Chalk Another One Up For Obamacare
Oct 19, 2010 Political
Boeing mailed a letter to its employees detailing increases in their health care costs as a result of Obamacare. The company provides very nice plans and under Obamacare they would be considered “Cadillac” plans and subject to the 40% tax the law places on such plans. The increase is expected to affect 90,000 NONUNION employees. Remember, the unions carved out a nice deal in one of the smoke filled back rooms.
This is the second of three reasons the company is changing the way it pays for health care. The others would have been there regardless but the 40% tax weighs heavily on any business. If you want less of something, tax it. We see that here.
Boeing is another in an ever growing list of companies that are either cutting or changing their health care plans as a result of Obamacare. As I see it, the employees will have one of three options.
They can join the union and enjoy the special carve-out (a desired effect of the con game).
They can pay the increase and be thankful they were able to keep what they have.
Or they can vote the miserable pukes who gave us this mess out of office.
90,000 votes can make a big difference in many districts.
Obamacare, not what it was hyped up to be.
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: boeing, health care increases, obamacare, unions
And To Think You Pay Taxes For This
Aug 18, 2010 Political
It is back to school time and this year the lists of supplies that schools send home for children has grown just a little (or maybe a lot) and the growth is to cover items that are supposed to be paid for with our taxes. School supply lists now include reams of paper (office supplies?), paper towels, and toilet paper.
When Emily Cooper headed off to first grade in Moody, Ala., last week, she was prepared with all the stuff on her elementary school’s must-bring list: two double rolls of paper towels, three packages of Clorox wipes, three boxes of baby wipes, two boxes of garbage bags, liquid soap, Kleenex and Ziplocs. CNBC
These are things that are supposed to be bought with the tax dollars that the government confiscates from us. However, mismanagement and bloated unions have gobbled up dollars that should be spent on the items that children are now supposed to bring to school.
This is a crying shame and it is a sneaky way to increase taxes on parents. You see, they pay taxes already, taxes that are supposed to buy these supplies, and then they are forced to pay again in order to actually get the supplies.
Children should not be required to take toilet paper to school. Children should not be required to take reams of paper to school. These are items that should be provided by the school and paid for with the tax dollars collected for that purpose. Of course, some parents do not agree with this (obviously they attended public school):
“We don’t expect Wal-Mart cashiers to buy the plastic bags for our groceries, or the mailman to pay for the gas to deliver our mail,” Ms. Cooper said.
No Ms. Cooper, we do not expect Wal Mart cashiers to pay for the bags because the consumer (those buying products in Wal Mart) are paying for the bags. The cost of bags and other overhead is figured into the expense of running the business and then passed on to consumers. We do not expect the mailman to pay for the gas because the postal service charges for its services and the cost is supposed to cover the operating expenses. Since it is a government entity it is always losing money but the mechanism is in place to pay for the costs associated with business.
Just like there is a mechanism to ensure we can furnish our schools with the supplies needed to operate. We call that mechanism taxes.
Don’t worry though, the Congress made sure it passed a bailout to pay the teacher’s union employees. Thank God they didn’t have to buy anything important like say, toilet paper…
Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: students, taxes, toilet paper, unions
What Happened To The Stimulus Money?
Jun 13, 2010 Political
And why are teacher’s, firefighter’s and police officer’s salaries a federal concern?
The stimulus bill signed into law last February was a 787 billion dollar boondoggle. The total package, with interest on borrowed money, will put the thing over 1 TRILLION dollars. The unfortunate thing is that we got very little for our money and the things it was spent on are NOT things that will stimulate the economy and a lot of them are things states are responsible for.
Obama is pleading with Democrats to pass another 50 BILLION dollars of “emergency” funds to prevent teachers, firefighters and police officers from being laid off.
President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery. Washington Post
The first thing we should realize is that the federal government is not responsible for teachers, firefighters or police officers unless they work for the federal government. The states AND ONLY THE STATES are responsible for the people in these professions who work in the individual states. It is not the responsibility of taxpayers from Maryland to pay for the teachers, firefighters or police officers in Michigan or any other state. Each state is responsible and using federal tax dollars to pay for these things taxes Americans twice for the same thing.
People are taxed by their states to pay for these services and then their federal tax dollars are used to pay for the same services, often because of mismanagement at the state level.
It is up to the states to decide if they can afford to pay for the same level of services or if they will have to be scaled back. The states need to decide whether or not to raise taxes to pay for these things. It is not the responsibility of the federal government and our tax dollars should not be paying it.
