(Ben Sargent via GoComics.com)
.
Not seeing a downside, here:
Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.
The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.
In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.
With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off…
This month, top aides to Mr. Obama including the economic advisers Jason Furman and Gene B. Sperling, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and the legislative affairs office convened a meeting at the White House complex with an array of liberal groups to discuss the minimum wage. The gathering included representatives from Mr. Obama’s political arm, Organizing for America, unions and progressive groups like Americans United for Change and the National Employment Law Project…
Apart from a rousing chorus of AboutDamnedTime, what’s on the agenda for the start of this peculiar rag-end-of-the-calendar week?
J R in WV
Good morning.
Minimum wage improvement seems like a no-brainer – why the high level conferences? Just do it!
I got up and heard a noise downstairs. It appears that the newly replaced ($645) pump in our septic plant only worked for a couple of days, as the high level alarm was burning up. Hooray~!
The old unit appeared to work once we pumped out the tank ($600) but we replaced it because of the cost of pumping and the fact that the original equipment was installed in 2004, and it is a harsh operating environment.
Fred, who is 73, is a self-employed tech for home aeration units, and only charged me $150 for two visits, one to diagnose and ID new equipment needed, and one to install it – that one was on a cold/rainy day. Fred has one eye after winning a fight with cancer. Works because he enjoys it and people need the service!
He’s retired from coal mining, and says the new job is drop dead easy compared to underground work. He has 400 customers for scheduled maintenance of HAUs, and me.
whimper… I hate working on the septic plant, just thinking of the definition of the word septic. Even tho it doesn’t smell that bad…
Hal
Minimum wage, unemployment benefits, reproductive rights, gay rights, healthcare access, not going to war with Syria or Iran. But hey, that website had major issues in November 2013 so fuck it. I’m voting Republican? Now, does someone have a dollar for the bus and a voter ID card I can borrow?
Schlemizel
Oddly enough I dob’t think the minimum wage thing is a winner for the Dems. Too many mouth breathing morans who see raising the minimum wage as a threat to their ‘cushy’ $10/hr jobs. “It ain’t fair that them gets a raise ifin I don’t!” Its why they vote GOP today. I got my curtain rod to roast wrens on F them!
Kay
So this was 2006:
And this was this year, NJ:
Baud
I’ve never understood why this is the standard response whenever the Democrats do something we like. Is there some precedent or analysis that suggests that being negative in these situations produces positive outcomes?
@Hal:
Don’t forget the NSA. Vote Republican to end the police state.
OzarkHillbilly
@J R in WV:
That’s not the septic tank your in, that’s your cistern! Either that or your diet is some serious kind of f*cked up. ;-)
raven
Some pig on MJ wants to give relocation vouchers instead of raising the minimum wage.
Baud
@raven:
Someone should relocate their foot up that guy’s ass.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: The NSA is coming for our guns.
JPL
@raven: Did Joe spend time discussing Issa’s witch hunt on Benghazi?
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: He’s from the Daily Caller, so we know he’s an idiot without saying a word.
Not quite Senator Harold Ford wants to have a 2 tier minimum wage, Sam Stein straightened him out. Harold Ford is still an idiot.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Joe and Mika are on vacay.
NotMax
Lots and lots of cooking for the big New Year’s Eve gathering.
Although what I’ll be cooking (other than the always made for New Year whiskey cake, mock chopped liver, and salmon mousse), haven’t decided yet.
Hoping that during an excursion at the market, something will catch my fancy.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I wonder how many GOP voters we can relocate to N Dakota with that program?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
And our LOLcats.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
2 tier? How would that work?
Botsplainer
@J R in WV:
I have that sort of packet plant, too. Luckily, on the two occasions when the pump quit, I was able to short-term drain the thing into a collapsing limestone basin on a slope beneath the level of the tank while awaiting the repair.
I hate the goddamn thing.
