ThinkProgress is reporting that Seattle will raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour over the coming years under a deal brokered by Mayor Ed Murray and blessed by labor and business groups alike, city leaders announced Thursday afternoon.
The new pay floor will phase in at different speeds for businesses of different sizes, but all employers will have to meet the $15 minimum wage by the end of the decade. Businesses with more than 500 employees nationwide will have a three-year phase-in period, while smaller employers get five years to ratchet up their payscales.
After reaching $15 an hour, the city’s minimum wage will automatically climb by 2.4 percent each year regardless of the rate of inflation. Even among states with relatively strong minimum wage laws, automatic increases are uncommon.
He’s a self-employed, self-sufficient logger who has cleared his own path for most of his 57 years, never expecting help from anyone. And even though he’d been uninsured since 2009, he especially wanted nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t read what the Democrats have to say about it because I think they’re full of it,” he told his friend Bob Leinhauser, who suggested he sign up.
That refrain changed this year when a faulty aortic valve almost felled Angstadt. Suddenly, he was facing a choice: Buy a health plan, through a law he despised, that would pay the lion’s share of the cost of the life-saving surgery – or die. He chose the former.
“A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA,” Angstadt said. “I was, before Bob went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody and, in fact, have encouraged friends, including the one guy who hauls my logs.
The embattled crack pipe mayor of Toronto was found indulging with another crack pipe and this time, like all the other times, there’s a video tape.
Ford, realizing that he is once again caught with his hands in the cookie jar, admitted himself to rehab.
He released a statement. Here it is:
For Immediate Release
April 30th, 2014
Tonight I want to take some time to speak from my heart to the people of Toronto. It’s not easy to be vulnerable and this is one of the most difficult times in my life. I have a problem with alcohol, and the choices I have made while under the influence. I have struggled with this for some time.
Today, after taking some time to think about my own well-being, how to best serve the people of Toronto and what is in the best interests of my family, I have decided to take a leave from campaigning and from my duties as Mayor to seek immediate help.
I have tried to deal with these issues by myself over the past year. I know that I need professional help and I am now 100% committed to getting myself right.
I love the people of Toronto, I love being your mayor and I hope you will continue to stand by me.
With the support of my family, friends, professionals and the people of Toronto, I will conquer this.
Please keep me and my family in your prayers during these difficult days ahead.
I just want to say to the people of Toronto that I thank you for your ongoing support and encouragement. I cannot tell you enough how much I appreciate it.
First it was marriage equality. Now it’s the minimum wage. And prison reform. And some lefty laboratories in cities across the country. It’s not a sharp turn to the left as many had anticipated with Obama’s election in 2008. It’s a wide turn, and the country’s already done the first hand-over-hand on the cultural-political wheel.
If you haven’t seen the Frontline series on American prisons, please go their post-haste and watch what you can. The growth of the prison population in this country is staggering, and is a direct result of the conservative policies that created minimum sentences and the mandated arrests of millions of low-level and non-violent offenders, most of whom were males of color. Pair that with the creation of laws that, in some states, treated 12 year-olds as adults, and the results are explosive. We built prisons, then made sure we filled them up.
That’s changing. Many states, such as Kentucky, are trying to reform and rewrite their legal codes to provide the kind of care that young, at-risk juveniles and older, clearly sick men and women need in order to avoid jail time. One of the stories on the program shows a clearly distressed young women who needs counseling, medication, emotional support and a mentor if she is to thrive as a citizen. Otherwise, she’s going to wind up as a ward of the state and she might commit a violent act against someone. Another story shows a 67 year old addict who’s been released from jail to a halfway house with nothing. No money, no prospects, no clothes other than the sweats on his body. And he’s supposed to get a job? Go on welfare or food stamps (that the GOP wants to cut more)?
And while we were spending all of this money on being punitive, the right wing also told us that we needed to spend less on schools and lower taxes that paid for needed government services. Spending more on prisons and less on schools has had a direct impact on our culture. But as I said, that’s changing.
There are other signs of a wide left turn. Minimum wages are going up in some states. In New Jersey, the people voted to raise the wage over the objections of Governor Christie. Today’s vote to try and raise the national wage ended in a Republican-led filibuster, which will show up in Democratic ads come the fall. The national reactions to comments from Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy shows that, although there are still racists in the United States, they will not be tolerated as they were before. Courts are striking down voter ID laws, most recently in Wisconsin, which is a welcome sign for democracy.
We still have work to do, and there will be setbacks, but slowly and surely, ideas that for years were ridiculed as soft and unworkable are seeing the light of day.
Citizens United, that infamous decision by the US Supreme Court that allows unlimited secret campaign contributions through SuperPacs, could be seeing it’s end days if Senate Democrats get their way.
