Thursday, June 29, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Democrats vow to block pay raises until minimum wage increased
From Ted Barrett
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, says he has the votes to block any congressional pay raise.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.
"We're going to do anything it takes to stop.... the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference.
"They can play all the games the want," Reid said derisively of the Republicans who control the chamber. "They can deal with gay marriage, estate tax, flag burning, all these issues and avoid issues like the prices of gasoline, sending your kid to college. But we're going to do everything to stop the congressional pay raise."
The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Democrats want to raise it to $7.25. During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600, or more than $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
In floor debate last week Republicans argued the raise for low-income workers would hurt small businesses. They offered an alternative measure to raise the minimum wage that was tied to tax breaks for small businesses.
The main proposal fell eight votes short of the 60 it needed to pass with 46 opposing; the alternative measure mustered only 45 votes in favor, while 53 senators opposed.
Reid wouldn't spell out the specific tactics he would employ to block the congressional pay raise -- which is triggered each year with the passage of an appropriations bill not by a vote on a stand alone bill to increase pay for members.
But he warned, "I know procedure's around here fairly well."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, says he has the votes to block any congressional pay raise.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A week after the GOP-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Senate Democrats on Tuesday vowed to block pay raises for members of Congress until the minimum wage is increased.
"We're going to do anything it takes to stop.... the congressional pay raise this year, and we're not going to settle for this year alone," Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said at a Capitol news conference.
"They can play all the games the want," Reid said derisively of the Republicans who control the chamber. "They can deal with gay marriage, estate tax, flag burning, all these issues and avoid issues like the prices of gasoline, sending your kid to college. But we're going to do everything to stop the congressional pay raise."
The minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Democrats want to raise it to $7.25. During the past nine years, as Democrats have tried unsuccessfully to increase the minimum wage, members of Congress have voted to give themselves pay raises -- technically "cost of living increases" -- totaling $31,600, or more than $15 an hour for a 40-hour week, 52 weeks a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
In floor debate last week Republicans argued the raise for low-income workers would hurt small businesses. They offered an alternative measure to raise the minimum wage that was tied to tax breaks for small businesses.
The main proposal fell eight votes short of the 60 it needed to pass with 46 opposing; the alternative measure mustered only 45 votes in favor, while 53 senators opposed.
Reid wouldn't spell out the specific tactics he would employ to block the congressional pay raise -- which is triggered each year with the passage of an appropriations bill not by a vote on a stand alone bill to increase pay for members.
But he warned, "I know procedure's around here fairly well."
Democracy in chains
Greg Palast
US Republicans are planning to change the law to stop black, Hispanic and Native American voters going to the polls in 2008.
Greg Palast
June 23, 2006 05:03 PM | Printer Friendly Version
Don't kid yourself: the Republican party's decision yesterday to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's white sheets caucus.
Complaints by a couple of good ol' boys to legislation have never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.
This is a strategic stall that is meant to decriminalise the Republican party's new game of challenging voters of colour by the hundreds of thousands.
In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar.... operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.
So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law.
The act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks - "literacy tests", poll taxes and more - to block citizens of colour from casting ballots.
Here is what happened in 2004, and what's in store for 2008.
In the 2004 election, more than 3 million voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect".
Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. More than 1m of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.
A funny thing about those ballots: about 88% were cast by minority voters.
This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter: they come from the raw data of the US election assistance commission in Washington DC.
At the heart of the GOP's mass challenge of voters was what the party's top brass called "caging lists" - secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a black-majority voting precinct.
When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential "donors". Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.
Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were "challenge lists" meant to stop these black voters from casting ballots.
When these "caged" voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly "fraudulent".
Why didn't the GOP honchos fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of colour is against the law. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The act says you can't go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove's ability to come up with an alibi.
The Republicans target black folk not because they don't like the colour of their skin; they don't like the colour of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.
These so-called "fraudulent" voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we have previously reported, are black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.
Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the voting rights law, it has found a way to keep using its expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.
Before the 2000 presidential ballot, then Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crime of most people on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.
That "felon scrub", as the state called it, had to be "pre-cleared" under the Voting Rights Act. That is, the US justice department must approve "scrubs" and other changes in procedures.
The Florida felon scrub slipped through this "pre-clearance" provision because Katherine Harris's assistant assured the government the scrub was just a clerical matter. Civil rights lawyers are now on the alert for such mendacity.
The burning cross caucus of the Republican Party is bitching that "pre-clearance" of voting changes applies only to southern states. I have to agree that singling out the old confederacy is a bit unfair. But the solution is not to smother the voting rights law but to spread its safeguards to all 50 of these United States.
Republicans argue that the racial voting games and the threats of the white-hooded Klansmen that kept African-Americans from the ballot box before the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act no longer threaten black voters.
That's true. When I look over the "caging lists" and the "scrub sheets", it's clear to me that the GOP has traded in white sheets for spreadsheets.
US Republicans are planning to change the law to stop black, Hispanic and Native American voters going to the polls in 2008.
Greg Palast
June 23, 2006 05:03 PM | Printer Friendly Version
Don't kid yourself: the Republican party's decision yesterday to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's white sheets caucus.
Complaints by a couple of good ol' boys to legislation have never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.
This is a strategic stall that is meant to decriminalise the Republican party's new game of challenging voters of colour by the hundreds of thousands.
In the 2004 presidential race, the GOP ran a massive, multi-state, multimillion-dollar.... operation to challenge the legitimacy of black, Hispanic and Native American voters. The methods used breached the Voting Rights Act, and while the Bush administration's civil rights division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers began circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the act before the 2008 race.
So Republicans have promised to no longer break the law - not by going legit but by eliminating the law.
The act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks - "literacy tests", poll taxes and more - to block citizens of colour from casting ballots.
Here is what happened in 2004, and what's in store for 2008.
In the 2004 election, more than 3 million voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect".
Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. More than 1m of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.
A funny thing about those ballots: about 88% were cast by minority voters.
This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter: they come from the raw data of the US election assistance commission in Washington DC.
At the heart of the GOP's mass challenge of voters was what the party's top brass called "caging lists" - secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a black-majority voting precinct.
When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential "donors". Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.
Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were "challenge lists" meant to stop these black voters from casting ballots.
When these "caged" voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly "fraudulent".
Why didn't the GOP honchos fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of colour is against the law. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The act says you can't go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove's ability to come up with an alibi.
The Republicans target black folk not because they don't like the colour of their skin; they don't like the colour of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.
These so-called "fraudulent" voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we have previously reported, are black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.
Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the voting rights law, it has found a way to keep using its expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.
Before the 2000 presidential ballot, then Jeb Bush purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crime of most people on the list was nothing more than VWB -- Voting While Black.
That "felon scrub", as the state called it, had to be "pre-cleared" under the Voting Rights Act. That is, the US justice department must approve "scrubs" and other changes in procedures.
The Florida felon scrub slipped through this "pre-clearance" provision because Katherine Harris's assistant assured the government the scrub was just a clerical matter. Civil rights lawyers are now on the alert for such mendacity.
The burning cross caucus of the Republican Party is bitching that "pre-clearance" of voting changes applies only to southern states. I have to agree that singling out the old confederacy is a bit unfair. But the solution is not to smother the voting rights law but to spread its safeguards to all 50 of these United States.
Republicans argue that the racial voting games and the threats of the white-hooded Klansmen that kept African-Americans from the ballot box before the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act no longer threaten black voters.
That's true. When I look over the "caging lists" and the "scrub sheets", it's clear to me that the GOP has traded in white sheets for spreadsheets.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Charles Darwin's Tortoise Dies (nothin' gets past me)
From: AAP
June 23, 2006
THE world's oldest animal in captivity has died on the Sunshine Coast at the ripe old age of 176.
