Minimum Wage and You

May 16 2014

The Minimum Wage and You

Some of of the largest corporations in America, corporations that earn billions of dollars a year in profits thank you for taking the load off of their backs. McDonalds, Wendy’s Burger King, Walmart, Dominoes and Yum Brands (Taco Bell, KFC Pizza Hut) spend millions to keep minimum wage legislation off the House floor while The CEOs of all these corporations earn tens of millions in compensation.

Full time workers 40hrs/wk at all of these companies are being paid $7.25/hr (about $18,000/year) The Fast Food Industry will try to tell you that these are teenagers trying earn a few bucks in an entry level job. They are lying. The average Fast Food worker is 29 years old.

These workers who get up every day and put in a full day’s work need SNAP (food stamps to feed their families and themselves). You pay for that. They are eligible for housing subsidies. You pay for that. In states (Republican controlled) that didn’t accept the Medicaid money from the Federal Government these workers don’t even qualify for the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, and still must either use the ER for primary medical care (You pay for that) or they forego medical care.

From an economic standpoint, they have little money to spend beyond necessities and depress the local economy when they can’t buy from local merchants. They spend less on everything.

As all this goes on the Republicans call them “takers”, “moochers” and lazy. If you live in district with tea party Republicans as your representative in the statehouse or congress, send the smug bastards an email that it’s time these hard working people earn a decent wage for a day’s work. $10.10 is good start. Then again, you can ignore it all and continue to subsidize the real moochers — the multi billion dollar corporations that have made all of us their bottomless wallets by taking from the public in the name of ‘good business’ to subsidize their greed. What a sweet deal they have going.

You can have the last word in November.

It Is Critical

It Is Critical

I put my blog, “It’s My America Too”, away for a while but I believe it’s time to start again. The issues facing this country are far too serious to ignore by me, or you, or by anyone for that matter. How large are these issues? The very nature of our democracy is at stake.

If you did not follow my blog in the past, allow me to introduce myself. I am a liberal who sits left of center but not so far left as fall off the planet! Hold it there a second all your conservatives, please don’t run away just yet. Yes, I will make you angry more times than not and sometime I will even make your blood boil, but no more than you do the same to me.

For my first entry, I would like to address the liberal base that elected the first African American President, twice. You came out in droves, in unprecedented numbers in presidential years. I have little doubt that you will do the same in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. But it is not 2016, it is 2014, or as the pundits call it, “an off year.” After electing Barack Obama in 2008, you dropped the ball in 2010 and stayed home. In state after state

Right-wing nut jobs took over State Houses and Governor’s Mansions. Congress fell back into the dark ages where the only agenda was to “Get the Kenyan” with a phony birth certificate. In essence, you screwed the president you elected by not voting in the midterms. He held the Senate by a hair, kept the veto in his pocket and did what he could with executive orders and the bully pulpit.

The first thing these right-wing tea party conservatives did was go after… well, everybody — Women, Gays, Immigrants, the working poor and the Affordable Care Act (50 times). And believe me they did a good job on most of it while you rang your hands and cried foul. But it was too DAMN LATE!

We have six months until the election that will decide whether the agenda of the president ends two years short of its goals or goes on to fruition. I don’t care how many roadblocks or how much Koch brother’s money is thrown at us in 2014. If we all do not get off our collective asses and vote, even if the kangaroo court rules set up by the Right makes it a ten-hour marathon. You HAVE to do it. We are still one-man-one-vote in this country and there are more of us than them. Your life depends upon it; the future of the middle class in America depends upon it. If the Right takes the Senate then the Congress of United States of America will become Alabama, Mississippi or Wisconsin and nothing but an impotent, damaged Barack Obama will stand between you and oligarchy.

Come back here often and see it’s Your America Too.