Botsplainer
@raven:
Because coddling the hyperwealthy like they’re endangered pandas has been such a successful economic strategy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Teens would get a lower wage than older workers. Sam Stein pointed out that business would just hire teens since their rate is lower.
geg6
Gotta run and see a friend today. Then it’s off to the grocery store for the NYE dinner. We’re having a pork loin roast with pear and fennel stuffing and lemon and garlic roasted potatoes. Got a couple of bottles of bubbly already. But we’ll be in bed well before midnight, I’m sure.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Getting the minimum wage passed in MO was no slam dunk “just-do-it” endeavor, it took a lot of hard work in a state that is competing with Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas for business. Now that both houses of the state legislature are controlled by veto proof GOP majorities I await the argument that we have to stop this creeping socialism before McDonalds’ and Burger King relocates all their jobs to Louisiana and Texas.
raven
@Baud: Lower min for teens.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I don’t even understand what the policy argument for that would be. In theory, conservatives are supposed to not like making rules more complex.
Kay
I also like it for reasons related to the title of AL’s post: “the dignity of labor”.
These wonky DC discussions about minimum wage versus the earned income tax credit and the safety net don’t take that into account, and it’s valuable, dignity.
There’s something disgustingly patronizing and abstract about tweaking tax policy and food stamp distribution “for the working poor” that makes me cringe. A wage debate brings them in to the discussion.
“The Poor”. Ugh. Stop talking about them and talk to them.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think they try to keep the debate solely focused on “teenagers who are hamburger flippers” because a higher floor puts pressure on the next tier (here, that would be entry-level manufacturing, so go from 9 to 10, which happened in Ohio). They don’t want to talk about that next tier, who are adults with families, so it’s all “teenage hamburger flippers who will be replaced with robots”.
It’s bigger than hamburger flippers, which they know, which is why they fight it like rabid dogs :)
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer:
If at all possible, don’t do this. If you or your neighbors are on wells, this could well be the equivalent of releasing raw sewage into their drinking water. If you or your neighbors aren’t on wells you are still dumping it directly into a karst aquifer and upsetting a very delicate ecological system. Cave life is very sensitive to sudden changes in water quality and the impact is always detrimental. 99.9% of the caves in Perry Co. MO, which is all one big sinkhole plain, are polluted by inadequate septic systems and getting a clean well is particularly difficult. (I don’t really know the percentage, but it is quite common for cavers to have mysterious skin maladies appear 2 or 3 days after a trip in one of those caves, and yes I have had that particular experience.)
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Is “About damned time” wholly negative? I interpret it as “I’m glad you’re doing this now, but I wish you’d done it sooner.” Is it worth letting those Democrats who heretofore ignored the return to Gilded Age levels of wealth inequality know that their absence on this issue was noted? If so, “About damned time” seems like a reasonable qualification for “Huzzah Dems!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: My point exactly Kay, hence the sarcasm.
NotMax
No link handy, but didn’t someplace in Washington state just raise the minimum wage (but only for selected classes of workers within the affected zone) to $15/hr?
The carve-outs are a real and ongoing problem, and about as undemocratic (small D) as can be.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s what I’m asking? Is it worth it? Does it do anything useful, or does it simply reinforce the perception these Democrats have that they can’t win with us?
ETA: And why would you begin a fight on the minimum wage with something about Democratic failings?
Luthe
Can they increase the damned tipped-workers wage while they’re at it?
IowaOldLady
I’d like to see minimum wage proposals on as many ballots as possible in 2014. We need our base to turn out and that might draw them.
mai naem
For some masochistic reason on my part, I watched Squawk Box with Joe Kernen. Howard Dean was on with him. At least Dean give Kernen back what he gives to him. Anyhow, Kernen used the quote “Earned success versus learned helplessness” WTF? You are going to tell me Alice Walton earned her success? Dumbass.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
And I didn’t see a Huzzah Dems! in AL’s post.
NotMax
For any of you housebound on New Year’s Eve, TCM is airing all 3 That’s Entertainment films back-to back (8 p.m. – 3 a.m. Eastern), a quantum leap upward from what they usually trot out on Dec. 31..
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem:
She earned it the old-fashioned way: She inherited it.
Kay
@Baud:
They could have done more with the minimum wage protests in their districts. Like this guy:
It’s the Democratic/liberal response to conservative charges of “learned helplessness”. It’s “we value the work that people do, whatever it is“.
