigation that found many employees have boosted their pay with unnecessary and unearned overtime.

Who’s pays this overtime? Not the government, it’s you.