REPUBLICANS VOTE TO KILL MINIMUM WAGE BILL. OLYMPIA SNOWE SHOULD READ BARBARA EHRENREICH'S BOOK
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My friend "H" tends to be pretty well-grounded. Her dad was an intellectual old-line NY commie and he instilled all the best values in her. Obviously she's about as pleased with the Bush Regime as is anyone with more than a 2-digit IQ. But I rarely she her veering towards hysteria. She was veering big time when it was looking like a formal draft might be instituted a year or so ago; she has two boys in college. In the last week or so "H" has started veering a little again. This time I think it would take her dear departed dad to talk some sense into her. She's a huge Tom Paine fan but the Mansion Subsidy story there about abolishing the home mortgage deduction just infuriated her. "How dare they pick on home owners?? I suspect the statistics are slanted or downright wrong, also," she wrote to me. "No mention of housing prices and the amount people now have to borrow to buy a home." I calmed her down, at least operationally, by assuring her that 1- the real estate and banking industries OWN both political parties and that it would be instant suicide for any elected official to advocate abolishing the income tax deduction for mortgages; 2- even poor people who rent want to be (and expect to be) rich enough one day to make use of this middle class tax deduction.
There's a lot more for "H" and the rest of us to worry about in terms of our governing class. They may screw the middle class now and then, but only subtly-- and never at the expensive of their wealthy corporate campaign contributors. On the home mortgage deduction Democrats and Republicans are united. On most other issues they aren't (not counting DLC Democrats who are, in many cases, Republicans in disguise anyway). But this week Congress too action on some legislation that clearly divided the two parties: Ted Kennedy's modest bill to increase the minimum wage.
Historically the political Right has always been violently against the very concept of a minimum wage, let alone increasing it. Republicans routinely vote NO on every minimum wage legislation ever introduced (except to abolish it). Yesterday when the bill to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 came to the floor of the U.S. Senate, it was defeated 51-47 (having needed 60 to pass). All the Democrats present (42) voted yes, as did Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont. All the Republicans voted against it with the exception of 4 Republicans [3 in tight re-election battles-- Chafee (RI), DeWine (OH), and the normally viciously anti-workingman Santorum (PA)]-- + a moderately pro-labor Republican who doesn't care about GOP-political correctness any long for personal reasons, Specter, (PA).
Kennedy said Hurricane Katrina showed the whole country-- the whole world-- the depth of poverty in the country and he pointed out that a single parent with 2 children working a minimum wage earns $10,700 a year, $4,500 below the poverty line. NICKEL & DIMED, Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book on Americans trying to make do on minimum wage jobs, should be required reading for all these wealthy senators. Kennedy didn't say that; I did. He said it was "absolutely unconscionable" that in the same period that Congress has denied a minimum wage increase, lawmakers have voted themselves seven pay raises worth $28,000. Meanwhile, the fascists, falling back on the hideous old canard they always trot out on such occasions, despite the fact that it has been proven false for generations, said higher minimum wages work against the poor by forcing small businesses to cut payrolls or go out of business. They never change their patently false arguments because their financial contributors, corporations and wealthy special interests love to hear it.
Patriots who believe in American values and ideals should think twice when they have to vote in 2006 for incumbents who opposed the increase-- George Allen (R-VA), Conrad Burns (Crook-MT), John Ensign (R-NV), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Trent Lott (KKK-MS), Olympia Snowe (Fake Moderate- ME), and Jim Talent (R-MO).
SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE!
I've been looking for the polling data on this and I finally found it this morning. Last May the Pew Research Center asked whether or not people thought the minimum wage needs to be raised. 86% of Americans felt that the minimum wage needs to be raised. 86%! That's a bigger percentage than the one by which George W Bush won even the most backward and benighted states of the Old Confederacy or even Utah! Yet the Republicans are arrogant enough to think they can kill a modest, gradual increase in the minimum wage with impunity and with no consequences. If you live, for example, in Maine or Nevada or Missouri, please remember you have a bold-faced liar and fraud as a senator up for re-election in 2006. It's time to make these bastards understand what losing a job really means!
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 4:12 PM
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And does anybody think the corporate owned media has any concern over the fact that most republicans turned their back on the poor, once again? Hell no they don't care. Today, all I heard was the vote count and nowhere was it mentioned that all dems voted FOR the minimum wage increase while almost all republicans shot a finger across American workers, once again. Keep up the good work DTW!
Or, as they say on south park .... "ehtukrjbs"
I think I was trying to make a case that as ambivalent as I am about the Democratic Party there really IS a significant, actionable difference between the two parties the vote on the minimum wage bill shows it pretty starkly. Perhaps the most extremist of all the senators in the Republican neo-fascist caucus inadvertently made the point in comments to THE HILL today. Jeff Dufour reports that "in a speech this week to the George Washington University College Republicans, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said of the 2006 elections, 'It’s OK if the Republicans lose control, for our country in the long run, because one cycle won’t make a difference, two cycles won’t make a difference.'
But Coburn, who made a habit of creating headaches for his party when he was in the House from 1995 to 2000, didn’t stop there. Of the current debate over spending and the budget, he said, 'Republican politicians are the same as Democratic politicians in that they like to spend money. Democrats want to raise taxes to pay for it, and Republicans allow the next generation to pay for it.'
Always quick with a statement, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said, 'If there’s one area where Tom Coburn and I agree, it’s that Democrats have a real shot at the Senate in 2006. But I respectfully disagree when he says control of Congress doesn’t make a difference. Here’s why it does: Democratic control of the Senate means the difference between a better America, where Congress puts the needs of everyday people first, and the America we have today, where cronyism rules Washington, D.C."
Brian Nick, a professional liar employed to smear people for the NRSC, a fascist front organization, said he would leave it up to Coburn to characterize his own statements.
One reason to oppose the minimum wage increase is on principle. Fundamentally supply and demand determine wages and prices. By definition a minimum wage is interference in the market by the federal government, an entity not noted for its efficiency or good judgment. What basis is there for demanding they be paid at a rate higher than their employers willingly provide? There’s only one: charity. And while charity is good, the government is not good at it.
Another is personal responsibility. Every single American knows that a life lived at the minimum wage level is one on the very edge of poverty and/or disaster. Opportunities abound to be educated, formally or otherwise in this country. Yet too many people ignore their chances because they don’t care and aren’t willing to make short-term sacrifices for mid-term gains. Why should they try if there is no consequence for failure?
A third reason, and my personal favorite, for opposing the minumum wage is that it amounts to little more than an indirect tax. Businesses are not going to lower their profit margins to provide the higher wage. Neither will they increase their margins - competition will not allow this. Those businesses that can will charge you and I increased prices. Those that can’t will cut staff, resulting in increased public assistance.
As inarticulate as Coburn’s message was, he is correct, I think, to say, “Free markets, and the American ideals of entrepreneurship and hard work, are far better equipped at setting and raising wages than politicians in Washington…American families deserve an economy in which they can prosper, not more counterfeit compassion from Washington”.
Few things make for a robust economy like the government simply staying out of the way.
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