This is Obama pushing our tax dollars to the people in the unions. Obama has the support of the teachers and many of the law enforcement and firefighting unions (whether the individual members support him or not) and he wants to ensure he has their votes so he will pay for them with OUR money.
Obama already signed one stimulus into law and that stimulus provided for teachers and for law enforcement.
- $4 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies
- $44.5 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair (State Equalization Fund)
Read the Wiki article and see how much money the stimulus funneled to things that will not, in any way shape or form, stimulate the economy. The total education package was over 90 BILLION dollars.
Obama spent 48.5 BILLION dollars for teachers and law enforcement and now he wants 50 BILLION dollars more. If the stimulus worked as sold then these entities would not need additional money, if we were to accept that the federal government should be paying for them at all.
The stimulus is not stimulating and it is a failure. Obama wants more money to throw at his supporters in the unions at the expense of the taxpayers and our national sovereignty. How much more debt will we accrue before we are totally owned by another country?
It is not the job of the federal government to pay for the salaries of people working for the individual states. The states are solely responsible for these salaries and if they cannot afford them then they need to make the same tough decisions that plenty of private companies have made and lay off employees.
Obama is trying to use OUR money to pay off the unions and to pander for their votes. We should not be paying for these things and it is criminal that we paid for them with the first stimulus.
Let us not keep making the same mistakes by continuing to throw good money after bad on an economic folly.
Never surrender, never submit.
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Tags: failure, firefighter, mini stimulus, Obama, payoffs, police, stimulus, teacher, unions, vote buying
Ford Refuses Bailout Money, Makes Profit
Jan 28, 2010 Political
Ford Motor Company was the only US big three auto maker to trun down the government’s offer of a bailout. The company was in financial trouble just as Chrysler and GM were but decided against taking taxpayer money.
GM and Chrysler took the money and their companies became government property with labor unions owning part of them. Neither has shown a profit and they both continue to bleed money. It is hard to see how they will survive and how taxpayers will ever get their money back (well, the banks will have to pay for it with a fee).
Ford showed a profit of $2.7 billion, its first annual profit in four years.
The company took action in the tough market and worked on a business plan that allowed it to make money, on its own and without politicians, (few of whom have business experience) running the show.
This is what happens when the free market is allowed to work. Ford would have failed on its own or succeeded on its own and that is how it should be. No business is too big to fail.
[note]One could argue Ford benefited from the cash for clunkers program but all auto makers had equal access to that program[/note]
I don’t think that Congress will catch on and neither will the progressives because they do not care about success, they care about control.
I love my Jeep but will not buy another. I will not buy a vehicle from a company that took my tax dollars and I really don’t care if they go belly up. I will buy from a company that was responsible and did not take tax dollars.
Looking at the financial status of the big three, it looks like I am not the only one who feels that way.
Ford makes some nice SUVs…
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Tags: bailouts, chrysler, ford, gm, government, taxpayers, unions
Unions Are Obstructive (And P.O.S. Too)
Aug 8, 2009 Political
Well, the unions feel that they are going to get back some membership, now that they have installed Barama the Acquiescent in the White House. In return for their thuggish prescence at the Town Hall meetings, where they can intimidate people with their prescence, Hussein can and will push through laws that unlawfully favor labor unions, and force people to join.
The first and most evident proposed law is the Card Check Act, where a union thug with no forehead and a continuous sub- orbital ridge can hover over you while “asking” you to sign a card that would require the company you work for to hold union elections- and the threshold percentage of people required to initiate the election would be 30%. When was 30% a Majority in anyone’s world?
Apparently, in Hussein’s world, 30% is a majority- no wonder they are having problems with budgets and TARP, and stimulus, and cash for clunkers- they cannot work with numbers, apparently.
So now, the other unions, besides SEIU, want in on the action, and they are not afraid to use strong-arm tactics to do this.
In an increasingly bitter Washington battle between the nation’s two largest shipping companies, some unionized UPS workers say they are being forced to write letters to their lawmakers in support of more stringent labor rules for arch rival FedEx.
Officials with UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 240,000 UPS drivers, acknowledge that the company has paid for workers’ time to pen many of the letters and has supplied the envelopes, paper and stamps needed to mail thousands of them to Congress. UPS spokesman Malcolm Berkley said the effort was “totally voluntary, and any allegations to the contrary are ridiculous.”