Giant Galapagos tortoise Harriet has died of a suspected heart attack.
She was a star attraction at Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo since the 1980s and.... even features in the Guinness Book of Records for her longevity.
Her history is as colourful as the hibiscus flowers she lovingly munched on.
It is believed Harriet was one of three animals naturalist Charles Darwin brought back from his trip to the Galapagos Islands in 1835 and which led to his theories of evolution and natural selection.
A few years later, Sir Charles gave them to a Brisbane-bound friend.
For about 100 years Harriet was mistakenly thought to be a male.
At 176, Harriet was recognised as the world's oldest living chelonian - a reptile with a shell or bony plates.
Mr Irwin said he considered Harriet a member of the family.
"Harriet has been a huge chunk of the Irwin family's life," he said.
"I have grown up with this gorgeous old girl and so have my kids.
"She is possibly one of the oldest living creatures on the planet and her passing today is not only a great loss for the world but a very sad day for my family.
"She was a grand old lady."
June 23, 2006
THE world's oldest animal in captivity has died on the Sunshine Coast at the ripe old age of 176.
Giant Galapagos tortoise Harriet has died of a suspected heart attack.
She was a star attraction at Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo since the 1980s and.... even features in the Guinness Book of Records for her longevity.
Her history is as colourful as the hibiscus flowers she lovingly munched on.
It is believed Harriet was one of three animals naturalist Charles Darwin brought back from his trip to the Galapagos Islands in 1835 and which led to his theories of evolution and natural selection.
A few years later, Sir Charles gave them to a Brisbane-bound friend.
For about 100 years Harriet was mistakenly thought to be a male.
At 176, Harriet was recognised as the world's oldest living chelonian - a reptile with a shell or bony plates.
Mr Irwin said he considered Harriet a member of the family.
"Harriet has been a huge chunk of the Irwin family's life," he said.
"I have grown up with this gorgeous old girl and so have my kids.
"She is possibly one of the oldest living creatures on the planet and her passing today is not only a great loss for the world but a very sad day for my family.
"She was a grand old lady."
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Take Your Dog to Work Day -- what a howl!
Your chance to get Fido into the rat race
H.J. Cummins, Star Tribune
Last update: June 21, 2006 – 10:45 PM
You might call it the dog day of summer.
Friday, June 23rd is Take Your Dog to Work Day, a chance for dog lovers to.... commute with their cockers, lunch with their Lhasa apsos and take a break with their border collies.
"It's quirky, but in the end it does what it's supposed to do," said John Long, spokesman for Pet Sitters International, which created the annual event eight years ago.
And that is: Show that dog ownership is so wonderful that colleagues will go out and adopt canines.
If you want to include your workplace, Long advises some preparation -- such as ruling out that any nearby colleagues have allergies or dog phobias.
Pet Sitters estimates that about 10,000 employers in the United States and Canada participated last year. So far, on the official website -- www.petsit.com/dogday -- about a dozen Minnesota companies have registered.
And then there are Minnesota workplaces where every day could be Take Your Dog to Work Day. Such as the PetSmart store in Plymouth, where operations manager DeeDee Bergquist sometimes brings in Daphne, her Italian greyhound puppy.
"She just chills out in the office, and I check on her," she said. "She goes on break with me, and our trainer spends a little extra time with her."
Why is it good to allow dogs at work?
"It's good for socializing the dog," Bergquist said.
Uh, no, we meant why is it good for people?
"I think it loosens everybody up," she said. "Animals are calming. They lower stress levels."
H.J. Cummins, Star Tribune
Last update: June 21, 2006 – 10:45 PM
You might call it the dog day of summer.
Friday, June 23rd is Take Your Dog to Work Day, a chance for dog lovers to.... commute with their cockers, lunch with their Lhasa apsos and take a break with their border collies.