These referendums pass by 60% and 70% margins for a reason, and it’s not a cold, economic analysis. It’s “work” and “wages” and “fair”.
More Dem House members should be out there with them, speaking of “learned helplessness” :)
the Conster
Legalizing pot should be a Dem priority too, with earmarking the taxes raised for public education. Everyone either smokes it or knows someone who does, and the laws against it are where SSM laws were a decade ago with the added benefit of getting the youngs to vote. And I want a pony.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Solely for those unaware of where “the old-fashioned way” became a catchphrase (it was, after all, 35 years ago), John Houseman.
J R in WV
My system isn’t a home aeration unit, just a 3 tank septic system with a pump because the drainage field isn’t downhill enough from the tank to drain right by gravity.
Partly that’s why the 3rd tank doesn’t smell that bad, it’s already mostly digested in the first two tanks. Fred said I could drop a sump pump into the 3rd tank to drop the level enough to pull the pump out, all you need to do is unscrew the union point and lift it out… that’s all.
What you said about the limestone / karst. I saw photos of a cave opening onto a classic river with a bank of cow manure, from a farmer dumping excess manure into a sinkhole with a loader. What a mess!
NotMax
@the Conster
Um, no, not everyone.
Betty Cracker
@Baud:
If constituent feedback amounts to more than a fart in a whirlwind (and that is debatable), then yeah, I think it does something useful: It lets the subset of Dems who have historically ignored wealth inequality issues know that this is an issue their constituents believe is worth pursuing and that their being AWOL on it before was noticed. The former lets them know that they CAN win with us (and how), and the latter tells them it’s not okay to return to previous form — because we’re watching.
I’m all for a positive-reinforcement-only approach when it comes to training puppies and toddlers. But a tougher brand of love doesn’t seem out of line when it comes to lawmakers.
Mustang Bobby
Josh Marshall wrote this weekend that the fight for marriage equality is essentially over and that we will see same-sex marriage as the law of the land before the end of the Obama administration.
I would love it if he was right, but I don’t think so.
the Conster
@NotMax:
I don’t know where you live, but where I live it’s truer than those who know someone who’s gay. Way truer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kay:
Maybe it’s just because it’s early and I haven’t had coffee yet, but I had to read this several times before I figured out what the writer meant:
In my defense, the writer could have found a better way to indicate that the MW raises were along a range of $1-$1.70/hour, because it’s easy to come away with the impression (even though it doesn’t make sense) that the previous MW was $.70 and was raised by $1 to a new MW of $1.70.
Or maybe it’s just me, needing coffee.
NotMax
@the Conster
No secret where I live (Maui) – but then I’m an older person, so among the people with whom I usually associate are many who used to smoke the stuff, but have moved on from that phase (in strict honesty, I gave it up in 1974, mostly because it never did anything for or to me and was more a social convention) .
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t dispute that. I’m questioning the rhetoric used to try to get them there.
@Betty Cracker:
I can’t definitively say you’re wrong, although I guess I’m more inclined to treat lawmakers like toddlers.
Patrick
@Hal:
It’s mind-blowing, isn’t it? The GOP shut down the government and the voters were all upset. Then the ACA website had some temporary web issues. And just like that, the voters apparently have forgotten all about the GOP led government shut down and are now set to vote Republican in November.
The stupidity of the voters…Next time there is a shutdown, they shouldn’t blame the GOP. They should look themselves in the mirror.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Believe me, I thought that one through (this has happened twice in 15 years). Tank was overflowing and already spilling over, probably about 2000 gallons worth, so it had already been released. Nobody is on wells in the area, and the whole watershed is subject to septic runoff, a high number from creaky spray systems like mine. When the repairman came, he said he’d have done the same thing that day, as the tanker truck is usually scheduled out a few days. Basically, without it, we’d have had to abandon the house for about a week.
beth
This won’t get anywhere without much better messaging from the Dems. There’s a Facebook post going around – promoted originally by Sarah Palin, I think – that has a picture of a soldier and says something like “we (meaning soldiers) get paid less than minimum wage and you want $15 per hour for flipping burgers?”. Most of my wingnut friends and relatives have posted or liked this not realizing that the outrageous part isn’t getting that much for flipping burgers – it’s paying our soldiers less than minimum wage. It’s a race to the bottom and we’re losing ground. We really need to push both the diginity of labor and living wage messages.
