Obama still side stepping the hard questions

WASHINGTON -- President Obama paid a surprise visit to members of the White House press corps on Thursday evening when he walked through their working area of the West Wing, but when he was confronted with a question by one of the journalists he quickly became agitated.

According to reports, when Politico's Jonathan Martin asked the president about his nominee for deputy Defense Secretary, William Lynn, Obama refused to answer, saying he was not there to take questions.

"I came down here to visit. I didn't come down here -- this is what happens. I can't end up visiting you guys and shaking hands if I am going to grilled every time I come down here," the president said.

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter's shoulder and staring him in the eye.

"Alright, come on" he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. "We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys - that's all I was trying to do," politico.com reported.

The situation came to a close when a cameraman in the room declared: "I'd like to say it one more time: 'Mr. President.'"

The nominee in question, William Lynn, is a former lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, a pick Obama made in contradiction to his much-heralded anti-lobbying rules.

Obama was willing to field lighter questions, though.

Yes, he's discovered the gym in the White House residence. No, he hasn't played basketball yet on the outdoor White House court because it's been too cold.

The president's walk-through came without notice, causing a bit of a wild scene. Reporters started running toward him, wary of missing a single word. When one reporter who hadn't spotted Obama yet asked what everyone was rushing toward, another one responded: "The big guy."

Obama made it to the back of the briefing room, in a narrow hallway, where he shook hands.

"I gotta say, it's smaller than I thought," the president said as he looked around for the first time.

He introduced himself to those whom he didn't already know from the long campaign trail and said it would take a little while to learn everyone's names.

The president then continued on, walking by the media outlets' booths on the same floor.
Obama asked about the reasoning behind why certain media outlets had work space where they did. When he got an answer involving the intricacies of press corps protocol, Obama responded: "This is worse than the Middle East here -- who's sitting where and all that stuff."

As he walked through the area where journalists have lunch, Obama noticed a pair of vending machines that dispense soda and junk food.

"Looks like you have some healthy snacks, guys," Obama said.

Then he walked through the basement quarters, where several other news outlets set up shop. He said that was smaller than he expected too.

Obama on equal pay for equal work

Equal Pay, in Practice (Obama doesn't practice what he preaches)

Recently, Presidential candidate Barack Obama has been talking about "equality" for women, as measured by what he calls "equal pay for equal work".

There are a lot of numbers thrown out comparing how much women get paid, as compared to how much men get paid.

The first problem of course, is how you compare jobs, situations, performance -- what makes two jobs "equal". It's easy if you have two assembly workers that both do a weld. Of course, in that case there is "equal" pay, although it might be based on seniority.

In a perfect free-market society, equal pay wouldn't be an issue. The market would dictate how much each job was worth. If one company insisted on not paying women as good as men, they would tend to get workers that were less qualified, and a competitor who paid women equally would win the competition.

And in fact, a lot of what is seen as discrimination toward women is simply the market reflecting the employer's ability to find an adequate pool of workers. If I advertise a job for $10 an hour, and no man wants to work for that money, but several women do, I will hire the woman. If down the street someone offers $15 for the same job, and they hire a man who is more qualified than any women, my hire will look like she is "underpaid" for the same job, but the problem was that she was willing to work for that amount.

A great example of the difficulty of "Equal Pay" in practice is the senate staff for the two presidential nominees. Deroy Murdock, national columnist, examines the pay practices of Obama's and McCain's Senate Staff, and finds an interesting disconnect. While Obama attacks McCain for not supporting "equal pay", Obama actually pays HIS female staff less than his male staff, while McCain pays his female staff MORE than his male staff, and more than Obama.

From his article Obama’s female staffers shortchanged:

Based on these calculations, Obama’s 28 male staffers divided among themselves total payroll expenditures of $1,523,120. Thus, Obama’s average male employee earned $54,397.

Obama’s 30 female employees split $1,354,580 among themselves, or $45,152, on average.
Why this disparity? One reason may be the under-representation of women in Obama’s highest-compensated ranks. Among Obama’s five best-paid advisers, only one was a woman. Among his top 20, seven were women.

Again, on average, Obama’s female staffers earn just 83 cents for every dollar his male staffers make. This figure certainly exceeds the 77-cent threshold that Obama’s campaign Web site condemns. However, 83 cents do not equal $1. In spite of this 17-cent gap between Obama’s rhetoric and reality, he chose to chide GOP presidential contender John McCain on this issue.

So, how does McCain stack up?:

McCain’s 17 male staffers split $916,914, thus averaging $53,936. His 25 female employees divided $1,396,958 and averaged $55,878.

On average, according to these data, women in McCain’s office make $1.04 for every dollar a man makes. In fact, all other things being equal, a typical female staffer could earn 21 cents more per dollar paid to her male counterpart - while adding $10,726 to her annual income - by leaving Obama’s office and going to work for McCain.

(btw, note that McCain, in the Senate for over 20 years, has a total of 42 staff. Obama, a 1st-termer, has 58. McCain pays out about $2.2 million, Obama $2.9 million. It is clear which one is more likely to hold down spending in government).

Also, McCain apparently values the opinions of women more than Obama. For while only ONE of Obama's top 5 advisors is a female, THREE of McCain's top aides are female:

One explanation could be that women compose a majority of McCain’s highest-paid aides. Among his top-five best-compensated staffers, three are women. Of his 20-highest-salaried employees, 13 are women. The Republican presidential nominee relies on women - much more than men - for advice at the highest, and thus, best-paid levels.

But what this shows is that, in practice, even a guy who pretends to be for "equal pay" doesn't seem to be able to achieve it, because in fact the staff don't all do the same job, and can't be "equally compared".

But Obama favors laws which would allow the Federal Government to build a registry of "comparable jobs" and force employers to pay women more for work than is necessary to make them satisfied employees. This will make our country even LESS competitive, and will discourage the hiring of women (I'm sure Obama will make quotas for that as well to solve the problem).