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Look at the world though Arab eyes. (See 2 below.)
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Why minimum wage is a wedge issue and is mostly political theater. (See 3 below.)
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Obama continues to struggle with his legacy - 'Schmuck Dynasty!' (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Did D'Souza Hit a Nerve?
By Richard Butrick
Ridiculed. Lampooned. Denigrated. That was the reaction that Dinesh D'Souza got upon launching his thesis about President Obama's mindset in his 2010 Forbes article, "How Obama Thinks." He argued in effect that president Obama's mindset was locked and loaded with the blame-colonialism doctrine that is still alive and well in post-colonial Asia and Africa.
The critical reaction came from political analysts from both sides of the political aisle. For example, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative claimed that D'Souza "has authored what may possibly be the most ridiculous piece of Obama analysis yet." Andrew Ferguson of The Weekly Standard claimed that D'Souza stupidly thinks absence of evidence against his thesis is evidence for his thesis. Moreover, most commentators jumped on the general futility of attempts to ascertain what is really going on in someone else's mind.
D'Souza certainly opened himself up to this latter line of criticism by mixing the blame-colonialism thesis with his tenuous claim that the President is trying to live out his father's dreams.
",.. [O]ur President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost."
But it is quite possible to separate the two entangled claims -- to decouple the admittedly flimsy father-fulfillment thesis from the blame-colonialism mindset thesis.
But is that the extent of it?
For openers, note that motive and intentionality are at the root or our criminal justice system.
But that is hardly the extent of the situation. While motive and intentionality can never be known with the certainty of empirically observable facts, it is ironically a necessary speculation in navigating not only through our own personal lives but in the general political life of nations. That we can be wrong -- terribly wrong -- is just part of the human condition.
Motives. From betrayal to concealment to tragic misinterpretation, motives are at the heart of literature from pulp fiction to Shakespeare. Speculation as to mindset is both necessary and necessarily plagued by an inevitable uncertainty. Ascertainment of motives is both a necessity in our personal lives and in the political life of nations and yet is inherently unascertainable with any great deal of certainty.
The question, then, is one of connecting the dots. And the dots are lining up in favor of the D'Souza thesis.
Let me just recount some dot alignment presented by D'Souza.
How does one connect these dots?
(1) Obama backs offshore drilling in Brazil but not the US
(2) The Gulf oil spill is used as an occasion to lecture the US on the evils of our fossil fuel consumption.
(3) Obama backs a 100 million dollar mosque near Ground Zero but turns a blind eye to the prohibition in many Arab countries against building any new churches.
(4) Supports the release of the Lockerbie bomber but incarcerates the producer of an anti-Mohamed film.
(5) NASA Chief Charles Bolden announced that from now on the primary mission of America's space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Penance? Penance for past colonial exploitation?
In explaining the blame-colonialism "anti-colonialism" frame of mind, D'Souza writes,
I know a great deal about anti-colonialism, because I am a native of Mumbai, India. I am part of the first Indian generation to be born after my country's independence from the British. Anticolonialism was the rallying cry of Third World politics for much of the second half of the 20th century. To most Americans, however, anticolonialism is an unfamiliar idea, so let me explain it.Anticolonialism is the doctrine that rich countries of the West got rich by invading, occupying and looting poor countries of Asia, Africa and South America. As one of Obama's acknowledged intellectual influences, Frantz Fanon, wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, "The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and the yellow races."Anticolonialists hold that even when countries secure political independence they remain economically dependent on their former captors. This dependence is called neocolonialism, a term defined by the African statesman Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72) in his book Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, writes that poor countries may be nominally free, but they continue to be manipulated from abroad by powerful corporate and plutocratic elites. These forces of neocolonialism oppress not only Third World people but also citizens in their own countries. Obviously the solution is to resist and overthrow the oppressors. This was the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. and many in his generation, including many of my own relatives in India.
What D'Souza does not explicitly bring out is the racist mentality that is the driving force and justification for colonialism: the "take up the white man's burden" mentality. His thesis becomes even stronger when the racist dimension behind colonialism is front and center. For that is what the anti-colonialist mind or post-anticolonialist mind sees as still being the driving force behind most of the world's ills -- at least those at are policy correctable.
