Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
USA Today, Dec.27th 2011 – The portion of federal workers earning $100,000 or more grew from 12% in 2006 to 22% in 2011.
Reuters, Dec.27th 2011 – President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.
Kate, you are a year ahead of the rest of us.
This may not go down as advertized….
Boehner kept the House sitting without the usual early christmas recess…..now you know the rest of the story.
If at all possible, the House may reconveen earlier than Jan 17th.
It’s an election year…all bets are off.
Just in case anyone is still in a festive mood, here are some of the more cheerful predictions for 2012.
http://www.infowars.com/unrelenting-global-economic-crisis-a-doomsday-view-of-2012/
Nothing is going to change till after the elections. Businesses and households are hunkering down for that reason.
The GOP and Dems want to rumble. Neither side will respect the results till after the fight in November. Obama and the Dems are will claim vindication if they don’t lose and will keep their agenda going.
Sadly, only a rout of the DEMS is going to do it. If they hang on to the Presidency, in particular, we are in for 4 more years of trouble.
Not until election night will there be any potential for resolution. They need to fight, lets just hope one side acheives victory, similar to what happened up here. Only the majority government shut the left up. I dont like a single party being in control of the White house and both houses….but it appears to be necessary. A Tea Party house, a COnservative Seate and GOP Presidency. That is the only way anything is going to happen in a positive sense.
Everyone is just waiting for the fight and the result
As soon as the current government of Syria falls, which could happen soon or not so soon, I think the lid will blow off the Middle East and Obama will be faced with a war that he will be at least partially drawn into. There is talk about an American military presence in Jordan already.
That will probably take over the campaign for the presidency, or at least become as large an issue as the economy. This invites certain types of misadventure. It also complicates one of the GOP’s current high cards, the perceived anti-Israel policy of the president. And it adds further speculation to talk of a Clinton-Obama rift widening.
Fasten your seat belts, we are about to hit some strong turbulence.
And in related news . . . the reason the Democratic Senate wanted only a two month extension of the Payroll Tax cuts was because they could only find two months of budget cuts to pay for it.
The Republican Senate found a year’s worth of cuts by holding off on scheduled pay increases for the massive Federal work force.
How much of the increase is inflationary bracket creep?
I have little doubt that Obama is making public sector employees even wealthier and more entitled than they already are, and by discounting the effects of bracket creep the numbers we are left with become all the more damning.
Peter O’Donnell >
“…Obama will be faced with a war that he will be at least partially drawn into.”
Drawn into?
Obamba isn’t being drawn into anything he hasn’t created.
I thought the world was supposed to end by Dec 21 2012, this juxtapose is impossible I say!
Back in 2006, when Carole Taylor was Finance Minister in British Columbia, she took about $1 Billion in windfall profits of the natural gas industry up north and used it to buy off the public sector union workers from striking.
Nobody in the private sector got such raises and it just reinforced the insane notion of public sector workers that they’re entitled to ever increasing salaries no matter what is happening in the economy at the time.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/09/26/taylor-played-well-within-the-rules-but-failed-to-improve-them
Contrast this with the health care sector in Saskatchewan. I stand to be correct but it’s my understanding that the budgets available are directly (indirectly?) tied to Potash profits. When revenue to the province goes down, budgets are cut. Indeed, people then have to be laid off but such is reality, no?!
Government workers are a privileged class. They are untouchable. They shall live long and prosper for they achieved a BA in something or other.
The ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER
This one is a little different.
Two Different Versions.
Two Different Morals.
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house, and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter,
so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE OLD STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!
*********************************************************************************************
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBC, CTV, Global and City TV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. Canada is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on CBC News with Peter Mansbridge along with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
People Against Poverty stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.
Then Olivia Chow has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.
Dalton McGuinty condemns the ant and blames Prime Minister Harper, former Premier Mike Harris, Bill Davis, Joe Clarke, Harold Ballard, and Conrad Black for the grasshopper’s plight.
Ed Broadbent and John Sewell explain in an interview with Wendy Mesley that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the Provincial Liberal/NDP coalition drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes his home is confiscated by the government Green Czar David Miller and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize and ramshackle the once prosperous and peaceful neighbourhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY:
Be careful how you vote.
I’ve sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant!
You may wish to pass this on to other ants, but don’t bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn’t understand it, anyway.
Administration in both Canada and the U.S. (and elsewhere) are self-generating and will continue on as they have been for years.
Assume the worst: Come the 2012 Federal Election in the U.S., and no matter who wins, NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE!!!
That is the question voter have to ask themselves: HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS?
Abe
They don’t need a BA….for most, a heartbeat will suffice.
After the better part of 25 years in the public sector, I saw more than enough examples of promotion via the Peter Principle (seniority) than I care to mention or remember.
That is why the sector is incompetent. Only those incapable of getting a real job, and keeping it, stay where they are until the supervisor retires or moves on. And despite their lack of intelligence, drive, etc, the most senior person gets the plum pay and job.
And CUPE protects them, shamelessly.
Oh, and all those female secretaries, typists, and paper copier types? Minimum $25/hr plus full benefits. Private sector? Half the wage, minimal benefits, and that’s appropriate, given the minimal skills necessary. In the union environment, however, its a highly skilled job in a dangerous work setting (you know, they have to deal with dangerous taxpayers and such)
When you hear the term “pay equity”, its just newspeak for overpaid and underworked.
it really doesn’t matter what is written in the laws passed by Congress… King ‘bama the 1st only does what he wants anyway…
Obama blows off Congress
President says he won’t abide by spending bill he signed
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/26/obama-blows-off-congress/
When the president of the United States signs a bill into law, it’s expected that he will abide by it. That’s not the case with President Obama, who has a sudden interest in novel legalistic interpretations getting him off the hook from laws he doesn’t like.
On Friday, the president signed the $1 trillion omnibus spending bill, which funds the government for the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. Afterward, he released a statement saying he won’t abide by the law because the Justice Department had advised that certain provisions are “subject to well-founded constitutional objections.”……
What’s the first rule of holes again?
When the US crashes, it’s not gonna leave a mark, its going to leave a crater that the entitlement generation will have to climb out of.
End all public Unions as threats to Canadian liberty if not the State.
Revnant, amen to that.
Trudeau’s legacy I believe.
What the hell is the point of a debt ceiling if you’re just going to keep upping the limit?
End all public Unions as threats to Canadian liberty if not the State.
No argument with that. Now, how do we make it happen?
As a former worker in the U.S. Government, I can tell you that this increase in pay has been going on for at least 15 years. It is mostly due to people being moved up in grade (i.e., from say a 7 to a 9 on the Government pay Schedule) rather than from an actual increase in pay. When I first started with the U.S. Government, a GS-11 (General Schedule 11) was a fairly high grade. Now it is only average whereas a GS-13 is pretty common.
As to why this is being done (allowed to happen), I don’t really know. But clearly, it is wrong!!
David
“a GS-11 (General Schedule 11) was a fairly high grade. Now it is only average whereas a GS-13 is pretty common.”
Are you silly or what? That higher category is because they all got straight “A” grades in school.