CNBC business analyst Rick Santelli was on television not too long ago to explain the news that the health care law would reduce the size of the workforce. The Chicago-based business news personality, no friend of President Obama, answered charges that it would lead to a loss of jobs by explaining, as many liberals and even Paul Ryan have said, that it would not result in a loss of jobs; rather, some people who get health insurance will be able to leave the workforce to take care of children or pursue personal goals and the like, while the jobs they leave behind will be filled by people who need them. Some people who leave the work place might even start businesses of their own with a secure health plan behind them.
So Santelli is cool with this, right? Wrong! In between mocking Obama for making yet another adjustment-cum-delay to the law regarding employer-provided coverage, Santelli bitched about how a smaller workforce meant less productivity, meaning less output, meaning fewer profits for CEOs and shareholders - and the economy would have to "take a haircut."
So who cares what a blowhard Windy City wop (hold your comments, I'm half-Italian) thinks? Well, you ought to remember that it was Santelli's on-air rant about the federal government's plan to help bail out folks with underwater mortgages - homeowners Santelli dismissed as "losers" - and his call for a Boston Tea Party-style rally in Chicago that spawned the nationwide Tea Party, which has since grown to include abortion foes, gun nuts, and Islamophobes who fear a movement supporting the expansion of Shari'a law in the United States (a movement that does not exist).
That rant happened five years ago today, and we're still paying for it.
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