Now add in the actions of his enforcer-in-chief, Holder.
(1) Low rate of Black home ownership? Racist banks.
(2) High rate of Black unemployment? Racist hiring practices.
(3) High rate of Black high school dropouts? Racist high school disciplinary practices.
(4) Income inequality of Black and Hispanics? Racist, exclusionary corporate culture.
(5) Turmoil in the Middle East? Hatred of the US? Orientalism, imperialism, colonialism, jingoism - aka racism.
(6) and now the Obama administration, led by Holder, has decided that Islam is a race. Therefore to examine or even to adduce a Muslim's Islamic beliefs about jihad, beheading, violence against kuffar ("infidels"), or re-establishing a caliphate is tantamount to racism
The blame-racism mindset also explains how the President listens politely to learned disquisitions from counselors and experts about the economy, foreign policy and domestic policy, but is hardly more than mildly bemused. He tolerates lesser minds and their take on problems besetting the US and the nations of the world. He will listen politely to theories of business cycles and money supply and the complexities of Mideast politics and Blackunemployment but he knows what the real problem is: racism. Racism in all its transformations, reincarnations and disguises.
The President presents his vision in sonorous bromides about fairness. Fair shot. Fair shake. Fair share. Then there is the "togetherness" gambit. We are all in this together. We can accomplish great things if we all pull together. Appeals to fairness and togetherness are dog-whistle shibboleths to ending racist exclusionary practices in the workplace in housing and education.
The problem is that the racism-is-the-problem mindset results in problem-solving geared to the same. Like Don Quixote, President Obama sallies forth with his squire Sancho Holder to tilt at vestiges of colonialism while the real problems facing the nation have little or nothing to do with racism:
(1) the worst labor force participation rate since the Great Depression: racism?
(2) crumbling student performance: racism?
(3) "non-core" al-Qaeda terrorist groups are spreading like wildfire but labeling them terrorist would be Islamophobic (aka racist)?
The result is more and more regulations and penalties and surveillance to crush the evil dragons of postcolonial racism.
And now d'Souza has been indicted for campaign donation fraud involving 20k. The charges were made after a "routine review" by the FBI of campaign filings. Did D'Souza hit a nerve? Is the D'Souza thesis - especially in its racist formulation - gaining traction?
Recently President Obama blamed racism for his falling popularity numbers. Will the President fess up and claim openly that in his opinion it is racism and the vestiges of racism that are the root causes of "social injustice" at home and animosity abroad? He is too politically astute for that. So in that sense we will never know.
Is the man with the purported 12 cylinder Ferrari mind really sporting a single cylinder under the hood? It is beginning to rattle like one.
1a) Dershowitz, Law Enforcement Experts Slam D'Souza Targeting
Even if allegations made against conservative filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza in a federal indictment on campaign finance violations prove to be true, legal experts and former federal regulatory authorities tell Newsmax that the government's handling of the case has been unusual.
"This is clearly a case of selective prosecution for one of the most common things done during elections, which is to get people to raise money for you," famed law professor Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax.
"If they went after everyone who did this, there would be no room in jails for murderers."
Federal prosecutors indicted D'Souza last week on two felony counts, charging that he promised to reimburse others if they would contribute to an unnamed Senate candidate, an offense that carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison, and causing false statements to be made to the FEC, which carries a maximum of five years.
Prosecutors allege that D'Souza illicitly directed a total of $20,000 in donations, with the money reportedly going to the New York Senate campaign of Republican Wendy Long, a long-time friend, who was handily defeated by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in last November's election.
The Justice Department's tactics remind Dershowitz of the words of Stalin's secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, who said, "Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime."
"This is an outrageous prosecution and is certainly a misuse of resources," charged Dershowitz. "It raises the question of why he is being selected for prosecution among the many, many people who commit similar crimes.
