Middle America Under Siege

As sad as this is, and my family is right at the center of this issue, the government is doing precious little to positively impact the situation. Simple handouts will help for the short term, but for the long haul, what America needs is more jobs. So where do jobs come from? Jobs are created from profit. Profit is a bad word to the self-proclaimed progressives. In their view, all profit is bad profit. And they would eliminate profit if they could. Companies that are growing in terms of customer bases and production require more people to fill positions. Corporations are not alive, nevertheless, progressive insist on further penalizing corporations through draconian measures that will succeed only in further shrinking the economy.

First of all the minimum wage. The minimum wage was meant to be an entry level wage for the very young. Few people continue to have this type of pay structure into their adult years unless they have made the mistake of dropping out of school, going to jail or relying on welfare and social programs to provide subsistance and prevent a continuous resume of work. Minimum wages were never meant to be an adult salary. They were meant for entry level employees with the unwritten promise that as they gained experience, they would move onto more lucrative work. My son is a manager at ChikFila. Due to rising minimum wages, they will be raising their prices to consumers across the board. And they will not be alone. See, when you raise the cost of employing people small businesses must recoop those costs through higher prices to the consumer. Now consider the Cap and Trade bill passed by the House. This will add to the cost of manufacturing, the cost of transportation and delivery and the cost to consumers. But do you know who won't be crying about these higher prices? Every local, state and federal entity that tacks on taxes will be overjoyed at the higher revenue they will achieve because of rates based on sales cost. And for most of us, these are not taxes that are deductible from our federal burden.

Let's consider the reluctance of the "progressive" party to require two important pieces of law-e-verify and Voter ID. First of all, in order to cash a check, to food stamps to do just about anything, you must have picture ID. Yet there are some apologists for illegal immigration that continue to believe this is persecution of a minority and use bogus arguements of how having to present ID when you vote penalizes the aged and the poor. All the poor that are citizens can easily get photo ID's from the states as can the elderly even if they do not drive. The arguements are presented in order to protect a potential (or in the case of our Left Coast states-current) voters . As for e-Verify, once again I defer to my son who works in fastfood. Their entire kitchen staff is Hispanic. And everyone no matter what their ethnicity must present drivers license, social security number and verification of their identity. Yet, even with that, there have been a few who have been escorted away or even fired for using someone else's identity. How is this not identity theft and why is it that the government doesn't pinpoint illegal immigration as the source for much of this type of crime? If we removed the ten or more million people who are here working illegally, that would make a significant dent in the unemployment numbers. And, lest you think this is just minimum wage jobs, I know of people who have worked as teachers who didn't have a verified ID.

Let's finally consider the burden on middle America to subsidize the failing state governments of the "green" states. If you will bother to look up the Green Party-a subsidy of the World Workers' Party and under the umbrella of the communist party, you will find that the current Democrat party is espousing Green Party platforms. They seek the systematic takeover of industry by government modeled on the failed systems of such programs in Spain, France and Germany. Right now, France and Germany have governments that are aghast that we are not learning from their mistakes. Please understand, even if the message is smoothly delivered, it is still a message of socialism. Unfortunately, the Rust Belt allowed unions to call the shots in the last election. People voted for a perceived ideal rather than the economic reality of the issues. And in the end, they will be the ones that pay because if these programs are implemented, these jobs will never come back. So how long before we all start moving into Canada? How long will they keep the borders open?