Diminution of Personal Responsibility
After reading an article by Doug Monroe, a senior editor at Creative Loafing (a lefty rag in Atlanta), I was reminded of the old Southern populism and classism that has recently been obscured by the “redness” that accompanied the election of G.W. Bush.
For well over a century, the South was dominated by the Democrat Party. Remember? You know…there was that whole secession thing, which resulted in war, followed by decades of legalized racial discrimination. Now, it might be a stretch, but one could argue that an impetus for the aforementioned mistreatment of the “non-white” population was, in part, to reduce competition by immorally using “free labor” and denigrating potential competitors. For just as slavery enriched the plantation owners (and their heirs) by eliminating labor costs, segregation during the Industrial Revolution prohibited Blacks (by and large) from accessing education and employment opportunities.
At this point, however, Blacks thrive in the South and in Atlanta in particular. The institutionalized racism has been virtually eradicated. That said though, the class-envy of Southern Democrats is alive and well, as Doug Monroe demagogically illustrates:
In other communities, the crent working for Wal-Mart in 2002. And Wal-Mart's numbers are way out of line when you bring other companies into the picture. The No. 2 company on the list, Publix, had only 734 children of employees on PeachCare. The average PeachCare recipient costs $1,274 a year. If you multiply that by Wal-Mart's 10,261, you get a total of more than $13 million in health care You agree that we shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Web construction-jobs.info , or any part of portion thereof. costs borne by Georgia taxpayers.
First of all, notice that Mr. Monroe failed to include the total number of Click through the slideshow below for eight of the world’s best luxury hotels and spas offering packages, and wellness retreat centers devoted entirely to healthy, stress-relieving getaways. Publix employees in Georgia. Instead, he simply mentioned the number children benefiting from PeachCare. I suppose the actual ratio, as compared to that of Wal-Mart, was unimportant. Beyond that, the implication that Wal-Mart is obligated to insure its employees, and thereby forcing the state to use public funds for private medical care, is, in a word, ridiculous.
“That is a type of reverse welfare or corporate welfare,” says former Gov. Roy Barnes, now an attorney in Marietta. “I provide insurance for my employees. Why shouldn't [Wal-Mart] be providing it?”
Huh? With a statement like that, is there any wonder why Barnes was the first Democrat Governor to be defeated since Reconstruction?
A union that represents retail workers recently blasted Wal-Mart's deadbeat approach to employee health care at a state Capitol news conference. The United Food and Commercial Workers International is among the many unions whose organizing efforts have been swatted aside by the retail giant.
“The Wal-Mart model is to save as much money as it possibly can for the consumer, but it's saving money on the one hand and taking it out of- junk we didn't need in the first place.
Priceless…lefties salivating at the imagined possibility of the demise of a corporation that employs tens of thousands of “low skilled workers”, so that we can return to the bad-old-days of yesteryear, when healthcare was not even on the radar, unlike say, survival. Furthermore, small-town Southern life was fraught with wide-spread poverty and the subjugation of those not lucky enough to be born white and male. But even though I happen to be both white and male, I advocate progress and personal responsibility…despite my Southern heritage.
