The new and improved Kirsten Gillibrand

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What a difference a few years can make.

Back in 2009, when then-New York Gov. David Paterson named then-Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill Hillary's vacated spot in the Senate, I said it was "a horrible, horrible pick": 

Earlier, I suggested that Gillibrand, who represents a pro-Bush district, is "almost a Republican." Almost? I'd say she pretty much is, what with a 100% approval rating from the NRA, support for the Iraq War, and, as she herself put it, "one of the most conservative" voting records in the state, including voting for the FISA bill that included telecom immunity and to lift the ban on the possession of semi-automatic weapons in D.C. Her father was close to former Republican Governor George Pataki. She even once interned for former Senator Al D'Amato, a conservative and hyper-partisan Republican.

Was that wrong? No. But has Senator Gillibrand emerged as something altogether different? Yes.

The fact is, Gillibrand represented a fairly conservative district in upstate New York. (Obama won it decisively in 2008 and 2012, but Bush won it by fairly large margins in 2000 and 2004.) And so her views very much lined up with what she had to do to succeed there. That's not to say she was lying about herself. While she was strong on civil liberties and a proponent of same-sex marriage (and gays in the military), there is no doubt that she was genuinely a conservative Democrat, and that's why many of us were concerned when she was appointed to the Senate.

But give her credit. She's adapted to her role as New York's junior senator and broadened her views, or at least her positions, to reflect a significantly more progressive outlook.

Read more »

Raising minimum wage won't hurt employment

By Frank Moraes

Minimum Wage in San Francisco: $10.55 per hour!

So much of conservative economic analysis comes down to, "I kind of paid attention to the lectures that term and I got a C in Econ 101." It is certainly true that you can understand a lot of what is going on in the economy by understanding some simple economic theory. But you can also go very wrong with this if your understanding is too limited. This is what we get from a lot of libertarian leaning people.

Let's consider the minimum wage. A very simple understanding of it indicates that if you raise the minimum wage, it will result in fewer jobs as employers drop marginal employees. But it doesn't work this simply. First, minimum wage employees do some of the most basic (and important) work at a company. Most companies could survive for a month or two without a CEO; they can't survive without the janitorial staff.

Much more important is the issue of company profits. A common myth among conservatives is that if a company's taxes are raised, the company will simply pass on the cost to the customer. Belief in this myth belies a shocking level of ignorance about not only how companies operate but also how markets themselves work. Undoubtedly, some increased costs will be passed on. But much of the increased costs will just have to be absorbed -- profits will decrease and the company will be forced to become more efficient.

The same goes on with the minimum wage.

Read more »

Let Republicans try to live on $7.25 an hour

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage to $9 from the current $7.25. That's per hour. 

Not surprisingly, some Republicans -- including Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan -- have already stated their, and their party's, unwavering opposition.

Their arguments are simply wrong. Increases in the minimum wage do not destroy jobs (though some employers can use them as an excuse to lay people off) and are not inflationary in any significant way (and besides, inflation is not a problem at the moment).

They're also cruel, a reflection of the GOP's penchant for brutality (specifically for the brutalization of low-income Americans).

But let them try to live on $7.25 an hour. Or even $9. For that matter, let them live in a cardboard box over a heating grate with no hope at all.

As they insist on being such insensitive, uncompassionate right-wing fucks, I for one would welcome that. It might even make me think there's some justice in the world.

Is there anything Romney won't flip-flop about?

Guest post by Comrade Misfit 

Ed. note: This is Comrade Misfit's second guest post at The Reaction. Her first looked back at when Romney was pro-choice, which wasn't all that long ago. For more of her writing, head over to her very fine blog Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I, which I highly recommend. -- MJWS

********** 

Comrade Misfit is a lawyer and cat-owner in upstate New York. You can find her at her blog, Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.

Apparently not:

It didn't get much notice amid the buildup to Super Tuesday. But after conservative outcry over his support for raising the minimum wage, Mitt Romney quietly reversed his position this week.

"There's probably not a need to raise the minimum wage," the Republican front-runner told CNBC's Larry Kudlow on Monday.

