minimum wage

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.

In October, Blue America endorsed Pat Murphy, the progressive candidate in the battle for the open Iowa congressional seat Bruce Braley is leaving in the state's northeast corner, IA-01-- Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Marshalltown, Decorah. It's a D+5 district and the winner of the primary will be going to Congress next year.

A $10.10-an-hour minimum-wage increase shows an improvement but is still not a living wage, which would be twice the poverty rate at $12 an hour.

I found the above quote this morning on the Facebook page of Jason Thigpen, the North Carolina Republican-turned-progressive Democrat running for the House seat occupied by Walter Jones.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is relevant these days with many in Congress playing the role of Scrooge before he was visited by the Christmas spirits. Dickens was greatly concerned about the plight of children forced to work under dreadful conditions and about the lives of the poor in Britain under industrial capitalism in the 1840s.
Pope Francis recently echoed these ideas when he expressed concern about unfettered capitalism. The Pope also called on world leaders to address poverty and growing inequality. Specifically, he said:

The above FDR reelection speech from 1936 warning voters about GOP intentions towards the popular social insurance policies they had fought so hard against, is no less relevant today than it was then. Roosevelt went on to win 60.8% to 36.5%, taking every state but Vermont and Maine and winning the electoral college 523 to 8. Democrats continued winning seats in Congress and wound up with a margin of 334 (+ 10 left-leaning independents) to 88 in the House and 76 (+ 2 left-leaning independents) to 16 in the Senate.

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class – the rich class – that’s making war, and we’re winning.
- Warren Buffett (2006)

Monday candidate registration for the 2014 congressional elections close in Texas. So far "Oily" Joe Barton doesn't have a Democratic opponent, just a teabagger, Frank Kuchar, in the primary and then a Libertarian, Hugh Chauvin, in the general. Another dismal DCCC failure presided over by Steve Israel!

Boehner must feel like the little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dike, holding back the flood-- in this case, the flood of popular comprehensive immigration reform, the flood of popular passage of a bill to end workplace discrimination against the LGBT community, the flood against

Lately we've come to the conclusion that the whole concept of billionaires is illegitimate and an existential threat to democracy. But, short of a guillotine, how do you protect society by getting rid of them? Progressive taxation is the obvious choice, of course.