For most of the past century, and especially the past five years, Republicans have stood forthrightly against every initiative aimed at relieving the suffering of low-income Americans. From opposition to extending unemployment benefits to slashing the SNAP (food stamps) budget to blocking an increase of the minimum wage, the GOP has exhibited stark insensitivity to the hardships of working families. And their determination to advance the interests of the rich is consistently at the top of their agenda.
Today President Obama signed an executive memorandum expanding the availability of overtime pay to millions of workers whose employers have been exploiting their labor by classifying them as management, despite the fact that they earn less than $24,000 a year. That classification enables the employer to forgo paying these employees when they work more than forty hours per week.
Republicans came out swinging as soon as the White House made the announcement of the change in policy. All of the typical right-wing complaints about stifling economic growth, killing job creation, big government intrusion, and executive branch overreach, gushed from the mouths of GOP politicians and Fox News pundits.
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What none of these partisans bothered to mention is that putting more money in the pockets of working class citizens is one of the most effective methods of stimulating the economy. These are people who, by necessity, recirculate their funds by spending them on goods and services, thus producing more growth and creating more jobs. Also not mentioned is how this policy will reduce expenditures on entitlement programs due to recipients being raised out of poverty and no longer requiring assistance.
Nevertheless, the conservative knee-jerk response to Obama’s directive predictably ignores the benefits while inventing problems that they cannot support with facts. Their determination to advocate on behalf of the ruling class and the wealthy corporations who oppose these measures is paramount to the Republican hierarchy.
What’s more, the GOP is engaging in blatant hypocrisy by making disingenuous arguments against the changes proposed by Obama, although they never had any such complaint when George W. Bush did the same thing in 2004 when he updated the overtime rules raising the minimum threshold from $250.00 per week to $455.00. That was ten years ago and it’s time to revisit the situation taking into account current economic conditions, inflation, and cost of living increases.
However, what was good enough for Bush and the GOP a decade ago, is seen by Republicans as the destruction of the economy by a radical tyrant bent on crippling the nation today. For some reason, when the Bush administration unilaterally expanded overtime rules with the stroke of his pen it was appropriate and beneficial, but when Obama does it, it is treasonous and unconstitutional.
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That’s the level of logic that this President has had to face for the last five years. And if he is finally getting around to recognizing the futility of reasoning with the obstructionist Tea-publicans in Congress, it is about damn time.
Dear Stupid FoxPods(tm): You do realize, of course, that it’s not always a good thing when your every move and motive can be predicted from six miles away, right? We saw this coming from the split second Obama said “I have just signed an executive…” Wasn’t necessary to go any further; after all, the fact that Obama has the audacity to use an executive order means it’s time to condemn Obama as a fascist dictator. Again. Because, only Lord Emperor Cheney and his puppet Mortimer Snerd can issue executive orders and not face any consequences…
Why is it a ‘lose’ being hated by the GOP ? It’s like being hated by celery.
Not quite. What they want you to do is work… for nothing. The Republican Party wants to enslave 99% of the American People and are using the awesome power of the government backed by the bucks of the billionaires to accomplish it.
They prove what they stand for every time they are in power. Look at the House of Representatives right now. Controlled by lazy, unproductive conservatives who secured their jobs through gerrymandering. Yet they have no problem drawing their government salaries to do absolutely nothing.
Think you may want to correct that about hating to work too much … the GOP want to be able to pay you 2 bucks an hour or less on a salary that way they can work you 200 hours a week and not have to pay you overtime pay. Mind you this will be in very unsafe, hazardous conditions because they will want all those pesky regulations gone so the owners of these company’s can keep raking in the money and do whatever they want without government “interference”. Really, how far from Gerald Ford have we come… from Ford to Walmart … how the mighty America has fallen.
I mean you ask a GOPer about CEO pay and why it is so high and you get the “paid what they are worth”, well… why not the regular folk’s? The GOP think the regular folk’s are not worth anything, or next to nothing, otherwise they would be for increasing the minimum wage, and getting people out of poverty and being able to feed their children without help for the government. Which would mean smaller government, which you know, they are SOOOO against.
Labor is nothing more than a commodity to republicans. The price is to be driven down by the market forces of unfettered capitalism to the lowest possible point like any other business cost. The human beings who make up that commodity can all go to hell as far as they are concerned. They are now floating the idea of doing away with child-labor law(s)(I shit you not). Paul Ryan wants to replace school lunches for kids with soul nutrition, whatever the fuck that means. Wait until they start trotting out their ideas of putting children back to work just like the good old days of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
They already have Newt Gingrich recommended eliminating Custodians and having poor children mop toilets and scrub dishes and Utah Senator Mike Lee has been on a campaign to eliminate Child Labor Laws as Unconstitutional.
I’ve never once heard a reasonable explanation of why anyone that works full time in this country should be poor. Why is that OK? Why should someone get rich off of my work while I get poor working for them? How in the hell is that tolerable? I’ve worked minimum wage jobs both before and after 08. They started treating workers like absolute dog shit after. Before the crash, they would at least see you as human, for the most part. Now, you’re nothing more than an expense that needs to be mitigated as much as possible, and apparently the decision to do so is just so much easier now. It’s more than obvious that the right, those politicians and pundits that is, do not give a shit about the American worker. They, like all huge corporate entities and giant enterprises, despise the American worker. They want a livable wage? They want a safe working environment? They want the environment we operate in to remain clean and safe to human habitation? Fuck that happy bullshit, I have a political party that says all that is just tyrannical and anti-business. I have a party that says regulations are overburdening and averse to true freedom. So where do I go? Fuckin China. Cause, ya know, China’s more free. And what’s the result in China with all this extra freedom? Air that you have to chew and can’t tell if a skyscraper is on fire for hours after it started, water that burns skin, workers that work themselves literally to death either by getting killed on the job or by suicide, workplace buildings that fucking collapse and kill everybody, child laborers, a leading cause of death being cancer, and oh yeah, don’t forget shitloads of higher profits for me. Totally worth it. Point being, they want us to be more like China, (otherwise why would they go there?), and they want to be “free” to treat people and the environment like they do there. Isn’t that nice of us? We let them go over there, operate in a way that if they did so over here would be INSANELY illegal, and sell their products mostly to us. Talk about a fuckin loophole.
RANT END