;)
The Commentariat -- Feb. 21, 2014
Internal links removed.
Zachary Goldfarb of the Washington Post: "President Obama;s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social Security benefits. With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans. Instead, the president will focus on pumping new cash into job training, early-childhood education and other programs aimed at bolstering the middle class, providing Democrats with a policy blueprint heading into the midterm elections." ...
... Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama's forthcoming budget plan will not include a proposal to trim cost-of-living increases in Social Security checks, the gesture of bipartisanship he made to Republicans last year in a failed strategy to reach a 'grand compromise' on reducing projected federal debt. White House officials said on Thursday that since Republicans in Congress have shown no willingness to meet the president's offer on social programs by closing loopholes for corporations and wealthy Americans, the proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not assume a path to an agreement that no longer appears to exist." CW: The Republican response, BTW, seems to be in disarray. Democrats, including this one, are relieved. ...
... CW: An end of the era of austerity? Too bad it has taken President Obama five years to get Krugman's message. It isn't as if Krugman, et al., have been shy about what was needed to boost the economy. ...
... Josh Terbush of the Week: "Obama is done even pretending to work with Republicans. If you can't beat 'em, ignore 'em."
... Brian Beutler of Salon: "Liberals are celebrating, with good reason, but I think the strongest emotional response should come from reasonable conservatives who have let an inflexible anti-tax orthodoxy destroy the right's longer-standing goal of slashing and devolving entitlements. The only way they'll get there with Democrats in power is to pony up some tax revenue. Failing that, they'll need to recapture the entire government and do the slashing and devolving all on their own. But there's every reason in the world to doubt they have the chutzpah to do that. So the dream is dead. Driving that point home to the right is just as valuable as granting a reprieve to the left."
One of the White House's most poorly kept secrets is that many of Obama's economic advisers support Chained CPI on the merits, or believe it to be the least-bad benefit cut Obama could offer Republicans. -- Brian Beutler
Who are these idiots, anyway? ... Fire them immediately. -- Charles Pierce
... Digby: "Now, how about proposing [to] raise benefits? If we want to kill this zombie once and for all, that should be the Democratic Party baseline going forward." ...
... Paul Krugman: "... the overall narrative of the stimulus is tragic. A policy initiative that was good but not good enough ended up being seen as a failure, and set the stage for an immensely destructive wrong turn." ...
... Margaret Chadbourn of Reuters: "Fannie Mae said on Friday it would soon send the U.S. Treasury $7.2 billion, a profit-related dividend that makes taxpayers whole for the 2008 bailout of the mortgage-financing giant and its sibling company Freddie Mac. Unlike other companies rescued by taxpayers during the financial crisis, however, the firms will remain under government control until Congress winds them down or replaces them. The bailout terms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac force them to turn over their profits to the Treasury in the form of dividends on the controlling stake the government took when it bailed them out. They cannot repurchase the government's share." CW: Let's see how Republicans spin this one.
Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post: "Between 1947 and 1973 -- roughly the one period of union strength in U.S. history -- productivity increased by 97 percent and workers' compensation (that's wages plus benefits) by 95 percent. Since 1973, however, as unions have weakened, productivity has increased by 80 percent and compensation by just 11 percent.... According to economists Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker, [the gains from productivity] have gone entirely to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans -- increasingly in the form of capital gains and dividends." ...
... William Galston in the Wall Street Journal: "The Great Decoupling of wages and benefits from productivity, the biggest economic story of the past 40 years, shows no signs of ending.... As the gap widened, U.S. households responded by sending more women into the paid workforce, expanding the numbers of hours worked and taking on a greater burden of debt.... Unless total compensation rises more rapidly, stagnant domestic demand will depress economic growth as far as the eye can see.... We should link the tax rates individual firms pay to the compensation strategies they adopt. The point is simple: Firms can either share productivity gains with their workers -- or contribute to the public programs made necessary by their failure to do so.... Our problem isn't a shortage of capital; it's the weakness of demand. We'd all be better off in the long run if workers' compensation grew along with productivity. And so would our country." CW: Firewalled. Cut & paste a clause or so into a Google search box.