Kay
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hah!
It went in gradually in Ohio, and there’s a large business/small business wage, but I don’t know any small business people who pay attention to it. They all pay at least a little above the higher minimum.
Very few employers here pay straight minimum, but I don’t think that’s really the goal of these referendums. I think the goal is to set a higher floor.
Labor doesn’t want to talk about that because it’s too complicated and the issue is more appealing to people without that, and conservatives don’t want to talk about it because now we’re getting past “hamburger flippers” and into members of their base who make 9,10,11 dollars an hour, but I think that’s the truth.
I do honestly believe “the dignity of work” push benefits ALL workers, whatever they make. IMO, work has been devalued over the last 30 years, which is ironic, because supposedly conservatives are all about self-sufficiency. They’re constantly trashing work and workers.
Patrick
Wasn’t it the Republican governor of Maine who wanted a mural of the state’s labor history removed? I assume most of the voters of Maine are not billionaires and instead workers. Why do they keep voting for someone who obviously have such hatred for labor, which would include the vast majority of the voters.
Baud
@Patrick:
We don’t know that. Polling is inherently about what’s happening at the moment.
@Patrick:
Maine governor has only faced the electorate once.
cmorenc
@the Conster:
Completely aside from the merits of pot legalization or the raw potential of raising tax money from it, an unfortunate dynamic that’s happened with other “earmarked” revenue sources for education (most particularly state lotteries) is that too many state legislatures have used this to replace rather than supplement revenue from other tax sources, which enables them to shift that other revenue to other unrelated uses (including tax cuts to upper-income folks). Don’t get me wrong; IMHO legalizing pot, including for recreational use, with the benefit of raising legal tax revenues from its sale are a terrific idea as is earmarking the revenue for particularly worthy things like public education. But recognize that earmarking those revenues for education is only half (or even less than half) of the battle for insuring that the money raised actually benefits education, the other half being to prevent the earmarked money from effectively being siphoned off by offsetting re-allocation of other tax revenues elsewhere that were formerly going to public education.
Patrick
@Baud:
I understand that. But we are not that far removed from the government shutdown. And to think that a minor, temporary issue like a website having problems would trump the government shutdown is mind-blowing to me. The attention span of the voter is worse than the attention span of a gnat.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Patrick:Ok I’ll bite, where is this groundswell of voters wanting to vote for the GOP? I mean unless you guys are connected to Newsmaxx or listening to a bunch of Duck Dynasty Rubes, I;m not hearing it. Be that as it may, doesn’t the Democratic Leadership under Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have an obligation to go out to the voters and convince them why they should vote? People like Keith Ellison ought to be leading the party, imagine standing up for working and poor people, hmm that can be a winner too.
Betty Cracker
@Patrick: Because the wingnuts have successfully turned factions of the working class and poor against one another. It’s all about some other group that is getting a free ride or who is insufficiently supportive of my issue than economic justice. That’s why it’s heartening to see Dems appealing to “fairness” — it’s not only true, it’s viscerally appealing to people who know they’re getting screwed.
Patrick
@Baud:
Yup. Again, why did they vote for someone who hated labor?
Baud
@Patrick:
I think it’s more a problem that people don’t hold grudges against Republicans the way they hold grudges against Democrats (even for stuff that happened decades ago).
Sadly, blogs are not an exception to that rule.
Baud
@Patrick:
They didn’t. Three-way race, the GOP governor won a plurality.
OzarkHillbilly
@J R in WV:
Sinkholes are great places for dumping unwanted items! Things just disappear when you put them in! I once came upon a refrigerator miles from an entrance. Tales of things found in Perry Co caves are legend. There is a pit in St Louis Co that is very well known for the prehistoric peccary bones excavated from it. But it is called “Crankshaft Pit” because of the old Model Ts at the bottom. It took a long time and alot of work but most farmers know better now (I would say all, but I never underestimate the limits of ignorance), some just don’t give a tinker’s damn.
