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| photo credit here - Read It |
Strib reports:
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison will be at the White House today when President Obama signs an executive order increasing the minimum wage for federal contractors.
The Minnesota Democrat led the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ effort to push Obama to sign the order.
Ellison spearheaded a letter writing campaign to the president, urging him to circumvent Congress on the issue, to “provide labor stability for the low-wage workers on whom these federal agencies rely to fulfill their mission.” Ellison personally handled one of those letters to the president.
Obama announced plans for the executive order during his State of the Union address. He has cast the move as a way to spur Congress to increase the hourly minimum wage for all workers from $7.25 to $10.10.
The rule will boost wages for a few hundred thousand workers, a small percentage of the more than 2 million federal contractors, White House officials said.
We can be thankful. And we can hope for more. However, the 87%, those needing minimum relief included, represent citizens of the nation that cannot depend on the dividend earnings of held wealth for a living. Working wage earners.
Remember how the Anoka County Board - as presently constituted - struck down prevailing wages? You should. All the way to the November ballot box, remember that.
Wage earners are not preeminent in the hearts and minds of too many politicians. That's how it is, but not how it should be. We, in Minnesota, at least have Ellison. Kline, Paulsen, Bachmann aside, somebody is in DC who truly cares about wage earners, up and down the scale from minimum wage to union prevailing wage. Some do care.
_____________UPDATE_____________
Reader help requested - does any reader know whether Micro Control has both government contracts and workers paid at minimum wage? Please leave a comment if you know whether this is so or not. The "Prevailing wage requires a contractor to pay certain wages on a construction project, not what the market will bear" Watchdog is on record against prevailing wage.
Any bets against a compatibly disdainful bark, that the minimum wage requires an employer to pay certain minimally conscionable wages in exchange for wage earner hours worked, "not what the market will bear?"
The old dog learns? Or will it be that the Obama executive order is hounded as yet more "thuggery" against the privileged few among whom the Watchdog's wealth places him, while barking up discord and dissent as best he can among the 87% - in hope of turning their hearts and minds against their own wage earner kind, and their own best wage earner interests. Capital lecturing labor, about what's good for capital being good for labor, with some labor receptive to such a message.
____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
That "Down With Tyranny" website from which the photo was taken, again read the accompanying post there, has a site sub-headline with a Sinclair Lewis quote that now, decades after Lewis wrote it, might arguably be shifted from future tense to past tense. That possibility is something about which the more honest and intelligent Ron Paul supporters might have something to say, yet apart from that, the site has another hands down excellent lead image to a post on the debt limit circus leaving town. Read it. And do not stop at the Paul Ryan image, since the item goes on to mention one of Minnesota's mistakes, Col. Kline, with the post using the word "extort" to describe Kline's carrying on leading up to the House vote to end the unpopular Republican adventurism and opportunism that backfired, big time, during earlier debt limit "negotiations."
Kline's and Boehner's corner threw in the towel on that humbug. So, give them a gold star, or expect it a purely transitory thing leading solely to resumption of more of the same? A hope would be for greater civility, but, after all, they are Republicans at the gate.