As recently as January, Romney said he was in favor of a hike in the minimum wage. "My view has been to allow the minimum wage to rise with the CPI [Consumer Price Index] or with another index so that it adjusts automatically over time," he told a staffer for a labor-backed group that supports a raise. And he confirmed that stance last month, telling reporters: "I haven't changed my thoughts on that."

Romney took the same position as governor of Massachusetts, an office he held from 2003 to 2007, and as a candidate for president in 2008.

Romney is shaping up to be the Incredible Plastic Candidate. There seems to be no outer limit to what he will say or do to achieve his goals.

Which means, for you folks in the GOP who are supporting him, that Romney will sell all of you out in an attosecond if he sees any advantage to doing so.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Linda McMahon

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For suggesting that the minimum wage, already low, ought to be lowered:

Linda McMahon, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Connecticut, suggested Thursday that the U.S. ought to take a second look at the federal minimum wage.

"The minimum wage now in our country, I think we've set that, so there are a lot of people have benefited from it in our country, but I think we ought to review how much it ought to be, and whether or not we ought to have increases in the minimum wage," McMahon said at a press conference.

After the event, "McMahon admitted she didn't know what the current minimum wage is or if any of her employees at World Wrestling Entertainment are paid it," CTNewsJunkie.com reported. McMahon was CEO of the WWE before launching her Senate campaign.

In other words, screw the poor and those just barely getting by. The economy is still in terrible shape, but let's just make their lives even more difficult. No matter that McMahon herself is worth millions and doesn't have a fucking clue.

She may be crazy, but she's certainly a Republican, and so her cruelty is right in line with her politics. It hardly distinguishes her from her fellow Republicans.

As her opponent, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, responded:

Linda McMahon laid off ten percent of her workers and takes home $46 million a year so it's no surprise she's thinking about lowering the minimum wage.

Remind me again how Republicans are successfully portraying themselves as populists, as the party of the people, how they're propagandizing voters into believing that they'll do something other than make the rich richer and the powerful more powerful.

It requires astonishing ignorance and denial to buy that bullshit.

Let only one flower bloom

By Capt. Fogg

According to the Foxspeak dictionary, a school of thought is defined as a scheme, usually by Roger Ailes or Rupert Murdoch that they wish to attribute to a broad segment of the public. People say, or Some people are saying are alternate disguises for propaganda. If there really is a school of thought that believes cutting the minimum wage will be good for workers, I would like to see its accreditation and I suspect it's a school where employers such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart are heavily represented.

"One school of thought says lowering the minimum wage will actually create more jobs,"

pronounced anchortwit Juliet Huddy from the Fox News Podium in an attempt to give credit to the idea if not to the school of one promoting it.

As Raw Story describes in detail, Fox reduces the entire concept of a minimum wage to "social justice" which sounds sufficiently close to Socialism that they deemed it unnecessary to point out any contrary ideas, no matter how credible. Blind slogans and doctrines being so much easier to sell than truth in all its complexity -- or justice for that matter.

At one point I was foolish enough to think that the failure of doctrine driven economic, social and military policies would be an embarrassment to Fox and its friends, but it seems now that with America down and out, the opportunity to kick us while we're down is irresistible. It seems that their dream of building a new, invincible corporate oligarchy from the ruins of our country, is the only school of thought that isn't a strategic fraud.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Senate votes for minimum wage increase

By Michael J.W. Stickings

$7.25 an hour.

That's what the minimum wage will be if a Senate bill, passed 94-3 yesterday, is reconciled with a House bill that was passed a few weeks ago. (President Bush supports the Senate bill.)

The Senate bill includes moderate tax cuts for small businesses, a necessary trade-off to secure Republican support. House Democrats may not support including this and other trade-offs in reconciled legislation, but they should make the effort to compromise.

Although I would like to see an increase in the minimum wage passed with no strings attached, the reality is that strings must be attached if any increase is to pass. And what matters most here is that the working poor, currently stuck with a shockingly low minimum wage of $5.15, a wage that hasn't been increased in a decade, could use the additional $2.10 an hour. I am ashamed to say that I spend about that much just on coffee every morning. To the working poor, that much could mean putting food on the table for their children and paying the heating bill.

The priority should be clear.

(For more, see Bob Geiger, Howie Klein, and Pamela Leavey.)