It's the Law

"Hey Ollie, how come there's nobody in the Giants' new ballpark?"

"Didn't ya hear? They moved back to New York. The city said they had to provide free rides to the games and health care coverage for all the fans. The Giants told em' to stick it."


San Francisco, that insane asylum by the bay, is a model of how not to run a city. Under the reign of Gavin Newsom, the playboy mayor and a lunatic city council, San Francisco has opened its arms to the homeless and illegal aliens of our country, while paying no attention to the blight the homeless have caused and to crime committed by some of the illegal aliens, specifically gang members-even when, as happened this year, a local family was brutally murdered by an illegal alien gang member who, being already in the city's justice system, should have been deported prior to his last crime (murder). Who is not welcome in San Francisco? Anybody associated with our military.

While the city has rightfully garnered a lot of negative publicity recently for the above issues, there is more that should be pointed out. You see, San Francisco, like the State of California itself, is not friendly to business.

For example, the city has established a new ordinance that requires local businesses to provide "commuter benefits" to its employees. Those benefits consist either of an income-tax break of up to $110 per month, an employer-provided transit pass or free rides to and from work supplied by the employer. Failure to comply results in a fine of $500. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi wants to add a new benefit that would mandate employers to provide $20 a month to those employees who ride to work on bicycles.

Meanwhile, the ultra-liberal 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a San Francisco "right" to charge employers to help pay for universal health coverage(see Orange County Register editorial October 21, 2008).

Now you liberals out there may think it is fine and dandy for government to mandate private businesses to provide this or that for its employees- pay for their transportation to work, provide health care insurance and all that. If a company wants to provide these benefits for its workers, great. I say you should get a job with that company.

However, I believe that these are issues between an employer and his/her employees. It should be the role of government to intervene.

Secondly, as a practical matter, at a certain point, a business owner saddled with all these regulations-not to mention-taxes-is going to do one of several things: They can lay off workers, raise prices, or relocate their business elsewhere-as many California businesses are already doing-and take their jobs with them.

Well, you say. That's California-San Francisco, in fact. That's not going to happen here in Wisconsin or Georgia.

Yes, it can.

If Barack Obama is elected, you know what he is going to do to businesses. He is going to raise taxes on them. He is going to saddle them with more regulations. He doesn't like business. He thinks they are the root of all evil. He forgets that businesses are the engine that drives our economy and provides jobs.

And what do you think will happen when President Obama starts laying the wood to the nation's businesses and mimics San Francisco? Many will move out of the country and take their businesses and jobs with them.

Many would call it unintended consequences. I am not so sure. The far-left leaders and politicians of this country are not so dim-witted not to know these will be the consequences. If they, in fact, know what the consequences of these policies are, then their motive can only be to bring this country to its knees.