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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  December 31, 20135:43 am| 55 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Don't Mourn, Organize, Open Threads

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keynesian unemployment benefits toles

(Tom Toles via GoComics.com)

.

I’m not the only one who really likes the idea of Democrats pushing for a living minimum wage. George Zornick, at Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog, has an idea for kickstarting the campaign:

… It’s a terrific idea. And there’s one way President Obama can show he takes the issue seriously: by issuing an executive order raising the minimum wage for 2 million federal contractors. This, too, is good policy, and the president is likely to get significant pressure from his left flank to do so.

More than half a million employees of federal contractors make less than $12 an hour, according to a study by the progressive think tank Demos. When the National Employment Law Project interviewed more than 500 federal contract workers who work in service-industry type jobs, sew military uniforms and drive trucks, more than 70 percent made less than $10 an hour…

Aside from the obvious benefit to workers and the economy, it could help present a unified Democratic front on the minimum wage. This year 15 senators and 50 members of the House, all Democrats, sent Obama a letter urging him to issue the order. Those efforts are likely to intensify this coming year and will be harder for the White House to ignore as Obama hits the campaign trail demanding a federal minimum-wage hike…

True, it would be preferable if the minimum wage could be raised through bipartisan legislation, but it would also be preferable that chocolate not have calories, and that ain’t happening either. Even legislation is hardly bulletproof — the WaPo also has the sad story about how SeaTac’s minimum-wage workers have been judicially ‘carved out‘ from the successful Seattle vote to raise their wages….
***********
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda, First Night preparations or otherwise?

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55Comments

  1. 1.

    Liquid

    December 31, 2013 at 6:00 am

    Well at least it’s not “your all dead.” That would just be depressing.

  2. 2.

    MikeJ

    December 31, 2013 at 6:12 am

    Senate signers:
    Sanders, Boxer, Merkley, Warren, Leahy, Schatz, Hirono, Murphy, Gillibrand, Markey, Reed, Heinrich, Cardin, Whitehouse, Baldwin

    Let’s ask the other 85 why they haven’t signed.

  3. 3.

    wasabi gasp

    December 31, 2013 at 6:14 am

    Kill Yr Idle

  4. 4.

    c u n d gulag

    December 31, 2013 at 6:17 am

    This is such a fucking stupid, bigoted country.
    I should have left it when I was younger.
    Now, I’m fucking stuck on this national Titanic – and all of the lifeboats left, have gaping fucking holes in them.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    December 31, 2013 at 6:18 am

    “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!”

    “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!”

    “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!”

  6. 6.

    Liquid

    December 31, 2013 at 6:27 am

    @c u n d gulag: Dear Sir, as a 31 year-old Best Coaster (Seattle B&R) there is still hope. But I tend to agree with one of greatest philosophical statements of my generation. – – That would be Homer — “He reminds me of me before the weight of the world crushed my spirit.”

    Pretty cynical but now it’s “Sometimes I let him do the wide shots when I feel like getting blazed back in my Winnie.”

  7. 7.

    JPL

    December 31, 2013 at 6:41 am

    I blame Obama.

  8. 8.

    raven

    December 31, 2013 at 6:46 am

    I guess I’ll thaw out one of the Omaha steaks I won in Cole’s frat raffle and make them for my bride since I don’t eat that stuff. Good time for me to lay in some shrimp for me cuz she doesn’t eat that!

  9. 9.

    Cassidy

    December 31, 2013 at 7:15 am

    @JPL: I blame the NSA and that swingin’ dick war in Syria.

  10. 10.

    OzarkHillbilly

    December 31, 2013 at 7:27 am

    @Cassidy: Not me, I blame Jimmy Carter and his cardigan sweater.

  11. 11.

    ThresherK

    December 31, 2013 at 7:28 am

    Stitching together various plans for First Night in Boston.

  12. 12.

    Raven

    December 31, 2013 at 7:34 am

    From a Times article on the future of the internet:

    Q. The Snowden affair raises a paradox. The Internet made it relatively easy for him to do what he did, and at the same time it enabled the dramatic increase in surveillance that alarmed him. How do you sort that out?
    A. I would push back on that a little bit. You could say oxygen made it possible for him to do that, because without it he wouldn’t be alive. Or his parents made it possible for him to do that.

    http://nyti.ms/1dltT4P

  13. 13.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    December 31, 2013 at 7:34 am

    @raven: Saw the pic of your girl last nite, here’s mine:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/8wi8ujn7q4unyn4/SAM_0270.JPG

  14. 14.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 7:35 am

    @JPL:

    I can tolerate legitimate efforts to create political pressure even on people I like (which can sometimes be helpful to such people). This line, however, drips with condescension:

    And there’s one way President Obama can show he takes the issue seriously

    I think Sergent is normally one of the good guys, but this was off-putting.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 7:36 am

    @Raven:

    Who’s that idiot?

