The Family Leave Act and "7 Questions"

Geez! Now Hillary wants to extend the Family Leave Act still further! And it'll ONLY cost a billion!

It's getting to the point where no matter where she's speaking or what group she's speaking to, Hillary's going to promise somebody something that's going end up costing another billion dollars! (You know - a billion here, a billion there - pretty soon you're talking about real money!) Is anybody keeping a "tally" of what's being promised?

This morning, it was extending the Family Leave Act (FLA) which currently effects businesses with as few as 50 employees - Hillary now wants to expand it to companies employing as few as 25 employees! OUCH! Her expansion would cost small employers at least a billion dollars a year, and cover an additional 13 million workers nationwide. Currently the FLA allows eligible employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, in order to care for a newborn or ill family member.

In addition, Mrs. Clinton wants to make it mandatory for all employers to grant employees seven sick days a year to take care of their children or themselves. Well geez, someone should pull Mrs. C aside and tell her that most companies already grant sick days or personal days of some number to their employees. Certainly when I was in Human Resources, it was part of every union negotiation I ever had, and a benefit most companies offered even in non-union environments. Explain to me how it's going to make the country better to have the federal government dictating the minutia of employment practices? Seems to me the government does a "shitty enough job," (that's a technical term), with its own employees, that it shouldn't be offering anyone else advice!

I hate to think that Presidential candidates are just pandering for votes here. And it's not just Hillary - they're all just as bad - Republican as well as Democrats. It's getting to be like the elections we had for high school class officers! "If you vote for me I promise to have free ice cream at lunch every Friday - and the elimination of the dress code!!" (Yeah, they had a dress code when I went to school!)

Seriously, all I hear these days from Presidential candidates and other politico's is how they're going to give things to people. The Governor of NY, Elliott Spitzer wants to enact a program by December 1st. whereby illegal aliens will be given a NY State driver's license's. How stupid is this? (He's been threatened with a lawsuit by the Assembly if he keeps pushing that one!) Last week Hillary wanted to give $5000 to people for something, but she pulled that back. This week she wants to give everyone $1000 for a 401K fund, and she wants small small companies to grant employees extensive -3 months- unpaid leave, but guarantee them a job at the end of that period. (Doesn't she understand what a burden this is on companies?) Congress wants to cover "poor children" (whose family's make upward of $60,000.00) with benefits - oh, and by the way 68% of those poor children are already covered in private health care programs that they'd have to drop out of!

Instead of this insanely protracted campaigning of almost two years, instead of this hedonistic promising of everything to everybody, how about telling me how you're going to solve the problems we already have? If you need a short list, here are "7 Questions" that I bet 99% of Americans would like simple answers for;

• how are you going to "win" the war on terror? How are you going to improve our military?

• how you going to fix Social Security which I've paid into now for 40 years, so I don't have to break out into a cold sweat thinking about it?

• how are you going to secure both our southern & northern borders & fix the current illegal immigration problem; (amnesty shouldn't be part of this effort)

• how are you going to fix our tax code? Because frankly I shouldn't have to work until June before I start making money for my family?

• how are you going to fix our educational system that costs us $488 BILLION a year, but doesn't make our students any smarter? While you're at it, how you gonna break up the single biggest money grubbing boondoggle in history - the teacher's union. (And that's not even including our "vaunted" college & university system!)

• how are you going to bring the United States back to its rightful place of prominence in the World arena? (This effort might start with kicking the United Nations squarely in it's lying thieving testicles!)

• in simple English - explain to all of us Americans - where does all that money go every year? And why do you always need more? (Use charts and stuff!)

Now those are questions I want all the candidates to answer!

Dum Spiro Spero!