Chicago Lobbyists Teach for One Day to Qualify for Pensions
Headline: Two Teachers Union Lobbyists Teach for a Day to Qualify for Hefty Pensions — State legislature opened a small window that they climbed through in 2007. “Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found. “This is one of the reasons, folks, why states are going bankrupt: public sector union parasites. The Democrats’ most loyal voters and donors are corrupt, greedy, loophole loving thieves, working one day as a substitute teacher to get a lifetime pension from the state of Illinois.
Congress and Fed Employees Live the High Life
There’s a website, folks, I ran across here and I did double documentation on this. It’s a website called EndoftheAmericandream.com: “10 Mind Blowing Facts Which Show How Members Of Congress And Federal Employees Are Living The High Life At Our Expense.” EndoftheAmericandream.com, and it’s interesting, and every one of these ten has a link taking you to the documentation for the claim.
For example, number one, when you total up all compensation, including health care and benefits, the average income for a federal worker in Washington last year was $126,000. In 2005, 7,420 federal workers were making $150,000 or more per year. In 2010, 82,000 federal workers were making more than $150,000 a year. That’s a tenfold increase in five years. In 2005, US Department of Defense had just nine civilians earning $170,000 or more. When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. Department of Defense had 214 civilians earning $170,000 or more. In June of 2010, the Department of Defense had 994 civilians earning $170,000 or more.
Last year, this is number four, federal employees earned approximately $447 billion in total compensation. According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, federal workers earn 30 to 40% more money on average than counterparts in the private sector. Number six: Today, one of every 12 people living in Washington, DC, is a lawyer. In New York City, only one out of every 123 residents is a lawyer. Number seven: More than 50% of the members of Congress are millionaires. Number eight: the median wealth of a US Senator in 2009 was $2.38 million. Number nine: Insider trading is perfectly legal for members of Congress, and they refuse to pass a law that would change it. Did you know that, Brian? Insider trading is legal for members of the US Congress.
Number ten: The percentage of millionaires in Congress is more than 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the general population. And yet who do they wail at, who do they target? Meanwhile, most of the rest of America has been going through economic hell. The standard of living in the US has fallen farther over the past three years than at any other time recorded in US history. The standard of living in America has fallen over the past three years farther than at any time in American history. And according to the Federal Reserve, the combined net worth of American families has fallen by five and a half trillion dollars since 2007, half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week. According to Paul Osterman, a professor of economics at MIT, approximately 20% of all employed Americans are making $10 an hour or less.
This is the kind of stuff the American people ought to be protesting. These protests ought to be in Washington, that’s where the wealth of this country’s being concentrated, Washington and the suburbs. That’s where the wealth is being concentrated. And the very people who are out there pointing fingers of blame and worrying and moaning about the income gap and the wealth gap are themselves the primary beneficiaries of that gap, people who live and work in Washington, both elected and unelected. And that’s why the answer to almost every question related to policy in Washington would be answered by “follow the money.”
Karzai Chooses Pakistan over US
The president of Afghanistan, whom I have met, Hamid Karzai, says that if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Pakistan. Now, Afghanistan was our good war, according to the left, according to the Democrats. That’s where we should have been all along. I remember the good old days when our so-called allies at least pretended to like us. Now with Obama, they openly hate us and side against us. And I thought they were all going to love us. Oh, it’s almost too much than I can bear.