Friday, December 6, 2013
@FOXNEWS Bill O’Reilly: Nelson Mandela was a ‘Communist’ #P2 #TCOT
"Because fighting for racial equality and breaking down apartheid is simply that: communism.
O'Reilly was joined by Rick Santorum who seems to be gearing up for the next Presidential contest. He actually added some historical fact to the interview.
Santorum reminded Bill O that Mandela fought against apartheid, the racist infrastructure supported by laws that had to be demolished."
@McDonalds ' can afford to triple their CEO's salary but not minimum wage. Boycott these assholes.
"We can't afford to raise the minimum wage?
But we can always afford a big pay increase for the CEO. Always. Even when sales are down for the year.
McDonald's Corp. more than tripled the pay packages last year for its new CEO Don Thompson and the man he replaced, Jim Skinner.McDonald's gave a $9 million dollar raise recently to their new CEO. $9 million dollars that didn't "Trickle Down", $9 million dollars that didn't help workers at McDonald's unless they have a second, better paying job as a waiter at the nicer restaurants the CEO of McDonald's goes to. McDonald's can't afford paying their workers enough to climb out of poverty but just happened to find $9 million lying around to give to their CEO. The golden arches are actually golden parachutes too.~snip~
McDonald's, based in Oak Brook, Ill., gave Thompson a package worth $13.8 million, up from the $4.1 million he received in 2011, according to a regulatory filing made Friday.
Skinner's pay meanwhile rose to $27.7 million from $8.8 million the year before, reflecting a $10.2 million payment as part of his retirement under his contract agreement.
Over the last 40 years this has been the trend. Worker's wages stagnate but for some reason CEO salaries go through the roof. The result is growing poverty. No one who works full time should be poor. No one.
And yet these CEO's then proceed to lecture us about being lazy and how they can't afford raises this year, maybe next year, and the stock markets rise and the CEO salaries rise but the rest of us will just have to wait.
But the CEO never has to wait. He always gets his raise. Always.
Over the last few decades the CEO's of corporate America have made themselves filthy rich by paying themselves instead of labor. The boss gets a raise, you don't. You are lucky just to keep your job. Any profit made goes straight to the wealthiest 1% and stays there.
And if you complain they call you a socialist.
If you notice the 800 lb CEO in the room, they say you hate capitalism.
We all have to ignore how rich the rich have become in order for the never ending austerity brigade's working class death march to make any sense.
Because you must suffer so that record corporate profits can live."
.@gop Rep. Joe Barton @RepJoeBarton (R-TX) "‘I Would Vote To Repeal The Minimum Wage’"
"Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) told the National Journal that he thinks the country should get rid of the minimum wage. "I think it's outlived its usefulness," he said. "It may have been of some value back in the Great Depression. I would vote to repeal the minimum wage."
Barton's not the only lawmaker to hold such a view. In June, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told a meeting of the Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee to mark 75 years since the signing of the Federal Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed a minimum wage, that he "do[es] not believe in it" and that he would abolish the minimum wage. And while he hasn't called for the full repeal of the minimum wage, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has said, "I don't think a minimum wage law works."
The minimum wage historically helped many families stay out of poverty. Up until the early 1980s, making the annual minimum wage income lifted a family of two above the federal poverty line. At its peak in 1968, it was enough to lift a family of three out of poverty. Yet despite rising inflation and worker productivity since then, the minimum wage has failed to keep up. It would be over $10 an hour today if it had risen with inflation since that high, and if it had kept pace with gains in productivity it would be more than $20 an hour.
As it is, however, working a 40 hour week at minimum wage won't bring in enough money to afford a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the country — workers would have to put in at least 80 hours a week. Working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks each year at the minimum wage only brings a worker $15,080, below the federal poverty line for a family of two or more. But bringing the wage in line with inflation by increasing it to $10.10 an hour would lift nearly 6 million people out of poverty, many of them women and people of color.
While critics of raising the minimum wage, like Rubio and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), claim that it will cost jobs, there's little evidence to back that up. Several academic studies have shown that raising the wage doesn't hurt employment, and one even found that states that raised their wages had slightly above average job growth. Perhaps that's because a higher wage can benefit businesses through increasing demand, lowering turnover, and increasing employee performance.
Republicans may have once recognized this, as they weren't always against a raise. At least 67 Republicans who are still serving in Congress today supported an increase under President George W. Bush, including Alexander and Ryan. Yet House Republicans unanimously voted down an increase in March."