"It's quirky, but in the end it does what it's supposed to do," said John Long, spokesman for Pet Sitters International, which created the annual event eight years ago.
And that is: Show that dog ownership is so wonderful that colleagues will go out and adopt canines.
If you want to include your workplace, Long advises some preparation -- such as ruling out that any nearby colleagues have allergies or dog phobias.
Pet Sitters estimates that about 10,000 employers in the United States and Canada participated last year. So far, on the official website -- www.petsit.com/dogday -- about a dozen Minnesota companies have registered.
And then there are Minnesota workplaces where every day could be Take Your Dog to Work Day. Such as the PetSmart store in Plymouth, where operations manager DeeDee Bergquist sometimes brings in Daphne, her Italian greyhound puppy.
"She just chills out in the office, and I check on her," she said. "She goes on break with me, and our trainer spends a little extra time with her."
Why is it good to allow dogs at work?
"It's good for socializing the dog," Bergquist said.
Uh, no, we meant why is it good for people?
"I think it loosens everybody up," she said. "Animals are calming. They lower stress levels."
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Dobbs: Congress stiffs working Americans
By Lou Dobbs
CNN
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Posted: 11:12 a.m. EDT (15:12 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Without much fanfare, the House of Representatives last week voted to give members of Congress yet another pay raise, as it has done almost every year for nearly a decade.
For some reason, our elected officials decided against holding a news conference. Maybe that's because they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they raise their own salaries almost every year while refusing to raise the pay of our lowest-paid workers.
Corporate America, the Bush administration and the national economic orthodoxy with which they're in league have consistently ....argued against helping working men and women at the lowest end of the wage scale by raising the minimum wage. Big business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable say it will harm the economy and eliminate jobs. As is so frequent with the faith-based economics that grips both political parties in Washington, such concerns have absolutely nothing to do with reality.
For example, it's impossible to deny the national minimum wage of $5.15 is not enough for a family to live above the poverty line. The annual salary for workers earning the national minimum wage still leaves a family of three about $6,000 short of the poverty threshold.
Raising the minimum wage to $7.50 would positively affect the lives of more than 8 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 single mothers and 1.8 million parents with children under 18. But even this 46 percent increase would get them only to the poverty line. Don't you think these families just might need that cost-of-living increase a bit more than our elected officials who are paid nearly $170,000 a year?
With no Congressional action on raising the minimum wage since 1997, inflation has eroded wages. The minimum wage in the 21st century is $2 lower in real dollars than it was four decades ago and now stands at its lowest level since 1955, according to the Economic Policy Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Also, since the last time Congress increased the minimum wage for our lowest-paid workers, buying power has fallen by 25 percent. Yet over that time our elected representatives have given themselves eight pay raises totaling more than 23 percent.
Raising the minimum wage isn't simply about the price of labor. It's also about our respect for labor. One of this country's greatest business innovators, Henry Ford, made history almost a century ago by raising the salaries of his production-line workers far beyond the prevailing wage. Ford not only paid his employees well enough to buy the products they built, but he kept his employees loyal and productive. That's also very good business.
The myth that raising the minimum wage will lead to job cuts is just that: a myth. In fact, research suggests just the opposite. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, since 1998, states with higher minimum wages experienced better job growth than states paying only the federal minimum wage. Among small retail businesses in those higher minimum-wage states, job growth was double the rest of the country.
The House Appropriations Committee has passed a $2.10 increase as part of a spending bill, but the business lobby pressured the House leadership to hold up the measure.
"I think it's disgraceful that we waited nine years to do this," says Rep. David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin. "We have seen gas prices go up by 140 percent since the minimum wage was increased. We have seen home heating oil go up by 120 percent. We have seen health care go up by almost 45 percent."
This administration, our Republican-led Congress and the dominant corporate interests in this country want cheap labor. And to achieve that goal they're outsourcing middle-class jobs, importing illegal labor and cutting retirement and health-care benefits.
