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President Obamas Proposal to Fully Fund the LWCF

My wife and I were on our way home to Pa.from a hunting trip in Montana this year. We decided to stopped in Billings to get a room for the night. We stopped at two different major chain motels and were told that all the room were empty but had not been CLEANED. I asked how that could be and the lady said they could not find people to clean rooms and the help that they had hired quit. She went on to say they QUIT because they were better off on FOOD STAMPS and STATE and or FEDERAL AID.Enough said !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How come the lady wasn't cleaning the rooms her own damn self? Too old? Handicapped? I thought such folks were boot-strapping, self-made folks who built everything themselves? Is it possible she was an asshat and the people quit because she was a whiner who thought her piss was trickle down economics?

She could get them off welfare by raising their pay and then raise *our* rates to cover the cost, but we'd probably complain about the true cost of a room. It's much easier to pay that cost in welfare and then be free to whine about welfare while we drive home without a room. Much easier. Complaining is always much easier than paying true cost.

P.S. I'd advise against hanging my "enough said" opinion on some loser I'd never met, sitting behind a desk in Billings, MT. As the kids say these days "Just sayin'".
 
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Bologna

My wife and I were on our way home to Pa.from a hunting trip in Montana this year. We decided to stopped in Billings to get a room for the night. We stopped at two different major chain motels and were told that all the room were empty but had not been CLEANED. I asked how that could be and the lady said they could not find people to clean rooms and the help that they had hired quit. She went on to say they QUIT because they were better off on FOOD STAMPS and STATE and or FEDERAL AID.Enough said !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anecdotal BS lacking any facts.

Is Fox news playing on your TV right now?
 
My wife and I were on our way home to Pa.from a hunting trip in Montana this year. We decided to stopped in Billings to get a room for the night. We stopped at two different major chain motels and were told that all the room were empty but had not been CLEANED. I asked how that could be and the lady said they could not find people to clean rooms and the help that they had hired quit. She went on to say they QUIT because they were better off on FOOD STAMPS and STATE and or FEDERAL AID.Enough said !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really?
I wonder if it's anything like the farmers who had crops rotting in their fields because they couldn't get people to pick the crops who were traditionally mexican because they were afraid to go there.


Immigration Clash Leaves Vidalia Onion Farmers Bitter
May 28, 1998|By Ginger Thompson, Tribune Staff Writer.


121
GLENNVILLE, Ga. — To some 250 farmers in this southeastern corner of Georgia, springtime is like Christmas.

It is the season of the sweet Vidalia onion, and in May and June the fields are bustling with workers rushing to pick the onions--not only sweeter, but more delicate than their Texas cousins--before the sun turns them to mush.




This spring however, Christmas almost got canceled. Two weeks ago in an operation named Southern Denial, dozens of Immigration and Naturalization Service officers descended on some of the area's largest onion fields. Workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico, ran for cover in the wooded hills. Frantic farmers rushed to their fields and demanded that the agents get off their property.

"They had guns, but I didn't care," said Gerald Dasher, co-owner of G&R Farms. "I told them to get the hell off my land or somebody was going to get hurt. They had driven their vehicles right onto my field. They ran all over my onions."

The clash between the Vidalia onion growers and the immigration service illustrates a crisis that concerns farmers and farm worker advocates across the country. Farmers and nursery growers complain there are not enough domestic workers to help harvest their crops and so they have become dependent on undocumented immigrants--and are at odds with the INS.

On May 19, however, the parties reached a truce. With handshakes, rather than a signed accord, the INS agreed to halt the raids and give the onion pickers temporary amnesty until the end of the harvest. The farmers promised that for future harvests, they will comply with labor and immigration laws. The Vidalia harvest, with an estimated worth of $90 million, was saved.

"I've been in this 22 years and I have never done anything like this," said Bart Szafnicki, one of the INS officials who brokered the deal. "It is absolutely unprecedented and it is very unlikely to happen again."

Szafnicki said he realized that onion farmers have a limited window of time--about four to six weeks--to get their crop harvested.

"They live and die on those four to six weeks," he said. ". . . I thought that stopping the operation and trying to negotiate a settlement was better than bankrupting a bunch of farmers."

In Vidalia onion country, 20 counties that lie between Macon and Savannah, the INS estimates that 70 percent to 90 percent of the 10,000 pickers are undocumented immigrants. The Labor Department estimates there are some 2.5 million farm workers in the U.S., and that at least 35 percent of them are in the country illegally.

For years, farmers have lobbied Congress to create new programs that would make it easier for them to hire temporary foreign workers, so-called "guest workers." The current guest worker program, called H-2A, is too expensive and the application process is too complicated, the farmers said. The program requires farmers to pay transportation costs for workers from their homeland to the farms, to provide housing to all workers and to spend several weeks advertising the job openings around the country.
 