How Ronald Reagan Extended Nelson Mandela’s Prison Term
"Reagan's Obstructionism
Ronald Reagan alone stood in the way as Congress tried to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. Meanwhile, public sentiment against Apartheid increased as celebrities voiced their displeasure with Reagan's stand. South Africa's Bishop Desmond Tutu visited the United States in 1984 and delivered a scathing indictment of Reagan's administration in a speech on Capitol Hill.
Republican Representative Dick Cheney, who would subsequently serve as Vice President under George W. Bush, was quick to point out that Nelson Mandela was the head of an organization (African National Congress) that the State Department had classified as a terrorist organization.
Final Victory
Public support for Reagan's policies eroded further when in 1985, Reagan's own party (Republican Party) voted 89-4 in the Senate on a resolution condemning Apartheid. Reagan finally lost when Congress overrode his Veto against the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986.The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act banned all new trade and investment in South Africa and banned South African Airways flights from landing in U.S. airports.
"For this moment, at least, the President has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America." -(Republican)Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr"
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Minimum Wage Was Once Enough To Keep a Family of 3 Out of Poverty #P2 #TCOT
"Amid protests across the country over retail and service jobs that pay little better than the minimum wage, it's easy to forget that this income benchmark once meant something slightly different. In the past, a minimum-wage job was actually one that could keep a single parent out of poverty.
Since the 1980s, the federal minimum wage has kept pace with neither inflation, nor the rise of the average worker's paycheck. That means that while a federal minimum wage in 1968 could have lifted a family of three above the poverty line, now it can't even do that for a parent with one child, working full-time, 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year (yes, this calculation assumes that the parent takes no time off).
In a Wednesday speech, President Obama pushed for a bill that would increase the federal wage to $10.10 (a rate closer in line with the most progressive municipal minimum wages, including one Washington, D.C. looks close to adopting). Perhaps that hike sounds unrealistic by historic standards. But it would actually bring us back to the kind of income floor America ensured prior to the 1980s, before Congress stopped passing the regular adjustments necessary to keep the minimum wage a livable one. Congress has only increased it twice since 1997."
Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut CEO Makes $100 Million As Taxpayers Spend $650 million on His Employees’ Welfare
"It is not secret that corporations love to pay their CEOs exorbitant salaries and hate to pay their lowest workers any higher than they have to, but there is a larger injustice that is occurring that these companies would love to keep in the shadows. The inconvenient truth of CEO pay is that much of it comes subsidized by the tax paying public.
If you don't recognize the name "Yum! Brands," you'll definitely recognize the companies they own. Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut chains all fall under its corporate umbrella. Yum Brands employes nearly 400,000 US workers and their fast food chains are practically national symbols, recognized all over the world.
Those companies are also extremely profitable. In 2012, Yum! Brands recorded a net income of $1.6 billion.
If you're an investor of Yum! Brands you couldn't be happier. If you were one of the 400,000 workers who make up the day-to-day operations at one of their locations, you probably didn't share in its success. The wages for many of Yum! Brands employees was so low that many seek out, and are even encouraged by the company to seek out, anti-poverty programs like food stamps and affordable housing just to live. The actual wages are so disconnected with the living wage that the National Employment Law Project estimates that Yum Brands' workers alone cost $650 million in medicaid and other public assistance annually.
Guess who pays for that $650 million? You do.
Guess who doesn't pay for that $650 million? Yum! Brands."
good guy George Lucas donated $25 mil to After School Matters, a program that connects at-risk Chicago teens with the arts
"Movie mogul George Lucas of Star Wars fame on Wednesday made a $25 million gift to After School Matters, the award-wining arts and education program chaired by his wife and founded by former First Lady Maggie Daley.
Board Chair Mellody Hobson announced the extraordinary gift from her husband's movie-making fortune at the Gallery 37 Center for the Arts, 66 E. Randolph, as Lucas sat glowing in the front row.
"George and I are just really excited to make this gift to the teens of Chicago . . . because we believe — and you all know that I'm in the investment business — that investing in young people is the best investment of all. There is no better use of money," said Hobson, president of Ariel Investments.
Choking back tears, Hobson then thanked the man she married last summer at a star-studded lakefront wedding "for sharing the fruits of his movie-making" with Chicago teens.
"This is a very generous thing that he's doing for the adopted city that he spends a lot of time in now, Chicago. I'm sure he never imagined that in all of his creative brain," Hobson said.
With Mayor Rahm Emanuel standing a few feet away, Hobson paid homage to Maggie Daley, who took an embarrassing hole in the heart of the Loop and turned it into an arts and education program admired and duplicated around the world.
