Before I took office, I promised help was on the way. Just three months in, I’m proud to say help is here. We’ve delivered over 150 million relief checks, administered over 200 million shots, and are working hard to build back better every day.
— President Biden (@POTUS) April 24, 2021
Latest NBC/WSJ poll shows an increase in strong Biden support and a decrease in strong Trump support. As a result, there are now more Americans "very positive" towards Biden (29%) than Trump (21%). Maybe we should start profiling the fervent Biden supporter. pic.twitter.com/zsJCmRKaX1
— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) April 25, 2021
If Erdogan signed a proclamation calling the Trail of Tears an example of ethnic cleansing and genocide, Biden's response would be, "Can't argue with that, Jack, it was a total atrocity."
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) April 25, 2021
Opinion: 100 days into his presidency, Biden’s priorities are clear. https://t.co/zEq8pV5hk2
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 26, 2021
I don’t agree with everything Dionne says here, but I do think it’s very important President Biden learned from his predecessors not to waste time trying for a ‘bipartisanship’ Republicans are determined not to grant:
… As President Biden addresses Congress on Wednesday to mark his first 100 days in office, the driving priorities of his administration are clear: the essential task of ending the pandemic, ambitious public investment to drive robust, long-term economic growth and aggressive efforts to reverse 40 years of expanding inequality.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that the Democrats’ big midterm defeats under Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010 were caused in significant part by sluggish economic recoveries.
As a result, Biden has taken no chances: He pressed relentlessly for his $1.9 trillion economic rescue bill, and continues to advance infrastructure investments and other programs to speed growth and lift incomes. He will pursue these plans with Republicans if possible and, more likely, without them if necessary…
… Biden is banking on his ability to use populist economics (relief checks, upward pressure on wages, a “Buy America” campaign to bring home more manufacturing work, confining tax increases to corporations and those earning more than $400,000 annually) to win back Trump voters whose dissatisfactions are primarily economic.
Biden’s proposals have thus far won support in the polls from about a third of Republicans and a substantial majority of lower-income Republicans (in the case of the relief act). Their response has allowed Biden to challenge the traditional definitions of bipartisanship — House and Senate Republican votes for his bills — that hamstrung his predecessors. Instead, Biden argues that what he is doing is good for many Republican voters, and that a significant share of them agrees…
Because Biden is focused on what pollsters see as less divisive “kitchen table” issues, he has been able, so far, to propose a great deal of spending and take steps progressives have long supported without running afoul of more moderate opinion…
debbie
“We should profile fervent Biden supporters”? Really, back to good news, is it?
Baud
Not to toot our own horn, but the liberal half of America is among the best group of people on earth. It’s why we have half a chance.
Baud
It’s not obvious to me at all that white backlash would be significantly different with stronger recoveries. The end of both Clinton and Obama’s terms were economically strong, and yet….
Amir Khalid
Two minutes to iftar. A very long two minutes.
debbie
@Baud:
The backlash against Obama had nothing to do with the sluggish economy.
Baud
@Baud:
Would be = would have been
Geeno
@debbie: What are you getting at, debbie?
/s
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Amir Khalid: Hey, you made it!
Spanky
@Amir Khalid: Full moon! Happy midpoint!
Not that you’re keeping track.
MisterForkbeard
I got up at 3:30am this morning for a work training thing. Gonna be on it for the the next three hours and technically I’m playing hooky by posting here and reading, but I couldn’t resist coming and posting early.
It’s amazing what Biden can do just by focusing on uncontroversial ‘bread and butter’ issues, and it’s also great that Trumpenfolk just aren’t having luck turning people against it. The recent “Biden wants to make a law that you can only eat one burger a month!” is a great example of Fox and Republicans just flailing and failing over and over again. Likewise, the recent complaining by Lindsay Graham that Biden lied during the campaign because he’s… doing a bunch of things he said he’d do during the campaign and he’s a flaming liberal instead of a moderate.
And you watch Biden’s approvals ratings just slowly tick up as he succeeds.
Ken
There’s just a chance that the opposition to Obama was because he was… well… um… different from all the previous Presidents. Being Hawaiian, I mean.
debbie
@MisterForkbeard:
In just three months, he’s become the Miss Havisham of politics.
Ken
I’ll guess “multinational corporation and the training is being led from Europe”.
John S.
