economic inequality

Few issues are as black and white as raising the minimum wage. The vast majority of Americans would like to see it go up to at least the $10.10 proposed by President Obama. The polling is through the roof on this, not only among normal people, but even among a majority of self-identified Republican voters! Democrats in Congress-- save a tiny handful of corporate whores from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (Blue Dogs and New Dems)-- have been working to raise it.

Boehner told Jay Leno on Thursday that he's learned that "a leader without followers is simply a man taking a walk." His problem, an inability to exercise the kind of skills needed to actually be a leader, never dawned on him when he led his caucus over the cliff last year, despite understanding what a disaster it would be.

Did you read Ken's post last night about Davos and economic inequality? If not, here's another chance. OK, so who doesn't love traveling by private jet? I mean, everyone knows how sucky airplane travel has become, right? Especially all the way to Davos!

The Alpine Fairyland of Davos, site of the Mastersof the Universe Annual World Economic Hoedown"[J]ust days after a stunning report was issued by Oxfam saying that the 85 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the global population, or about 3.5 billion people[,] a good chunk of those 85 are likely to be fretting on the slopes about this horrible state of affairs."-- Al Kamen, in his

terrorism?You probably read earlier today that the 85 richest people own nearly half the global wealth, right? The role of conservative government everywhere in the world is to either maintain or increase the share of wealth in the hands of the wealthy. That is the only real reason conservative parties exist.

"What I see is that we are rats, deliberately starved and set against each other. . . .

I think my health has actually improved since Satanic religionist right extremist Bryan Fischer blocked me from his deranged, anti-American twitter feed.

A friend, who apparently doesn't read this blog, just called me astounded that this week 1.3 million Americans would be losing their unemployment benefis. He had just found out. "What are they going to do," he asked. I mentioned something about turning their anger, in a decidedly non-electoral way towards the individual conservatives in Congress, who have authored their impending misery.

I wish I could say that of course Bernie is focused on the real issues of economic equality that plague most working families. After all, he went to James Madison High School in Brooklyn, just like Ken and I did. But that "of course" would be less than accurate. Norm Coleman was also a student there-- and so was Wall Street shill Chuck Schumer. At Madison the only kind of elitism that was encouraged was intellectual elitism-- not the kind of economic and social elitism that has since we all graduated pushed the U.S.