The wife of former Mayor Richard M. Daley died of breast cancer two years ago.
"I cannot help but to think about Maggie Daley and all that she did to make After School Matters what it is. She poured her heart and soul into this organization and into these programs," Hobson said."
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
.@gop Here's Why Obamacare Is Going To Work #p2 #tcot
"Quite simply, there are tens of millions of uninsured people who want health insurance, a law in place to help them obtain it, and advocates on the ground making sure they know how to do it.
For on-the-ground organizations, Obamacare represents a once-in-a-generation organizing opportunity. By signing someone up for health insurance, they are delivering a tangible benefit, something that person will value for years to come, and winning loyalty along the way. Nonprofits, as well as mayors and governors, have an intense incentive to make Obamacare work.
And millions of those uninsured people -- many of them young and healthy -- are in tightly concentrated urban areas, target-rich environments for the grassroots groups and politicians working to sign people up."
no wonder Illinois' Cook County is mired in scandal and corruption: 2 ex cons are running for county board
"If Chicago continues to be dogged by corruption and the "Crook County" reputation, it's probably because stuff like this keeps happening: Two ex-convicts, both former players in city politics, have filed petitions to run for a seat on the Cook County Board.
Al Sanchez, Chicago's convicted former Streets and Sanitation commissioner, filed his petition Monday for the 4th District Seat; Ike Carothers, a convicted ex-City Councilman, filed his petition Nov. 25 for the 1st District Seat, according to NBC Chicago.
Sanchez is looking to fill the seat formerly held by disgraced Cook County Commissioner, William Beavers -- who just started serving out his six-month federal prison sentence for corruption on Monday.
Thanks to a 1999 ruling, by law both men are free to pursue their respective seats since neither is seeking office as a Chicago city official and felons may run for county, state or federal office; an ex-convict can run for an eligible office not connected to their crime."
we don't question - we shout - and & have regressed politics in unproductive and anti-democratic ways.
"C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues. [read more http://www.nationalmemo.com/7-reasons-the-gops-war-against-saying-happy-holidays-is-the-dumbest-thing-ever/
.@RepStevePearce Republican New Mexico Congressman Steve Pearce Who Cut S.N.A.P Caught Flying & Dining On Taxpayer Dime
"His stance is quite clear, which is why so many of his constituents struggle to understand why one of the richest members of Congress, whose priorities led him to cut the SNAP program by $39 billion from the Farm Bill, continues to comp his lunches with American taxpayer money.
Why would he also, according to the Albuquerque Journal, spend nearly $20,000 of taxpayer money on a plane ticket to Egypt in order to visit New Mexican troops even after other planned members of Congress had backed out of the November 2012 trip? Merely to offer support and let them know he has one hundred good jobs in the oil and gas industry lined up for them when they return home? Is that more important than feeding hungry children living in poverty? Priorities can be a bit subjective, it seems.
Spokesperson for Congressman Pearce, Eric Layer, defended the cost of the solo flight to Egypt, stating that the Veterans Day trip was booked with less than two weeks' notice. The Albuquerque Journal, however, found tickets for less than $2,500 with less than two weeks to book a similar flight. Prices do vary from day to day on flights in the airline industry, but that's quite a difference!
Pearce has been noted as saying in a response statement to House Republicans in March 2012, keep in mind, after they released their 2013 budget,
Turning a blind eye to the reckless spending habits of Washington will only result in greater economic crisis.
Perhaps a blind sense of privilege is partially responsible for such a warped sense of entitlement masquerading as "priorities". Wherever Pearce's priorities lie, it is clear that they are not with the people — his constituents. But that is exactly where government's priorities should lie."
Food stamps make kids fat, according to Rush @Limbaugh
"Rush Limbaugh attacked a federal program that keeps children from going hungry, arguing that food stamps are instead the cause of childhood obesity -- but studies find no link between the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP -- also called food stamps) and obesity in children.
On the December 3 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh agreed that a Washington Times op-ed by James Bovard proved the theory that "more food stamps means fatter kids." Limbaugh asserted that minority children were casualties of "Obama's obesity epidemic" because the "Democrat party has made everybody they can think they are victims" by giving them food stamps. "
contrary to what @gop said, Consumer Reports endorsed the ACA website
"In reality, Consumer Reports' position has always been more nuanced than conservative activists and lawmakers would have us believe. The consumer advocates, for example, defended the Obama administration from criticism on canceled plans through the individual market, rejecting Republican talking points altogether. Consumer Reports also played a role in debunking some of the ACA horror stories that the right has been so invested in.