"This sounds to me like it is coming from higher places. It is hard for me to believe this did not come out of Washington or at least get the approval of those in Washington."
Others share Dershowitz's suspicions. Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney and partner at the law firm diGenova & Toensing, says it is not surprising that criminal charges were brought because the Justice Department has been actively prosecuting campaign finance violations.
"But what strikes me as unusual is that it involves a single donation made by an individual with no criminal record. It seems to me that a misdemeanor makes much more sense than a felony charge," diGenova told Newsmax.
The U.S. Justice Department's move against a popular conservative intellectual — D'Souza served as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan and most recently produced the box office blockbuster film "2016: Obama's America," which offered a harsh criticism of the president's world view as anti-American — has raised hackles on the right. D’Souza supporters claim the charges are politically motivated and that the Obama critic is being treated differently than the average defendant.
"What struck me first was that it is unusual in cases like these for the FBI to go out and actually arrest someone, simply because it is not necessary," David Mason, a former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, told Newsmax.
"And even less so in this case because [D'Souza] has enough prominence that it is fairly obvious that he is not a flight risk. White collar indictments are made lots of times without an arrest being made," Mason said.
Law enforcement experts tell Newsmax that if the FBI or another federal agency received a tip about a fraudulent act involving just $20,000, the government would likely show little interest in investigating. Mason notes that a violation of $20,000 in contributions is trivial compared to most cases.
"The violation involves a pretty small amount for this type of case," said Mason, who was an FEC commissioner from 1998 to 2008. When small amounts of campaign financing regularities are uncovered the matter is usually resolved at a low level.
Mason believes the case against D'Souza will succeed or fail depending upon whether prosecutors can prove he was "knowing and willful" in making the improper contributions. "There are a lot of sophisticated people who are not aware of the nuances of campaign finance law," he pointed out.
The case most often compared to D'Souza's is that of Arkansas trial lawyer Tab Turner, for donations made to former South Carolina Sen. John Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign.
Turner directed four members of the staff at his law firm to make contributions totaling $8,000 to the Edwards campaign and reimbursed them for the donations. Turner also used the firm's credit card to contribute $2,000 to the Edwards campaign and made a $2,000 contribution attributed to his brother and sister-in-law.
But Turner's case — which was handled with a civil, not criminal, complaint — was more involved. He also made in-kind contributions by using law office staffers to help plan fundraisers for Edwards and charged more than $2,000 in hotel and rental car expenses to the firm for Edwards Committee staffers' travel to the events.
Turner eventually paid a $50,000 civil fine to the FEC. The Edwards for President Committee paid a $9,500 penalty for accepting the contributions.
Hans von Spakovsky, former FEC commissioner, said, "Most of the campaign finance violations handled by the FEC are inadvertent violations of the law. … The FEC usually gives way to DOJ to pursue the criminal side of the case. The FBI is used by DOJ to investigate these types of campaign finance violations."
Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said raising the question of what motivated the Justice Department's tactics against D'Souza is legitimate.
"Any time you have a case that involves a person that is prominently known for their political views being prosecuted and you have a prosecutor who is equally prominent, it is natural to have questions raised about what is behind the charges," Hasen told Newsmax.
The prosecutor in the D'Souza case is U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, a former staff member to Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and an Obama appointee. Bharara has earned a reputation for his rigorous prosecution of white-collar crime on Wall Street and has been mentioned as a potential successor to Attorney General Eric Holder.
"My sense had been that in the past many of these, when they were smaller scale, were handled civilly or were pleaded out," Hasen said.
Hasen pointed to the cases involving then-Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and then-House Speaker Tom DeLay of Texas, both Republicans, as examples of cases that were politically motivated. In both circumstances their convictions were overturned.
In a statement issued after the indictment, D'Souza's attorney Benjamin Brafman asserted that his client "did not act with any corrupt or criminal intent whatsoever. He and the candidate have been friends since their college days, and at worst, this was an act of misguided friendship by D'Souza."
In the context of the political targeting of tea party and conservative groups by the IRS, and recent reports that the IRS is investigating members of the Friends of Abe, a group of Hollywood conservatives, critics say something does not seem "ordinary" about D'Souza's prosecution.