Adam Serwer of NBC News: "A revolt against President Barack Obama's nominees to the federal bench in Georgia has spread from the civil rights icons who paved the way for Obama's presidency to the abortion rights movement.... With NARAL joining the fray, other liberal groups may follow suit, and Democrats in the Senate may no longer be able to stay silent on the matter." ...
... Digby: "It's just inexplicable that [President Obama] would agree to 'deals' in which Republicans get to put more far right ideologues on the court after the previous president already packed it with them to the fullest extent he possibly could. If there is one area in which ideology, temperament and political philosophy simply must be taken seriously, it's this one. If he can't do any better than this, he should leave the seats unfilled and hope his successor is a Democrat who has better negotiating skills."
Gene Robinson: "Sometimes, when I'm in my car, I crank up the music pretty loud. All you Michael Dunns out there, please don't shoot me. Please don't shoot my sons, either, or my brothers-in-law, nephews, nephews-in-law or other male relatives. I have quite a few friends and acquaintances who also happen to be black men, and I'd appreciate your not shooting them as well, even if the value you place on their lives is approximately zero."
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: A new, "hard-hitting," anti-ObamaCare ad produced by Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, "doesn't add up."...
... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "AFP is being purposefully misleading using Boostra's story, and doesn't think that their ad should be subject to this kind of scrutiny, attempting to shame Kessler and any other fact checkers with this: 'The reality of what she's dealing with is much more involved and can't be swept aside by saying, "you have an OOP maximum so quit complaining about your cancer.'" No one is sweeping aside her illness, or telling her to stop complaining about her cancer. They're pointing out that she's saving enough in premiums to cover her out of pocket costs. She can complain all she wants, but it's not callous and it's not out of bounds to say that she's not telling the entire truth." ...
... Kevin Drum of Mother Jones: "I'm beginning to think there's not actually a single person in America who's been harmed by Obamacare.... Julie Boonstra[, the leukemia patient who stars in the AFP ad,] kept her doctor. Her new plan is, on net, less expensive than her old plan. And presumably she's no longer required to compromise on the type of chemotherapy she receives. In other words, it appears to be superior on virtually every metric.... This ad implies that Boonstra flatly can't afford coverage anymore. It implies that she could no longer see her old doctor. It implies that Obamacare is killing her. None of this is true.... Why is it that every single hard luck story like this falls apart under the barest scrutiny?"
Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "The enduring ban on transgender individuals serving in the US military has earned America a low ranking in the first global league table of LGBT inclusion in the armed forces. The US is placed at number 40 in the table of 103 countries' armed forces as measured by their inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender service members. That puts it behind the militaries of countries such as Chile, Georgia and even America's bête noire, Cuba."
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post: Rep. Darrell Issa (RTP-Calif.) said at a GOP fundraiser in New Hampshire earlier this week that he suspected then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and/or President Obama had ordered the military to stand down immediately after the Benghazi attack. "It is correct that Issa poses a series of questions, but his repeated use of the phrase 'stand down' and his personalizing of the alleged actions ('Secretary Clinton;' 'Leon' [Panetta]) leave a distinct impression that either Clinton or Obama delivered some sort of instruction to Panetta to not act as forcefully as possible. He even incorrectly asserts that not a single order was given to use any DOD asset. One could argue the response was slow, bungled or poorly handled. But Issa is crossing a line when he suggests there was no response -- or a deliberate effort to hinder it."
CW: Can Hardly Wait to Meet My New Neighbor. Jake Miller of CBS News: "In a move sure to provoke speculation about his future in Congress - and a fresh round of jokes about his superhuman suntan - House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, purchased a condo in Florida.... The condo, located in the posh coastal enclave of Marco Island in southwest Florida, was purchased this month at a cost of $835,000, according to Collier County public records. Boehner and his wife put $185,000 down and mortgaged the remainder." ...
... David Drucker of Winger News the Washington Examiner: "House Republicans have begun jockeying for leadership positions in the next Congress, anticipating the possibility that Speaker John Boehner could step down after the November elections."