When we bought our place, it didn’t even have a drainage field, just drained right onto the ground… Think of it: Raw sewage in my back yard only 75 feet from the deck where we planned to eat many lunches and dinners on pleasant evenings. NOT for us (IIRC, $3,000+), but it is perfectly legal in Washington Co. MO.
Needless to say, we still have a long ways to go on the education front.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re not going to go all Lovely Bones on us, are you?
Kay
@Patrick:
I personally think Democrats and liberals have a bit of a split. In my view, there’s a sort of “elite punditry” set who push tax code changes and safety net over talking about work and wages.
Obviously, I think that’s a mistake, partly because it’s so passive and distant as far as the people they’re trying to “help”.
No one in the world is listening to earnest discussions about the Earned Income Tax Credit and while I’m a big fan of the safety net, the Democratic/liberal response to low wages can’t just be “more food stamps!”. I mean, Jesus but that’s grim. Who wants to put themselves in the group, The Poor, that needs all this help? No one.
I was listening to Paul Ryan, who is really an expert bullshitter, and his whole response to this is to talk about when he was a teen who made minimum wage. It’s a way to narrow this. He’s putting the whole issue in a box and filing it away. But there’s a huge group of workers who are adults in Wisconsin who make slightly more than minimum, and they probably benefit from a floor that’s higher. He doesn’t want to talk about that, so we should :)
greennotGreen
Note that the Times article starts out presenting the minimum wage issue as little more than an election strategy – couldn’t possibly be that Democrats think this is the right thing to do and now might be the time they can actually accomplish it – no, it’s all just a “strategy.” While I’m sure there are some Democratic lawmakers who are just sociopathic enough for that to be true of them, I don’t think it’s the majority. If they really don’t care about the poor or the economy (because raising the minimum wage is a great way to stimulate the economy,) they’d be Republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Why I said, “If at all possible…” I presumed nothing and just wanted to make sure you knew the problems associated with such a procedure. I do want to point out that you can get your septic tank pumped out with the gunk hauled away and in fact it is recommended that you do so at least once every 3 years because otherwise solids build up in the bottom of your tank. I got ours done last year and it cost app $300.
Southern Beale
Anti-tax chickens come home to roost in Tennessee, and I’m playing the world’s tiniest violin.
geg6
@NotMax:
That sounds like a fun evening. I think that’s what we’ll watch!
Keith G
@beth:
@Mr Stagger Lee:
This cohort of Democratic Party leadership are quite inept at when it comes to the messaging wars. While social media has it’s place, few things are more important than having a central core of the party’s top leadership leading from the front and aggressively hammering home the party’s central ideas.
debbie
@Kay:
Yeah, and in Ohio, it’s about to go up $.10. Big whoop.
danielx
Kind of longing for the ‘good old days’ when writing a comment to local media meant that someone actually had to have it together enough to put pen to paper (or paper in typewriter), go to the effort of writing something out, putting the rant/letter in an envelope, affixing stamp, etc etc. It was a lot more difficult to write a letter to the editor, but at least it meant that whoever did it had to put some thought and effort into it, which automatically eliminated about ninety percent of potential letter writers. Had recently in the area a truly horrible case in which two women were murdered in the course of a home invasion-type robbery, with they being (white) residents of an (extremely) affluent area. The accused being a former (black) employee of the husband/father who was evidently angry about being fired for attendance issues in June of this year, with the home invasion and murders taking place on 12/20. Granted that it appears to be an open and shut case, reading the commentary is akin to swimming in a combined open sewer and toxic waste pit with the comments saying a great deal more about the writers than they do about the case, victims or alleged perpetrator. Some things in this benighted state (and presumably a lot of others) haven’t changed since 1930, the year of the last known public lynching in a northern state. Some of these people are longing for blood.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemizel: Yep. Or people pissed about the Fight for Fifteen.
I will give this to the craft unions-a lot of them pegged their wages to min wage so if it goes up they jump too. Smart.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Emoprogs are only for the working class in the abstract.