@MisterForkbeard:
Which is why the GQP has nothing left but obstruction. They have already seen what has happened in less than 100 days, and they know what will happen if a massive infrastructure bill and new voting rights bill get passed.
No amount of gerrymandering or Frank Lutz focus groups will bring them back from extinction.
Kay
They should profile strong Biden supporters because it would be interesting!
Especially because there’s some evidence it doesn’t fall along the lines one would think it would- his popularity with young people, for example. What if the support of young people has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the politician?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I made the mistake and turned on MSNBC where Scarborough was lamenting in the lack of bipartisanship.
Ya know I’ve never heard a single person say, “well, unemployment is too high and I haven’t got a raise in years, but that’s okay as long as there’s bipartisanship”.
MisterForkbeard
@Ken: Right in one.
We have people from the US, Mexico, Philippines, Australia and Europe. The Eastern European contingent basically just refused to attend outside of normal work hours, so everybody else decided to take the hit.
Baud
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Ask them how their lives have benefited from 46?
I bet more than one would say..
‘ I am sleeping better’
hueyplong
@Kay: That really would be interesting and might plausibly happen if outfits like the FTFNYT were on a mission of discovery instead of supporting an existing narrative.
More likely we’ll be treated to more meat loaf, gravy and grievance from diner customers who are either “left behind” by Biden’s legislative and executive accomplishments or are “concerned” that he’s ” going too far.”
rikyrah
@Baud:
This will be interesting
Baud
@rikyrah:
While I’m glad it’s being released under Biden, I worry about the quality of the data collected under Trump (and the pandemic).
rikyrah
@MisterForkbeard:
Best stat I read from the COS about the Jobs ACT
90% of the jobs created by it won’t need a college degree.
.THAT.IS.HUGE.
That is a serious commitment to the working class of America.
NotMax
Fun fact for the start of a fresh week.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Thanks for linking to those New Yorker covers in the COVID thread. The footsteps all over the inside of the box got to me the most.
When I was in art school, we had to imagine covers of Time. Far less possibility for creativity.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard: Why is your work training in the middle of the night? What kind of work do you do anyway
ETA: Never mind. I see you answered
I was imagining much more interesting work.
Kay
@hueyplong:
Perhaps obvious but still an important lesson- getting cash money to people quickly seems to be both popular and effective :)
I’m curious about the advance on the child tax credits, how that’s being perceived. If the people I talk to are any indication it’s being perceived, um, positively.
I bet the pause in student loan payments was huge too. That frees up a ton of fucking money.
A lot happened! Let’s get some man in the street interviews.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@MisterForkbeard: I recently saw some GOPer railing about how Biden was going to force plant-based beer on us. They’ve reached complete incoherence.
Amir Khalid
@MisterForkbeard:
They keep insisting that Biden’s plan is the wrong way. But try asking them what their better plan is: they can’t tell you, because they’ve got bupkes.
debbie
@Bluegirlfromwyo:
I saw that. Oy. Hope the interviewer called him out on that.
Ken
I’m still waiting for the every-accusation-a-confession shoe to drop for that weird “children’s blood being harvested in a pizza parlor” story. Is this it? An inadvertent admission that the GQP drinks beer made from human blood?
NotMax
@Bluegirlfromwyo
“Less filling, more chlorophylling.”
Immanentize
@Baud:
Just take this HUGE Deep State win and celebrate. However hard the results might be, they are infinitely bett er than they would have been under the Former Guy.
MisterForkbeard
@rikyrah: The JOBS act is really fantastic.
I see some ‘reasonable republican’ friends of mine (who didn’t vote Trump) adopting the Republican frame that “infrastructure means pipes and streets only” and they’re annoyed that the ‘infrastructure’ act contains a lot of jobs and they’re taking the recent Republican response proposal as genuine negotiation rather than just fucking around. But they still want the overall bill passed and like the job provisions.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Bluegirlfromwyo: I blinked at those comments about beer too. I once tried to write a novel about a brewster. In the first half of the European Middle Ages, almost all brewing was done by women because it was perceived as part of food prep. Also, they didn’t use hops, which means they couldn’t preserve the ale well, so you couldn’t really mass produce it. Once hops came into use, capital was needed for big breweries and men took over. Anyhoo, I knew what beer was made from.
How could there be beer that wasn’t plant based? Do the fools think meat is in there?
