Day: October 2, 2009

Family Values in Action

Witness the holiest of holier-than-thous, C street, in action:

That month, Mr. Hampton [whose wife was carrying on an affair with John Ensign] decided to take stronger steps to end the affair. He and Mr. Ensign shared a strong Christian faith, and often attended prayer meetings at a Capitol Hill house where Mr. Ensign, Mr. Coburn and other lawmakers lived. The house, on C Street, is affiliated with the Fellowship Foundation, a Christian outreach group influential with conservatives in Congress.

Mr. Hampton went to several group leaders. On Valentine’s Day, they confronted Mr. Ensign during lunch at the house. Mr. Hampton, yelling at times, was there, too. Mr. Coburn, an ordained deacon, took the lead in questioning Mr. Ensign, who acknowledged that Mr. Hampton’s accusation was true.

“I said, ‘No. 1, you’re having an affair, and you need to stop,’ ” Mr. Coburn recounted. The senator said he also advised Mr. Ensign to make the affair public and to work to reconcile the two families.

Mr. Coburn warned Mr. Ensign that if the affair did not end, he would “go to Mitch” — referring to Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, Mr. Hampton said.

At the urging of foundation leaders, Mr. Ensign agreed to write a goodbye letter to Cynthia Hampton and send it by overnight mail. “What I did with you was a mistake,” he wrote in longhand. “I was completely self-centered and only thinking of myself. I used you for my own pleasure.”

There you have it, Jesus at work. Why, they wrapped this thing up in record time. Oh, wait:

But immediately after the confrontation, the senator called Ms. Hampton and told her to disregard the letter, Ms. Hampton said. The relationship would continue for six more months.

[-and-]

The senator soon began developing an exit strategy to quietly move Doug Hampton out of his life.

Truly a model for all of us to follow and emulate. God love the GOP and their family-oriented politics and politicians.

Read the whole, sordid tale.

Go Die in the Streets is catching on, though under the Die Quickly! rubric. I still take, nay DEMAND credit, though.

When pressed by the GOP for an apology, Grayson gave them one:

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America.”

More like this, please.

New slogan ideas

marco:

The Democratic Party: Depressingly Ineffective.™

The Democratic Party: We Won’t Put Up Much Of A Fight.™

The Democratic Party: Wait, We Won?™

The Democratic Party: We’ll Forgive Our Opponents Repeatedly So You Don’t Have To.™

The Democratic Party: Defeat You Can Believe In.™

The Democratic Party: How Much More Of A Majority And Public Support Do We Need To Get Anything Done?™

All About the Benefits

TNR reports on the firing of Hyatt’s Boston-area housekeepers, noting:

The housekeepers, some of whom had worked for Hyatt for over twenty years, were making between $14 and $16 an hour plus health, dental, and 401(k) benefits. Their replacements were to make $8 an hour with no health benefits.

It’s unclear to me why, within the context of the current debate about healthcare, the benefits angle to this story has received zero attention. Instead, everyone rushes to the $16/hr to $8/hr change in gross-pay. Sure, Hyatt is now paying half as much and these replacements are, apparently, pretty much all there on guest-worker visas (and so are, by definition, short-term, damned near cash basis day workers).

The key fact, though, is all that stuff that comes after the mention of base pay. These folks that have been fired were getting health, dental, and 401k benefits. That’s a vaguely astounding contract they had; seemingly unprecedented, actually. I’d wager Hyatt cut their expenses on employing these workers by four to five fold just by dropping benefits. Tacking on the pay cut was just gravy; something they did because they could. Based on some back-of-envelope calculations using these figures to get ballpark estimates for provisioning the insurance coverage, to provide the health benefits (forgetting dental and 401k for now) Hyatt was paying these workers the equivalent of $23/hr. Add in the rest and you’re up to $30/hr easily. Probably well beyond it.

So, we have workers’ jobs cut specifically to save on the (presumably) outrageous expense of providing them with healthcare; these firings have subsequently gone national for a variety of completely unrelated reasons. During the biggest healthcare debate of my lifetime. What does the media focus on with absolute uniformity? An $8/hr pay differential. As if nothing else is going on here. Do we mention that these uninsured guest workers still create a cost on healthcare in this country? Do we mention that Hyatt has effectively shifted some of its healthcare expenses from Hyatt to you, the US Taxpayer? Do we mention that this is yet another clear-cut case of spiraling health coverage costs measurably and indisputably claiming jobs, all the while adding to the rolls of the unemployed (and uncovered) in this country? Of course not. Keep walking. That sort of thing just isn’t said.