What about the corporate/direct mail/bankster surveillance state? Oh, but Target just sent me coupons in the mail so who cares.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: And the right wing-left wing convergence is complete.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Heh. I had to look that up. Truth is I know a # of places I could dump a body and it would never be found and several others it would be years, maybe decades, before they would be discovered. Over the years I always went to great lengths to explain this fact to all of my prospective girlfriends.
Still don’t know why my wife married me. Only thing I can think of is that like all good Ozark cavers, she has a short memory.
gene108
@Schlemizel:
I think we have to come to grips with the fact that many people approve of Republican policies. They approve of would be wars with Iran and Syria, cutting unemployment benefits, food stamps, aggressive abortion restrictions, etc.
How to change their minds, I do not know, but unless that happens the Republicans will still be more than a regional rump party.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, we’ve been following that schedule for the solids side of the system pretty religiously. The jackass who lived there before us never did pump that out (the honey dipper said it was practically like concrete the first time he got in there).
An even funnier story – the system probably never got a decent initial permit. The health department lost their records from the 70s, and there wasn’t a signed approval on file with planning and zoning. Two years ago, the state water guys came sniffing, and the system didn’t conform to lot size at all. With some work, I got it grandfathered in on a permit; maintenance is 450 a year, but that only covers monthly inspection and chlorine tablets.
Another Holocene Human
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Funny story, when the samurai caste was ruling Japan they decided to ban porn because like a high school football coach they were convinced it robbed the commoners of their stiff spine & purity of essence, argle bargle. Rather than ban nudity, they banned depicting adult’s naughty bits mingling with other adult’s naughty bits. Sounds legit until Japanese pornographers figured out they could circumvent the law by drawing naughty pictures of teenagers humping.
Also, too, isn’t it funny how quickly we run from “let’s protect teens from themselves, they’re practically overgrown children” to “let’s exploit the fuck out of them, they’re only half adults and don’t really feel pain or suffering”. Being sarcastic but they seem to think teens who work don’t have real world bills to pay. BULLSHIT.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Exactly. We could talk about strengthening unions, but we can’t have that can we?
off sarcasm button
Ben Cisco
@beth:
Only someone as disconnected from reality as Madame Mooseburger could fail to see that – although she’s all about wrapping herself in the flag and being about “the troops”, she could really give a sh*t. In that, she’s no different than her GOP brethren.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: In MO i have read 50 cents. $20 a week may not sound like much, but for some people that’s a weeks worth of dinners and that is certainly better than nothing.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
After deducting for taxes, they’ll be very light dinners.
Another Holocene Human
@OzarkHillbilly:
If lowages were all bidniss interess cared about, then why has IL had a resurgence in manufacturing jobs while AL and MS run all these ads, throw out grants, have no laws to speak of, etc, and can’t get any fucking businesses to relocate there except for some sucker furrin car companies without US footprint who don’t realize what they’re buying?
If min wage is a job killer why did Florida recover better than Georgia from the recession, pro-tip: Florida’s gas price is higher, min wage is higher, do disregard the unemployment topline because it’s a lie (Voldemort refused UI extension monies, thus solving unemployment forever!), climate similarly shitty? Why is SC the biggest shithole on the Atlantic coast? Why are RI and DE minishitholes regionally? Hmm, funny, they, too, have lower min wage and a conspicuous lack of standards and/or progressive taxation.
RI had gilded age millionaires a plenty but you can’t eat the bitter end of that GINI index.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: Chlorine tablets? I have been told that that (and most other additives) is a big mistake as it kills off the natural bacteria that munches on the stuff.
WereBear
At the very least, the rise of the Right Wing has herded most of our Constitutionally Hateful into easily self-identified groups.
There’s mental illness, where people struggle with trauma, brain chemistry, and genetics, and which I hope the ACA can offer help where all was lacking.
On the considerable other hand, while I believe the Constitutionally Hateful are also mentally ill… but they enjoy being hateful, and will not willingly give it up.
The only thing you can do with such people is marginalize them; Goldwater knew that. Reagan let them loose.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Holocene Human: Shhhhhhhhhhhh….. somebody might hear you.
