(H/T: NHInsider)
Foster’s Online has this dandy little article (Foster’s is the owner of our local paper, The Citizen):
Local Democrats are urging support of working families, renewable energy and affordable health care
OK, nothing wrong with that. After all, who would want to be against these items? It continues:
She also supports an increase to the minimum wage.
Democrats cited health care costs as a major issue, especially for small businesses.
Ray Miller, president of Northern Fiber Glass Sales in Hampton, said he’s seen a 12-17 percent increase in the amount he pays for his employees health care — an unsustainable increase.
"When I have to choose between raising someone’s salary or paying for health insurance, I have no choice," he said. The time to battle the issue is now, under Gov. John Lynch’s leadership.
OK, I owned a small business a few years ago, so let me remember – oh yeah! Raise my cost of doing business means either I absorb that cost increase (meaning I bring home less to my family) or I have to raise my prices to my customers. Raise them too much and my customers are going to go somewhere else.
The Democrats are unhappy with the cost of health care – it is hard for small businesses to keep up. True enough.
Then why are they so insistent on raising the cost of doing business by raising their costs again by mandating higher wages?
Remember – a cost is a cost, no matter what area it is in. Are the Dems willing to lower something that they do have control over to make up for it – say, the cost of regulations or the taxes that small businesses have to pay?
And then there’s this….
I’d have a lot more respect for the Dems if they’d follow and practice their own rhetoric (from Captain’s Quarters):
With the Democrats demanding a raise in the federal minimum wage and campaigning on the issue to highlight their sympathy for American workers. That sympathy, as Power Line noted earlier this evening, doesn’t even extend beyond their own payroll. Democratic canvassers in Wisconsin have walked off the job as the Democratic Party refuses to pay them the existing minimum wage:
Alex Scherer-Jones began working for Grassroots Campaigns to fight the Bush administration and elevate the fortunes of the Democratic Party. The 21-year-old MATC student left feeling exploited and sour: "I went in there being very idealistic and it kind of ruined my idealism."
The job involves going door to door asking people to give money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, using talking points that include a call to raise the minimum wage. For this, Scherer-Jones says he was paid far less than the state minimum wage of $6.50 an hour.
"I worked 37 hours one week and got paid around $130 [after taxes]," recalls Scherer-Jones, who quit after two weeks.
John Dedering worked for Grassroots Campaigns for about a month last year and again this year. He says the company paid a satisfactory base wage in 2005, when he canvassed for Environmental Action, but this year switched to a new system, dropping his wages to less than minimum.
Juan Ruiz says he put in about 45 hours working at Grassroots Campaigns for five days this year, and was paid just $56. And Miles Kristan produces pay stubs for two two-week periods, during which he says he typically worked 50 hours per week. One is for $339.81, the other for $281.50. Before taxes
This is like unions paying people just off the street min wage or less to protest someone else not meeting their wage demands. And then they wonder why many of us don’t take them seriously?