Greg Molen, a co-producer on "2016: Obama's America," clearly believes the indictment was politically motivated.
"In light of recent events and the way the IRS has been used to stifle dissent, this arrest should send shivers down the spines of all freedom-loving Americans," Molen said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.
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2)The World through Arab Eyes
Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East
by Shibley Telhami
A Skewed Look at Arab Hearts and Minds
Telhami offers in The World through Arab Eyes a valuable if unavoidably imperfect attempt at illuminating the hearts and minds of the Arab world as revealed through public opinion polling. His book contains useful broad generalizations, revealing new data and intriguing ambiguities. But it also suffers from occasional problems: methodological flaws, unsupported or questionable single-sourced assertions, and strained interpretations that go beyond the available evidence. Arab public opinion polling as well as the analysis and policy debate surrounding it needs to be taken with a proverbial shaker of salt, a seasoning the author does not always apply.
Egyptians window shop in Cairo. Arabs' popular dislike of the United States derives mostly from a rejection of its policies rather than its values—and, more surprisingly, this dislike actually has very little effect on Arab consumer preferences or behavior.
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On the positive side, the book provides interesting and well-organized survey data on certain broad major topics. Moreover, the author acknowledges the evidence that Arab public opinion has turned inward, toward domestic issues such as political freedoms and social justice. He also makes due allowances for the significant differences among and within diverse Arab publics.
In addition, the book offers numerous specific nuggets of information. It is interesting and important, for instance, to see that on average the Arab citizens of Israel are four times more likely to empathize with Jewish Holocaust victims than are Arabs in the six other countries polled: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Or that those Arabs' popular dislike of the United States derives mostly from a rejection of its policies rather than its values—and, more surprisingly, that this dislike actually has very little effect on Arab consumer preferences or behavior. Another important data point: On a weighted average, two-thirds of those in the six Arab countries polled would accept a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; only one-quarter say the Arabs should keep fighting Israeli forever.
Equally surprising nuggets, but also plausible and useful, come from individual countries. In Saudi Arabia, the "most admired" foreign leader in 2011 was Saddam Hussein. In 2012 Egypt, two-thirds of those polled wanted Shari'a as the country's legal basis, but most (83 percent) preferred applying "the spirit of shari'ah but with adaptation to modern times"; just 17 percent opted to apply it literally, "including the penal code (hudud)."
One problem, however, is that other recent polls show dramatically different results for very similar questions. The latest Pew poll from Egypt, to cite but one case, shows that 88 percent of Muslims there favored the death penalty for apostasy.[1] This kind of discrepancy points to the problems in most contemporary Arab survey research—whether by Pew or Telhami.
The book suffers from scattered methodological omissions as well. The first is simply the failure to spell out several important procedural approaches. Were all these surveys true probability samples, or were some based on quota or even merely "convenience" samples? If the former, what precisely were the methods adopted in each case—multi-stage, stratified, geographic probability? Random walk? Household interview selection? Statistical/demographic weighting? If these were not all standard probability samples, how truly scientific or reliable are the resulting numbers? Regardless of sampling method, how much host government supervision, permission, or intimidation took place, which might have distorted the findings?
Some potentially revealing numbers are also missing from the narrative. For example, one poll cited produced the unlikely result, not replicated in others conducted by this reviewer, that Hugo Chavez was once the "most admired" foreign leader among Arabs. But did he get a rating of 60 percent, 20 percent, or some other percentage? It makes a big difference—and in this and other instances, there is no telling from the text.
A different deficiency is in the choice of the countries surveyed and in the decision to stick with purely urban samples, which thereby excludes half or more of a country's total population. Thus, the book's samples hardly encompass all the Arab eyes of its title, and they completely omit crucial current developments in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia. Even in Egypt and other countries that are included, many of the most salient internal political issues are absent. As a result, the book has little to tell us about the great contest between the Islamist and the civil-military segments of society now underway in Egypt or about the prospects for stability or instability in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, or Jordan.
