minimum wage

The Deseret News in Utah is far more conservative than the Salt Lake Tribune. But last week, the paper's ran an OpEd that one wouldn't expect to see in a right-wing Republican newspaper, America Has Gone Too Long Without Raising The Minimum Wage. "June 16 marks the longest period in history without an increase since the federal minimum wage was established in 1938. The federal minimum wage went to $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009-- nearly 10 years ago.

LOL!Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced a great piece of legislation on January 16, the Raise the Wage Act (H.R.582. The bill would gradually raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. There are 235 Democrats in the House. 205 have signed on as co-sponsors.

Medicare-For-All original co-sponsor Josh Harder (CA) raked in a stupendous $800,000 in the first quarter. Just imagine how much he would have raised if he was also co-sponsoring the Green New Deal and a $15 minimum wageIf the Democrats don't deliver on the expectations voters have of them-- Medicare-For-All, a $15 minimum wage, the Green New Deal, etc-- 2022 is going to be a banner year for the GOP-- akin to 2010.

The Green New Deal is complicated and partially abstract and certainly not easy to understand for an idiot. It's aspirational too. Medicare-For-All isn't as complicated, but it's complicated too. You know what's not complicated? Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a semi-livable wage. That;'s pretty straight forward. But it's something that infuriates conservatives almost as much as the Green New Deal and Medicare For All do.

Furloughed federal workers who are finding life tough because of the partial government shutdown are sacrificing and taking extreme measures to make ends meet and pay their bills. They are visiting pawn shops, asking for loan extensions, applying for SNAP (food stamps), using food pantries and visiting soup kitchens. They are taking any part-time temporary work they can find at whatever pay rate. They go to bed each night wondering how they will get through the next day, week, month. Sort of like a huge chunk of U.S. workers.

Arizona's mammoth first district-- slightly bigger than Pennsylvania-- is centered on Flagstaff but is like a representation of the state of the whole state of Arizona. It includes the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, the suburbs south of Phoenix and north of Tucson, the huge a Navajo and Hopi reservations--and more native Americans than any other district in the country.

Pelosi's not taking any crap from New Dems on raising the minimum wageAt her leadership meeting this week, Pelosi informed her leadership team the democrats would be putting forth a $15/hour minimum wage bill. Most members were delighted of course-- but not all.

I was at a city hall meeting in Beaverton, Oregon, the other day when a few questions I had for the presenters dropped jaws. We’ll get to that later, the jaw-dropping effect I and those of my ilk have when we end up in the controlled boardrooms and chambers of the controllers – bureaucrats, public-private clubs like Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, and both political operatives and those who liken themselves as the great planners of the world moving communities and housing and public commons around a giant chessboard to make things better for and more efficient in spite of us.

Almost forty years ago I invented direct democracy – or so I thought at the time. I had been raised in Rhodesia, a racist and mostly fascist country, and had just moved to England. Although England considered itself a fine example of democracy (and still does), I was puzzled how such a fine democracy could have an unelected head of state, and a parliament where more than half its members are unelected.

The challenge by progressives to Democratic party leaders for November’s midterms—and the 2020 presidential election—is to tone down the anti-Trump focus and play up domestic planks as did the Great Depression’s president Franklin D. Roosevelt (“FDR”) to solve the nation’s critical domestic needs. Campaigners do not want to waste time and energies in yet another party defeat because the party continues to abandon the interests of millions once under its “big tent” in catering to the interests of banks, big business, and the rich.
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