It's an interesting problem. I used to hoe thin and weed beats in the fields with Mexicans. They were very skilled and could do two rows to my one. If I tried to keep up, my worked sucked compared to theirs. People say these are jobs that Americans *won't* do. Sometimes they are jobs Americans *can't* do. Americans don't have the experience or the skills.

Can they learn those skills? Yeah, I suppose, but then we get to the "won't do" part of the equation. And why should a business person train when there is a skilled force already out there, ready and willing and able? After all, we've had the "globalization" "new world order" crap shoved down our throats forever. If we had to train and pay, we'd get out-competed by those in other countries that don't have clean air, clean water, worker's rights, living wages, etc. You know, the 1% who take their businesses and jobs and money to other countries without regulation. And often keep their profits over there with no tax. But the lady can't pick up her motel and move it to Mexico. Nor can Florida farmers move their farms.

So everyone wants American workers to work for the wages of, and live like a third world worker. Can't have it both ways if we want to buy cheap shit. I don't think isolation is the answer but neither is allowing the exodus of American capital to countries that pollute and allow the virtual enslavement of workers and children.

I've had kids that didn't know how to make a bed or clean a shitter. WTF? So, I pay more and search high and low for a work ethic. I've found a few, knock on wood. And yet my biggest complaining customers are those who work for government or who receive the bulk of their income from government contracts. Those who own their own businesses don't bitch about prices or operations or how they would do things. They know better. If they don't like something, they shrug and go elsewhere. But I still dig ditches, clean shitters and do dirty work. I never ask my people do to anything I don't do or haven't done.

Some fereners is better than Mericans when it comes to work ethic. But it's all about incentive, and how hungry you are, and balancing out, and how much customers are willing to pay for product and services, and what the competition is up to and getting away with. That same analysis is engaged in by the so-called welfare slackers. Some look up the food chain and see folks that never worked any harder or smarter than they have, and who milk the system harder and longer and for more.

End rant.
 
Nope, I'm just trying to be more welcoming to our Islamic brethren....like the pres wants.

Oh, I see. Good thing your heart is in the right place.

But you're doing it wrong. You said: "Obama has systematically changed this country for the worse. But hey, the folks wanted change..and by allah they got it."

That would not be more welcoming to our Islamic brethren. I know the Islamic guys I served with in the Marine Corps would not read it that way. But thanks for the effort. Keep trying. ;)
 
Oh, I see. Good thing your heart is in the right place.

But you're doing it wrong. You said: "Obama has systematically changed this country for the worse. But hey, the folks wanted change..and by allah they got it."

That would not be more welcoming to our Islamic brethren. I know the Islamic guys I served with in the Marine Corps would not read it that way. But thanks for the effort. Keep trying. ;)

Assalamualaikum
 
I can't help but laugh....

Ben, what is a "living wage" ? Is it higher than "minimum wage"? Why is there a minimum wage? Should minimum wage not be whatever pay I am willing to work for?

JamesRiley, were I only king...before anyone could be hired by the Gov't they should have to have a minimum of 5 yrs. self employment.....I guess that would disqualify just about everyone working for the Gov't.....

Ronald Reagan was right on, "the best and brightest minds are not working for the Gov't, private industry hired them away"
 
I can't help but laugh....

Ben, what is a "living wage" ? Is it higher than "minimum wage"? Why is there a minimum wage? Should minimum wage not be whatever pay I am willing to work for?

JamesRiley, were I only king...before anyone could be hired by the Gov't they should have to have a minimum of 5 yrs. self employment.....I guess that would disqualify just about everyone working for the Gov't.....

Ronald Reagan was right on, "the best and brightest minds are not working for the Gov't, private industry hired them away"

I'd be happy if they were either denied the legislative benefits they get OR they were barred from complaining about or voting against the application of those same benefits to the civilian work force. It's easy to whine about big government provision of programs to civilians while you're sitting on full coverage as a government employee; health, retirement, civil service protections, etc. Yet I can't count the number of those government employees who listen to Limbaugh all day and bitch about civilians seeking the protections the government employees take for granted. As if they are special, and work hard for, and deserve those benefits, and anyone on the outside that does not have those benefits must not be working hard or smart enough. :rolleyes: Those folks on the outside are paying for those government wages and benefits. It's almost as bad as Congress and their packages.

If minimum wage were the lowest anyone would work for, the 1% would fling the borders wide open and we'd be competing with people who were happy with 57 cents per hour. The more human life we have, the cheaper it is.
 
I have had enough. I am going rabbit hunting on STATE land that I OWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I have had enough. I am going rabbit hunting on STATE land that I OWN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Enjoy. Make sure to follow all the rules.

I hope to get out an enjoy my public lands this coming weekend also. Beside taking pictures; I will camp, drink a couple beers and maybe shoot my bow if the weather is nice enough. Good thing I will be on federal land where this is permitted. :D
 

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