All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Gray Lensman]

Republican leadership have successfully conned their voters into thinking a higher wage for workers is bad and tax breaks for the rich are good.

"If I are forced to pay a higher minimum wage by those Damned, Dirty, Dems.....I'll fire YOU instead."

[JackDaw]

The minimum wage ought to be much higher and, also, I like the idea of tying its actual value to rent.

Multiple studies have shown, over and over again, that the 'classical wisdom' about the increased minimum wage being a 'job killer' doesn't really play out in reality, at least partially because our's is *so frigging low* right now.

But sure, let's pretend that minimum wage kills jobs and ignore the trillions of sucked up, stolen wealth and productivity is not, as per usual.

It’s more than academic studies that indicate a minimum wage works fairly well.

It was first introduced in UK back in 1998. And has worked out so well that no UK political party (including the Conservatives...who I think of as a sane version of US Republicans) has ever seriously proposed doing away with it.

Obviously it’s likely that at some point if you set the level too high it destroys too many job opportunities. Effectively in UK debate has moved on to at what level the minimum should be set...no credible politician advocates removing it completely.

[CaptainEurope]

It’s more than academic studies that indicate a minimum wage works fairly well.

It was first introduced in UK back in 1998. And has worked out so well that no UK political party (including the Conservatives...who I think of as a sane version of US Republicans) has ever seriously proposed doing away with it.

Obviously it’s likely that at some point if you set the level too high it destroys too many job opportunities. Effectively in UK debate has moved on to at what level the minimum should be set...no credible politician advocates removing it completely.

Same in Germany. A lot of conservatives were shouting bloody murder about its introduction, but unemployment continued to go down, not up, after it was introduced.

It's not very high in Germany (9.50 Euro is about $ 11.50) but keep in mind we all have health insurance paid for.

[worstblogever]

In regards to that photo of the golden Trump idol, is the slogan behind it cropped down or is the slogan literally just "AHEAD AMERICA"? Because the Honorary English Major in me just can't handle that, it looks like something right outta Veep.

Like, all questions of it are valid. Like...

• Did the GOP forget large parts of the Book of Exodus" with the golden calf?
• The slogan being like an incomplete homework assignment.
• Why is Trump proportioned like Bob's Big Boy pitching burgers? Was this meant to be a Big Boy, but they just cast a gold Trump head on it?
• Why is he wearing flip flops and American flag shorts? Trump wouldn't be caught dead in that.
• We get why CPAC would be delusional and have him holding a Constitution which we know he's never read... but why is he holding a fairy godmother's magic wand?

[JackDaw]

Same in Germany. A lot of conservatives were shouting bloody murder about its introduction, but unemployment continued to go down, not up, after it was introduced.

It's not very high in Germany (9.50 Euro is about $ 11.50) but keep in mind we all have health insurance paid for.

Our hourly rate is set at a very similar level...8.91 pounds, equivalent at present exchange rates to about 12.3 dollars. But realistically exchange rates fluctuate so much that effectively the minimum rates in our two countries is at a very similar level.

In addition we have a “real level wage” which is about 15 percent higher, which firms are asked to try to pay, but is not a mandatory requirement like the minimum living wage.

A year ago, I think there was at least some pressure to adopt the “real living wage” as a mandatory payment, but effectively there is little or no pressure to do that now...the pandemic has forced other priorities for near to medium future.

[worstblogever]

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Gene Alday, a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives who is a pro-life and pro-death penalty, Voter ID supporting, climate-change denying, God fearin’ American who also happened to be quoted in 2015 saying, “I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks.' They don't work.I had to go to the emergency room for pain. I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots." But don’t worry, in his apology for those remarks, Alday insisted he was being taken out of context, just like the majority of Republicans do when they frequently say racist things. Alday lost his seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives in the 2015 elections, and hopefully will not be heard from again.

