If it Works for the messiah, Why Doesn’t it Work for Community Colleges?

(Please note the word messiah not capitalized on purpose!)

I have a dear friend who works at the community college district I used to do contract work for (I performed some public information officer duties, and produced a newsletter designed to keep both college campuses informed about activities on their campuses and to read about achievements of co-workers and sometimes students). My friend is in fear for her job, because the unemployment ax is flying and there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to who goes.

I’ve talked about this job before, and how I did not get the job, and the person actually hired is unable or unwilling to perform all of the duties of the job, including minor graphic design work and showing up at evening events. Oh, and how she’s Latina and I’m not.

Anyway, this community college district is now laying off people deemed non-essential. There was talk amongst some of the survivors that they’d be willing to take a pay cut in order to keep their jobs and let their friends and co-workers retain theirs.

To my knowledge, the head of the district has not offered to take a pay cut off the top of her $250K salary, nor return/not accept her $4K a month housing allowance. Earlier this week this leader found money for a hotel room for a film producer to come speak at an event, and she and some board of trustee members took this person to dinner, no doubt expensed to the district.

Last time I was on campus, about a week after the coronation, there were still “hope and change” posters all over the place. Certainly things were going to be perfect now! And the newly-coronated leader would no doubt take care of the as left-leaning-as-possible community college system and its administrators.

We all know the messiah created a “stimulus package” that hasn’t stimulated anyone with a job (or underemployed, or who has lost a job because of the economic situation). What seems to have been stimulated is a bunch of banks who are in part being rewarded for plenty of bad decisions regarding real estate loans (and who were also TOLD to make those loans by a Democratically-controlled Congress and Senate!) and a pair of U.S. automakers who have been held hostage by unions for years and have built poor quality cars. (I would never own a GM car; I learned to drive in a Chevy Monte Carlo and I ran that thing to the ground!)

So spending what you don’t have is supposed to cure all ills? That's what that "stimulus package" tells me anyway ...

If you are a community college district, with liberal leanings as left as you can go, shouldn’t you do the same thing as your esteemed leader—spend what you don’t have, because that will fix things?

Kind of funny that those people applaud what the messiah did, yet they fail to follow his lead and just keep spending … (sarcasm meter on!)

Of course that district should have done the last hired/first fired thing, and the first fired should be their incompetent PIO. That will save the district $100K a year, and keep two lesser-paid support people in their jobs. What do you think a community college district needs more, a PIO who can’t do half of the job, or two culinary workers who keep the students and staff fed?

I hope my friend survives the carnage.

Why must certain professions be so strongly linked to liberalism?

Hindsight is of course 20/20. And as you get older, usually you get wiser.

I decided to become a registered nurse when I was 19 years of age. It wasn’t so much a love of mankind but a conscious decision to have a career that for as long as I chose to work, I’d have a job (boy was I wrong about that!). After a couple of false starts at college (dropping out due to knee problems that I thought were fixed—ha!), I began to work toward an associate’s degree in nursing in 1978, starting the actual two-year nursing program in 1979.

As I learned more about the profession, I discovered there were two areas that I was pretty darn good at—labor and delivery and surgical nursing. I caught on real fast in both areas, and was among the few students in my cohort who was invited to scrub into actual surgeries and to fully participate in managing laboring mothers, including internal exams.

I ended up working at a place I had no desire to work at, but I was unable to leave the area, being married and thinking my husband was right in his desire to stay in the area. One of the first things I had to do when I acquired that job was join the California Nurses’ Association—a union.

My experience with unions up until that time had been watching the United Farm Workers use intimidation methods to achieve their goals. I sure hated the idea of giving a union my hard-earned money to do next to nothing for me.

Naturally union membership included subscriptions to newsletters, and it was then I learned that being a nurse meant being a liberal Democrat. Calls for donations for PACs and other liberal special interests came in the mail thanks to my union membership.

In retrospect, would I have sought another career if I’d known that my career choice would have linked me to liberal ways? I admit I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-spaying and neutering of repeat welfare offenders.

I am also against universal healthcare, but I am for the government getting truthful answers as to why health care is so costly (is it really lawsuits and insurance premiums or just greedy doctors?). I am against non-taxpayers with social security receiving care (especially adults). I am against illegals specifically coming to the U.S. to get free health care. I am against the misuse of emergency room services for routine health care, too. I saw plenty of abuse while working at that hospital.