Ken
@MisterForkbeard: I think the Democrats have already responded to the full extent of the Republican objections and demands for changes, when they said “You’re right, some of this isn’t traditional infrastructure, from now on we’re calling it a jobs bill.”
Betty Cracker
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Great point. There’s a ton of polling to back up the notion that people crave “bipartisanship,” but it’s meaningless, IMO. The same people are in favor of policies Dems are enacting and Repubs are obstructing. You might as well ask if people are in favor of unicorns.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard: That seems…incoherent to me.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Ha! No, it’s tech work. I work in what is technically an IT team, and I manage about 40 people who run a very specialized instance of software for about 10,000 employees. So we’ve got people all over the work, and we’re grouped with the more traditional IT group which is centered in Europe. My team is very Philippines-centered, but central leadership is mostly in the US, so…
Yeah. Shit-tastic times whenever we have to all meet, but it’s better for the US folk to take the hit.
WereBear
@Kay: Some of them even eat in diners!
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It IS incoherent.
What it is, is that they’re offended by Dem behavior because they WANT to be angry at Democrats. They want the whole bill, they want the ‘human’ portion of it. But they want to find something wrong with it.
The problem is that they don’t want to understand that Republicans will block anything and this isn’t an honest negotiation. They’re pretending for now that Dems and Republicans could get an overwhelming ‘pipes and streets’ bill and then maybe Dems could get the rest of the bill in separately with smaller majorities.
In reality, this is only passing through reconciliation so the entire path above is just fantasy.
gvg
@debbie: It did have something to do with it. White backlash was the big thing, but the poor economy meant Democrat’s had soft support. Unenthusiastic voters=poor midterms.
Some of Obama’s early support was anti Bush too, even though he wasn’t running. His party took a hit, and rightly so. I always knew some of those voters were borrowed so to speak. But racism was the big problem which is why we got so annoyed with the media.
germy
(Ambrose Bierce, 1911)
rikyrah
@Baud:
Me too ??
germy
(Ambrose Bierce, 1911)
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
This was in the overnight thread, and the fool in question is Larry Kudlow, which probably answers your question.
Geminid
There was a good article about the upcoming Republican primary race in the Ohio 16th Congressional District, in Politico on Friday. Anthony Gonzalez, the former Ohio State and NFL tight end won the district last year by 12 points. But Gonzalez was one of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach trump, and former trump functionary Max Miller is mounting a primary challenge. It’s a long article, gets into local political dynamics (Miller grew up in Shaker Heights on the east side of Cleveland, but packed his carpetbag and moved into the west side 16th district; his grandfather, Sam Miller, was a heavyweight in Cleveland philanthropic and political circles). Another trumpist candidate and upcoming redistricting are factors.
Ohio will likely lose a Congressional through reapportionment, and has a new redistricting system that may or may not reduce gerrymandering. Upcoming redistricting was cited recently by a state legislator proposing a permitless concealed-carry law. He said that the law had to be passed before a less Republican legislature took power next year.
rikyrah
Ohio folks:
What say you?
Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) Tweeted:
Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat, is running for Senate in Ohio to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Rob Portman. https://t.co/XyQ0XnZxbP https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1386653870013788162?s=20
germy
This one reminds me of the modern GOP:
(Ambrose Bierce, 1911)
Skepticat
I’m tremendously relieved that this administration seems to have figured out that the Repugnants’ definition of “bipartisanship” is “both sides do whatever the Repugnants want.” Rather than sticking around playing useless games, people who actually are capable of and willing to get something good done are doing just that, calmly and quietly.
rikyrah
Jennifer ‘pro-voting’ Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) Tweeted:
If corps want to stave off a populist rebellion, they should consider some self-imposed constraints including significant limits on CEO pay in years of layoffs and economic losses; a permanent cutoff of contributions to anti-democracy politicians, etc.
https://t.co/l5w5r38qFS https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/1386655361059393538?s=20
rikyrah
@Skepticat:
ICAM
They take the GQP at their word, by their actions since 2009.
Very gratifying.
Kay
@gvg:
I blame Obama for the lack of response to foreclosures. There was no reason for people to have had to land that hard and what was available was ridiculously complicated to access. A lot of Democratic programs are, in my opinion, overengineered. They’re so busy making sure someone who doesn’t need it gets it they make it all but inaccessible for ordinary people. It’s the thinking that says they can’t do student loan relief because 4 people at Harvard might get it. Keep your eye on the ball. It’s not about excluding 4 people at Harvard. It’s about the other 4 million.
