healthcare

[Perchoutofwater]

Absolutely, because there are so many great obs going begging now it's ridiculous. I mean, most companies have installed revolving doors so many people are jumping ship for riches across the street.

 

Fact is nobody is forced to work anywhere, but in some areas business have no choice between union and non-union labor.

[yo mama]

Fact is nobody is forced to work anywhere, but in some areas business have no choice between union and non-union labor.

Not sure that I agree. For parents who need to feed their kids, the economic necessity of working the only job they can find is force enough to keep them right where they are.

[Perchoutofwater]

Not sure that I agree. For parents who need to feed their kids, the economic necessity of working the only job they can find is force enough to keep them right where they are.

 

Get rid of all the illegals and think of how many more choices they would have. Too bad your guy would rather file suit against Arizona than see Americans have more choices in employment.

[bpwallace49]

Get rid of all the illegals and think of how many more choices they would have. Too bad your guy would rather file suit against Arizona than see Americans have more choices in employment.

 

 

migrant farm workers' challenge: Take our jobs

 

SAN FRANCISCO – In a tongue-in-cheek call for immigration reform, farm workers are teaming up with comedian Stephen Colbert to challenge unemployed Americans: Come on, take our jobs.

 

Farm workers are tired of being blamed by politicians and anti-immigrant activists for taking work that should go to Americans and dragging down the economy, said Arturo Rodriguez, the president of the United Farm Workers of America.

 

So the group is encouraging the unemployed — and any Washington pundits or anti-immigrant activists who want to join them — to apply for the some of thousands of agricultural jobs being posted with state agencies as harvest season begins.

 

All applicants need to do is fill out an online form under the banner "I want to be a farm worker" at http://www.takeourjobs.org, and experienced field hands will train them and connect them to farms.

 

According to the Labor Department, three out of four farm workers were born abroad, and more than half are illegal immigrants.

 

Proponents of tougher immigration laws have argued that farmers have become used to cheap labor and don't want to raise wages enough to draw in other workers.

 

Those who have done the job have some words of advice for applicants: First, dress appropriately.

 

During summer, when the harvest of fruits and vegetables is in full swing in California's Central Valley, temperatures hover in the triple digits. Heat exhaustion is one of the reasons farm labor consistently makes the Bureau of Labor Statistics' top ten list of the nation's most dangerous jobs.

 

Second, expect long days. Growers have a small window to pick fruit before it is overripe.

 

And don't count on a big paycheck. Farm workers are excluded from federal overtime provisions, and small farms don't even have to pay the minimum wage. Fifteen states don't require farm labor to be covered by workers compensation laws.

 

Any takers?

 

"The reality is farmworkers who are here today aren't taking any American jobs away. They work in often unbearable situations," Rodriguez said. "I don't think there will be many takers, but the offer is being made. Let's see what happens."

To highlight how unlikely the prospect of Americans lining up to pick strawberries or grapes, Comedy Central's "Colbert Report" plans to feature the "Take Our Jobs" campaign on July 8.

 

The campaign is being played for jokes, but the need to secure the right to work for immigrants who are here is serious business, said Michael Rubio, supervisor in Kern County, one of the biggest ag producing counties in the nation.

 

"Our county, our economy, rely heavily on the work of immigrant and unauthorized workers," he said. "I would encourage all our national leaders to come visit Kern County and to spend one day, or even half a day, in the shoes of these farm workers."

 

Hopefully, the message will go down easier with some laughs, said Manuel Cunha, president of the California grower association Nisei Farmers League, who was not a part of the campaign.

 

"If you don't add some humor to this, it's enough to get you drinking, and I don't mean Pepsi," Cunha said, dismissing the idea that Americans would take up the farm workers' offer.

 

 

California's agriculture industry launched a similar campaign in 1998, hoping to recruit welfare recipients and unemployed workers to work on farms, he said. Three people showed up.

 

"Give us a legal, qualified work force. Right now, farmers don't know from day to day if they're going to get hammered by ICE," he said, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "What happens to my labor pool?"

 

His organization supports AgJobs, a bill currently in the Senate which would allow those who have worked in U.S. agriculture for at least 150 days in the previous two years to get legal status.

 

The bill has been proposed in various forms since the late 1990s, with backing from the United Farm Workers of America and other farming groups, but has never passed.

 

I dont support the last 2 sentences . . . but seriously face reality here Perch. If the jobs could be filled by US workers, they would be. If there were stiffer penalities for hiring illegals, more US workers might actually take this jobs . . . but I sure doubt it.

 

Eliminate the reason they come here and guess what? THEY WONT COME HERE>

[gbpfan1231]

I dont support the last 2 sentences . . . but seriously face reality here Perch. If the jobs could be filled by US workers, they would be. If there were stiffer penalities for hiring illegals, more US workers might actually take this jobs . . . but I sure doubt it.

 

Eliminate the reason they come here and guess what? THEY WONT COME HERE>

Keep them from getting in and maybe the demand for the labor will increase and thus so will the wage which will then make it more attractive for people to want the work.

 

I am all for stiffer penalties for the employers but let's stop this jagoffs from coming into this country ILLEGALLY!!!!

[bpwallace49]

Keep them from getting in and maybe the demand for the labor will increase and thus so will the wage which will then make it more attractive for people to want the work.

 

I am all for stiffer penalties for the employers but let's stop this jagoffs from coming into this country ILLEGALLY!!!!

 

If you dont eliminate the desire and INCENTIVE to come here . . they will still find a way.

 

You know why there isnt a fence around Afghanistan? Cause NO ONE wants to go there! Eliminate any incentive for them to come here (by the way, you DONT need the feds for that, it can be handled on a local level) and the flow will start to subside.

