Shady

Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz claims that sequestration are bringing congressional staffers to the brink of starvation.

 

Automatic federal cuts are bringing staffers to the brink of starvation, suggested Debbie Wasserman Schultz, at a recent House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

 

...

 

Restaurants on the House side of Congress are increasing in cost so much that aides are being “priced out” of a good meal, she said, as Fox News reported. The comments came by way of a discussion about the impacts of the sequester on lawmakers’ office budgets.

 

However, when one actually looks at the costs of meals on Capitol Hill...

 

An 8-ounce bowl of Ham and Bean soup at the Cannon Office Building’s carry-out café costs $2. A gourmet wrap or sliced bread sandwich sells for about $5. And in the Longworth Building’s sit-down cafeteria, a serving of stuffed chicken, asparagus and mashed potatoes sells for about $7, Fox News finds.

 

Meanwhile, Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s staffers earn between $60,000 and $160,000 per year

http://www.washingto...early-starving/

 

Is it really too much to ask for someone earning between $60,000 dollars and &160,000 dollars to pay for their own lunches, regardless of the cost on Capitol Hill?  Like the rest of us do?  Or gasp, bring a lunch from home?  Is this kind of ridiculous demagogy really necessary?  And how do they expect the public to take them seriously when there's actually something important that needs to be brought to everybody's attention?

 

How is there any chance of tackling the real and serious budget issues, when Democrats won't even budge on literally a free lunch?

 

 

 

I knew that Chavez was a pretty bad apple, but I had no idea just how insidious some of his actions actually were.  What I find amazying, as does the writer, is that so many people "of the left" admire and defend this man.  All under the guise of his help for the poor.  It's simplely Orwellian.

 

Some interesting facts regarding Mr. Chavez...

 

* His closest allies were bloody-handed dictators: Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and, formerly, Gaddafi.

 

* His anti-Semitism over his 14-year rule drove two thirds of Venezuela’s Jewish community into exile.

 

* He muzzled the media, shutting down television stations that were critical of him, and denied the opposition access to the state news networks.

 

* He tolerated unions only if they were official, and he allowed strikes only if controlled by the regime.

 

* He prosecuted, criminalized, and threw into prison independent trade unionists who, like Ruben Gonzalez, the representative of the Ferrominera mineworkers, refused to wait for Bolivarism to be fully realized before demanding decent working conditions, protection against mining accidents, and fair wages.

 

* His the repression of the Yukpa Indians of the Sierra de Perija, carried out in the name of “cultural integration”; the targeted assassinations, covered up by the regime, of those of their chiefs like Sabino Romero in 2009.

 

* He repealed family law provisions, one protecting women victims of domestic violence, and one protecting the rights of divorced women.

 

* As for the good souls who remind us that Chávez’s national populism had “at least” the benefit of feeding the hungry, caring for the most vulnerable, and reducing poverty, they neglect to mention that these reforms were made possible only by budgetary recklessness, itself funded by colossal oil revenue inflated by the high price of crude. The result has been that the real economy of the country, the modernization of its infrastructure and equipment, and the formation of businesses capable of creating sustainable wealth were heedlessly sacrificed on the altar of a form of Caesarism designed more to buy social peace than to build the Venezuela of tomorrow.

 

* Rather than take the trouble to expand domestic production, he imported 70 percent of the bread he distributed to the people, without ever wondering what might happen if the price of a barrel of crude, now about $110, were to fall back down to near $20, where it was the year he came to power. This is the policy of the ostrich or the cicada. Very simply it is a policy of mortgaging the future.

 

* Increases in the minimal wage, today about $250 a month, have, over 14 years, been overtaken by inflation. Half of the active population still just scrapes by, often by doing odd jobs on the margin of the formal economy. As a result, it is not unlikely that this long decade of oil-supported socialism will show a net deficit for those segments of the population who were supposed to benefit most.

http://www.thedailyb...ugo-chavez.html

 

It seems as though, as with other socialists, his so-called "good intentions" trump his means to achieve them, and the end results themselves.

 

 

 

For whatever reasons, whenever I post, it seems I get a flurry of ad hominem attacks directed toward me instead of addressing the issue of the post. They're not personal attacks, but shouldn't as hominem attacks also be against forum rules?

There have been over a dozen examples over the past couple of months of the economic fallout of some of the new tax increases and regulatory burdens of Obamacare. I'm posting this one because it's the latest one. But feel free to add your own. There are plenty to choose from.

Medical Company Smith & Nephew Lays Off Almost 100 People, Blames Obamacare

Medical technology company, Smith & Nephew, announced Thursday that it would be letting go of almost 100 workers at its plants in Tennessee and Massachusetts. The company, which makes orthopedic reconstruction products, is blaming 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices in President Obama's health care law for the layoffs, according to Fox13 News.
“The nearly $30 billion tax on medical devices that took effect Jan. 1, 2013, has impacted a number of companies across the U.S.,” the company said in a statement to Fox13 News.
Medical companies lobbied to get the tax, which is levied on medical devices implanted by professionals, repealed, according to Reuters. The tax is expected to raise $29 billion in government revenue through 2022.

http://www.huffingto..._n_2607112.html

Great report from Reuters...

The federal government has emerged as one of the most potent factors driving income inequality in the United States - especially in the nation's capital

...

In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.

The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.

...

That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities. This at a time when income inequality in the United States as a whole has risen to levels last seen in the years before the Great Depression. …
The federal government does redistribute wealth down to struggling Americans. But in the years since President Lyndon Johnson took aim at poverty in his first State of the Union address, there has been an increasingly strong crosscurrent: The government is redistributing wealth up, too – especially in the nation’s capital.

...

Roughly 15 cents of every dollar from the entire federal procurement budget stays in or around the government’s hometown, said Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. Last year, that was about $80 billion out of $536 billion in procurement spending, he said. The 15 percent share is far greater than the region’s 2 percent portion of the U.S. population.

“We’re seeing an enormous transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the Washington economy,” said Fuller.

http://www.reuters.c...lity/washington

Washington D.C. lives like Kings, while states and local governments struggle to keep their budgets controlled and to provide a sufficient level of services.