The Boy Who Cried Minimum Wage

Huffintonpost:  Could an increase in the minimum wage put the $5 footlong in jeopardy? Maybe, according to the founder and CEO of Subway. 

Fred Deluca, the man behind the sandwich chain, told CNBC that a sharp increase in the minimum wage is “a bad idea.”
 
These greedy robber baron CEO's say that every time somebody mentions raising the well-below-poverty-level minimum wage.  It's going to raise prices, cost jobs, blah, blah, blah.  The only thing it's going to do is possibly decrease their short term compensation.  Other than that, history has proven time and time again that what it actually does is stimulate demand and consumer spending because people at that wage level have no choice but to spend the extra money.   Of course broad wage growth, which we haven't had since Bush/Cheney/Team GOP came into power, can lead to inflation but that's a demand to supply issue and not what this guy is talking about.

Slavery Lite

Think Progress:  As President Obama pushes to increase the national minimum wage, Mississippi Republicans are digging in their heels to prevent any similar efforts in the Hospitality State. A bill working its way through the Republican-controlled Mississippi legislature aims to ensure that no local government enacts a mandatory minimum wage or other worker protections.

Hell why not indentured servitude?  Let's bring back child labor while we're at it.

They fought for slaves back then and they fight for wage slaves today.  Conservatives have been working on behalf the plantation owner since before this country was founded.  

Come Strong Or Don't Come At All

Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) to Sean Hannity:  You're not a Republican?  You're nothing but a Republican...  You're a shill for the Republican party...  You say things that aren't true... You're immoral.

Note to Democrats: if you go on Fox News and you come with anything less than this, you're betraying yourself, your party, and the progressive movement. 

Proof? We Don't Need No Stinking Proof

Raw Story:  Michigan state Sen. Tom Casperson, a Republican, said Tuesday he wasn’t sure whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

“I don’t know because it seems like that issue was dropped immediately as far as the major media went,” he said on Michael Patrick Shiels’ radio show. “My gut tells me if it had been a different president, like say George W. Bush, they’d have been digging into like there was no tomorrow and trying to get to the bottom of, which they never really tried to get to the bottom of, so it became a conspiracy theory and no big deal.”

“I think it is strange, again, that it is not being looked at by certain groups that normally would,” Casperson added. “I think what the media did to George W. Bush was OK. They kept his feet to the fire, but I think they equally should be doing the same thing to this president.”

Of course 1 in 4 Republicans also believe Obama just may be the anti-Christ.  This is why it's dangerous to vote Republican.  They believe in things for which their is no proof, and they refuse to believe in that for which there is proof.  For example, they fight against progressive economic and fiscal policy - regulated capitalism - which history has proven time and time again to be achieve great results, and they continue to legislate on behalf of billionaires and transnational corporations and a deregulated market, which anybody who wasn't in a coma in 2008/2009 can tell you is a God-damn-national-disaster.

Mitch McConnell (R-China)

TPM: ProgressKentucky is a progressive group that first made headlines by announcing its intention to fund a tea party candidate to run against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) in the 2014 primary. On Tuesday, the group’s leadership tried to defend itself after a series of tweets this month referencing the ethnicity of McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and her father’s business ties to China.

All they said is that McConnell's wife is Chinese and her father makes a fortune importing crap from Asia.  And thus McConnell has a conflict of interest when he pushes Republican policies that encourage and enable outsourcing. And now everybody has a case of the vapors.  Progressives need to toughen up.  This is well within bounds.  But look, you got a problem with it, fine, if his wife's fathers business is not the reason he's selling out his country and the American worker, let him explain what are the reasons he legislates like he's representing the Chinese Factory Owners Association rather than the people of Kentucky. 

Threat

American Prospect: Cuts to the Mental Health Block Grant program would leave 373,000 mentally ill people without services. Nearly 8,900 homeless people with mental illness would also lose treatment, outreach, housing, and support with cuts to the Projects for assistance in Transition from Homelessness program.

This along with our wonderful Republican/NRA gun laws poses a serious threat to public safety.  It's but one of the many dangerous things that are about to happen because the Republicans refuse to close the tax loopholes that allow Mitt Romney and Exxon to pay little or no federal income tax.

Party Like It's 1995

Daily Kos:  With draconian sequester cuts just around the corner and with the Republican leadership refusing to do a damn thing to stop them, it's time to start looking at the impact these cuts will have on individual states, starting with John "I got 98 percent of what I wanted" Boehner's own Buckeye State.

As he says later on down his post, congress appropriates money, not the President.  This is on the Republicans in the house.  And we need to make sure they wear it every day until November 2014.  Hopefully after that we can be rid of their constant efforts to trample the poor and disabled underfoot in favor of billionaires and transnational corporations.  Either way, let this be a lesson: let Republicans serve in government and they will do everything they can to make sure it doesn't work, at least not for the 99%.