An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Archive for 24 February 2010
Just An FYI For Our Little Patch of Tennessee
Darryl Worley Cancer Center Becoming a Reality
After years of ironing out the details, Darryl Worley’s vision and dream of one day opening a cancer treatment facility in his hometown is finally coming to fruition. On Wednesday (Mar. 3), the groundbreaking ceremony of the Darryl Worley Cancer Treatment Center is set to take place in Savannah, Tenn.
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“It’s been our dream to build this cancer treatment center here in Hardin County for several years now, and the people at West Tennessee Healthcare have done a lot to help make this dream a reality,” says Darryl. “We have a really high cancer rate in our general area and all of our lives have been affected by the dreaded disease so there is a lot of passion in this for everyone.”
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The treatment center hopes to open its doors by early 2011. Donations to the Darryl Worley Cancer Treatment Center can be sent to Hardin Medical Center, 935 Wayne Road, Savannah, Tenn. 38372.
Kind of curious they don’t tell ya exactly where this ground breaking is taking place. Granted, Savannah isn’t a huge metropolis, but still…… Perhaps it’s next to the hospital? Although, for the life of me, I can’t imagine where. I sure hope, where ever it will be built, they’ll have more parking than the hospital offers. 
Just in case you aren’t a country fan, and have no idea who Darryl Worley is…
Wanna Get Rich? Work For The Gub’mint!
Employment is up, wages are up, and job security is as firm as ever. Unfortunately, this is only true for federal government workers.
And who pays these wages?
President Obama is presiding over the largest federal work force in decades. In the current fiscal year, the number of civilian workers will grow by 153,000, to 1.43 million. These are the only jobs Mr. Obama can legitimately claim to have created. Unfortunately, they are subsidized by deficit spending.
Oh yeah. Putting the taxpayers further into debt by creating jobs paid for by the taxpayers makes total sense. /snark
Federal positions are not shovel-ready make-work jobs, either. Working for Uncle Sam pays extremely well these days. Government employment used to be a calling, a career in which a sense of fulfillment from public service offset low pay and spartan working conditions. Not so today. According to a study by the Cato Institute, 2008 federal worker pay-and-benefits packages averaged $119,982. That’s more than double the private-sector average of $59,909.
When we all become government employees, who is going to pay our salaries? To misquote Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with socialism is eventually, you run out of other people’s money.” Will the income tax be raised to 75% on salaries just so we can all pay each other? But what is actually being produces by these government jobs that is really worth anything? What goods are being manufactured? Not a dadburn thing!
In the Defense Department, which is adding the most new workers, the number of civilian employees earning more than $150,000 jumped from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009. Many highly paid Defense Department employees are retired members of the military who receive full pensions in addition to salary. This “double dipping” is extra costly for taxpayers.
Excuse me while I clean the coffee off my monitor. ………………. Ok, now, let me read that again. 1,868 in 2007 increases to 10,100 in just two years? PLUS, many are getting a nice pension, from taxpayers, in addition to their nice fat salaries? Does anyone else see a major problem here?
Federal pay keeps growing even as overall private-sector compensation stagnates. In 2009, federal employees received an average pay raise of 3.9 percent, more than twice the 1.5 percent wage-and-benefit increase for private-sector employees – that is, for those who still had jobs. Mr. Obama proposed a 2 percent federal pay increase for fiscal 2010, down from a projected 2.4 percent rise. This was supposed to save approximately $20 billion, but a zero percent increase would have saved $120 billion.
I will grant you that many who work for the government are necessary. However, that being said, there are many more who are NOT! Eliminate the thumb suckers. You know the ones….the redundant, a large portion of the union workers at the IRS who sit around and file their nails instead of answering the phone, any number of Congressional staffers, etc. Oh, hell. Just get rid of the gooberment unions altogether! Make folks actually save their own money for their retirement, like responsible grownups use to do not all that long ago. That would save a WHOLE lot more than just the $20,000,000,000.
A federal pay freeze is a reasonable proposal in times of record budget deficits, especially when federal workers already make much more than their private-sector counterparts. However, this would require the president to make one of those hard choices he likes to talk about but studiously avoids. Feds who think they have a right to regular pay raises should contemplate the hardships of the millions of Americans recently forced to accept 100 percent pay cuts. And a 10 percent cut in the federal work force would save additional billions of dollars and still leave the government larger than it was when Mr. Obama took office. Those bonuses for bureaucrats should end, too.
Yep, the opinion folks at The Washington Times are almost as smart as me. Just without the same amount of sarcasm thrown in for good measure. 8)
Here are some interesting charts from the CBO, just in case you are interested. (.pdf)
The Great Divider
Obama Giving Black Farmers $1.25B in Reparations
Black farmers – possibly over 70,000 of them – will get cash payments and debt relief from the federal government totaling $1.25 billion, in reparation for alleged racial discrimination suffered under the Department of Agriculture’s loan programs, the Obama Administration has agreed.
Alleged? No proof! Let me ask the obvious. Was Obama’s decision based on the color of their skin? Did the DoA not make the loans because of inability of the farmer to provide proof they would be able to repay the loan? Or was it truly a case of discrimination? Were there no white farmers who were denied loans as well?
House Majority Whip and Congressional Black Caucus member James Clyburn cheered the deal. “History has taught us to never give up when fighting for what is right,” he said in a statement. “What happened to these black farmers was wrong, and we now have the opportunity to make it right.”
Clyburn said, “I thank President Obama for his leadership on this issue” adding that “I especially want to congratulate my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus for keeping the focus on the plight of black farmers.”
I wonder what the Congressional White Caucus had to say about any white farmers who were denied loans? Oh, that’s right. There’s no such thing, cuz well, that would be raaaaaaaaaaaaacist.
The National Legal and Policy Center some years ago examined slave reparations activism and found one proponent calling for the federal government “to pay $500,000 to every slave descendant,” which would total “more than $15 trillion and require a surtax of roughly $50,000 on each non-African American man, woman and child in this country (the median family income is not even that high).”
Are there any former slaves still alive? Have you ever owned a slave? (We won’t mention Muslims and human smugglers for the sex trade.) I don’t think I’ve ever met either. I’m old, but not THAT old! I’d like to point out one thing, if you are African-American, that means you immigrated from Africa, and became a citizen. But in reality, you would be an American now, wouldn’t you?
Pointing to “the staggering breadth of America’s crime against us,” TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson in his book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” argued that “Solutions must be tailored to the scope of the crime in a way that would make the victim whole. In this case, the psychic and economic injury is enormous, multidimensional and long-running. Thus must be America’s restitution to blacks for the damage done.”
Ok, here is one HUGE problem with this guy’s assumptions. Take me for example. Half of my ancestors were already here when the first boat of Europeans landed on our shores. No doubt, some were actually enslaved by the Spanish, who used the indigenous people as slave labor. Does that mean the Spanish OWES me? The other half? Well, they didn’t show up until AFTER slavery was abolished. I don’t owe anyone a dadburn thing! Neither does anyone else!
According to the reparations mindset, therefore, President Obama’s $1.25 billion for 70,000-plus black farmers is hardly even a beginning.
I’d like to thank president Obama for exposing himself for what he is! A divider!
The Invisible Woman
Thanks to Jerry for sharing.
