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Jul

7

Beware of the Dark of Night

July 7, 2005 |

The PA General Assembly voted itself a giant 16%, $11,000 minimum pay raise in the wee a.m. hours last night, with many members getting much larger increases. While the rest of the nation finds wages stagnating and increasing well below the official CPI number (which itself is fudged to remove real costs we must all contend with, like recent increases in food and energy!), Pennsylvania politicians found their existing annual higher than CPI raise (tied to the Philadelphia inflation numbers) too small.

Says the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, “The average Pennsylvanian makes less than $39,000 a year. In addition, taxpayers provide $650 a month for lawmakers to lease a car; lawmakers get a $129 “per diem” allowance for each day in session; they don’t have to submit receipts for their expenses; and they get fully paid health and pension benefits.”

Leased cars and per diem’s as well? Wake up, voters. Get some sense, would you please?!?

Alas, I should probably not hope for any sense… I particularly liked that the biggest complaints posted by the PG were insistence that the minimum wage should be raised, and that Medicare had some cuts… Never mind, the public trough is the public trough, and that the minimum wage is nothing better than a direct tax on employers… and a really bad idea, to boot!

Oh, this, the “land of the free.” Until we can each stand up and say, “No thanks!” to this sort of nonsense, that phrase will sound very hollow to those bothering to care.


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