WereBear
@Ben Cisco: Not to mention that the soldiers do get some help with housing, food, and medical care; while those burger flippers are on their own.
And while some of it is indeed, people being that stupid, a LOT of it is simply that no one has ever explained, anything, in this country for about forty years. Civics has been eliminated from public education. Fundies relentlessly try to remove the very concept of thinking from public discourse. The entire mass media that is supposed to, at a minimum, explain how things work in our society has devolved into celebrations of white trash lifestyles.
People look at “socialism” and all they think about is how the paycheck they get is smaller. When I explain that they should look at the “spending money” left at the end of the day, their mouths drop open. Because those socialist Europeans get a smaller paycheck, but it is all theirs.
The wage slaves in this country cannot say the same.
Dead Ernest (Thought Wrangler)
@Schlemizel:
Schlemmy*
Usually, reading what you post, I find myself thinking, “Such a smart guy. He thinks what I think” – and, also as usual, I like your style…
This time, perhaps too optimistically, I think enough of the ‘$10/hr’ folks are either related to, or friends with enough people who’d benefit from raising the mw, that, this time, they would be populists.
*pardon the presumed familiarity. Been agreeing with you for so long, it’s as if we know each other, Cheers – Dead’ele.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay:
In my state the chain restaurants spend big bucks (the “other” NRA, Hermann Cain’s NRA) trying to lower the minimum wage back down again because a higher starting wage breaks one of the stools that gives chain restaurants a competitive advantage against more closely held concerns and corporate no likely.
It’s funny, you go overseas (not Canada) and see a relative dearth of chain sit-down establishments and wonder why. Well, it’s a regulatory environment thing. The dining out industry is smaller in France and Germany, but even the lowliest food worker there gets wages and benefits. But oh noes, no Master’s in Business Admin grads from “good” families with junior VP positions to visit farms to “source” the best produce so their non-skilled kitchen minimum wage grunts can totally kill the hell out of it on a steam table.
What will they do, get a job in education?!?!?!?
Ben Cisco
@WereBear: Having been on the receiving end of those benefits, I know it well. Another nuance lost on those who would use “the troops” to slag on the civilian poor.
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s what I thought, too. Basically, on spray systems, the state regulation requires that the effluent be filtered and treated at the end stage. The bacteriophage number has to be low, but I am not required to test that unless there is an issue.
The bacteria munch earlier in the process, and I’ve got an aerator to make their meals enjoyable.
Another Holocene Human
@Southern Beale: Great blog post! Wow, and I thought my local pols were dumb!
Southern Beale
@Another Holocene Human:
Nothing is dumber than a Tennessee Republican.
Patrick
@Baud:
But they did. Like you yourself said, a plurality of the Maine voters voted for a guy that hated labor. Amazingly, it was not limited to Maine in 2010. And this was just 2 years after the Bush debacle.
Patrick
@Mr Stagger Lee:
Not sure about a groundswell. Nothing is likely to happen in the House, which has been gerrymandered to hell. But the senate is up for grabs. Obama’s approval rating is low and the generic approval rating has been switched so the GOP is now winning it.
Not sure how many times I have to say it but I’ll say it one last time; the GOP shut down the government. In spite of this, the voters are giving Obama and the Dems lower rating than the GOP. Mind-boggling.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Southern Beale:
I dunno, Missouri Republicans are pretty dumb, lately.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Though unions are almost as big a scapegoat as government nowadays – it regularly boggles my mind the sheer number of non-27%ers I know, otherwise open to at least some intelligent ideas, who’ve completely bought into the whole “unions are job destroyers who only look after their own and make things worse for everybody and besides they destroyed Detroit argle bargle” mindset.
WereBear
@Chris: When have they ever been told anything different? It’s not even covered in American history class, which is the closest most people come to understanding anything that is over six months in the past.
Chris
@WereBear:
This.
I’ve seen a couple military people posting that on Facebook and my reaction has tended to be “bullshit,” for exactly those reasons.
