“Mrs. Clinton has introduced a bill that, in addition to raising the minimum wage to $7.25, would link Congressional pay raises to hikes in the minimum wage. Under the bill, the minimum wage would be increased automatically by the same percentage as any increase in Congressional pay.”
As reported by Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times
“You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there — it’s stronger. I like that about my flag. I would go so far as to say it’s my flag’s best feature.
“I wouldn’t mind if Congress were considering changing some other feature of the flag. For example, if they wanted to represent Rhode Island with half a star, I could get behind that. But I’d hate to chip away at my flag’s freedom feature. That just seems wrong.”
Excerpt from a good piece by Scott Adams
Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday accepted a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
Associated Press
House says yes to $3,300 pay raise
June 14, 2006
A bid to boost the U.S. minimum wage failed Tuesday as Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed back an effort by Democrats to force a vote on the measure.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said last week that he wanted to hold off on debating minimum wage legislation until possibly after the November elections. House Majority Leader John Boehner also said he probably wouldn’t allow the legislation to reach the House floor this week.
Bloomberg News
Bid to boost minimum wage suffers setback
June 20, 2006
Text from Whiskey Bar, who adds his always incisive commentary.
“The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled ‘Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.’ Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: ‘All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.’ ”
Dan Froomkin discussing Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine
President Bush called a reporter’s cell phone yesterday to apologize for joking with him about wearing sunglasses during a press conference. The reporter has an eye disease that Bush was not aware of it.
Getting a call on your cell phone from the president, now that is cool. If Bush called NewMexiKen on my cell phone I would probably vote for him the next time he ran for president.
Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday embraced a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
AP via MSNBC.com
But the minimum wage remains unchanged at $5.15/hour since 1997. It would be $6.35 if it had simply kept up with Congressional (self-generated) raises during the same period — 23.3%.
Vote no on Congress.
Thanks to Functional Ambivalent for the pointer.
From BBC News:
A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a “good PR move to draw attention”.
The official is Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.
Guess she thinks they took the old PR cliché “there’s no such thing as bad PR” to heart.
Walt Handelsman: N.S.A. Wiretapping [cartoon video].
Why, after all, was Mr. Gore’s popular-vote margin in the 2000 election narrow enough that he could be denied the White House? Any account that neglects the determination of some journalists to make him a figure of ridicule misses a key part of the story. Why were those journalists so determined to jeer Mr. Gore? Because of the very qualities that allowed him to realize the importance of global warming, many years before any other major political figure: his earnestness, and his genuine interest in facts, numbers and serious analysis.
And so the 2000 campaign ended up being about the candidates’ clothing, their mannerisms, anything but the issues, on which Mr. Gore had a clear advantage (and about which his opponent was clearly both ill informed and dishonest).
Or, as The Daily Howler sums up Krugman’s point:
Why did those idiots [in the press] sit and jeer Gore—then invent all those stories about him? (Al Gore said he discovered Love Canal!) Krugman offers an explanation. He suggests they hated Gore because they’re idiots—and because Gore isn’t.
A better article than most about the human element (from many sides) in the immigration issue — At Unforgiving Arizona-Mexico Border, Tide of Desperation Is Overwhelming. An excerpt:
Frank Ormsby, a rancher, and his brother, Lloyd, said that after living for more than a decade in the middle of the buildup of the Border Patrol and the growing waves of immigrants, they are just plain sick of all of it. There are more backpacks littering the desert than rocks, they said, and enough money is being spent on equipment for the Border Patrol to rebuild New Orleans.
To them, illegal immigration is a huge business managed by powerful interests to make money and political careers. Among the beneficiaries, Frank Ormsby said, were immigrant smugglers, whose fortunes increased every time a new law enforcement effort was announced, and the Border Patrol, whose budget has increased fivefold in 10 years.
“There are so many agents they could stand hand-in-hand across the border and stop illegal immigrants if they really wanted to,” said Mr. Ormsby from beneath a wide black cowboy hat. “The money we are spending on the Border Patrol, in gas, in equipment, in technology, what do we have to show for it?”
“I see so much waste,” he added. “Ray Charles could see it.”
I guess The White House hasn’t gotten the memo about Spanish.
At The New York Review of Books, Jeff Madrick offers a lengthy review of Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.