Today I received an e-mail blast from a freebie nursing publication, “inviting” me to click a link to be part of tomorrow’s inauguration celebration.

The e-mail read:
“Nurse.com presents Inauguration 2009: Where will you be on Jan. 20? Go to nurse.com/inauguration to be part of the crowd!”

Our nurse writers and editors will be covering the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. We’ll travel by plane, train, and bus to bring you reports from…

• A Chicago-to-the-Capitol-bound busload of nurses who knew Obama way back when

• A special medical unit stationed smack dab in the middle of the crowd on the Washington Mall

• And from the hottest seat in town, front and center in the media section at the swearing-in ceremony

I deleted the e-mail.

I do keep my nursing license active but sometimes I question my sanity. I will never work as a nurse again because of my job-inflicted back injuries. I do not have the proper degree to do any sort of administrative or research work as a nurse. Yet because of my career choice, I am assumed to be liberal and receive plenty ‘o propaganda in my snail mail and e-mail.

I do not expect any liberal cause to help me get work. Being liberal is all about being “young” and “hip,” and I am neither.

Not that I've done any better with what I ultimately did when I did finish a four-year degree. My BS is in public relations, a profession that is highly linked to journalism. And we all know where most journalists stand politically nowadays ...

Fears

I suppose I should start talking about my fears for the United States (and my way of life) during the rule of the newly-elected messiah.

First, I am so distressed about people who say "this is the first time in a long time I am proud to be an American," or "I finally have hope." Listen, if things had been so terrible, if you'd been humiliated to be an American, there are other places you can go. Perhaps you should have gone there years ago. 

I do think it's funny that the term "liberal" is used when what being a liberal means is an anything goes attitude, except the government is telling you what goes. Liberal means more government in everyday life, legislating morality (and the ultra-conservative Repubs are just as bad, so I'm not blind to this) and telling us all what is acceptable to think and do. 

So here's today's concern: employment/labor & immigration

I'm a baby boomer who can't get full-time work. People in their 30s are picked before me, even though I have more education and most likely can do the job better than someone wet behind the ears. How many other boomers are in my situation? I know so many high-tech workers, smart people, eager and creative people, who remain unemployed while their former employers demand that more work visas be granted so they can fill jobs. What of the boomers you chose to fire because you felt their benefits were getting more expensive? It's more acceptable to import an unknown person so you can pay him/her less? Shame on the U.S. companies who have bought into this! Claiming qualified workers aren't readily available is as shameful as the outsourcing that's become so popular. Why isn't Big Brother looking out for the good of U.S. workers? I'm hoping against hope the messiah and his regime find a way to take away any advantages to these labor practices—higher taxes, tariffs for each foreign worker admitted into the U.S., and closer monitoring of those workers to make sure they do leave the U.S. when their visas are up. Oh and NO ANCHOR BABIES. That's always their way in.

There is an article in today's LA Times about how happy labor unions are with the messiah's election. They are salivating all over themselves, eager to unionize anything and everything. Look what unionization has done for American car makers—the product is not as good as a Japanese or German-built car (even if they are built somewhere in North America), and the U.S. product is certainly no value for the dollars you spend on it (though my 1998 Mustang with 162K miles is still going strong). And the government is considering bailing those automakers out, which really means that the unions can continue to extort dues from American workers.

I have worked in unionized jobs twice. I hated paying those dues, and in each case, the union did NOTHING for me. I looked for assistance as I kept suffering on-the-job injuries with the first job, and the union rep claimed there was nothing that could be done for me. Thanks for nothing! I sure could use that $200 a month in "dues" you took from me in the 1980s. 

I know of a family whose patriarch worked tirelessly for the United Farm Workers in the late 1960s into the 1980s. He alienated local growers who had previously hired him and his family. When he became too gravely disabled to work or even do union organizing, he filed for retirement—benefits he'd been paying for as a member of the UFW.

He was told he hadn't paid enough in to draw from the UFW's retirement program. Yet Cesar Chavez' family all live in very nice homes, driving late model cars. This man ended up on social security disability AND SSI—something he never expected to do, because he believed in the UFW and its retirement program.

The only people who benefitted from the UFW's union dues are Cesar Chavez and his descendants. I believe the only people who benefit from unions of any kind are the head honchos and the so-called organizers. Their check is in the mail. Where is yours?