Posted on 11/09/2006 1:41:30 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
SAN FRANCISCO - A group of restaurant owners filed a lawsuit Wednesday that could jeopardize funding for The City’s ambitious plan to provide health care for more than 82,000 uninsured residents.
Pushed by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Tom Ammiano, the recently adopted health care ordinance was unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors, but largely opposed by the business community, which will have to pay a portion of the program’s estimated $200 million price tag. The program is expected to begin this July.
The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a nonprofit group representing the interests of restaurant owners, allege in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco that The City’s health care ordinance is pre-empted by a federal law, known as Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which sets national standards for employee benefit plans. The federal law prevents states and local governments from dictating specific terms of an employee benefit plan, which includes health care benefits.
“ERISA broadly pre-empts all state and local laws relating to the administration of federally governed employee welfare benefit plans,” the lawsuit said. “If implemented, the ordinance would intrude both directly and indirectly upon the administration of such plans.”
The health care ordinance requires businesses with 20 employees or more to invest $1.06 to $1.60 for each employee hour worked for health care.
“The judge will rule that the intent of ERISA is violated by the funding mechanism of the health care program,” said Kevin Westlye, president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association.
While not having seen the lawsuit yet, proponents of the health care ordinance were quick to defend it against a legal challenge.
“This law was written very carefully to avoid pre-emption under ERISA,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor and Research. “This law is like the minimum wage law. It sets standards for spending on health care. The law says nothing about the content of the health services, which is what ERISA addresses.”
“I haven’t read the details of the lawsuit but I am confident we’ll prevail and it won’t stop our momentum over the course of the next year to begin the process of implementing the San Francisco Health Plan,” Newsom said.
Westlye and other business leaders wanted to explore other options to fund the program, such as a quarter-cent sales tax.
“[The lawsuit] is an example of what happens when a process like the health care mandate does not seriously take into consideration the financial impact of legislation on small businesses and restaurants,” said Steve Falk, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. “It doesn’t surprise me that a lawsuit has been filed just out of frustration of not being listened to.”
However, one TownHall blogger [satire] writes:" I figured out how we can raise the minimum wage to $100 an hour!"
See: YouTUBE under addressed bold heading...
Pelosi said she will rush through an increase in the minimum wage to 7.50 an hour. The labor unions will adjust wages and will raise prices elsewhere.
Democrats on a whirlwind mission to make big and small business pay in their first few hours after taking control.
Still, the Nancy woman and her running dog lackeys are not at all interested in enforcing the minimum wage law on employers who hire illegal aliens.
Maybe they figure that the employers will need to hire illegals when they cannot afford to pay the new minimum wage.
You mean, like the vineyard her husband owns?
Will the last employer out of San Francisco please turn out the lights...
Dana Closing 8 Plants in North America
By JOHN SEEWER
AP
TOLEDO, Ohio (Nov. 9) - Auto parts maker Dana Corp. plans to close eight North American plants and reduce operations at three others, the company said Thursday in a regulatory filing.
Dana, which filed for bankruptcy protection in March, said it would cut health benefits for retirees and attempt to alter labor contracts at its unionized plants.
"Our existing labor costs, especially in the U.S., impair our financial position and are a significant impediment to a successful reorganization," the company said in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
It was not immediately clear what plants would be closed or how many jobs would be affected.
Dana, which sells brakes, axles and other parts to most major automakers, said in its bankruptcy filing that rising energy costs were driving up production costs and hurting demand for its customers' products.
A large slice of its business comes from three customers: Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG.
http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/dana-closing-8-plants-in-north-america/n20061109152409990025?cid=403
It's in California, which means the Nancy woman and her husband own it together.
To liberals, this is an "investment". To normal people, it's an expense.
Very few jobs pay minimum wage, and there's this extraordinarily prevalent myth that people try to make a living on minimum wage. It really doesn't happen. While I think the minimum wage should be adjusted for inflation, raising it arbitrarily (as voters just did) amounts to nothing more than printing money. It affects more than just the minimum wage as you will see.