In Kevin Phillips’s view, the Bush energy policy is a prime example of America’s failure to confront its most difficult challenges. Phillips, once a member of the Nixon administration, has written a timely book that argues that America is very different from the independent and omnipotent nation portrayed by President Bush and his administration. Dependency on oil is one of three major tendencies that will seriously undermine America’s future, he writes, the other two being the influence of radical religion and the growing reliance on debt to support the economy. For Phillips, these constitute “the three major perils to the United States of the twenty-first century,” and he offers little hope that the US will avoid the consequences. Since he wrote his widely read The Emerging Republican Majority in 1969, Phillips has published several books lamenting how poorly the Republicans have handled their responsibilities. American Theocracy is his most pessimistic work to date.
In some ways Madrick thinks Phillips is a narrow optimist.
Phillips’s three major threats to the nation are well chosen, and he presents much information about them; but he could usefully have considered other perils to the US as well. The rising cost of health care, for example, is as grave a concern as the three issues on which he concentrates. Unless that system is radically reformed the US will face a future in which growing numbers of people will not receive adequate treatment. The cost of education is on a similar trajectory, as the chances of getting even a minimal education in the poorer neighborhoods become smaller. Similarly urgent are the failures of the economy. Despite rapid increases in productivity, which is historically the source of a rising standard of living, family incomes are not growing. In fact, after the five recent years of economic expansion, median family income is roughly what it was in 1999, even though wages at last rose early this year.
Madrick himself, however, proves more optimistic than Phillips about America’s ability to change and recover.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to read American Theocracy, but these issues interest you, Madrick’s review is very worthwhile.
The Emergency Quota Act was approved on this date in 1921. The Act limited the number of European immigrants into the U.S. for the first time. It set the annual limit at 3% of the number of foreign-born persons in the U.S. from that country in the 1910 Census. About 357,000 immigrants could be admitted annually, the majority from northern Europe.
The Quota Act did not apply to “aliens from the so-called Asiatic barred zone, … [or] aliens who have resided continuously for at least one year immediately preceding the time of their admission to the United States in the Dominion of Canada, Newfoundland, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Mexico, countries of Central or South America, or adjacent islands….”
In other words, no East Asians would be admitted whatsoever (having been barred by previous laws), but there were no restrictions on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere.
Immigration limitations have always been about cultural wars, not economic ones.
News item: “The Senate voted on Thursday to designate English as the national language.”
Todo que es incorrecto con el mundo y éste es de lo que se preocupan.
Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.
Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.
Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.
While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices.
From a letter to President Bush signed by many economists, both right and left and posted at Marginal Revolution.
“Currently, 451,000 Mexican students are enrolled in full-time undergraduate [engineering] programs, vs. just over 370,000 in the U.S.”
From Business Week, 22 May 2006, p.47, via Marginal Revolution.
Cyndi Smallwood is looking for a few strong men for her landscaping company. Guys with no fear of a hot sun, who can shovel dirt all day long. She’ll pay as much as $34 an hour.
She can’t find them.
Maybe potential employees don’t know about her tiny Riverside firm. Maybe the problem is Southern California’s solid economy and low unemployment rate. Or maybe manual labor is something that many Americans couldn’t dream of doing.
“I’m baffled why more people do not apply,” Smallwood says.
President Bush is not. In his speech to the nation Monday night, he referred to “jobs Americans are not doing,” echoing a point he has been making for years. To fill these spurned jobs and keep the economy humming, Bush says, the U.S. needs a guest worker program.
Otherwise, the logic goes, fruit will rot in the fields, offices will overflow with trash and lawns and parks will revert to desert.
“Whatever Lou Dobbs says, illegal immigration is not anything like a crisis. The possibility of civil war in Iraq – now, that’s a crisis. The devastation in New Orleans – that’s a crisis.
“People risking their lives to cross a desert to clean our toilets – that’s a tragedy.”
“Let’s set aside our political differences for a moment and pretend we all agree with the goals Bush outlined for immigration reform last night. Is there any sane person left on the planet, anyone at all, who truly believes these pinheads are capable of executing a plan successfully?”
“In a nationally televised address last night, President George W. Bush announced that he would order 10,000 National Guard troops to protect his sagging approval rating.”
“President Bush is going to address the nation Monday night on the immigration issue. Bush said he would have given the address [Friday night] but, he couldn’t get that Mission Accomplished sign in Spanish made fast enough.”
Jay Leno
President Al Gore reports on the State of Union.
Video from Saturday Night Live (May 13).
Following up on Functional Ambivalent’s fervent wish — dare I say, demand — that there be no more Bushes, Clintons or Kennedys elected president, NewMexiKen proposes that the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution be amended.
In Section I, after:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once.
Insert:
Further, no person shall be elected to the office of President if their father, mother, sister, brother, child, or spouse has been elected to, or held the office of President.