New Jersey News
Larry McShane of the New York Daily News: "Meet the world's first inaction figure. A Florida artist, using a 3-D printer, created a tiny figurine of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie bringing traffic to a grinding halt at the George Washington Bridge.... The 4 1/2-inch tall figure hardly does justice to the gargantuan governor -- but [the artist, Fernando] Sosa, has an explanation for that. 'This was modeled to scale just like the shutdown of the bridge was a "traffic study,'" he said.... The individually produced figures ... are available for $37.87 each through Shapeways.com."
Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: For Chris Christie, "Thursday was supposed to represent a defiant, maybe even triumphant, return to the town-hall-style meeting, an intimate and comfortable setting in which he could bathe in the adulation of his fans and unleash harsh denunciations of anyone foolhardy enough to challenge him.... But the two-hour forum [in Port Monmouth] near the Jersey Shore on Thursday, his first since controversy enveloped his administration, demonstrated just how difficult it will be for Mr. Christie to quickly recreate the political magic that once seemed certain to put him in contention for the White House."
Matt Friedman of the Star-Ledger: "A controversial housing complex for the elderly planned for Belleville, an Essex County town that was largely spared from Hurricane Sandy, was approved for a second round of federal recovery funds as its projected costs ballooned. The project, which was pushed by Gov. Chris Christie, had been approved for $6 million in May from a federally financed, state-administered program intended to replenish affordable housing damaged or destroyed in the storm. But according to figures provided by the Department of Community Affairs last week, that figure has increased, to $10.2 million.... Construction has not yet begun on the complex...."
New York Times: "A judge in New Jersey has ordered two former aides to Gov. Chris Christie [-- Bill Stepien & Bridget Kelly --] to appear in court to explain their refusal to turn over potential evidence to a legislative committee investigating the politically charged closing of lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in September.
Star-Ledger Editors: Port Authority Chair David "Samson needs to go. Certainly, he's not the source of all that ails the Port Authority, but he is the guy in charge. Beyond Bridgegate, his tenure as the Port Authority's chair has been a failure. Despite promises of transparency and reform, the agency remains a dysfunctional patronage pit. Samson's conflicts of interest are well-documented, and his resignation would be a fitting first step toward fixing a troubled agency."
Elsewhere in the Hinterlands
Steve Schultze & Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: "As crises at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex unfolded, Scott Walker managed the response from the background while his staff focused on political damage caused by the botched care of what one key staffer called 'crazy people.' Walker was in his final year as county executive and running for governor as issues at the complex demanded much of his attention.... Walker's county and campaign staffs collaborated in determining how to respond to one issue after another -- sexual assaults of patients at the complex, security lapses, controversial remarks by Milwaukee County's mental health administrator. At one point, Walker's campaign manager complained that a county lawyer needed to 'think political for a change.' Walker played an active role in how to respond, even when he insisted on staying at a distance publicly.... Walker has repeatedly said he kept campaign and county business separate." ...
... So let's see: Repeated racist remarks, efforts to fire a staffer who was a former thong model, worse-than-Dickensian treatment of patients in the county's care (to which one staffer response was, "Nobody cares about crazy people"), using county employees as campaign workers on county time, and Scott Walker's personal involvement in much of it. ...
... CW: Naturally, Politico characterizes all this as "a snooze."
** Katie McDonough of Salon: After gutting women's healthcare programs, "the Texas Health and Human Services committee ... [will] hold a hearing on the 'progress' the state has made in women's healthcare seems like a particularly cruel joke. The committee intends to 'build on previous legislative achievements in women's healthcare,' according to a statement on the hearing."
Oops! I Left My Loaded Gun in a Capitol Committee Room Where Irresponsible Democrats Could Find It. Kurtis Lee of the Denver Post: "In the moments after lawmakers and visitors cleared a committee room Feb. 6 following a debate on concealed handgun permits, Rep. Jonathan Singer [D] found a black canvas bag under the table.... Inside, Singer discovered a loaded handgun that belonged to Rep. Jared Wright, R-Fruita, who sits next to him on the House Local Government committee.... Wright said he was contacted by Gov. John Hickenlooper's office about the incident and after speaking with Colorado State Patrol and Roxane White, Hickenlooper's chief of staff, he agreed to no longer carry it inside the building."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Garrick Utley, a former anchor for NBC News who for many years was one of a rare breed in television news reporting, a full-time foreign correspondent, died Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 74."