Too often the book treats all six Arab countries polled as a unit, which obscures rather than illuminates the vital differences among them. The averaged responses are weighted by population. Since Egypt has many more people than the other five countries combined, the findings are really a distorted reflection of Egyptian public opinion rather than a meaningful average of anything.
Another methodological problem is the occasional use of loaded questions on key issues. Some examples: "What aspect of al-Qaeda do you admire the most, if any?" "How important is the Palestinian issue to you?"—instead of an open-ended question like "What issues are important to you?" Given the author's repeated and correct references to Arab aversion to international pressure, why ask: "There is international pressure on Iran to curtail its nuclear program. What is your opinion?" This preamble prejudices the findings by cuing the respondents in a particular direction.
Finally, the author largely neglects other readily available Arab polls that variously corroborate, qualify, or contradict the findings from his own fieldwork. Among the obvious candidates for inclusion would have been the Pew, Gallup, Charney, PIPA, Pechter, and many Palestinian and Israeli surveys on the topics in question. Given the particular constraints and vagaries of Arab polling, no single source can be credible. In certain important cases—as on Arab attitudes toward Iran or toward selected American values—the discrepancies among different pollsters are so significant that they demand detailed accounting and explanation.
In particular, other surveys taken in the two-and-a-half years since the beginning of the 2011 Arab uprisings strongly suggest that most Arabs are now very heavily focused on their own internal issues—and not on Americans, Israelis, Palestinians, or other Arabs. This is contrary to the book's overall leitmotif. Telhami interlaces the book with observations about Arab "dignity" and "the ever-present prism of pain," attempts to reassert the primacy of the Palestinian issue and resentment of U.S. policy therein. If there were actual empirical survey support for this, as opposed to mere anecdotes, fine. But the evidence is just not there—not in the polls, not in the public squares, and not in the actual policies of Arab governments, revolutionary or otherwise. In 2011, as Telhami notes in passing, the Palestinian conflict ranked eighth out of eleven possible named priorities in an Egyptian poll—and dead last in Tunisia. Yet the author is at pains to add that "there were other indications of [its] importance," without indicating what those are.
Even if he at times concedes that today's Arab politics and public opinion are "primarily" about domestic matters rather than foreign economic, social, and political affairs, Telhami spends little time considering the ramifications of this trend.
Telhami is among the most decent, thoughtful, knowledgeable, and balanced experts in this all-too-polarized intellectual arena. There is much to be learned from this book, despite its imperfections. Yet had the author considered the substantial and directly relevant work of others like him—including mounds of complementary but occasionally quite contrary polling data—the result would have been considerably more compelling. This narrow focus is a common and even an understandable academic failing but one that is relatively easily remedied. One keeps hoping that it will be—another time.
David Pollock is the Kaufman Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of its bilingual Arabic/English blog, Fikra Forum. A Harvard Ph.D. and former State Department official, he is the author of Slippery Polls: Uses and Abuses of Opinion Surveys from Arab States (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2008) and The Arab Street: Public Opinion in the Arab World (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1993).
[1] Neha Sahgal and Brian J. Grim "Egypt's Restrictions on Religion Coincide with Lack of Religious Tolerance," Pew Rresearch Center, Washington, D.C., July 2, 2013.
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Most minimum wage workers are under 25 and work in sales or food preparation.
By Sean Davis
During his annual State of the Union address before Congress, President Barack Obama made a big deal about the need to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The move followed months of promises and rhetoric from the White House about how important it was to the economy to increase the minimum wage.
Back in August, the White House Twitter account even posted an infographic claiming that 15 million workers would “directly benefit” from a minimum wage increase and that “nobody who works full-time should live in poverty.” And in December, both the White House and the president’s labor secretary publicly expressed support for nationwide strikes by hourly workers demanding higher pay (because nothing says “I deserve a raise” like refusing to show up to work).
Unfortunately for the White House, many of its claims about the minimum wage are divorced from reality. Here are 11 facts about the minimum wage that Barack Obama forgot to mention during his State of the Union address.
