Fired Ohio Woman Sues Employer – Suggests Cause was her Vote for Obama – The Manipulation and Downfall of Being a “low-information” voter.

Applebees announced layoffs due to Obamacare - Image with article from the Examiner

Headline: from the Ohio Dispatch : “Ohio woman claims she was fired for Obama vote”, goes into some detail regarding a woman who filed suit against her former employer, a defense contractor, claiming her loss of employment was due to her personal vote for President Obama – she filed the suit (3) three months after her separation. (Read balance of story and comments here at dispatch.com)

The comments under the article are accusatory towards the woman, based upon her vote, rather than what should be obvious, for the most part. Those commenting are suggesting that if the owner of the company fired her due to her vote, it was justified; however they are missing two points.

The first is that the woman most likely was fishing for any excuse to find income after the separation, the national proclivity to bring suit over just about anything, is not lost on the general public (given the findings made in terms of suits filed on the most ridiculous of cases.) What better excuse, than an employee who is found to be out of a job, especially one who had been “last hired”, in a declining economy, with little to stand on, possibly believing that her separation was due to her political leanings?

If one however, reads one’s local or national news outlets, including online, broadcast and print, then one understands that the economy has driven the number of available jobs, and the number of layoffs. In addition, due to the costs to employers of the Affordable Health Care Act, there was sufficient notice, through the media outlets mentioned, that employers were more than vocal about the additional need to scale back on employees hours, as well as noting the costs would make it impossible to either keep those hired, or hire additional employees.

One might look at headlines today, based on a simple “Google News” search and find the following using “layoffs health care law” (simple search):

January 26th, 2013 "Aurora Health Care Says It Will Lay Off Employees Because Of Obamacare " (Huffington Post)

February 1, 2013 "Medical Company Blames ‘Obamacare’ For Layoffs Of Nearly 100 People" (CBSDC)

February 8, 2013 "Looming layoffs, pay freezes, hold the R&D: Regional manufacturer says medical device tax under healthcare law will hurt business”(Penn Live)

Today, February 21, 2013 "Farmington hospital to cut up to 40 jobs"(WGME Maine)

(The above is particularly disturbing for those who are concerned about availability of health care in general, as there are multiple articles in this vein, from Hospitals across the nation. Staff is being reduced to cut costs – those costs cutting measures are associated with the Affordable Health Care Act, as it pertains to providers of Health Care. In short, under the Affordable Health Care Act, providers must find ways in which to reduce the cost of healthcare generally. One such cost cutting measure that patients may face is the 30 day waiting period for appointments to treat the same diagnosis. This is designed to insure that hospitals’ make the “right call” and provide the correct treatment the first time an individual visits their provider. If not, the Hospital is footing the bill, should that individual present the same systems, and visit that provider within (30) thirty days. All things being equal, should human error occur, the provider may make the decision to push an appointment up – or offer a new diagnosis. As private hospitals are owned by corporations which have an obligation to make a profit in order to continue operations, an alternative is to reduce their overhead, (they are also subject to the employers additional costs to implement this act.) is to lay off staff, and/or to reduce hours.)

The above are relatively new articles, however, if one goes back a bit further into 2012, as the costs to employers under the law became more defined (Nancy Pelosi “Sign the Bill now, find out what’s in it later” approach come home to roost), the writing was on the wall and the front page:

For example: October 14, 2012 ”YET ANOTHER CEO ASKS EMPLOYEES TO VOTE ROMNEY FOR SAKE OF THE COMPANY (AND THEIR JOBS)” (The Blaze). Although the article points to the Blaze, a blog, cites MSNBC as the source for the individual companies who were, in desperation, trying to drum up votes for Mitt Romney out of fear of the costs of “Obama Care” to both the employer and employee.

August, 2012 "California Obamacare: LA County Prepares For Massive Health Care Restructuring" (Huffington Post)

The list of companies that have laid off since it was clear the mandate would go forward with the re-election of the President can be found on blogs such as ”Share This Massive List of Post Election Firing and Layoffs…”(The Economic Collapse Blog)

Using “low Information voters” – a term that is in itself, insulting, but for lack of another term and politically correct, is a new tactic by politicians - Those who are deemed “low information voters” are those that either do not avail themselves news on a local or weekly basis, if at all, or limit themselves to their local and national broadcast news. Therefore, they are somewhat easily “fooled” into thinking or voting a certain way, or for that matter, may fail to take shelter in light of a coming storm!

Understanding that the ”news” may be boring, and more to the point, that finding news sources and information by multiple outlets, may be too time consuming and/or challenging for the average voter (which is truly the term that should be used). Of course, news may be depressing, or incomprehensible, (given the state of our education system in the U.S.) – or shunned due to one political bent or the other (i.e. Fox on the left, MSNBC on the right) This type of news consumer is more prone to believe their separation of employment was caused by a vindictive employer knowing how they voted. On the face of it, ridiculous, however, in truth, they may simply not know better. If one is honest, especially those commenting on the Dispatch Article (Paragraph 1), they might know a family member, or several, friends and coworkers, who are not particularly keen on reading, listening or watching news in depth. The current state of affairs offers more teaching moments than not, when one considers that to be well-informed and educated on a subject gives on more power to make an informed decision.