[Perchoutofwater]

I dont support the last 2 sentences . . . but seriously face reality here Perch. If the jobs could be filled by US workers, they would be. If there were stiffer penalities for hiring illegals, more US workers might actually take this jobs . . . but I sure doubt it.

 

Eliminate the reason they come here and guess what? THEY WONT COME HERE>

 

I've never been against penalties for businesses hiring illegals. I don't know where you seem to get that from. If you are breaking the law whether you are the illegal or the employer hiring the illegal, I think you should be prosecuted, instead of our government looking the other way. Of course part of the reason so many citizens won't take the jobs as we have made it more profitable to sit at home, collect two years of unemployment, welfare, food stamps etc.... All these programs increase unemployment, because the reduce the desire to seek lower level employment.

 

Here's and idea, how bout we actually enforce our immigration laws, how bout we take away some of the incentive, or actually give those that feel they are too good to do a "menial" job and incentive to work instead of sit at the house. We could easily make it to where if you are "under employed" rather than taking away the unemployment and other "entitlements" all together, reduce it by one dollar for every two dollars earned. Then the cost of their cost on unemployment insurance premiums, welfare, food stamps, is half of what it is now, the people make 50% more than they would just sitting at the house, the border states are happy, the government is doing half as much of what it has no business doing, and is actually doing what it was originally formed to do.

 

We need entitlement reform a lot more than we need medical care reform, so that the hand outs don't disincentivise actually working.

[yo mama]

Get rid of all the illegals and think of how many more choices they would have. Too bad your guy would rather file suit against Arizona than see Americans have more choices in employment.

Easy there, amigo. President Obama's views on immigration look nothing like my own.

[Ursa Majoris]

Keep them from getting in and maybe the demand for the labor will increase and thus so will the wage which will then make it more attractive for people to want the work.

 

I am all for stiffer penalties for the employers but let's stop this jagoffs from coming into this country ILLEGALLY!!!!

You can do one (stop them) by hammering the other (the ones who take them). It's the same as the "war on drugs" - only attacking the demand side has a chance of success, though, as always, you might not like the consequences.

[gbpfan1231]

You can do one (stop them) by hammering the other (the ones who take them). It's the same as the "war on drugs" - only attacking the demand side has a chance of success, though, as always, you might not like the consequences.

Where did I ever say you could only do one of them? Do BOTH!!!!

 

BP says in his last post that you can even do the Employer thing locally - Arizona is trying to do something locally and the F'd up govt and Mr. Obama is suing them. Send the illegals home and if you find an employer knowingly employing illegals fine the hell out of them.

 

There are also a lot of illegals coming in that are not doing the farm jobs - so we stop the employers from hiring them then what do we do with the illegals coming here and not coming here for "legitimate" work - these will just stop coming?

[driveby]

A tingle runs down my leg when I think of how great things are going to be under Obamacare.

 

Liberals find it odd, and perhaps slightly irrational, that Americans so heavily criticize the British National Health Service. This has been of particular relevance in light of Donald Berwick’s “love affair” with the agency.

 

Britain’s Conservative prime minister, after all, often talks “of how proud we in Britain are of the NHS.” Just as with Medicare in the U.S., British politicians who talk of dismantling the NHS get hammered in the polls. (Despite Her Majesty’s Government’s surprise announcement this week of incremental market-oriented reforms to the program, the Tories under David Cameron have repeatedly pledged to preserve its funding.)

 

But describing the NHS as “popular” with British voters is a bit like describing cocaine as “popular” with crack addicts. Once people become dependent on heavy state subsidies, it is natural for them to feel insecure at the thought of losing them. Tocqueville long ago articulated how this problem inevitably arises from majoritarian democracies. And people who live under a single-payer regime have no way, short of moving abroad, of appreciating that there are better alternatives.

 

Having said that, Britons are frustrated by the incompetence and inefficiency of the National Health Service. Its problems are covered widely in the British press. Here are some examples (and readers are welcome to suggest others):

 

•NHS doctors routinely conceal from patients information about innovative new therapies that the NHS doesn’t pay for, so as to not “distress, upset or confuse” them.

•Terminally ill patients are incorrectly classified as “close to death” so as to allow the withdrawal of expensive life support.

•NHS expert guidelines on the management of high cholesterol are intentionally out of date, putting patients at serious risk, in order to save money.

•When the government approved an innovative new treatment for elderly blindness, the NHS initially decided to reimburse for the treatment only after patients were already blind in one eye — using the logic that a person blind in one eye can still see, and is therefore not that badly off.

•While most NHS patients expect to wait five months for a hip operation or knee surgery, leaving them immobile and disabled in the meantime, the actual waiting times are even worse: 11 months for hips and 12 months for knees. (This compares to a wait of 3 to 4 weeks for such procedures in the United States.)

•One in four Britons with cancer is denied treatment with the latest drugs proven to extend life.

•Those who seek to pay for such drugs on their own are expelled from the NHS system, for making the government look bad, and are forced to pay for the entirety of their own care for the rest of their lives.

•Britons diagnosed with cancer or heart attacks are more likely to die, and more quickly, than those of most other developed nations. Britain’s survival rates for these diseases are “little better than [those] of former Communist countries.”

These problems are not an accidental side effect of socialized medicine — they are inherent to socialized medicine. Liberals who believe that technocratic experts can rationally allocate health care resources ignore the real-world examples, like Britain’s, of how that model fails in practice.

 

The American health-care system has its flaws, and real reform is urgently needed. But the reason why Obamacare is so unpopular is that most people would never trade our approach, warts and all, for that of Donald Berwick’s NHS.

 

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