1) Only 1 Percent Of The U.S. Labor Force Earns The Minimum Wage
Despite the hoopla surrounding the issue, only a tiny percentage of American workers actually earn the federal hourly minimum wage: 1 percent, to be exact. In 2012, the most recent year for which nationwide minimum wage data is available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), roughly 1.5 million hourly workers were paid the federal minimum wage of $7.25. To put that into perspective, the U.S. labor force consisted of nearly 155 million workers in 2012.
2) Teenagers Comprise The Single Largest Age Group Of Minimum Wage Workers
Teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 years comprise 31 percent of all minimum wage workers in the U.S. according to the BLS. Workers between 20 and 24 years of age comprise 24 percent of all minimum wage workers, those between 25 and 34 years comprise 15.5 percent, workers between 35 and 44 years comprise less than 10 percent, and those 45 years and up comprise roughly 20 percent of all minimum wage workers in the U.S.
3) Most Minimum Wage Workers Are Under The Age Of 25
According to federal data, over 55 percent of all federal minimum wage workers are under the age of 25. Unsurprisingly, young workers are also the most likely to be unemployed. As of last month, the unemployment rate for 16-to-19-year-olds was 20.2 percent, and the unemployment rate for 20-to-24-year-olds was 11.1 percent. The overall U.S. unemployment rate currently sits at 6.7 percent.
4) A Majority Of Those Who Earn The Minimum Wage Work In Food Preparation Or Sales
In addition to classifying minimum wage workers by age, BLS also categorizes them according to their industry and occupation. Data for 2012 indicate that most minimum wage workers work in “food preparation and serving related occupations” (26.1 percent of all minimum wage workers) or in “sales and related occupations” (25.5 percent of all minimum wage workers), an occupation that often pays commissions and bonuses in addition to fixed hourly rates.
5) Less Than 5 Percent Of People Who Earn The Minimum Wage Work In Construction Or Manufacturing
While there seems to be a persistent belief that a large number of minimum wage workers are salt-of-the-earth construction manufacturing types, that’s just not the case. In fact, less than 5 percent of all minimum wage workers are employed in the construction (0.8 percent) or manufacturing industries (3.3 percent) according tofederal wage data.
6) A Majority Of Them Also Worked Less Than 30 Hours Per Week
It is true that it is difficult to make a living when you earn only $7.25 an hour. It’s even harder to make a living when you don’t work full-time. BLS says that in 2012, 51.5 percent of U.S. workers earning the federal minimum wage – roughly 800,000 out of 1.5 million — worked an average of 29 hours or less each week.
7) Less Than One-Third Worked Full-Time
You read that correctly. Only 32 percent of the country’s minimum wage workers work full-time — 501,000 out of more than 1.5 million, to be exact. And of those 501,000 minimum wage workers who regularly put in a full work week, only 39 percent are men. Now, it can be argued that it’s not these workers fault that they’re unable to find full-time hourly work. However, Obama administration laws and regulations haven’t made it easier to find full-time work. Recently enacted laws like Obamacare have made the quest even more difficult by creating enormous incentives for employers to shift workers to part-time roles to avoid the health law’s onerous mandates and regulations.
8) A Full-Time Minimum Wage Worker In 2014 Will Make 24 Percent More Than The Federal Poverty Limit
A White House tweet and accompanying infographic from last August said, “It’s time to raise the minimum wage because nobody who works full-time should love in poverty.” But a little math and a quick look at the 2014 federal poverty guidelines show that a single individual who earns the current federal minimum wage and works full-time will earn $14,500 in a year (50 weeks per year x 40 hours per week x $7.25 per hour). By way of comparison, the federal poverty limit for 2014 for a one-person household is $11,670.
Wage income from a two-earner family with two kids where both adults earned the minimum wage would exceed the federal poverty limit by 22 percent: $29,000 in income compared to a four-member household federal poverty limit of $23,850. And that’s before federal benefits like Medicaid and food stamps are included.