But Internet sites dedicated to UPS-related discussions feature dozens of accounts from anonymous employees who in recent weeks have said they were forced to write the letters or felt they would be punished for not doing so. Such tactics could run afoul of both labor laws and lobbying disclosure requirements, according to legal experts.
washingtonpost.com
FedEx is not truly a rival of UPS- one ships mainly by ground transport, and the other, FedEx, ships by air, but the union wants to control FedEx, and could, if successful, cause work disruptions easier, thus forcing wage concessions easier, which of course would mean more money for the leaders of these unions. It’s all about greed with these unions, nothing else.
The letter-writing campaign is part of a costly and often fierce legislative fight between UPS and FedEx, which together have spent nearly $10 million on federal lobbying in the first half of the year. The feud captures the prominence of mass mailings, Internet campaigns and other grass-roots efforts to catch the attention of Congress in high stakes disputes, even when they involve relatively arcane regulations.
The focus of the UPS-FedEx conflict is House legislation passed earlier this year that would make it easier to unionize FedEx’s lucrative express-air operation, which is currently treated as an airline under labor rules that limit strikes and require unions to organize nationally rather than locally. UPS, by contrast, is treated as a trucking firm, allowing for easier union organizing.
UPS and the union are now concentrating on convincing the Senate to adopt the provision.
“We hope at the end of the day the Senate will see this as a simple issue of fairness,” said Ken Hall, head of the Teamsters’ package division.
FedEx has responded with an aggressive public-relations campaign of its own that includes a Web site, http://www.brownbailout.com, that mocks UPS as another wealthy corporation seeking a federal rescue. FedEx founder and chief executive Frederick W. Smith, who was mentioned last year as a potential Cabinet nominee by GOP presidential candidate John McCain (Ariz.), says the legislation would cripple his company by leaving it open to disruptive strikes.
“FedEx Express remains committed to putting our customers first and making sure Congress doesn’t change the legal framework that is the basis on which FedEx Express created the air express industry,” said company spokesman Maury Lane.
washingtonpost.com
So the union thuggery continues unabated- its not just SEIU brutes beating a Black man at a St. Louis Town Hall meeting, but AFL-CIO thugs browbeating union employees to get them to “write” letters to their Congressmen to advance a special interest on the part of the union.
The legislative fight between the companies captured headlines in Washington last month when Politico’s Web site released a letter from the American Conservative Union offering FedEx its political support, including an “aggressive grass-roots campaign to stop the legislation in the Senate,” in exchange for payments of at least $2.1 million. After FedEx refused, ACU Chairman David Keene signed on to a letter with other conservative leaders accusing FedEx of mounting a “disinformation campaign” against UPS.
The pro-UPS correspondence was also signed by ACU board member Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, which has received $200,000 worth of grants from the UPS Foundation since 2005. A Norquist spokesman said his group had taken no position on the legislation and does not intend to do so.
Now FedEx officials are bristling at the UPS letter-writing campaign, pointing to complaints from Scott and other UPS workers. “They are forcing us to write letters at our UPS center,” one employee wrote on BrownCafe.com, a Web site independent of UPS. Another user wrote: “My System Manager told us ‘this is not an optional activity.’ I wrote the letters and still feel dirty.”
One veteran UPS worker from New Mexico, who requested anonymity to speak about his employer, told The Washington Post that he favors a law change for Fedex but objects to UPS tactics.
“Employees were first told that they were required to write these letters and that if they chose not to then they were to write a letter to the district manager explaining why not,” the employee said. Supervisors backed down in the face of complaints, he added, only to repeat the demand again a day later and threaten to “write up” those who refused.
Most workers complied to get the extra pay, which was marked down as training time, he said.
washingtonpost.com
How nice- “training time”, huh? Just call it bribery, with just a whiff of coercion and extortion thrown in. So the union lies- gee, we didn’t see that one coming, did we? You are telling me that Unions lie and deceive, and cheat to advance their cause? Say it aint so, Joe. This is just yet another move on the part of the unions, with the complicit aid of the Hussein Administration and members of Congress, to increase reliance on unions for work, and the government for everything else. This is not right.
FedEx should be able to chart its own way in the business world, as should everything and everyone else. Unions used to have a legitimate use and function, but no more. They are the Neanderthals in the business world, and for everyone’s sake, they need to go extinct ASAP.
If, on their own, employees of FedEx chose to unionize, that would be fair, but coercion never turns out well, and the unions only end up looking like, well, cartoons of unions, demonstrating their brute side for all the world to see, and its not pretty.
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Tags: brownmail, coercion, neanderthals, thugs, unions