  16. 16.

    Liquid

    December 31, 2013 at 7:40 am

    You gloomy bastards. FFS, go out and do something! Oh yeah sure, I’m too old and sest in my ways. Buncha goddamn pussies. We were tempered in raw shit! Wait that’s a Carlin bit… still! Get out there and do something!

  17. 17.

    Raven

    December 31, 2013 at 7:42 am

    @BillinGlendaleCA: and she has Illini ribbons, yes!

  18. 18.

    Raven

    December 31, 2013 at 7:45 am

    @Baud:I’m on my iPad so my linking capability is limited but it’s an article in the times:
    Dr. Cerf, 70, and Dr. Kahn, 75, have taken slightly different positions on the matter. Dr. Cerf, who was chairman of Icann from 2000-7, has become known as an informal “Internet ambassador” and a strong proponent of an Internet that remains independent of state control. He has been one of the major supporters of the idea of “network neutrality” — the principle that Internet service providers should enable access

  19. 19.

    Raven

    December 31, 2013 at 7:48 am

    This doozie is by Cerf:

    Is the I.T.U. and its effort to take over governance a threat to an open Internet?
    People complained about my nasty comment. I said that these dinosaurs don’t know that they’re dead yet, because it takes so long for the signal to traverse their long necks to get to their pea-sized brains. Some people were insulted by that. I was pleased. It’s not at all clear to me that I.T.U.’s standards-making activities have kept up with need. The consequence of this is that they are less and less relevant.

  20. 20.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 7:48 am

    @Raven:

    Ok, so not idiots, but that answer struck me as silly.

  21. 21.

    Raven

    December 31, 2013 at 7:52 am

    @Baud: check out the article, one of their points is that there is nothing new about stealing information

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    December 31, 2013 at 7:52 am

    New Year’s Eve cooking still in progress.

    Whiskey cake batter just went into oven (takes about 2 hours).

    Salmon mousse is made and in fridge jelling.

    Mock chopped liver made (always tastes better the next day).

    Shrimp cooked, bathing in spiced marinade in fridge for 24 hours before serving.

    Tuesday, still have 2 cream pies and 2 cranberry-blueberry pies to do, plus 1 noodle kugel, couple of dozen cookies to bake and some candied bacon to prepare (bacon is currently doing its overnight soak in jalapeno liquid).

    Then have to truck it all over to the party locale, where I plan to do nothing but sit in a comfy chair with flute after flute of champagne until the wee, wee hours of Wednesday.

    Others are doing entrees and assorted munchies this year. What with people who pop in to say hi and then move on, somewhere around 2 dozen (minimum) expected.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    December 31, 2013 at 8:02 am

    Getting ready to make an herb-crusted crown roast of pork, stuffed with a dressing with sourdough bread, dried cranberries, chestnuts, and fennel. Have a magnum of champagne in the wine fridge. Tomorrow, it’s kielbasa and sauerkraut (which we made from our garden cabbages).

    And then I’m dieting (which means eating normally) until Valentine’s Day.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    December 31, 2013 at 8:05 am

    @Baud: He’s just pointing out a way POTUS can signal the importance of the issue to him. How is that condescending?

  25. 25.

    Kay

    December 31, 2013 at 8:10 am

    @Baud:

    It’s a little bigger than minimum wage. There’s a larger issue on contractor reimbursement that goes to income inequality, and they’re fighting on that “front” too.

    Briefly, contractors at the top of the tier are paid a lot, and the employees of contractors are not. This is while there’a a huge push to freeze or outright privatize the wages or jobs of public employees (national and states):

    Being a jolly sort, and just in time for the Christmas buying season, Uncle Sam has announced that he will pay some contractors nearly a million dollars a year for doing his work.
    What he calls his “benchmark compensation amount” for government contractors now is set at $952,308. Meanwhile, Sam’s regular crew, his federal employees, are scheduled to get a 1 percent bump next year, after a three-year freeze on their basic pay rates. Beats a lump of coal.

    So the policy question becomes, if you’re a contractor and your single client is the government, should taxpayers be subsidizing a pay scale that pays those at the tippy-top huge salaries (much higher than public sector managers’ salaries) while those at the bottom get next to nothing?

    I think it’s about time someone brought it up. We hear an awful lot about lazy, overpaid government employees. We hear very little about how much contractors (at the executive level) are paid, and the fact that they’re paid double what actual goverment-employed managers make.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 8:19 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s the negative implication that he doesn’t take the issue seriously. If your hubby told you, “one way you could show you’re a loving wife is…,” you’d probably smack him into next week.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    December 31, 2013 at 8:19 am

    @Kay: It is past time to turn the private contractor log over and examine the creepy-crawlies beneath it, including the inequality issues, the lack of accountability in the budgeting process and the worrisome way privatization enables lawmakers to duck thorny policy questions (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan).