9) One-Third Of Minimum Wage Workers Either Dropped Out Of Or Never Attended High School
Educational attainment is clearly a significant factor in determining a worker’s hourly wage. According to BLS, over 36 percent of minimum wage earners — 568,000 out of more than 1.5 million — lack a high school diploma. Only 4 percent of minimum wage workers have a bachelor’s degree or higher. That doesn’t mean a college education is best for everyone, but it does suggest that lacking one can make it more difficult to move up the pay ladder.
10) There Are Nearly Six Times More Minimum Wage Workers Today Than In 2007
In 1980, the number of minimum wage workers in the U.S. reached a peak of 4.7 million workers. At that time, the prevailing federal minimum wage was $3.10 an hour. In 2007, following more than two decades of economic prosperity, the number of Americans earning the minimum wage bottomed out at 267,000 workers. Since then, the number has risen dramatically, exceeding 1.5 million workers as of 2012, the most recent year for which data are available.
11) A Change In The Minimum Wage Often Triggers Union Wage Hikes And Benefit Renegotiations
The famous investment banker J.P. Morgan said something along the lines of, “Every man has two reasons for everything he does: a good reason and the real reason.” Giving minimum wage workers a little extra cash is the White House’s “good” reason for supporting a hike in the minimum wage. But what’s the real reason? Richard Berman, a union analyst, studied numerous union contracts and published his findingson their terms in the Wall Street Journal in 2013:
The labor contracts that we examined used a variety of methods to trigger the [wage] increases. The two most popular formulas were setting baseline union wages as a percentage above the state or federal minimum wage or mandating a flat wage premium above the minimum wage.
Other union contracts stipulate that, following a minimum-wage increase, the union and the employer reopen wage talks.
[...]
Minimum-wage hikes are beneficial to unions in other ways. The increases restrict the ability of businesses to hire low-skill workers who might gladly work for lower wages in order to gain experience. Union members thus face less competition from workers who might threaten union jobs.
And there you have it. The “real” reason behind the minimum wage push is to pay back the labor unions who helped re-elect the president in the form of higher wages, increased negotiating leverage, and less competition for jobs. The president’s decision to unilaterally hike the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour doesn’t really make sense until you view it through that lens (is there a critical mass of federal contractors who make only the minimum wage?).
Unfortunately, when it comes to politics, the good reason is rarely, if ever, the real reason.
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4) Seven Big Lies (Know no's) Obama Told In His State Of The Union Speech
I know what you’re thinking – just seven? Actually most of Obama’s speech was filled with the same old platitudes and empty rhetoric that bellows out of all politicians, right or left. Here are seven lies he told.
1) Income inequality is the worst it’s ever been!
Obama sayeth, “[T]today, after four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better. But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by; let alone to get ahead.”
There’s all sorts of wrong going on here, but here’s one of the bigger ones – “income inequality” was worse in 2000 and in 2007. But if you adjust the rate for the massive taxation the government does and the redistribution of wealth already underway, income equality is the same as it was in 1987. It’s pretty easy to make the case that the only reason Obama pretends it’s a sudden crime that needs to be addressed right now is that Obamacare is such a disaster that needs to be ignored.
2) Raising minimum wage will help families
Obama sayeth, “[We] have a bill to fix that by lifting the minimum wage to $10.10… This will help families. It will give businesses customers with more money to spend… So join the rest of the country. Say yes. Give America a raise.”
It’s not hard to believe that Obama, who has never run a business, doesn’t understand that artificially forcing a business to pay someone more than their wage is worth will put more people out of the labor market. Making job creation more expensive leads to fewer jobs.
3) His minimum wage hike for federal workers brings immediate relief
Obama sayeth, “In the coming weeks, I will issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their federally funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour, because if you cook our troops’ meals or wash their dishes, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.”
But most employees of federal contractors earn more than the minimum wage, so this will apply to only about 10% of those,or 200,000 employees. Finally, this wage hike won’t apply until 2015 at the earliest, and even then, only for new contracts, not old ones.
4) How many Americans have gained insurance under Obamacare?
Obama sayeth, “More than 9 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.”