CNN: "Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro told a CNN reporting team Friday that it could continue reporting in the South American country, a day after the government revoked or denied press credentials for CNN journalists. Earlier, Maduro had said he would expel CNN if it did not 'rectify' its coverage of anti-government protests. During a news conference aired live on state-run TV, Maduro reversed his early position, saying CNN could stay."
New York Times: "The government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych announced a tentative resolution on Friday to a crisis that has brought days of bloodshed to Ukraine. The agreement, which has yet to be signed, was announced after all-night talks with opposition leaders, Russian representatives and the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and France. In a statement later on his website, Mr. Yanukovych said he would call early presidential elections, form a coalition and reduce presidential powers through constitutional reforms." ...
... The Guardian is liveblogging events in Ukraine.
Guardian: "Rebekah Brooks has told the Old Bailey she did not have a six-year relationship with Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former spin doctor, as she described how her personal life had been a 'bit of a car crash for many years'. Brooks, in the witness box at the phone-hacking trial for a second day on Friday, told the jury she was "incredibly close" to Coulson and described him as her 'best friend' but said it was wrong of the prosecution to characterise their relationship as a six-year affair. Brooks told the court that she had several periods of 'physical intimacy' with Coulson, but the police and prosecution had misinterpreted a letter she had written to him declaring her love for him back in February 2004." ...
... Here's an UPDATE with more detail of Brooks' testimony.
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Reader Comments (19)
Already, apologists for Scott Walker are downplaying the seriousness of this week's revelations. Local supporters claim that if Walker wasn't charged with a crime, we should just move on. Nationally, the response is "oh, you Wsiconsin people are so cute, thinking that this is a big deal when there are governors who can really cause trouble by stopping traffic."
This is a big deal. Walker has been lying to us all along, saying he was unaware of illegal activity (and Wisconsin has tough laws about campaigning on public time for a reason) when emails show he was in the thick of it. The emails reveal the racist culture of his circle in a county office which is supposed to serve a very diverse population. This, along with The cynicism and naked political ambition displayed, should disqualify him for office. He will be propped up by Koch money in blood red suburban Milwaukee counties and and lazy media coverage in rural Wisconsin, enough to likely win reelection. But he has been exposed as a penny-ante lightweight whose national ambitions are toast.
I'm reposting this comment by @Akhilleus because it got spammed the other day:
Marie,
Thanks for the link to Krugman's piece on abstruse writing.
As a grad student, I spent many an irritating hour hacking through the underbrush of articles and tomes dedicated to obscurantist critical theorizing. A particular writer I recall, with an instant headache, one Stephen Heath, a British semiotician, must have been trying to win a contest. His pages had to be read and re-read over and over. Pages? Hell, it was murder just trying to get through a paragraph.
I'll give you an example, from Heath's book "Questions of Cinema".
"The position of realism is the position of intelligibility and the guarantee of intelligibility is the stability, the unity, of the subject; thus narrative appears as an obliteration or covering over of division, symbolic process: 'what distinguishes fiction films is not the "absence" of a special work of the signifier, but its presence in the mode of denegation, and it is well known that this type of presence is one of the strongest there are'."
And if you think that's bad....
"Secondly, inevitably, a broad conception is emerging of what might be the critical role of art, of a practice of cinema, and in terms precisely of a production of contraindications against the fictions of stasis which contain and mask structuring work, in terms of a fracturing of the vision of representation."
Wow. That must have been some killer weed. The really sad thing is that aside from a lot of the gobbledygook, now and then I'd come across some very good points. I just needed a pickaxe to pry them from the tundra of frozen verbiage.
As a grad student, I was told that this was the way to write. I tried. Really I did. But I sucked at it. It was just too much work to bury what you really wanted to say under a canopy of corkscrew constructions and metastasized secondary clauses. That is, if you actually had something to say. One of the granddaddies of the continental critical theory craze that swept through American universities in the 70's, Michel Foucault, actually complained that he wrote like that because he had to. Say what?