  28. 28.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 8:22 am

    @Kay:

    I have no love for contractors. They have their place, but the idea that they are inherently more efficient or do better work than employees is a false right-wing meme.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    December 31, 2013 at 8:25 am

    @Baud: You can choose to read it that way, but doing so strikes me as exquisitely sensitive and deferential, particularly in the context of politics. There’s that mileage variance again.

  30. 30.

    OzarkHillbilly

    December 31, 2013 at 8:27 am

    @Kay:

    We hear an awful lot about lazy, overpaid government employees.

    Who are in fact usually overworked, underpaid, and sick and tired of getting screamed at for a screw up they had nothing to do with, and who’s only real mistake is not being able to immediately fix WHATEVER ABSOLUTE DISASTER is presently descending upon the offended party.

    Personally, I always found it quite beneficial to play it stupid and appreciative. Then they want to help you.

  31. 31.

    c u n d gulag

    December 31, 2013 at 8:28 am

    @NotMax:
    YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    What time should we be over?
    I’ll bring some cheap champagne – that’s all I can afford. :-(

  32. 32.

    Josie

    December 31, 2013 at 8:30 am

    @OzarkHillbilly: This is so true. It is a winning approach which I rely on quite a bit. People appreciate being able to actually help someone.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 8:36 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    I admit it’s a subtle thing. Like I said, Sergent is generally one of the good guys, and I don’t think he meant anything bad by it. But I’m confident if I used the same phrase in a discussion about, say, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, people would interpret it the same way I’m interpreting Sergent.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    December 31, 2013 at 8:38 am

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    They privatized part of foster care here. I know what the private company social workers make (because I asked them) and it’s less than the county-employed social workers make. What I don’t know is how much the managers of the private entity that got the contract make – they’re based in Michigan, as far as I can tell.

    Do they make 10 times what the county or state-employed managers make? Why, if their single client is government? I don’t think it benefits me at all to send all that public money up to the top management tier. In fact, it benefits MY business if social workers make more, because they spend it here, where I do business. Since I’m (we’re all) paying the contractor, and public money is their one and only revenue stream, I think I get to weigh in on their pay scale. Don’t I? I would think so.
    If they want to pay more than ten dollars an hour to their low level employees, maybe they could pay their executives half a million instead of a million, since it’s public money and all. Look how much money we found, without even trying! :)

  35. 35.

    Nina

    December 31, 2013 at 8:46 am

    Intern abuse is rife at some contractors, too. And let’s consider intern abuse at one particular place in government, Congress. How much do those pages get paid?

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    December 31, 2013 at 8:53 am

    @Kay: But… but… but…. PROFITS! FREE MARKET MIRACLES! THE ONE % EARN THEIR MONEY!!!

    Yep. Conservatives love to complain about wealth redistribution when the arrow points from the top to the bottom. When it points the other way, well, that’s the American Way ™.

  37. 37.

    Gin & Tonic

    December 31, 2013 at 8:54 am

    @MikeJ: Yowza. Two for two here in the great State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

  38. 38.

    JPL

    December 31, 2013 at 8:59 am

    @Baud: this

  39. 39.

    Cassidy

    December 31, 2013 at 9:08 am

    @Baud: But you wouldn’t have to use it with those two as they are “true progressives”, unlike that blah guy who’s really a Republican fooling us all by passing all this progressive legislation. Eventually, we’ll have a “there can be only one” moment. The smart money is on Warren. Something tells me she practices her katana skills when no one is looking.

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    December 31, 2013 at 9:29 am

    @Baud: An experiment:

    “And there’s one way Elizabeth Warren can show she takes the issue seriously: by sponsoring a bill to reinstate the Glass–Steagall Act.”

    Nope, still not feeling the disrespect. I’m glad Obama is president and would vote for him again if third terms were allowed, but I do think some of my fellow Obama supporters are too damn sensitive to any criticism of the man and even go out of their way to find a pea of offense under 20 mattresses of good intentions.

    Could be an understandable reaction to all the crazy hate the other side flings at the president. The reverence I perceive concerns me sometimes because deference isn’t conducive to healthy political debate — not on the so-called “purity pony” side, and not on the “reality-based” side either. But in the scheme of things, that’s probably the least of our worries.

  41. 41.

    Chuckles

    December 31, 2013 at 9:48 am

    60 Minutes, still asking the tough questions Americans and the world want to know: Is it safe in Egypt… underwater?
    https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/416345491530850304

    (this was promoted in my Twitter stream this morning)

  42. 42.

    ryanayr

    December 31, 2013 at 10:41 am

    The Seattle issue is that the Port of Seattle has jurisdiction over the airport, therefore they have to increase the minimum wage, not the city of Seatac. Seatac is both a city and an airport, so it is confusing. The Port of Seattle very well may increase its minimum wage this next year, as it is disturbing that baggage handlers and some ground crew are paid minimum wage. It seems that a pay increase would increase service quality. Imagine if you saw baggage handlers NOT throwing your baggage like a pro wrestler. I would pay 15/hr for that.