On this date in 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Angela Kaaihue, who has taken two shots at running for the U.S. House of Representatives for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District in 2016. She describes herself as a "real estate developer", and has previously failed to be elected Mayor of Honolulu. Kaaihue's first attempt at getting elected to Congress in 2016 was actually in the special election for Hawaii's 1st Congressional District, where she bizarrely ran as a Democrat trying to replace the Congressman Mark Takai, who was dying from pancreatic cancer. She was utterly wrecked by Colleen Hanabusa, only receiving 3% of the overall vote. Perhaps her poor performance had something to do with her choice to run campaign advertising where she proudly declared herself "healthy and cancer-free" as a positive trait, and later gave a radio interview where she defended her ads, saying, "Would you want to vote for someone who has cancer?" She then continued to dig the hole even deeper when she later added the assessment that, “If you have cancer, it's almost like having AIDS, you don't want people to know." Now, given how disastrous her performance was in the special election, one would hope the Republican Party wouldn't welcome someone with a questionable educational background and poor campaigning skills into their ranks with open arms. Alas, the Hawaii GOP did just that, and had Angela Kaaihue as a candidate in the primary to run against their chosen son, Eric Hafner... and she won with 56% of the vote. And that decision blew up right in their faces, almost immediately. It was just a tad disconcerting, perhaps, to GOP insiders that Kaaihue actually was arrested in 2013, sentenced to probation, and ordered to undergo a mental health exam. Or maybe they should have balked because she chose to have a website that looked, at best, like a Myspace page with auto-playing music when you went to it. And they chose not to get upset about the fact that Kaaihue was a fanatical Christian who believes that a Christian religious identity supersedes any other qualifications for office, and put out bigoted campaign ads to tout herself as a Christian, and try and attack Tulsi Gabbard, her opponent, for being Hindu. She then took it a step further by claiming both Rep. Gabbard, and her previous opponent, Rep. Hanabusa, were both devil-worshippers, or that a vote for Gabbard was "a vote for Satan". And then, for whatever reason, Kaaihue decided to get on Facebook, and start hysterically ranting about Japanese people in a now-deleted post where she said they were "murderous", "lieing" (sic), "stealing," and "conspirators." She told them to go back to Japan and "eat your fucking radiation at Fukushima you f***ing low life scum," among other things. When the local media asked her to explain herself, she walked her comments back, although continued to underline that she was a theocratic Christian twit when she said, "I truly regret posting that about Japanese people. I don’t think all Japanese people are bad, I just think that the non-Christian Japanese people.” (NOTE: That didn't help.) Kaaihue was disavowed by the GOP, and of course responded rationally to being denounced by the Hawaii GOP. HA! Of course she didn't. She started raving on social media further about it, getting even more fanatical than normal, and insisting that everyone was silencing her, a true "Messenger of God". Kaaihue got crushed by Tulsi Gabbard, getting a little less than 19% of the vote against her in the general election that year. She is likely too toxic politically for any party, even the GOP, from giving her a chance to run for any office going forward.


On this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Jeffrey Guice, who was first elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives back in 2007 by running unopposed, and other than a challenger who he crushed by over 40 points in the GOP Primary in 2015, has been allowed to have a career as a legislator without any competition whatsoever. Guice’s odds of seeing a challenger in 2019 went up, though, in 2019 because after a mother wrote to him to express her difficulties in getting her Medicaid benefits to cover the cost of her daughter’s medications for her Type 1 diabetes to keep her alive, Guice responded to her e-mail thusly:

"I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought about buying the supplies with money that you earn?"

The parents, between the two of them, were working three jobs to cover medical expenses. And they posted Guice’s response (one of only 3 they received from state legislators) onto Facebook, prompting him to apologize to try and save his own ass politically, going forward. But really, Guice was probably too busy trying to preserve the public glorification of the Confederacy to bother trying to save a poor diabetic girl’s life.

That’s actually understating how awful his legislative career is:

• March 14th, 2012: Guice votes for HB 921, a GOP “Voter ID” bill aimed at suppressing the vote in the state.
• April 1st, 2014: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 1400, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks that flies in the face of the Roe v. Wade ruling.
• February 17th, 2016: Guice votes for HB 786, a nice little bill to allow people to be authorized to carry firearms in church.
• February 25th, 2016: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 519, an anti-choice bill to prohibit “dismemberment abortions”, which might mean a D&E, but who can even tell with these anti-abortion morons anymore.
• March 2nd, 2016: Guice votes for HB 983, to make it easier for parents to get exemptions for having to get their children vaccinated.
• March 26th, 2016: Jeffrey Guice votes for HB 683, to authorize the use of the gas chamber, the firing squad, and the electric chair as possible means of execution in Mississippi.
• February 5th, 2018: Guice votes for HB 1510, a ban on abortion on 15 weeks even more likely to be overturned by a judge than the 20 week ban Guice voted for four years earlier.