This style of writing is what you often come across in academic position papers spat out by the many right-wing (and some left-wing) ideology factories and "think tanks".
So basically, people write like this for one of two reasons:
a.) You don't care about the general public because you're only writing for other people who write like this, or
b.) You don't have a fucking clue what to say in the first place.
It's all about looking through a dark glassly.
Or something.
Nadd2,
It's very likely that Walker will be re-elected. We really do deserve the mess we're in. The Republican field of potential '16 presidential candidates has two governors currently being investigated for multiple offenses and another (Kasich) who may join them in the under-investigation column, for using state money to develop a public relations campaign for the oil and gas industry which seeks to suck money out of Ohio by fracking on public lands such as state parks. Kasich is also cut from the same union busting cloth as Walker, so there's that too. Several other up and coming GOP guvs once considered president material (hey, don't laugh), have already augured in (Jindal and McDonnell). Republicans may try to draft other governors not as obviously tainted, but who? Rick Snyder? Sam fucking Brownback? Not likely.
So once we get past the duplicitous and possibly felonious governors, we get venal narcissists, liars, and off-the-chain whackos, Paul, Ryan, Cruz, Rubio, all the as-yet unannounced loonies (no dearth of them on the right) and another Bush. (Can all the rest of the Bushes run this year as well so we can permanently cross these bastards off any future dance cards? Enough already.).
But the fact remains, as in Wisconsin, that even though none of these guys have an excellent shot at the White House, they can still get re-elected despite serious legal and ethical difficulties and continue to wreak havoc on democracy. Hell, Romney, a blank-slate, robotic one percenter who wrote off half the country as lazy moochers still got almost 61 million votes!
Had he surrounded himself with a smarter campaign operation and laid off the hallucinogens he might be president today.
Charlie Pierce is absolutely correct when he says we are all largely to blame for this abysmal state of affairs. Workers in Tennessee got screwed by Republican ideology because not enough people (including organized labor) have been standing up and calling bullshit on bug-eyed extremist cant. If a racist, criminal dickhead like Scott Walker gets re-elected in Wisconsin, voters and Democrats and good government organizations have only themselves (and the press) to blame.
AND I'm reposting this comment by @James Singer from late in yesterday's thread because I disagree with him here. I'll get to that:
Okay, so here’s what I’ve found running around the internet all day. People who should know better are convinced somehow that a worker’s hourly wage is related to the worker’s hourly productivity. That is, if you raise wages10 percent, you increase productivity 10 percent and, therefore, can lay off 10 percent of your work force and maintain your place in the capitalist firmament. I’ve actually read morons who said it was simple math. Arithmetic, maybe, but still not simple.
So the obvious question, then, if this is true, why can’t you raise the hourly wage 300 or 400 percent, cut your workforce to two or three hardy souls, and lay off all those other slackers?
Sorry, no cites. There are too many of them and it’s too late in the day and I need a drink.
Oh shit, not this guy again:
God personally wrote the US Constitution and founded this country. And he did it in way less than seven days.
Tom (I'm still a dangerous idiot) DeLay proclaims that the Constitution is not just based on the Bible, but was personally written by God.
What, with the flaming finger and all?
How come it's on paper and not in stone? Did Madison have to climb a mountain to get it? Where are all the references to god and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the Bible? Oh right. They're there but written in invisible ink. Maybe in the blood of the martyrs.
DeLay, in this interview also recalls that as Majority Leader he once closed the capitol rotunda "...so that members of the House and Senate could get “on our knees seeking the face of God and praying.”
Sounds a tad Taliban-ish to me, no?
Don't forget that this guy was in congress for over two decades.
We really do deserve what we get.
@James Singer. Pretty funny. When you take many a rule & carry it to an extreme, it isn't likely to make sense.
