Pay for Nothing?

So here we are.  The government has shut down, people are furloughed and soon if this is not solved it will trickle down to state levels.

 

The plan that Congress has is to pay these workers regardless whether or not they actually do any REAL work at all.  On top of this, they can apply for unemployment benefits as well.  Does this mean that they would have to look for a new job while collecting a paycheck from their government job at the same time?

 

Anybody else see a problem with this?  Why should government employees get a free pass to get a government pay while robbing states of unemployment benefits?

 

While I like government employees being unemployed, I don’t care for them to double dip into funds that they don’t deserve either of.  My suggestion is that if any member of Congress votes for this foolishness than I say that we the voters send them to the unemployment line without getting a government check anymore.  It’s time that we slim down government, but not at the expense of paying them for doing nothing.

 

However, comparatively that evil company Staples is top-heavy with executives that should be let go as well and not given a check for doing nothing, which is the way the company has been operating for years.  Their plan for existence is to eliminate store employees to pay for the corporate people.  Just walk into any of their stores and you will see what I mean.

 

This is exactly what I did last week while I was away on a family trip.  This is the reason why there was no post last week, but anyway I have visited this particular Staples store annually with basically the same results.

 

I walked into this particular location, which I won’t identify except to say it is in New England as I always would.  At no point, was I ever neither greeted by anyone nor was I asked if I needed any help.  I stayed in the store for about 20 minutes to see if anyone would ever come around to ask if I needed help.  It never happened.  In fact, I never saw an employee on the sales floor until I got to the door where I found just the unoccupied cashier and 4 (yes 4!) gray shirt managers talking amongst themselves while ignoring everything around them.  Nobody, not even the dumb looking girl cashier acknowledged me on the way out the door.  It was apparent that the store was run without employees and was held together with incompetent management that just didn’t care.  It will be interesting to see what happens next year when I visit this location that is assuming that the location is still in business next year much less the company still in business.

 

Maybe a Staples shutdown is in order.

 

The Way I See It: LePage Hates the Unemployment Fraud?

This commentary refers to this story:

http://www.chron.com/news/article/LePage-Maine-targets-unemployment-fraud-2198012.php#loopBegin

Let’s do some math here:

The state claims 6.5 million dollars wasted on unemployment benefits.

Take that number and divide it by $300 (roughly the average benefit).

Take the result and divide it by 13 weeks (the average unemployment period-not really).

The result is roughly 1700 people are defrauding the state.  I highly doubt the number is that high, but just another way for Mr. LePage to manipulate the numbers.  I know myself that I NEVER defrauded the state, I just could never get a job.  Maybe, Mr. LePage should look at reality before jumping to such a conclusion.  Just saying that people should take the first offered them doesn’t apply when you are never offered one in the first place!!

The Way I See It – Obama and LePage Got It Wrong

After hearing President Obama’s jobs speech last week, I came to the conclusion that he is going about this whole thing the wrong way.  Certainly, one could play a great drinking game every time Obama said “Pass This Bill”, but the real problem is not lowering corporate taxes, but increasing them.  Yes, we need to take money away from big companies that have been hoarding money and taking it overseas.  The government should be punishing companies for not hiring and only lower taxes when they REALLY hire the unemployed.

Extending unemployment benefits won’t fix anything either, as states like Maine top out benefits at 72 weeks.  It would not matter if Obama extended the benefits forever, they will still limit them to 72 weeks.  So people who really need help will never get it and would just be more tax dollars wasted.

Cities and towns should also stop giving tax breaks to big businesses as they take their money out of the country and contribute nothing to local economies.  Since most employees live out of the towns in which businesses are in, they don’t help town economies either.  So lets end the corporate welfare and raise those taxes and punish big business once and for all..!!

As far as LePage goes, he states that Maine has only 24,000 unemployed and 21,000 job openings.  Sadly, he is once again, misinformed about both numbers.  The last state statistics say that over 50,000 people are unemployed and possibly more jobs are available (or possibly even less depending on how often job banks are updated.  It is sad that LePage thinks that training is all that is needed to produce a fix to this odd game of musical chairs. If LePage was really thinking (I have previously stated that he doesn’t), he never would have painted this fake rosy picture.

I am hoping that Obama’s job bill fails and LePage stop saying stupid things, but hey 1 out of 2 wouldn’t be completely bad.  And that’s the way I see it.