While the news media was otherwise occupied, the Bush
Administration slipped another one by the public.
While the news media was otherwise occupied, the Bush Administration slipped another one by the public.
The heretofore unnoticed Labor Day Surprise came in the form of 500 pages of Labor Department regulations that, according to the AFL-CIO, mean about 6 million American workers will no longer be eligible for overtime pay.
Those who will no longer be eligible for overtime, according to the new regulations, include nursery school teachers, some police officers, chefs and nurses. The Labor Department scam will also lead to instant promotions for tens of thousands of hourly wage employees as in promoting busboys to the position of “assistant kitchen managers.”
Following its usual “if it’s news, it’s news to us” news hunting, the media has lately found itself on the front end of the Bush-Cheney campaign’s talking points about whether the bullet holes and shrapnel wounds Sen. John Kerry claims really happened in combat in Vietnam or wash off when Kerry takes a shower.
That so-called news story should end with something along the lines of “Kerry served in combat and Bush and Cheney did not.”
So at the height of the “Yes, he did, no, he didn’t” business about Kerry and Vietnam, the Bushies let go with Labor Department regulations that continue the administration’s all-out assault on the middle class. This should have detonated large objects that, once airborne, turned into funny signs with crude sayings about how the administration is just a front for large corporations.
What’s worse is the Senate voted the proposed overtime changes down on two occasions and the House of Representatives danced around the issue. So, in a move familiar to those living in places run by despots protected by weapons purchased from the U.S., the administration simply changed the rules.
I vaguely remember way back in the day reading that the nation had three branches of government. Congress is supposed to make the laws. The Executive Branch implements them and the Judiciary rules on legality issues. Nowhere does it say that the administration in power can just change the law on its own decision. For further comment see the sentence in the previous paragraph about despotic governments that are propped up by this country.
Expect then that the Labor Departments 500 pages of “No overtime for you” will be subjected to any number of lawsuits and the whole business will be tied up in court.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department spin doctors, operating at the direction of the White House, claim that 1.3 million workers making between $8,000 and $23,000 will now be eligible for overtime. But a study by something called the Economic Policy Institute says only one in seven of these workers actually ever works overtime. And the vice president still believes that if we send enough shovels to dig up Iraq there are still weapons of mass destruction to be found.
Will Rogers once said that he didn’t make jokes; he just watched the government and reported the facts.
And the facts are that since the administration took office in January 2000, millions of jobs have disappeared, the stock market has lost value, the middle class got rolled on the tax cuts, the number of people without health insurance has increased, the number of those living in poverty has jumped dramatically and we still haven’t found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In addition, nearly 200,000 U.S. military personnel are bogged down in the Middle East. The preemptive war with Iraq (see earlier references to the still missing WMD) has cost nearly 1,000 soldiers their lives and seen nearly 6,000 wounded. To this day, Iraq remains an unstable and unreliable environment even for those backed up by tanks and other heavy weapons.
Over the last year or so, the administration has listed more reasons for invading Iraq than there are Wal-Mart employees with health insurance.
As my favorite writer, the Anonymous Wag pointed out, if lying were a capital crime as it relates to this administration, the hangman would be working overtime.
Based on the Labor Department’s new regulations, the hangman would be perhaps the only person who would be on overtime. But nobody knows that for sure. If embalmers are excluded from overtime, as they are in the new regulations, why should the hangman expect extra pay?
After all, according to the administration’s new rules, your time is corporate time.