When you put all that together with his exchange with his constituent simply trying to keep her daughter alive… suffice to say Jeffrey Guice is kind of a ****hole. Regrettably, he won re-election in the 2019 election in Mississippi, only getting an Independent candidate as a challenger, and coasting to re-election by over 50 points. He could remain in office until 2024… unless, in theory, he wins the mayoral election coming up in nine months to become the next mayor of Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Based on the story we found that he was living in a RV on a campground near the state capitol, it would make sense why Guice might be looking to get a gig in politics closer to home.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I've said here many times before that I'm no political expert, but, it seems to me that the Biden administration made a misstep by shooting for the moon with the $15.00 an hour wage goal. I'm sure they knew going in that Qpublicans wouldn't go for that (or anything else Biden proposed), still, Joe should've gone for a lower amount, say $10 an hour to start, then inch that number upwards over time once the bill went into effect. Perhaps that would've been a non-starter with the GQP as well (give them half a chance, they'd lower the current minimum wage), however, a more moderate number might have been more palatable to both parties. Yeah, I know, serious pipe dream, but that's all I got.

[kidfresh512]

I've said here many times before that I'm no political expert, but, it seems to me that the Biden administration made a misstep by shooting for the moon with the $15.00 an hour wage goal. I'm sure they knew going in that Qpublicans wouldn't go for that (or anything else Biden proposed), still, Joe should've gone for a lower amount, say $10 an hour to start, then inch that number upwards over time once the bill went into effect. Perhaps that would've been a non-starter with the GQP as well (give them half a chance, they'd lower the current minimum wage), however, a more moderate number might have been more palatable to both parties. Yeah, I know, serious pipe dream, but that's all I got.

Nah, you have seen how difficult it was to get discussed in the first place and how long the minimum wage has stagnated. If he started under where it should be they would still scream bloody murder and want to go lower or not deal with it at all.

From what I am reading for it to get passed the senate they will have to either eliminate filibuster for this of craft in some kind of tax based incentives to make it fit the reconciliation process somehow. Then Keep manchin

[worstblogever]

I've said here many times before that I'm no political expert, but, it seems to me that the Biden administration made a misstep by shooting for the moon with the $15.00 an hour wage goal. I'm sure they knew going in that Qpublicans wouldn't go for that (or anything else Biden proposed), still, Joe should've gone for a lower amount, say $10 an hour to start, then inch that number upwards over time once the bill went into effect. Perhaps that would've been a non-starter with the GQP as well (give them half a chance, they'd lower the current minimum wage), however, a more moderate number might have been more palatable to both parties. Yeah, I know, serious pipe dream, but that's all I got.

Although, alternatively, he didn't jeopardize getting people the help they need right now that is the stimulus money.

I think that what we'll see happen is multiple minimum wage increase bills later, and forcing Republicans to outright block it non-stop as we get near the 2022 mid-terms. Use it as a cudgel against them to get the working class motivated, and/or as the argument as to why the filibuster has got to go. If they won't pass a bill that 66% of REPUBLICANS want, let alone 83% of Americans... that's as good as a rallying call as you're gonna get.

I would rather they just did it, but I think there might be some wisdom to playing the long game with these motherf***ers so they don't blunder their way back into control of the Senate or House.

[Hellion]

Like, all questions of it are valid. Like...

• Did the GOP forget large parts of the Book of Exodus" with the golden calf?
• The slogan being like an incomplete homework assignment.
• Why is Trump proportioned like Bob's Big Boy pitching burgers? Was this meant to be a Big Boy, but they just cast a gold Trump head on it?
• Why is he wearing flip flops and American flag shorts? Trump wouldn't be caught dead in that.
• We get why CPAC would be delusional and have him holding a Constitution which we know he's never read... but why is he holding a fairy godmother's magic wand?

Just saw an expanded view of that photograph and the full slogan is LOOK AHEAD AMERICA. Which I'm assuming is meant as "look forward to 2022 and 2024 when the GQP returns to power" but it's funny because the conservative worldview is more appropriately "looking behind."

[Tami]

Supreme Court to again consider federal protections for minority voters

With one contentious election behind it, the Supreme Court this week will consider the rules for the next, and how federal law protects minority voters as states across the nation race to revamp their regulations.

The court on Tuesday will review the shield provided by the Voting Rights Act (VRA), first passed in 1965 to forbid laws that result in discrimination based on race.

The cases at the Supreme Court involve two voting regulations from Arizona that are in common use across the country. One throws out the ballots of those who vote in the wrong precinct. The other restricts who may collect ballots cast early for delivery to polling places, a practice then-President Donald Trump denounced as “ballot harvesting.”

But the greater impact will be the test that the increasingly conservative court develops for proving violations of the VRA, as new laws are proposed and state legislatures begin redrawing congressional and legislative districts following the 2020 Census.

The liberal Brennan Center for Justice says that lawmakers in 33 states have crafted more than 165 bills to restrict voting so far this year — more than four times the number in last year’s legislative sessions. The group attributed the surge to “a rash of baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud” and accused lawmakers of a “backlash to historic voter turnout” last year.