MisterForkbeard
@Spanky: There are some beers which aren’t meat-based but do have meat in them. Until 2016, Guinness actually had… fish-bladders in it as part of the process.
Baud
@Kay:
I agree with this. The GOP has been effective in pushing its talking points about “fraud, waste, and abuse” for many years now. I hope we’re finally in a position to overcome it by emphasizing the need for less red tape.
Kay
Public service student loan relief is another example of overengineering. OMFG, simplify. Whatever we spend on some undeserving for-profit will be absolutely dwarfed by the hours and hours of free labor people are putting in to check the boxes and qualify. There is an entire (HUGE) Facebook group devoted to helping people navigate those rules. That means it’s too complicated.
Don’t make public programs a mirage- all that does is inspire cynics and enrage people. Make them real.
Soprano2
It’s like he’s been asleep since 2008. The “lack of bipartisanship” isn’t Democrat’s fault. If that’s what he’s saying, then he’s being stupid.
The Dark Avenger
I sincerely hope that Biden breaks his promise to pursue bipartisanship like a glass smashed against a rock.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Atrios (does anyone still read him?) has gone a bit off the deep-end now, but he was absolutely correct that HAMP and similar programs didn’t work.
germy
@Kay:
The thing that worries me about means testing is that I’ll have to send sensitive information over a not-secure old laptop and/or phone. If I must prove income, I’d rather sit down face to face and show a printed copy.
Nowadays, they want us to do everything online. I’m old. I don’t trust that.
germy
@Soprano2:
Scarborough never met a republican talking point he didn’t want to repeat.
Puddinhead
@Spanky: if you think Larry is mad about that, just wait until someone lets him know that Biden’s plan will force him to snort plant-based cocaine.
Soprano2
I’ll tell you right now that employers are going to perceive it negatively. I’m sure I’ll be hearing even more of “we can’t hire people because no one wants to work because the government keeps giving them money”. It can’t at all be that everyone is trying to hire people all at the same time, which almost never happens. *rolleyes* I checked – the unemployment rate in the city where I live is 3.9%. When I was in college, that was considered full employment! I still think a bunch of people dropped out of the job market due to Covid and their kids having to be home for remote school, and that as more people get vaccinated they’ll come back into the market. Right now is a good time to be looking for work here – you’ve got your choice of jobs.
Geminid
@rikyrah: I’m not an Ohioan, but I know Sherrod Brown won reelection in 2018 by 300,000 votes. So that open seat is winnable next year. There are fewer and fewer true swing voters, and the contest will likely be a battle of base motivation and turnout. I’ll be rooting for injuries in the Republican primary.
Just One More Canuck
@Dorothy A. Winsor: There’s a lot of black ops sites in Eastern Europe, aren’t there?
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a bigger argument. IMO, we need to get away from the idea that to equalize we need to direct to only the lowest income. The best protection for low income programs is to put working and middle class people in front of the programs, to defend them.
I’ve seen it operate twice in our public schools. Public pre-k, free to all, wildly popular, tons of political support and economically diverse- we have higher income kids in with lower income kids. “College credit plus” – not means tested, huge public support, lots and lot of lower income kids are benefiting. It’s free college.
Cutting lower income people out from the herd was a mistake. It makes them vulnerable. Put them back in with the 75%.
Chief Oshkosh
@Bluegirlfromwyo: I would love to hear more about this specific grievance performance art.
Kay
@Soprano2:
This shouldn’t be vulnerable to that because it’s child care, right? Everyone I talk to who is anticipating getting it is working and paying for child care. They’re considering it a 300 a month child care subsidy. So they can go to work.
Soprano2
Oh, I totally agree. They completely shit the bed on this because they were so worried about the Republican talking point that they would be helping people who didn’t deserve it, and believed too much of that crap put out by the right that most of these people caused their own problem by buying houses they shouldn’t have. I told everyone I knew to listen to the “This American Life” episode called “The Giant Pool of Money”, it explained what happened better than anything else I heard. Atrios isn’t wrong when he criticizes the Obama administration for this. They were too focused on helping the banks to the exclusion of the bank’s victims. I’m happy to see that Biden has learned from this mistake.
zhena gogolia
@Bluegirlfromwyo:
Yeah, I think it was Kudlow.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m not doctrinaire about universal program vs. means testing. It’s more of a case by case situation for me. And universality is no panacea. States still find ways to short change schools in poorer and minority areas.
