Tag Archives: Work

Commentary

Why are people on food assistance programs allowed to buy luxuries?

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An editorial from the Wall Street Journal caused me to wonder why I have had to weekends for 6 weeks straight in order to make a deadline when 35% of my income is going to people who don’t even work for a living.

Here’s the anecdote the author recounts:

Recently I had to run into that store and, sizing up the three lines, chose to stand behind a woman with one item in her cart. It was one of those large ice-cream cakes. When the checkout person said “Forty-one dollars,” I wasn’t the only one who blanched. The shopper’s son, around 12, repeated it as a question: “Forty-one dollars?”

I quickly calculated that the woman’s cake was eight times more expensive than the kind I make at home to celebrate birthdays. The mother ignored her son’s question.

She took out her benefits card, swiped it through the machine, and they were off. My turn.

I stood there, wondering what lesson the young boy takes away from this transaction. Does he grow up with the faintest understanding of delayed gratification—that you have to earn your money before you can buy candy—or, in this case, an ice-cream treat? I wondered how we arrived at this point as a nation. I also felt like a chump.

How can this happen? Here’s how:

[O]ver the last four decades, our government has quietly done away with almost all of the restrictions once placed on food assistance. SNAP cards (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) can be used to purchase practically anything with the exception of liquor and cigarettes. These cards are also openly and illegally sold for cash, which allows the recipient to buy anything they want, including cigarettes and liquor.

Food assistance is helping many families keep their heads above water when they would otherwise not get by, and many of these families watch every dime. But the system also allows people to flagrantly disregard the program’s original purpose.

Of course there are instances of fraud in every corner of the government, from Congress to defense spending. Why single out food stamps? Because, with over 48 million Americans now using some form of food assistance and few restrictions, the possibilities of waste are unlimited.

Is there no shame in laziness and irresponsibility any more?

There are only 311 million people in the United States, and 48 million of us are on some welfare program, while half of us don’t even pay income taxes. Why am I working to pay for these other people? Why do people who vote for big government social programs think that I can afford to get married and have a family when I have to pay for all of the single mothers on welfare? Why does everyone think that they are being generous by giving away the money I earn? Why does everyone think it’s OK for people who don’t work to steal from  people who do work?

Maybe instead of redistributing money, we should redistribute work ethic.

News

Unemployed college graduates resort to unpaid internships

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From the liberal New York Times, a story about how Obama’s young supporters are being forced into unpaid labor because there are no jobs.

Excerpt:

Although many internships provide valuable experience, some unpaid interns complain that they do menial work and learn little, raising questions about whether these positions violate federal rules governing such programs.

Yet interns say they often have no good alternatives. As Friday’s jobs report showed, job growth is weak, and the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds was 13.2 percent in April.

The Labor Department says that if employers do not want to pay their interns, the internships must resemble vocational education, the interns must work under close supervision, their work cannot be used as a substitute for regular employees and their work cannot be of immediate benefit to the employer.

But in practice, there is little to stop employers from exploiting interns. The Labor Department rarely cracks down on offenders, saying that it has limited resources and that unpaid interns are loath to file complaints for fear of jeopardizing any future job search.

No one keeps statistics on the number of college graduates taking unpaid internships, but there is widespread agreement that the number has significantly increased, not least because the jobless rate for college graduates age 24 and under has risen to 9.4 percent, the highest level since the government began keeping records in 1985. (Employment experts estimate that undergraduates work in more than one million internships a year, with Intern Bridge, a research firm, finding almost half unpaid.)

“A few years ago you hardly heard about college graduates taking unpaid internships,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president at the Economic Policy Institute who has done several studies on interns. “But now I’ve even heard of people taking unpaid internships after graduating from Ivy League schools.”

Youth unemployment in America is about 20% for teens and college graduates. It’s the capitalists who provide those jobs – the same capitalists who the young have been taught to hate. The same capitalists now shifting their capital abroad because of Obama’s anti-business taxes, regulations, inflation and cronyism – which the young support. It’s anti-business socialism that causes outsourcing – if you tax and regulate and insult businesses here, they just shift their production somewhere else.

Recall what happened in 2008:

Strong support from young and minority voters propelled Barack Obama on the road to the White House, exit polls showed Tuesday.

Voters in the 18 to 24 age group broke 68 percent for Obama to 30 percent for John McCain, according to the exit polling. Those in the 25 to 29 age bracket went 69 percent to 29 percent in Obama’s favor.

The only age group where McCain prevailed was 65 and over, and that by just a 10-percentage-point margin, 54 percent to 44 percent, the exit polls showed.

Since the election, Obama has been piling up 5 trillion of debt for these poor ignorant fools to pay off. They will be working until they are in their 90s to pay off the retirement benefits and health care of their parents, but when it’s their turn to get Social Security and Medicare, the money will have run out. That’s what Obama offers young people. And surprisingly, they take it. What else can they do? All they know about the world are the slogans that their secular leftist teachers have taught them in school. America is evil. Tax the rich. Stop global warming. Chastity and marriage are sexist. These teachers are the ones who are relying on their little slaves to make them rich – not the corporations. The slaves rally believe in slavery, and they want to be slaves. They want to save the planet by voting for bigger government benefits for their unionized teachers.

News

EPA administrator boasts about crucifying oil and gas firms

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Tom sent me this article from CNS News.

Excerpt:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) took to the Senate floor today to draw attention to a video of a top EPA official saying the EPA’s “philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies – just as the Romans crucified random citizens in areas they conquered to ensure obedience.

Inhofe quoted a little-watched video from 2010 of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, admitting that EPA’s “general philosophy” is to “crucify” and “make examples” of oil and gas companies.

In the video, Administrator Armendariz says:

“I was in a meeting once and I gave an analogy to my staff about my philosophy of enforcement, and I think it was probably a little crude and maybe not appropriate for the meeting, but I’ll go ahead and tell you what I said:

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean.  They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they’d crucify them.

“Then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.”

“It’s a deterrent factor,” Armendariz said, explaining that the EPA is following the Romans’ philosophy for subjugating conquered villages.

Soon after Armendariz touted the EPA’s “philosophy,” the EPA began smear campaigns against natural gas producers, Inhofe’s office noted in advance of today’s Senate speech:

“Not long after Administrator Armendariz made these comments in 2010, EPA targeted US natural gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.

“In all three of these cases, EPA initially made headline-grabbing statements either insinuating or proclaiming outright that the use of hydraulic fracturing by American energy producers was the cause of water contamination, but in each case their comments were premature at best – and despite their most valiant efforts, they have been unable to find any sound scientific evidence to make this link.”

We want to be careful with environmental regulations so that we don’t hurt job creators. We need to work to have money, and we shouldn’t have to give up our prosperity in order to make a few bureaucrats feel as if they are “saving the world”.