  43. 43.

    gene108

    December 31, 2013 at 10:51 am

    When work gets contracted, I wonder how much a company really saves. The contracting company has their mark-up built into the bid, even if the baggage handler earns $10/hr, the company paying the contracting company may be paying more.

    I think the bigger issue is the fact the economy sucks so bad that people will work for low wages because there are no other jobs.

    I also think business is O.K. with this because they can keep making money, even in this economy, so there is no reason to push for higher employment and upset what is working.

  44. 44.

    Keith G

    December 31, 2013 at 11:01 am

    @Betty Cracker:

    How is that condescending?

    Because it challenges “He who is perfect and shall not be challenged”.

    You see that same philosophy at play in comment #15

    Who’s that idiot?

    Folks can disagree about how much effort a president might be willing to expend on an issue without their opinion being called out as negative, or condescending, or the like.

    Folks should be able to speak about Snowden in non normative (or god forbid, humane) tones without being called an idiot.

    It is so depressing when people on the good side take up behaviors of the dark side.

  45. 45.

    chopper

    December 31, 2013 at 11:33 am

    @Baud:

    well, it’s easy to see condescension in the pundit class given that they’ve been condescending to the president since the day he took office.

  46. 46.

    chopper

    December 31, 2013 at 11:40 am

    @Keith G:

    It is so depressing when people on the good side take up behaviors of the dark side.

    whereas boiling down someone’s criticism of a pundit’s tone as ‘the president is perfect and shall not be challenged’ is what, the side of the angels?

    or is constructing lousy strawmen not one of the ‘behaviors of the dark side’?

  47. 47.

    jc

    December 31, 2013 at 12:15 pm

    “a living minimum wage”

    Why aim so low? How about some assurances of labor security in general? At this point the employers have the upper hand in almost every aspect of the equation. Rights are never given. We have to fight for them.

  48. 48.

    Keith G

    December 31, 2013 at 12:39 pm

    @chopper: It seems to be the case that when a writer, or commenter here, is four-square supportive of the President all is good, but should that same individual (Sargent, Klein, Drum, Dionne, Cole, Benen, Maddow & etc) voice something challenging to the President the vocabulary switches to villager, troll, idiot, drunkard, and other terms less complimentary.

    That is a rather straight forward observation.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    December 31, 2013 at 1:08 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    Nope, still not feeling the disrespect.

    Because progressive bloggers have spent the last six years demanding that Elizabeth Warren prove her liberal bonafides and sniff suspiciously at her every action, right?

    I especially love when people claim Obama is a secret Republican and ignore that Warren actually was a registered Republican for decades.

  50. 50.

    Bjacques

    December 31, 2013 at 1:31 pm

    I was a contractor at NASA. Loved the work, hated the company I worked for. We put in 2 hrs per week “voluntary” overtime, or else get a bad performance review

  51. 51.

    chopper

    December 31, 2013 at 2:12 pm

    @Keith G:

    is baud known for that? or is this one of those things where because some guys are obots then he must be one too?

  52. 52.

    chopper

    December 31, 2013 at 2:17 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    the pundit class surely is condescending to the president. that’s their job, to think they know more about politics than the guy who obviously is far and away more knowledgeable than they are. monday morning quarterbacking and all that.

    the fact that the pundit class is white and the president is black tends to make regular folks more sensitive to this stuff tho.

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne

    December 31, 2013 at 2:44 pm

    @chopper:

    the pundit class surely is condescending to the president. that’s their job, to think they know more about politics than the guy who obviously is far and away more knowledgeable than they are. monday morning quarterbacking and all that.

    I’m still wondering where all of the monday morning quarterbacks were when W had his brilliant plan of invading Iraq to avenge us for 9/11. Somehow it’s only Democrats who are given the benefit of constant nitpicking and second-guessing.

    It wouldn’t be quite so obvious if pundits actually changed sides at the change of an administration and professional liberals took over the professional conservatives’ job of defending their side to the death, but it’s generally liberals nitpicking everything a president does and conservatives only nitpicking Democrats, so the constant carping from both sides during a Democratic administration gets more than a little tiresome.

  54. 54.

    Anne Laurie

    December 31, 2013 at 4:22 pm

    @Baud: Reading comprehension fail: The piece I excerpted was written by “George Zornick, at Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog”, not the guy in your head named ‘Sergent’.

  55. 55.

    Baud

    December 31, 2013 at 4:35 pm

    @Anne Laurie:

    You’re correct. My bad. Don’t know if Zornick is a good guy or not. Never heard the name before.

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