Chief Oshkosh
@Ken: I’ve been away for a week or so. How is it that people are objecting to initiatives aimed at creating real jobs in a bill whose name is JOBS? Of course, I don’t know what the name of the bill actually is, so maybe I should research this more, but a bill that is aimed at creating real jobs for necessary infrastructure creation and maintenance seems like it will likely include things that creates jobs for real people who will be making real things in the real world that other real people will use. Since they are real people in the real world, they likely have real-world considerations that need to be addressed, like education, healthcare, childcare, etc.
What am I missing?
SiubhanDuinne
@Chief Oshkosh:
There was a thread devoted to it overnight.
https://balloon-juice.com/2021/04/26/late-night-open-thread-oh-no-plant-based-beer/
PST
I have been following interest rates closely out of concern that my ARM could become a real liability down the road. Despite all the dire predictions of inflation ahead under the the Biden Administration’s expansive economic policy, interest rates aren’t changing much, another sign that the President has a good handle on the economy. I will be closing on a refinancing today, because I can’t help but feel a little itchy about rates in the long term, but rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage have actually drifted downward since I started the process. As an aside, I get a bit of a chuckle out of being a 67-year-old signing a 30-year mortgage.
Ken
Republicans don’t argue in good faith?
MisterForkbeard
I love this. You’re either an optimist or deeply cynical and it just works either way :)
Soprano2
@Kay: Oh I agree, it shouldn’t be, but I guarantee you that will be the next talking point for why they can’t find workers (never mind that it will actually help people work by helping them pay for childcare, which is a huge impediment for women with children no matter their income level). What I wonder is, if all these allegedly lazy people got off the couch and applied for jobs, would these employers even hire them? My guess is mostly probably no. My manager told me that of 6 people who applied for a server/bartender job last month, only one was even acceptable, and another of our bartenders who saw the applicants told me the same thing. Workers aren’t interchangeable – just because people apply doesn’t mean those are the right people for your job. The problem with hiring is real – even employers who are paying higher wages right now are having problems finding people. I keep hearing things like “I had 3 dishwashers quit just last week” right after a complaint that “everyone” is sitting at home on their asses because the government is paying so much unemployment. I always point out that people who quit a job can’t collect unemployment, and that they probably went to a different job! It also seems that people have forgotten about the problem of workers not being able to pass a drug test, hardly anyone mentions that anymore.
Chief Oshkosh
@Soprano2: Uh, Newt Gingrich is calling from the 90s…
Zinsky
It galls me to no end that the obese, geriatric, lifelong conman and insurrectionist Donald Trump is still lumbering about free, driving his golf cart on greens with lazy impunity, and hasn’t paid in anyway for his crimes. Imagine a world in which Barack Obama loses his re-election bid in 2012 to John McCain by seven million votes, but claims there was fraud and incites a large number of black people, including the Black Panthers, to storm the Capitol and to chant “Hang Paul Ryan”, causing great damage and loss of life. Do you think Republicans would say “Oh, that was no big deal. They were just exercising their First Amendment rights”? Are you kidding me? There would have been mass executions and probably a public lynching of Obama. Why is it different with Trump?
FoxNews can drone on about Biden being corrupt and not accomplishing anything. They are empty lies. Actions speak louder than words and the truth vindicates itself.
germy
Vaccinated Woman Says Tearful Goodbye to Dent In Couch Where She Sat for Past Year
Freemark
@Baud: A large part of that is the reliance on local property taxes for most schools.
germy
MisterForkbeard
@germy: This is a good summation, but it should also include “The audit has been marked by chaos and rule-breaking by the consultants.”
germy
@MisterForkbeard:
Chaos and rule-breaking… that’s the GOP’s credo.
