You're being paid how much? For what?

On the front page of my newspaper this morning was the headline "Hottest job in county: $27 an hour to clean LCCC fire damages." Although this is not entirely outrageous in and of itself, it should serve every taxpayer as a warning of things to come.

As unemployment rates rise in this country, it is great that short-term opportunities come along that will pay an unusually high wage. With the rates in Lorain County, Ohio approaching 10%, this specific opportunity created a massive buzz and clamoring for the relatively few positions available. Being that the cleaning project will be for a limited time, hundreds showed up at a temp agency in Elyria to fill the positions for 12 hour shifts for $27 an hour. There was no rioting or trampling involved, that's not the story here. The story is the wasteful spending and the perpetuation of it by President Obama.

The fire that damaged a large portion of Lorain County Community College was started by a mentally disturbed arson. No one was injured, but the campus sustained well over a million dollars in damages. The restoration company hired by the insurance company did not have enough manpower of their own, so they had to enlist the services of a temp agency. And being that the college is county controlled, any work done at the facility has to comply with the Davis-Bacon Act and pay all workers at the prevailing wage.

It just so happens that the prevailing wage for laborers in Lorain County is $27.24 per hour. Now don't get confused here. Most laborers in unions do not actually take home $27.24 per hour. They have to pay union dues and health insurance, making the take home rate probably somewhere around $19 per hour. But because the restoration contractor does not have enough of its own employees, the temps will be paid the full wage in order to comply with prevailing wage requirements. And I am positive that union bosses and business agents will be lurking around the campus attempting to extort money from these suddenly rich individuals.

The Davis-Bacon Act requires that any federally funded project or tax funded entities pay contractors prevailing wage. Given that the work done at the college involves fire damage restoration, do you think that the work warrants $27 per hour pay? General cleaning, like pushing brooms, sucking up water, pulling down drywall, scrubbing concrete block. Twenty-seven dollars an hour. Really? If times were really that tough and unemployment was really that high, don't you think that you could find the same amount of temp help for say...$10 per hour?

Now take this event and multiply it hundreds, if not thousands, of time over. Not the fire, but the prevailing wage and institution. The government spending bills signed into law over the past few weeks are going to perpetuate this type of activity. Our tax dollars have been committed for the next four or eight years to grossly overpay for services that could be more efficiently performed by the private sector.

One of the temp hopefuls, waiting to see if she could get in on the $27/hour assignment, commented that "(u)ntil the president does what he's supposed to do, this is what we have to look forward to." Isn't that just great? It's the President's job to make sure that everyone has a high paying job and that those evil rich people quit taking money away from us poor folks. Instead of beating the pavement and taking some responsibility for yourself, just wait for PBHO to get you your health insurance, put gas in your car, and get you a house. Let me know how that works out for you.