It's time for the federal government to reverse the trend, to at least substantially raise the minimum wage in this country, and by doing so express how much we value all working Americans.
CNN
Wednesday, June 21, 2006; Posted: 11:12 a.m. EDT (15:12 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Without much fanfare, the House of Representatives last week voted to give members of Congress yet another pay raise, as it has done almost every year for nearly a decade.
For some reason, our elected officials decided against holding a news conference. Maybe that's because they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they raise their own salaries almost every year while refusing to raise the pay of our lowest-paid workers.
Corporate America, the Bush administration and the national economic orthodoxy with which they're in league have consistently ....argued against helping working men and women at the lowest end of the wage scale by raising the minimum wage. Big business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable say it will harm the economy and eliminate jobs. As is so frequent with the faith-based economics that grips both political parties in Washington, such concerns have absolutely nothing to do with reality.
For example, it's impossible to deny the national minimum wage of $5.15 is not enough for a family to live above the poverty line. The annual salary for workers earning the national minimum wage still leaves a family of three about $6,000 short of the poverty threshold.
Raising the minimum wage to $7.50 would positively affect the lives of more than 8 million workers, including an estimated 760,000 single mothers and 1.8 million parents with children under 18. But even this 46 percent increase would get them only to the poverty line. Don't you think these families just might need that cost-of-living increase a bit more than our elected officials who are paid nearly $170,000 a year?
With no Congressional action on raising the minimum wage since 1997, inflation has eroded wages. The minimum wage in the 21st century is $2 lower in real dollars than it was four decades ago and now stands at its lowest level since 1955, according to the Economic Policy Institute and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Also, since the last time Congress increased the minimum wage for our lowest-paid workers, buying power has fallen by 25 percent. Yet over that time our elected representatives have given themselves eight pay raises totaling more than 23 percent.
Raising the minimum wage isn't simply about the price of labor. It's also about our respect for labor. One of this country's greatest business innovators, Henry Ford, made history almost a century ago by raising the salaries of his production-line workers far beyond the prevailing wage. Ford not only paid his employees well enough to buy the products they built, but he kept his employees loyal and productive. That's also very good business.
The myth that raising the minimum wage will lead to job cuts is just that: a myth. In fact, research suggests just the opposite. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, since 1998, states with higher minimum wages experienced better job growth than states paying only the federal minimum wage. Among small retail businesses in those higher minimum-wage states, job growth was double the rest of the country.
The House Appropriations Committee has passed a $2.10 increase as part of a spending bill, but the business lobby pressured the House leadership to hold up the measure.
"I think it's disgraceful that we waited nine years to do this," says Rep. David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin. "We have seen gas prices go up by 140 percent since the minimum wage was increased. We have seen home heating oil go up by 120 percent. We have seen health care go up by almost 45 percent."
This administration, our Republican-led Congress and the dominant corporate interests in this country want cheap labor. And to achieve that goal they're outsourcing middle-class jobs, importing illegal labor and cutting retirement and health-care benefits.
It's time for the federal government to reverse the trend, to at least substantially raise the minimum wage in this country, and by doing so express how much we value all working Americans.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
All work and no play for government of Kyrgyzstan
Jun 19, 10:29 AM (ET)
BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's leader banned top officials in his Central Asian state from taking holidays until later this year as a punishment for not doing a good job.
Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous nation to the west of China, has been plagued by violence and crime since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power in a revolution last year.
"I'll take measures if I find out that even one of the ministers has gone on holidays before December," Bakiyev told top government officials during a meeting on Monday, according to a statement on the presidential Web site.
"I think it's not time to rest, it's time to work."
Kyrgyz ministers were not available for comment.
Bakiyev also ordered officials to cut the number of foreign trips and focus on domestic issues such as the 2007 budget and crop harvesting, the presidential statement said.
Most government officials in former Soviet states like Kyrgyzstan usually take up to a month off in July or August, bringing political life to a standstill during summer months.
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