• It reduces poverty and inequality. Recent studies .. http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/the-minimum-wage-as-an-anti-inequality-policy .. continue to suggest that the decline in the minimum wage over the last thirty years has contributed noticeably to the rise in economic inequality, a rise that continues apace in post-recession America. A higher minimum wage would help finally reverse this ever-more-dangerous trend. And while Obama’s proposed increase still leaves many Americans (especially those with families) in poverty, it would still push millions above the poverty line. Overall, it would help 21 million workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Lawrence Mishel, and increase wages by $22 billion. Increasing the minimum wage, of course, is but one tool in fighting inequality and poverty, but it remains an effective one.
• It reduces in the “wage gap” for women and minorities. Despite making up slightly less than half the workforce, women hold around two-thirds of all minimum wage jobs .. http://www.nwlc.org/resource/fair-pay-women-requires-increasing-minimum-wage-and-tipped-minimum-wage . As the Roosevelt Institute’s Bryce Covert has written, this is a “significant factor in that bothersome gender wage gap.” Not surprisingly, then, women would disproportionately benefit from a minimum wage increase, shrinking the wage gap at a time when House Republicans refuse to pass other measures, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would help. Similarly, Hispanics and African-Americans would also disproportionately benefit .. http://www.epi.org/publication/mwig_fact_sheet/ .
• Indexing the minimum wage is, well, common sense. From 1998 to 2006, the real value of the minimum wage declined 19 percent .. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/13/fact-sheet-president-s-plan-reward-work-raising-minimum-wage . This wasn’t because of any policy, but because the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation, and so automatically declined in value when it wasn’t raised by Congress. Indexing would ensure that workers do not get screwed over by congressional inaction. Ideally, the minimum wage in fact would be indexed to wages in general or productivity, but pegging to inflation is a good first step.
We stand for a living wage…enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living — a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.
Roosevelt understood that a living wage (which, it must be noted, would be higher in today’s America than what the president is calling for) carries out the commitment the Founders made in the Constitution to “promote the general welfare.” It is a commitment that goes all the way back to the country’s beginnings, to the Puritans and John Winthrop, who in his famous “City on a Hill” sermon .. http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111winth2.html .. (yes, the same one Ronald Reagan was so fond of), said “we must be knit together, in this work, as one man…We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labour and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.” Obama’s push for a $9 minimum wage, while it doesn’t go far enough, is still an important step toward restoring that truly American community and its general welfare.
It appears that we are losing one more time what is known as a SANE republican Senator and he is from N. Dakota .... sad, the good ones leave and the loud undisciplined repubs stay and make crazy all session long, it's disgusting__Nebraska Republican Won’t Seek Re-Election to Senate
Senator Mike Johanns, pictured here in 2011, announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election.
By JONATHAN WEISMAN Published: February 18, 2013
WASHINGTON — Senator Mike Johanns, a Republican from Nebraska who is in his first term, announced Monday that he will not seek re-election next year, the fifth lawmaker to bow out of a Senate that has become increasingly polarized and dysfunctional.
Mr. Johans, a soft-spoken former Nebraska governor and secretary of agriculture in the George W. Bush administration, appeared well positioned to be re-elected and was not on any Democratic target list. But last year, he angrily criticized conservative groups that tried to step in and influence the Senate election in his state. And his efforts as part of the “Gang of Eight” to broker a bipartisan deficit reduction accord proved fruitless.
“With everything in life, there is a time and a season. At the end of this term, we will have been in public service over 32 years,” Mr. Johanns wrote in a letter to his constituents with his wife, Stephanie. “Between the two of us, we have been on the ballot for primary and general elections 16 times and we have served in eight offices. It is time to close this chapter of our lives.”
With his announcement, Mr. Johanns joined Senators Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa; Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia; John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia; and Frank Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, in heading for the exits. With former Senator John Kerry’s move to secretary of state, the rash of retirements will hasten a wholesale makeover of a Senate that was once far more stable.
“Words are inadequate to fully express our appreciation for the friendship and support you have given us over the past three decades,” the Johannses wrote.
and we get stuck with the problems and the ones who want to work something out for the best for the people in the US .. LEAVE. I know nothing about him .. but from this blurb .. he seems like he was a SANE man who maybe put people first... if so ... too darn bad!
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