But in fact, five million Americans have lost insurance, meaning that this number is not a net gain. In other words, the vast majority already had insurance before Obamacare. As few as 11% might be new enrollments to Obamacare. Finally, the payment system for the federal Obamacare website isn’t completed; who knows how many of these will experience more “glitches.”
5) Obama will cut red tape that’s holding up construction jobs!
Obama sayeth, “we’ll need Congress to protect more than 3 million jobs by finishing transportation and waterways bills this summer. But I will act on my own to slash bureaucracy and streamline the permitting process for key projects, so we can get more construction workers on the job as fast as possible.”
But what’s actually holding back these projects is lack of money, not red tape. Joshua Schank of the think tank Eno Center for Transportation explains:
“The reason most of these projects are delayed is they don’t have enough money. So it’s great that you are expediting the review process, but the review process isn’t the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough money to invest in our infrastructure in the first place.”
Perhaps if Obama hadn’t squandered what was supposed to go towards infrastructure in his stimulus bill on green energy boondoggles and other crony capitalist schemes, there might have been more money to fund these projects. Nevertheless, not only hasn’t Obama created “shovel-ready jobs,” he has actually lost 720,000 of them in the Construction field.
6) Your Medicare premium went up? You’re making that up!
Obama sayeth, “because of this (health care) law, no American can ever again be dropped or denied coverage for a preexisting condition like asthma, back pain or cancer… And we did all this while adding years to Medicare’s finances, keeping Medicare premiums flat, and lowering prescription costs for millions of seniors.”
That’s simply not true:
Although the basic premium remained the same this year at $104.90, it increased by $5 a month in 2013, up from $99.90 in 2012. Obama’s health care law also raised Medicare premiums for upper-income beneficiaries, and both the president and Republicans have proposed to expand that.
On paper, the program’s giant trust fund for inpatient care gained more than a decade of solvency because of cuts to service providers required under the health law. But in practice those savings cannot simultaneously be used to expand coverage for the uninsured and shore up Medicare.
7. Obama’s created 8 million new jobs in the last four years
This figure leaves out a lot of lost jobs early in Obama’s presidency and glosses over that this recovery has been the weakest since World War II. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a net gain of 2.4 million job have been added on Obama’s watch (this doesn’t account for population growth, leading to the lowest labor participation rate since 1978).
You might think Obama might get into trouble for all these lies, but you’d be wrong – he’s a Democrat, remember? The media will barely mention these, or just ignore them all together. And for Americans who are too busy trying to get ahead in this terrible economy, tuning into The State of the Union address allows the president to solidify these misleading talking points in people’s minds.
4a) Bush speechwriter accuses Obama of plagiarism in State of the Union
A former speechwriter for President George W. Bush accused President Barack Obama of plagiarizing one of Bush's speeches for the Tuesday evening State of the Union address.
Marc Thiessen, who served as Bush's lead speechwriter for his 2007 State of the Union speech, told Megyn Kelly of Fox News, "Barack Obama has gone from blaming George W. Bush to plagiarizing George W. Bush."
Thiessen then read phrases from the 2007 speech which focused on the theme "hope and opportunity." "It was eerily familiar. There were lines like 'Our job is to help Americans build a future of hope and opportunity, a future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy, a future of hope and opportunity requires that all citizens have affordable and available health care, extending opportunity and hope depends on a stable supply of energy,' all of that came from the 2007 State of the Union from George W. Bush," Thiessen said.
Poliico writes that none of Obama's lines "were directly lifted" from Bush's 2007 address, though in both speeches the presidents repeatedly used versions of the word "opportunity" and both concluded with stories about veterans who had been wounded in combat.
This isn't the first time Obama has been accused of plagiarism in a State of the Union address. In 2011, Alvin Felzenberg, presidential scholar and former spokesman for the 9/11 Commission, wrote an op-ed for U.S. News and World Report stating the Obama's speech "contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince."
However, President Bush was not immune to similar accusations. In 2010, a Huffington Post reporter accused Bush of lifting passages of his memoir from the books of his advisers.
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