Oct 19 2011
Senator Reid: Its Now Govies Versus Citizens
Harry Reid’s DC arrogance has now morphed into DC moronic:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday said Congress needs to worry about government jobs more than private-sector jobs, and that this is why Senate Democrats are pushing a bill aimed at shoring up teachers and first-responders.
Not sure where he gets his Kool-Aid, but it looks to be strong stuff. The unemployment rate is around 10.5% nationally (once you adjust the workforce numbers to address the population increases since 2000 and bring back into the equation unemployed workers the government stopped counting). I can tell you most of those unemployed are citizens, not government workers.
So now we have the real ‘us vs them’ battle defined. It’s not 1% vs 99%, nor 53% vs 47%, etc. It’s 16% (government workers) verses 84% (average citizens). We all get to go further into debt with liberal spending madness, and government workers get to keep screwing up and wasting our money.
Gee, why didn’t I think of that! Pay off the government union workers who have oh, so hard!
Reid just tossed the 2012 election to the GOP. You never tell 84% of the electorate its ‘us’ or ‘you’ and expect anything but a clear ‘then you’ response back at the ballot box.
Like I said – moronic.
Update: Timing is everything!
Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.
The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.
The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity
So while the average American struggles on $50k a year, the average DC bureaucrat not only grabs almost 30% of their income in payroll and income taxes (see here), that bureaucrat rakes in 2 and half times their salary.
Seems we have a disparity here, a new kind of class warfare.
http://www.redstate.com/jeff_emanuel/2011/10/19/harry-reid-private-sector-jobs-are-doing-just-fine-its-the-public-sector-jobs-where-weve-lost-huge-numbers/
Here’s a fact that Reid should look over before he opens his mouth again. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, government workers have the lowest unemployment rate of any industry or class recorded, at 4.7%, while the national unemployment rate is 9.1% – nearly twice that of public sector workers.
Further, I seem to recall – contrary to Reid’s assertion that the private sector is “doing just fine” but that public sector employment funding has been overlooked – an almost $1 Trillion ($1,000,000,000,000.00) “stimulus” bill being passed and signed into law early in the Obama administration whose major purpose was to fund “shovel-ready” public-sector jobs and to “save essential government services.” Now, Harry Reid is telling us that the public sector needs another fiscal shot in the arm, while Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) is telling audiences that a failure to pass another stimulus bill to follow the first, utterly failed one will lead to mass rape and murder of…somebody.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/280697/harry-reids-public-sector-recession
Number of government workers the month President Obama took office: 22,582,000.
Last time the number was around the current level of 21.9 million: July 2006.
The private sector, unsurprisingly, tells a different story.
Most recent total number of all private-sector employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: 109,349,000 (preliminary September 2011 number).
Recent peak: 115,610,000, in January 2008. It hit 115 million in February 2007 and remained above that threshold until June 2008.
Recent low: 106,772,000 in February 2010. It went below 108 million in June 2009 and remained below that threshold until December 2010.
Range from the recent peak to the recent low: 8,817,000.
Reid isn’t stumping for the jobs it is all about union donations to the Democrats which in this case will be funded indirectly at taxpayer expense.
AJ,
Good Post. Below is the link for congressional salary info. Rember to double the salary amouts listed because they stated amounts for individuals cover a 6 month period.
http://www.legistorm.com/salaries.html
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/10/19/the-edujobs-iii-bailout/
In February 2009, President Obama signed the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nearly $115 billion was earmarked for education. The stimulator-in-chief’s crack team of Ivy League economists predicted the law would hold the jobless rate under 8.5 percent.
The actual unemployment rate in October 2009 skyrocketed to a whopping 10.2 percent.
In August 2010, President Obama went back to the well. With deep-pocketed public employee unions by his side, he lobbied hard for the so-called “EduJobs” bill — $26 billion more to bail out bankrupt states, school districts and public hospitals. Nearly half went to teachers, whose unions raked in an estimated $50 million in rank-and-file dues as a result. Obama’s economists had promised the jobless rate would be down to 7.9 percent by then.
The actual unemployment rate in August 2010 was 9.6 percent.
I am very familiar with that type of attitude.
I’ve seen it in the communist apparatchiks in my old eastern European country.
That should tell all of us who are these guys at heart.
The masks are coming off all the dirtbag Democrats and boy, are they ever ugly!
Maybe more of the KoolAid drinkers will put their foot in their mouth.
Wilbur, that was my thought exactly, you beat me to it. The OWS and their jew-hatred, the democrats and their hidden love of marxism, the enviro-nazi’s contempt for all of humanity, except themselves of course – the masks are truly all coming off.
It’s actually quite refreshing. Honesty, finally.
It makes sense if you believe that government jobs are ‘real’ jobs. You see, he believes that government jobs are more ‘effective’ and ‘fair’ than any that the ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ jobs that private industry can create. After all, the profit motive is immoral because it takes advantage of others hard work. If you work in a government job, you are spared the pressures of becomming greedy like ‘them’.
If you listen to some of the recent comments by a teachers union leader in Wisconsin, it becomes even more clear. “If teacher unions want to be strong and well supported, it is essential that they not only be teacher unionists, but teachers of unionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement for workers rights, oppressed peoples’ rights. That’s our responsibility.”
Oppressed people. I left out the quote about the ‘ruling class’.
These are not exactly American ideas. But they do make sense. Our dear Presdient is doing exactly what he said he would do: “Fundamentally CHANGE” America. We have plenty of people who are helping him.