Arizona leads the nation in restrictive proposals, the center said.

In 2013, the Supreme Court made it harder for civil rights groups to challenge such changes. It effectively eliminated the requirement that states proven to have discriminated against minorities in the past receive advance approval from a panel of federal judges or the Justice Department before changing their laws.

Civil rights groups openly worry that the 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder portends a further wearing of the federal law, as the court’s conservative majority has been bolstered since then.

[Kirby101]

It should not escape our notice that Congress gives themselves raises whenever they feel their pay is slightly not enough.

[skyvolt2000]

I've said here many times before that I'm no political expert, but, it seems to me that the Biden administration made a misstep by shooting for the moon with the $15.00 an hour wage goal. I'm sure they knew going in that Qpublicans wouldn't go for that (or anything else Biden proposed), still, Joe should've gone for a lower amount, say $10 an hour to start, then inch that number upwards over time once the bill went into effect. Perhaps that would've been a non-starter with the GQP as well (give them half a chance, they'd lower the current minimum wage), however, a more moderate number might have been more palatable to both parties. Yeah, I know, serious pipe dream, but that's all I got.

Some jobs are at that amount.

I think part of the issue that no one talks about is you raise that minimum wage does that mean EVERYONE else gets one too?

One of the issue we have in the schools is keeping employees in certain positions because the PAY is the same with another job. Such as Nurse or Diagnostician or clerk.

$15 an hour is 31K yearly. For my school that would mean changing over 50 jobs (including security jobs) and supplemental pay for who knows how many folks.

Now you do that-do the folks who were already making $15 get a raise too? Because some of those jobs had requirements (such as degrees or certifications).

Fair is fair.

[kidfresh512]

Some jobs are at that amount.

I think part of the issue that no one talks about is you raise that minimum wage does that mean EVERYONE else gets one too?

One of the issue we have in the schools is keeping employees in certain positions because the PAY is the same with another job. Such as Nurse or Diagnostician or clerk.

$15 an hour is 31K yearly. For my school that would mean changing over 50 jobs (including security jobs) and supplemental pay for who knows how many folks.

Now you do that-do the folks who were already making $15 get a raise too? Because some of those jobs had requirements (such as degrees or certifications).

Fair is fair.

I think the answer to that is yes. Yes they should get more. Teachers always should be making more than they do. So we can attract more and better qualified teachers. They shouldn't be barely making ends meet. There is always this argument that actual everyday people making money is somehow bad. Or there just isn't enough to go around when it comes to taking care of regular people. But somehow corporations making billions in profits in a pandemic is fine.

Raising minimum wage at its heart is literally about lifting the lowest tier of workers out of poverty and near homelessness. It isn't like they will suddenly become rich. The wealth gap is insane in America. Yes the lower and middle classes need to be lifted up to close that gap. Trickle down doesn't work. You cant trust businesses and corporations to all use their profits to pay their employees correctly.

I get small businesses etc. might be stretched with paying more. But its just the cost of living

[Tami]

The making of Madison Cawthorn: How falsehoods helped propel the career of a new pro-Trump star of the far right

Madison Cawthorn was a 21-year-old freshman at a conservative Christian college when he spoke at chapel, testifying about his relationship with God. He talked emotionally about the day a car accident left him partially paralyzed and reliant on a wheelchair.

Cawthorn said a close friend had crashed the car in which he was a passenger and fled the scene, leaving him to die “in a fiery tomb.” Cawthorn was “declared dead,” he said in the 2017 speech at Patrick Henry College. He said he told doctors that he expected to recover and that he would “be at the Naval Academy by Christmas.”

Key parts of Cawthorn’s talk, however, were not true. The friend, Bradley Ledford, who has not previously spoken publicly about the chapel speech, said in an interview that Cawthorn’s account was false and that he pulled Cawthorn from the wreckage. An accident report obtained by The Washington Post said Cawthorn was “incapacitated,” not that he was declared dead. Cawthorn himself said in a lawsuit deposition, first reported by the news outlet AVL Watchdog, that he had been rejected by the Naval Academy before the crash.

Shortly after the speech, Cawthorn dropped out of the college after a single semester of mostly D’s, he said in the deposition, which was taken as part of a court case regarding insurance. Later, more than 150 former students signed a letter accusing him of being a sexual predator, which Cawthorn has denied.

Yet four years after Cawthorn spoke at the chapel, the portrait he sketched of his life provided the framework for his election in November as the youngest member of the U.S. House at the minimum age of 25 years old. A campaign video ad repeated his false claim that the car wreck had derailed his plans to attend the Naval Academy.