Coincidence?
SAN FRANCISCO 49ers say they are moving to Santa Clara.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/09/BAGNJM99FK1.DTL
I didn't realize the Niners were that cheap. Explains a lot though. :)
I work in San Francisco. I don't live in the city, since I ran for my life 7 years ago and moved to the leafy burbs.
Businesses are leaving here in droves. Major companies have moved to the suburbs, where parking is plentiful and employees don't have to step over passed-out vagrants to get to work.
San Francisco is a "transit first" city! That means they open a new downtown shopping complex with 200 stores...with NO PARKING.
Rent control is so severe that you can be prohibited from moving into your own property if a "protected class" tenant rents there. If you have a tenant over 65 who has lived in the unit for 10 years, you can NEVER evict the tenant.
If you do a legal eviction on a family of 3, you will have to pay them $16,000 to move. It's the law here.
According to the SF Small Property Owners group, there are an estimated 20,000 un-rented units in this city. Who wants a tenant from h*ll you can't get rid of?
This city is just under 50% white. But the schools are at 9% white. This is because almost all the white, middle class families with kids have already left. They are in the same suburbs I'm in, and the increase in suburban wealth and quality of life shows the result. All of SF's money is leaving.
The health care mandate is just one symbol of how this city has declined in the last 10 years. It's now run by the most extremist leftists in the country, who openly boast that "property is theft", and that the profits of business are immoral.
I'm happy to take the city's money, but I wouldn't live here for the world.
If you want a pretty city on the Pacific for a vacation, try Victoria, BC.
"Pelosi – who owns non-union vineyards in Napa Valley where grape-picking depends chiefly on the availability of cheap foreign labor – is doing everything she can to help open the floodgates to more illegal immigration. And she wants the American taxpayers to pay their way. As even more proof of this than I previously reported, Pelosi does not want employers like her to be required to pay the cost of illegal aliens’ hospital care. She voted against a bill that would make employers liable for the reimbursements if an undocumented employee seeks medical attention. And she voted in favor of rewarding illegal aliens from Mexico with Social Security benefits."
Peter Schweizer also notes in his best-selling expose of liberal hypocrisy, "Do As I Say (Not As I Do):
"The vineyard produces expensive grapes for high-end wines. Napa grapes bring up to $4,000 a ton compared with $300 a ton for, say, San Joaquin grapes.
Schweizer places Pelosi in a chapter titled "Workers of the World Unite Somewhere Else:
" UFW members need not apply at the Pelosi family vineyards."- INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 10/31/2006
It would be interesting to know what wage the Pelosis pays their workers.
They are among the very few owners of Piatti (one is located in Mill Valley), a chain of Italian restaurants with 900 employees.
After Arizona just raised the minimum raise by referendum, I'm wondering what's to prevent the "people" from raising the minimum wage to $100? Or granting every Arizona $5,000 just for fun.
Awwww. . .poor thing. She has to work so hard. She works almost 40 hours per week!
It's been just over 10 years since Congress passed Rep. Nancy Pelosi's Presidio Trust legislation, effectively creating the first privatized national park in the United States. The results are pretty clear: Just cruise through the Presidio and check out the gigantic new office complex George Lucas has built. In fact, the private business interests that were given control of the park in 1995 now oversee more than 80 percent of the 1,408-acre parcel. The goal of the privatizers: raise enough money from development, leases, and other real estate deals to pay the entire cost of running the park by 2013.
That's what Pelosi's legislation requires said to be a terrible disaster for SF.
The Press, however, seems to be warm and fuzzy over Pelosi " The first woman................"(I can't say it out loud yet!)
In 1949, the minimum wage was .75c, adjusted for inflation it's about 8 bucks. Still - in 1949 there was no welfare to speak of, no WIC and the myriad of other social services available. So in some ways, people are much better off today.
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