Wag
@MisterForkbeard: Inisglass, aka fish bladders, are the flavorless flotation bladders of fish(maybe cod?), and are traditionally used after fermentation in the final step prior to bottling . The inisglass acts to aid precipitation of proteins that can cloud beer. Typically used in a tiny amount, maybe 1 oz is solution per 5 gallons of brewed beer. After the beer has clarified, the inisglass is completely precipitated out of solution.
marcopolo
Good morning folks. I just can’t stop thinking that this entire made-up-from-whole-cloth Biden/beef brouhaha is some eleventh dimension con put on by the beef industry. Like they planted the original article in the Daily Mail to get the maga mouth breathers in a tizzy and buying much more meat than they normally would.
PS I still think that is what the Seuss folks did as well. Lol.
MisterForkbeard
@Wag: Yep!
There were persistent rumors awhile back that some irish beers or whiskeys used to toss old beef into the mix at some point, but I’ve never seen any actual proof of that.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
An international view of Biden, from an opinion piece in the Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini:
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Information distortion centered around Murdoch-controlled entities is a huge factor in why success gets little traction. He’s ruined every country he’s ever touched.
Ken
Our two credos are chaos, rule-breaking, and a fanatical devotion to the pope of Mar-a-Lago. Three, our three credos are…
rp
Enthusiasm plays a huge role in midterm elections because you don’t get the same level of interest as with Presidential elections. The opposition party usually does well because their voters are motivated to turn out, while the voters for the party in power is often complacent. That was certainly the case in 2010; after the huge wins in 2006 and 2008, Dem voters didn’t show up. But a major factor in that race was the endless b*tching from the left about how Obama had betrayed the base by not getting a bigger stimulus, a public option, a better HAMP, etc. There were plenty of legit complaints about his administration of course, but the over the top attacks really hurt us IMO. Not that I’m bitter or anything…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@rp:
“He didn’t even try, so stay home and SHOW THEM!!!”
– FDL average opinion
Jeffro
It’s true. And also started my day off with a smile. Thanks Baud!
Geminid
Tim Ryan’s announcement for next year’s Senate race made the CBS radio news. They played a soundbite from his announcement video. Ryan was emphasizing infrastructure investment.
Chief Oshkosh
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks!
rikyrah
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
This is indeed 46.
Geminid
@rp: Historically, the dropoff in Democratic voing in off-year elections exceeds that of Republicans. That’s one reason Republican candidates used to overperform in Virginia’s odd-year elections. That changed in Virginia’s 2017 and 2019 state elections, and nationally the pattern was broken in the 2018 midterms. I think this new dynamic will continue next year. Democrats seem as unified and motivated as they have ever been.
Kay
@Soprano2:
You raised a great point with “full employment”. I always understood unemployment this low to be “full employment” too. I suspect we’ll get some real information that will make this talking point anecdotal, rather than a real thing. As we’ve discussed I think some of it is real anxiety being felt by small businesses because of wage pressure – wages already went up. To compete small businesses have to offer what Amazon, Costco, Kroger and Wal Mart are offering.
One of our three big production facilities just went to 17.44 an hour plus health insurance and a 401k after 90 days, so that’s like 22 an hour. Unskilled “operators” so the lowest on the totem pole.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think one thing small businesses might do to compete is offer some kind of ownership share deal. I’m thinking about it with our most important employee- she’s great and we cannot lose her. The advantage to being small is we can try things fairly easily.
J R in WV
@Betty Cracker:
I’m strongly in favor of unicorns. I understand they provide an exhaust heavy in gold nuggets and candies, both of which we enjoy. Plus flying around the woods, creating unexpected beauty.
Flying Flicka, Soaring Black Beauty, who wouldn’t approve?
Low Key Swagger
@Kay: YES. I don’t understand the reluctance of small businesses to cut key employees in. When I owned a large bar/entertainment venue, I decided to offer my bartenders a piece if they kept my pour cost down…and it worked! I also had next to zero theft. People who feel valued will work their asses off for you.
J R in WV
@Soprano2:
NO, he isn’t being stupid — Scarborough is being a craven liar, he is, has been, will be a Republican Qanon stooge all his life. He’s working to defeat progressive advancement of the nation lest people of color make $0.10 from taxes paid by rich white fascists.
Mary Ellen Sandahl
@Bluegirlfromwyo: Complete ignorance, too.
Best laugh I’ve had for a week!!
Brian
@Wag: Isinglass, not inisglass, although the latter does have kind of a Scottish sound.
Panurge
@Kay:
And, of course, all the complication actually contributes to the public’s mistrust of government action in general.