Paying higher wages certainly can increase productivity. For one thing, if you pay higher wages, you can expect to attract better employees. A friend of mine, out of desperation, recently took a low-paying job as a store clerk. To the amazement of her employer, she was a much better worker than other employees in the same job. I don't mean that she had more gumption or "worked harder" than they, but that she had better "clerking skills." She greeted customers, helped them find stuff, guided them to products she figured they would like even though those products were not on their shopping lists, was faster & friendlier at check-out, improved product displays, etc. Within a month, her employer promoted her to manager & gave her a big fat raise. The employer was right to do so; obviously, my friend was a better worker &, for the store, "more productive" than less experienced clerks. This is what the GAP guy meant when he said that paying higher wages would increase productivity.
In addition, higher wages likely mean less turnover. Experts estimate that hiring a new employee costs 150% of the employee's annual wage. Anything a company can do to retain good employees is a huge cost-saver.
I also would argue that even paying the same employee -- with all his limitations -- higher wages will make him a better employee. Paying someone $20/hour to stamp widgets instead of $7.25/hour will make him a more productive employee because it means that he will likely bring fewer off-the-job stresses to work. He can, for instance, buy a car & get to work in 20 minutes instead of the hour on the bus (with a transfer!); he can move out of his sister's apartment; he can go out for a beer with his fellow widget-stampers & maybe forge on-the-job friendships; he can eliminate the hassle of food stamps; he can get more reliable care for his children, etc. Whatever. A less-stressed-out employee is very apt to be a better employee.
Obviously, there is a point after which higher wages do not lead to a commensurate increase in productivity. Highly-paid people -- say, CEOs -- are still going to work hard whether their compensation is $1MM/year or $12MM (although the $1MM person is likely to be looking for a $12MM gig). A salaried doctor making $100K a year probably would not be twice as productive if you paid her $200K. (However, adding perks -- onsite child care, for instance -- that made her life easier would more than likely improve her performance. And the 100% rise in pay would make her a happier doctor. Plus, offering a new hire $200K instead of $100K would reward you with a better crop of applicants.)
So, no, you can't fire most of the staff & expect 3 or 4 highly-paid widget stampers to stamp out as many widgets as a couple of hundred employees. But you can, up to a point, get more productivity out of your entire staff, on average, by raising wages.
Marie
@Akhilleus: Also, per retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, when Jesus returns on Judgment Day, he (Jesus) will come with an AR-15 in hand or in his mouth or something -- anyway, he's going to off a lot of people. But apparently, the Bible tells us Jesus will need help:
"And the sword today is an AR-15, so if you don't have one, go get one. You're supposed to have one. It's biblical."
Assuming Boykin is a trinitarian, he must totally agree with DeLay as to the "real" authorship of the Constitution:
"Now I want you to think about this: where did the Second Amendment come from? ... From the Founding Fathers, it's in the Constitution. Well, yeah, I know that. But where did the whole concept come from? It came from Jesus."
Marie
Speaking of productivity, it seems you can pay someone a shitload of money (relatively speaking) and they still won't do a damn thing.
Orange John Boehner, arguably one of the most hapless, ineffective, do-nothing Speakers in US history, doesn't do much for the money he takes home, but he does just fine when that money's in the bank (although it may not be only money from his government checks).
Seems CheetoMan just bought a condo in sunny Florida (like he needs more sun) for $835,000 and dropped 185,000 simoleons on the down payment. $185,000 down payment? Sheesh. My house didn't cost that much.
I guess when the GOP spouts off about working for your money they must be talking about other people.
Marie,
Ho-lee-shit.
Better go get me one-a them AR whatchamacallits so's I can be ready for rapturous mayhem.
Praise the lord and git you some heat!
And this new from the Hinterland: Watch Jon Stewart take down Kansas Rep. (a democrat, no less) for her insane child-beating bill. At first I thought this was a joke. I am appalled that something like this would be introduced. I am fervently against the spanking of children for any reason––it's barbaric and teaches the child all the wrong ways of dealing with problems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/21/jon-stewart-kansas-corporal-punishment_n_4830881.html
The Jon Stewart video doesn't work here so I went back to H.P. but their video doesn't work either. Wonder why.
Marie:
No argument.
But the proposition was that it would eliminate jobs, not merely cycle more productive workers through them.
