payroll

It certainly isn’t if you have CEO behind your name and you work for a big corporation:

Compensation received by chief executives of the biggest US companies surged 11 percent over the past 12 months -- to $9.3 million on average, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing a study conducted for the newspaper by management consultancy Hay Group, The Journal said the increase was largely due to decisions by company boards to reward CEOs for strong profit and share-price growth with bigger bonuses and stock grants.

The survey covered the 350 biggest companies that filed their statement between May 1, 2010, and April 30, 2011.

So while middle America is struggling, the fat cats are still raking it in. Really – why shouldn’t they? Employment works much like the economy, based on supply and demand. Right now we have an over abundance of workers (supply), so they can hire people for less than normal wages. A lot of companies are even getting rid of the higher paid employees just to bring in lower paid ones. Is it right for this to occur? Nope, but it is what happens.

Of course there is also a real bad side to this. Income disparity will be even greater. Our middle class is being pushed into non-existence and our standing as the industrialized nation with the highest rate of income disparity will remain in tact. Also this increase will point to a growing payroll in America, which is only the case for about 1% of the working population. For the other 99% payroll has either remained flat or sunk, which the cost of living has continued to rise.

There is some mixed news on the jobs front. In April there were 290,000 new jobs created, but unemployment also jumped to 9.9%:

More confident employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.

The hiring of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census helped overall payroll growth last month. However, private employers - the backbone of the economy - boosted jobs, too. They added a surprisingly strong 231,000 positions last month, also the most since March 2006, the Labor Department reported Friday.

I like how the WaPo is trying to put a nail in a right wing talking point from the get go. They acknowledge the temporary government workers for the census, but also point out that private employers also added the most jobs in 4 years.

But here is what really gets me:

The reports came ahead of the Labor Department's monthly jobs figures, scheduled for release Friday. The April data are expected to show a gain of 187,000 jobs, compared to an increase of 162,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate holding at 9.7%.

So we added over 100,000 more jobs than the economists were predicting. I wonder how that will play with Fox News, who put out a breaking news alert yesterday saying the jobs report won’t meet expectations? Sounds like they got that one totally wrong, which isn’t all that uncommon for Fox.

Such cute fuckers. Take Robert Stacy McCain. Here’s a main that goes out of his way to avoid the work fuck:

Hell, no! Why the f--- should I lay off a reporter when that g--d--- piece of s--- David Brooks is collecting $300,000 a year to produce two columns of nothingness a week? You can fire me if you want to, or I'll just quit right here and now, because I'll be g--d----d if I'll lay off one more reporter as long as that useless motherf----r David Brook is on the payroll!

But yet he doesn’t mind having things like this on his blog:

And this isn’t an ad. It’s something he actually added. One can only guess that this epitome of right wing blogs sits there looking at this picture and thinking “wow I would just love to f___ her all night. She knows she wants my g_d c_ck.”. Now I wonder if he says that quote literally, or does he fill in the blanks?

Oh – and why does Malkin send people to this guys blog showing that picture? I guess this is part of the whole “family values” thing they push so hard. She does warn them about the profanity (err – blanks), but not about the half naked lady on his site. Maybe Malkin is also saying that same quote that McCain is.

Since Bob Ney pleaded guilty Friday, we now have a felon sitting on the United States House of Representatives. Now he has said he will resign in the future and the Republicans have vowed to vote him out, but that will not happen until after their recess, which means Ney will continue to draw a salary from U.S. taxpayers.

This needs to become another key Democratic issue. Republicans really pissed America off last year when they all flew back into D.C., from around the country, late on a Sunday night in order to vote if they should step in on the Terri Schiavo fiasco. That was the first time in our nation's history that Congress has tried to intervene on an issue that affects only one person. The fact that a felon is now getting paid by U.S. taxpayers because the Republicans are to worried about themselves and won't take a vigilant stance is effecting the entire country.

Should our Congress be in the practice of harboring felons? That is exactly what they are doing right now. Ney's decision to plead guilty was no surprise either. We have known about it for a couple of months. Why didn't Congress take action before leaving? They knew damn well it was coming, and even what day it was coming on for well over a month.

What is really disturbing is the fact that Felons are not allowed to vote, yet we allow one to stay on the U.S. payroll and remain an active member of Congress? Oh I get it. To Republicans if you are poor, black, Hispanic or just not one of them, then if you commit a crime you loose your right to vote, even after paying your debt to society. If you are some white-Christian Republican, then you can remain in power even after you have confessed to your crimes, but yet start to repay your debt to society.

Let's sum that up. This man has not been convicted of a crime yet, however Republicans are demanding he be removed from office (and the Democrats have already removed him from all his committees, taking the vigilant stand).