-By Warner Todd Huston
As America loses jobs, as American workers find they have to tighten belts, do without, and are told to accept a world of permanently high unemployment, elites lucky enough to join the government find themselves living high off the hog — and by that we mean raping the taxpayers for undeserved paychecks. We find yet another example of the gold strike that is being hired by the Obama administration with the union operative that became Obama’s Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis.
It appears that Solis re-hired six of her former congressional staffers at huge pay raises courtesy of the American taxpayers.
Now, as Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner reports, the Bush administration prevented giant windfall pay raises by limiting job jumpers to a 20% increase over previous salary. Like all the other so-called “responsible government” ideas that Obama keeps claiming he is sure to implement, this old Bush corruption cutting idea has been tossed by the wayside. I say this because Obama’s appointee gave one staffer a better than 95 percent pay raise with only one of the six getting a less than 30 percent pay raise.
Here’s the list of the lucky elites that are rolling in the taxpayer’s clover:
Staffer: Roberto Soberanis
Last congressional salary: $44,500
Dept. of Labor salary: $86,927
Percentage increase: 95.34
Staffer: Laura McDonald
Last congressional salary: $53,500
Dept. of Labor salary: $86,927
Percentage increase: 62.48
Staffer: Cindy Chen
Last congressional salary: $49,000
Dept. of Labor salary: $73,100
Percentage increase: 49.18
Staffer: Megan Uzzell
Last congressional salary: $82,000
Dept. of Labor salary: $120,830
Percentage increase: 47.35
Staffer: Laura De La Torre
Last congressional salary: $37,000
Dept. of Labor salary: $50,408
Percentage increase: 36.24
Staffer: Noelle Lee
Last congressional salary: $52,999
Dept. of Labor salary: $60,989
Percentage increase: 15.07
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 200 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDailyReview.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
Huston has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Huston’s work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neil Bortz, and Michael Savage. He has appeared on the G. Gordon Liddy show, dozens of local shows from coast to coast, and many blogtalk radio shows.
Mr. Huston has appeared on local TV news to discuss his writing, has been a guest of CNN’s blogger lunch, and has appeared on Breitbart TV’s B-Team show.
Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com and has a blog on the Tribune-Owned http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/publius-forum/ChicagoNow.com website. He is a well known writer on Illinois politics.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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