News & Articles

Anyone who works full time, ought not live in poverty. Period.
Raising the minimum wage above the poverty level, is not a question of economics (even though it would be a big plus for our economy), but a question of morality. Who are we as a people, a nation – especially in the richest nation in the world – if we dishonor the work ethic with a wholly-unethical wage floor? It’s disgraceful, which is why three out of four Americans support raising the floor, including a majority of Republicans.
Yet, the wage stays stuck at the unconscionable level of $7.25 an hour because Republican leaders are stuck on the low-wage dogma dictated by corporate elites.
At a forum in April, GOP congress critter Dennis Ross of Tampa was confronted by a fast-food worker who asked him to support a minimum wage hike. “Who’s going to pay for it?” snapped Ross, who’s paid $174,000 a year by us taxpayers. A person in the audience rose to say he’d gladly pay a little more for a hamburger so workers could be paid a decent wage – a comment that prompted applause from the crowd. Yet Ross railed against the very idea of a minimum wage: “If the government’s going to tell me how much I can get paid… then we have a serious problem in this country.”
Yes, we do have a serious problem, and its name is Dennis Ross. Or, let’s call it Lamar Alexander. The Republican Senator from Tennessee said of the minimum wage, “I do not believe in it.” Indeed, he “believes” in the immorality of letting executive-suite kleptocrats set sub-sub-sub-subpoverty pay scales to impoverish America’s workforce. Or, how about John Boehner, the GOP Speaker of the House, he’s gone operatic on the issue, declaring that he would “commit suicide before I vote [to raise the] minimum wage.”
These guys aren’t just out of touch – they’re nuts!

“In Denial,” www.thinkprogress.org, April 16, 2014.

“3 Out of 4 Americans Agree: It’s Time to Raise the Wage,” www.social.dol.gov, January 15, 2014.

Boney Fingers v. Soft Hands Work An old cliché says: “Hard work   always pays off.”

Really? Ask a farm worker about that, or talk to a McDonald’s fry cook working three shifts to piece together an income that still leaves them in poverty. “Work your fingers to the bone,” goes the old song, “and what do you get? Boney fingers.”
If it’s a big payoff you want from a job, go for what my Uncle Emmett called “soft hands work.” I recommend hedge-fund huckstering! Those guys (and they’re nearly all guys) never get a callus and do nothing of social value, yet they make the biggest haul of anyone. Last year, the 25 highest paid hedge funders raked in a collective $21 billion in personal pay, with half of that grabbed by the top four guys.
Their billions are what’s called “unearned income” – money made from money, not from one’s labor. And it’s not even their money! Other rich people, big pension funds, endowments, etc. entrust them with big piles of their money, which the soft hand guys then bet on such screwy “financial products” as packages of subprime-mortgage derivatives (yes, that’s the one that crashed our economy in 2008). But even when they bet poorly, the hucksters get richer, for they charge what’s called “2 and 20” to get into their casino game – that’s 2 percent off the top of the millions of dollars a person or group turns over to the hedge fund, plus 20 percent of any profits made from the bets. So a guy like Ray Dalio, who runs the world’s biggest hedge game, made a lousy showing for his backers last year, yet he still walked away with $600 million in personal pay.
Also, to further rig the unearned income game, the hedge-crew is lobbying furiously in Washington to let them get away with paying only half the income tax rate that you working stiffs are assessed. Why do we even allow these worthless scoundrels to exist?

“Hedge Fund Moguls’ Pay Has the 1% Looking Up,” The New York Times, May 6, 2014.

Who’s pushing to impeach President Obama?

Perhaps you thought that, surely, partisan posturing by far-right congress critters couldn’t get any nuttier. But now comes the GOP’s claim that all the talk about impeaching President Barack Obama is being led by – guess who? – Barack Obama!
The top Republican leader, John Boehner (having discovered that the larger public is appalled that his party would even consider wasting time on such extremist nonsense) tried to do a political back flip. Impeachment talk, he fumed, is “a scam started by Democrats at the White House.” No Republican lawmakers, he barked to the media, are even discussing it.
Boehner, Boehner, Boehner – did you not hear Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, who’s number two on your own GOP leadership team, tell Fox News that he refuses to rule out impeachment? Or Rep. Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, exult that “it would be a dream come true” to impeach Obama, and that he has pursued advice on how to proceed? Or Iowa’s Steve King, saying flatly, “We need to bring impeachment hearings immediately.” How about Randy Weber of Texas, who put it unequivocally: “The President deserves to be impeached, plain and simple.” And Georgia’s Jack Kingston confirmed that: “Not a day goes by when people don’t talk to us about impeachment.”
Still, Boehner received some back-up on his disclaimer from tea party radio ranter Glenn Beck, who echoed the Speaker’s ridiculous assertion that no one in the GOP has given a moment’s thought to impeachment: “Have you spoken to one person [pushing such an idea],” he demanded in a recent broadcast. “No one” has used the I-word, he snapped. But, in fact, Beck does know one person who has: Himself! Also, Sarah Palin! And at least a dozen others.
Put away all hope for honesty or seriousness, ye who enter the nut house presently known as Boehner’s US House of Representatives.

“None Dare Call It Impeachment,” The New York Times, July 31, 2014.

“House Republicans Refuse To Rule Out Impeachment,” www.dccc.org, July 29, 2014.