Somebody's still gotta flip the goddamn burgers.
@James Singer: Agreed. But part of my argument is that even the burger flipper will be a better -- i.e., more productive -- employee if you pay him more because his higher wage empowers him to do things to make his whole life easier. If he can't get to work on time -- or at all -- because the bus is late, school's out & he doesn't have reliable child care, he has to go to the gummit office to see about his food stamps, the electric company turns off the lights so he can't shower & shave to make himself work-presentable, etc., then the whole burger operation suffers.
Even if that particular worker mishandles his new-found "wealth" & doesn't become more productive, your burger joint entrepreneur will be able to replace him with an experienced burger flipper, one who will not require much training & will be happy to come to work & flip his heart out for a relatively high wage.
If you're a McDonald's franchise open 24 hours & you have 10 unreliable employees flipping burgers at different times of the day & week, you can probably fire the worst slacker & raise the wages & benefits of the 9 others, thus making each of them more reliable for the sorts of reasons I've posited. Nine dedicated workers are in theory more productive than 10 slackers with issues.
Marie
Marie:
No argument again... but a qualification. The burger flipper's productivity increase will likely be a temporary blip, unless, of course, the minimum gets raised again next year. Cost of living has a way of deflating minimum wage increases rather quickly. Which means, I guess, that for the increases to be more than symbolic gestures, they need to be indexed.
Another state is ready to leap aboard the crazy wagon.
Hard on the heels of Georgia, the Kentucky State Senate has voted to allow gun nuts to carry concealed weapons into bars. Other states now allow deadly weapons to be carried, hidden, into churches, schools, college campuses, airports, pretty much everywhere, because what could possibly go wrong?
But don't worry. Kentucky lawmakers have addressed the potential problem of all those likkered up patrons pulling out their peacemakers and turning local watering holes into the OK Corral (or the Capitol building in Denver). They say that, on your honor, if you're gonna go packing heat into a bar, you shouldn't drink. Right. Cause the vast majority of people go to bars not to drink.
Ahh...I can see it now. "Hey buddy!" shouts the concealed carry guy who came to the bar "not to drink" but is on his fourth shot of Jack Daniels. "Who the fuck are you lookin' at?" BANG goes the peacemaker. SCHLUMPF goes the other guy. SQUIRT goes the blood. "Another shot, bartender. Hey...I made a joke." goes the shooter.
Because, as always, freedom.
Kentucky House members, who may or may not think this is the greatest idea since indoor toilets, vote on this insanity soon.
"Hey sweetheart, let me buy you a drink and I'll show you my gun. It's a big one...heh-heh.
Re: AK's re-post; simple; if you can't dazzle'em with brilliance, baffle'em with bullshit. Learned that one while sitting through any number of literary criticism classes in the early 80's. Same time took a class in poetry form and function. "Po'em" by JJG. Got me an A.
Re: mo' money. A decent wage makes for a decent wage earner.
What do the super rich care? Minimum wages ultimately end up back in their greedy grasp anyways.
@AK, just to be mean; what do people from Kentucky know about indoor plumbing?
Re: Scott Walker. Is this the same Scott Walker who pushed through
legislation making it unlawful (and a sin) for Wisconsin residents to
go outside of Wisconsin to get hitched? And if you do, and return to
to your home state after being hitched in, say, Hawaii, you go
directly to jail and pay a fine of $thousands. Because I have friends
in Milwaukee who went out of state to marry since there is no same
sex marriage in Wisconsin. Are opposite sex couples jailed and fined? Sounds a lot like discrimination. I don't know a lot about
the laws on this, but it just doesn't sound right and should leave
Mr. Walker open to some lawsuits, or loss of votes at least.
Marie, just getting to the Roger Angell piece. It's lovely. Thank you.
Forrest--Walker did not pass either the amendment to Wisconsin's constitution banning same sex marriage (although he voted for it) or the older law criminalizing leaving the state to get married. He has extremely Rightwing views on social issues, though, and recently said he doesn't see much popular support for marriage equality. Of course, that is because he isolates himself from being with any constituents unless they can fund his political dreams.