Then again, I’m just mightily tired in general of the “every last person whose job is at all less dangerous, exhausting, traumatizing, underpaid and otherwise nasty than that of a soldier in a war zone is a pampered fat cat who’s being unpatriotic and troop-hating if he ever seeks an improvement in his job situation” line of argument. For too many reasons to even begin to list.
JoyfulA
@NotMax: That’s true here. But a 91-year-old friend is looking for pot for his neighbor with pain that opioids don’t do much for. Visiting in Arizona, the neighbor smoked pot with her host and was pain-free for the first time in decades.
Now the olds want the (comparatively) young-uns like me to find them some pot. I said call your state legislator.
MomSense
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Aside from the obvious problems with a two-tiered wage, I don’t think the people on MJ and in Congress realize the extent to which even the teenagers in many families are helping to support the entire family. Parents have been unemployed or underemployed and the teens are helping to put food on the table and pay other expenses. As with so many issues, it seems like these people only talk to the other people in their small circles and have no clue what people are going through.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is my theory, but I feel as if because the Democrats had unions, they didn’t have to develop enough of a practical, basic economic message. Unions filled that role for them. Unions still fill that role for them. The whole action part of the minimum wage push is labor. No one else is doing anything.
I actually think it’s a real problem for Democrats, and we don’t talk about it enough. There’s this huge focus on how horrible GOP dogma is on the economy, and I agree with that, but Democrats need an economic plan or approach. They can’t just keep pointing to FDR, and the Clintonian/Robert Reich “job training” is worn and stale.
There’s been this push in the Obama Administration to dump income inequality on public schools, but I can’t help thinking it’s extremely convenient for everyone who is in power to decide public schools are the sole source of stagnant wages. I get why it’s wildly popular, it’s much easier to point there than it is at business interests not investing in training or employees or really anything other than their own bonuses, but saying “education!” over and over isn’t an economic plan.
It’s not just “Obama”. This has been going on for a long time. I know what’s wrong with the Republicans approach to the economy, and I know what the labor approach to the economy is, but what is the Democratic Party approach to the economy? They don’t really have anything coherent and unified.
catclub
Good news Everyone! Another LGM post about the oceans dying.
Chris
@Kay:
The thing is, it’s kind of hard to build a coherent critique of modern society (including the very basic fact that big business and unregulated capitalism are not the solution to our problems; they are the problem) without sailing into some fairly socialist waters. And admitting, de facto, that yeah, the socialists were right about a lot of things – not necessarily their solutions, but certainly their critique.
I don’t know how much of a bogeyman “socialism” still is nowadays in the general public, but I think leading politicians on the “left” have a terminal allergy to being tainted with the label regardless.
WereBear
That’s very generational; when I describe Scandinavian programs to the youngs, they love it!
Anoniminous
@WereBear:
It’s called “consumer discretionary income,” which is the money available after all mandatory and necessary Cost of Living expenses is subtracted from gross income. When the figure is calculated the projected minimum wage increase to $9/hour works out to $18,000/year which is still ludicrously short of a Living Wage and barely over half of the average US yearly wage of $35,000/year.
Until this is rectified the US economy will continue to stumble.
Anoniminous
@Patrick:
This far out polls are meaningless.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay, tell the truth all the way about their attack on workers.
ruemara
@Baud:
Isn’t that how all liberals talk about Dems? We’re the original disaffected hipsters.
@beth: I’d ask any friend of mine who posted that why they’re ok with soldiers getting minimum wage. It usually gets them to shut it or think.
fidelio
@OzarkHillbilly: Karst (and karst-dwellers) thank you for this reminder.
This is one reason why gigantic hog farms with inadequate sewage systems are so horrid to have around. (We’ll leave aside all the other issues with regard to food safety, animal cruelty, antibiotic abuse, and terrible working conditions.)
p.a.
Can’t wait for the Harold Ford Jr./Tim Geithner/Bob Rubin NYT editorial about how raising the minimum wage is the wrong issue at the wrong time. And then Obama can sandbag Congressional Dems. by undercutting their opening bid by half to get the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller on board to seem bipartisan.
rikyrah
@Kay:
you are correct, Kay.