Paranoid RW delusion or some basis in fact?

[FSogol]

Talking to a small business owner the other day. Guy is right wing (economically) but hates the crazies and social conservatives in his party. Runs a good business, treats his employes well, offers and pays for medical without being required to, company pays 90% of medical and only passes 10% cost on to employees, etc.

Anyway he is paranoid that Obama's Department of Labor is getting ready to audit ALL small businesses in the US to see that they are complying with EVERY SINGLE applicable regulation and will fine any business that has forgotten to submit a form or haven't complied with every regulation whether they know about it or not. He says this a new form of revenue for the DOL and that they will have ridiculously high fines.

I told him that this sounded paranoid and I doubted they had the capability to audit even a fraction of small businesses. I pointed that the IRS currently has an all-time low on number of people/businesses audited. I said that any DOL audits would be against companies where complaints have been filed or having a history of ignoring laws/regulations.


Has anyone heard anything about new DOL audits?

[sharp_stick]

1. They don't have anywhere near

the number of people or computing power required to audit all small businesses in the country on an even tiny audit scale never mind a regulatory sweep.

Something like that would take 10's of thousands of employees and years of analysis. An audit isn't something that's done by just walking into a company and asking a few questions.

[FSogol]

6. Yeah, auditing every single business is nuts.

I'll never understand how educated, intelligent people can fall for the most ludicrous RW Bullshit.

[Lee-Lee]

7. Like I said, you don't have to hit every one

Hit just enough for word to get out and put the fear into them.

Your friend just needs to follow the law and be responsible and he won't have any reason to worry. Sounds like he isn't.

[dawg]

2. Obama's Department of Labor has been pro-business for six years now, but ...

the socialist crackdown is coming!!! Any day now!!!

Booga booga booga!!!

[JaneyVee]

3. Right after he rounds up all the guns and opens FEMA camps.

[Rex]

4. He's coming for our guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnssss...any day now,

wait was that him...no, no...just a squirrel...WAIT I SEE HIM...nope sorry, but ANY DAY NOW...yep...

[Lee-Lee]

5. There is nowhere near the manpower for that- but they can

do it to a handful of small business operators in every town, neighborhood and industry and get the same results.

Hit a few hard to make examples and the rest will start complying voluntarily. Simply watch and see who doesn't start filing/complying more after they have seen the examples and hit them next.

It won't happen, but it should and it's long oberdue. There is no point in fighting for and passing all the regulations protecting workers, the enviornent and everything else if we allow all those business owners to ignore them because it's inconvenient to comply.