“The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections. That needs to stop, and it needs to stop now,” said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer.
“The only way to undo the damage the court has done is to pass Senator Udall’s amendment to the Constitution, and Senate Democrats are going to try to do that,” he said.
Schumer said the vote would take place by year’s end and called on Republican colleagues to join Democrats to ensure “the wealthy can’t drown out middle-class voices in our Democracy.”
Hawaii, led by a Democrat is doing the right thing for that people, and is following the president’s recommendations to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. The bill is expected to be signed into law on Wednesday.
Hawaii is the third state to pass a wage at that level this year, following Connecticut and Maryland.
We all knew this was going to happen. No matter what the situation, no matter what the cause, Republicans and conservatives always find themselves on the wrong side of every issue.
And you knew it was just a matter of time before racist Donald Sterling found support from the Conservatives. That support began Tuesday with a theory from a caller to the Rush Limbaugh radio program.
It is the caller’s belief that the whole issue is a plot to take the team away from Donald Sterling. The caller who identified himself as Niel, said that he hopes people rally around Sterling and of course, his theory found favor with the conservative host. The conspiracy was born.
“Whoever set this up is really good. They covered every base. They’ve got the media wrapped around their little finger,” radio host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday according to a report by Talking Points Memo.
“This is a fascinating theory. And, Neil, I’m glad that you held on through the break so I could dig deep, explore further,” he said, crediting the caller for the theory. “You know, you got it.”
Conservative blog Daily Caller reporter Patrick Howley questioned Magic Johnson’s involvement in the scandal. Below are some of the tweets from Howley:
And Allen West thinks Donald Sterling is being used to distract the world from the Fox News made up conspiracy called… Benghazi.
Yes, somehow you knew they would include Benghazi in the whole Donald Sterling fiasco.
West admitted that what Sterling said was deplorable, but… “But what is really concerning,” he continued, “as I listen to the sound-bite montage that you played, where is the outrage of the public? The outrage of the public seems to be totally focused on Mr. Sterling but, you know, you’ve got this thing with Benghazi and we have an even bigger lie, an even bigger deceit, which is even more impactful on the country that no one is really caring about.”
By now the entire world knows who Donald Sterling is – a verified racist who have been sued for his racist ways, and currently the owner of the LA Clippers.
Oh yea, Donald Sterling is also a registered Republican.
That last fact however, was either entirely missed by Republican Representative Sean Duffy (R-WI), or it was intentionally misused as an effort to distance the Republicans from racism – a feat that’s almost impossible to achieve considering some recent activities of the party.
In any case, Duffy was at a House Financial Services Committee hearing and felt the need to broadcast the lie that Sterling was a Democrat.
“We’ve all heard of the comments that were recently made by Mr. Sterling from the LA Clippers,” Duffy said, then he added, “who is a Democrat — made absolutely offensive comments.”
The Tamper Bay Times is reporting that when U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson married his wife, she was already wed to another man, according to a new court filing by the congressman’s lawyers, seeking an annulment on the basis of bigamy.
In new court paperwork filed in the couple’s divorce case last week, days before their 24th anniversary, Grayson, D-Florida, accuses Lolita Grayson of fraud, unjust enrichment and misrepresentation, among other claims.
He’s also suing for defamation, the new document states, stemming from a disturbance at their home in March. Lolita Grayson accused her husband of shoving her, but later dropped her petition for a domestic injunction.
Lolita Grayson’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a call or emails seeking comment on Tuesday.
Alan Grayson’s new filing, a counter-petition to her January divorce filing, states that when he met Lolita Grayson in 1985, she “represented herself as single in order to induce Mr. Grayson to marry her.”
Have you ever hated someone so much, that you simply cannot stop thinking about them, can’t stop talking about them? Well that seems to be the the situation Republicans find themselves in. They simply cannot’t get the Hillary Clinton of their minds.
I hate to say this, but I’m beginning to think that Hillary Clinton satisfy some devious sexual fantasy in these Republicans. They simply cannot hate her that much.
I can understand hate if it’s based in reality. But when you make up a whole narrative and then base your hate on the stuff you made up, then you left me no choice but to call you a crazy lunatic Republican.
Glenn Beck is a crazy lunatic Republican.
In one of his recent broadcast, Glenn Beck pointed out some politicians who were once against gay marriage but have now changed their minds. Hillary Clinton, a favorite target of the right right wing hate machine, was obviously mentioned.
It is apparently Glenn Beck’s belief that Hillary Clinton would become a lesbian if it means getting the gay vote.
“I’m telling you,” Beck said, “Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the White House desk if it becomes popular.”
If Fox News – the people who are the authors of some of the Republican talking points against Obamacare – cannot get a Republican to disclose their secret Obamacare replacement, then who can?
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) struggled to articulate a credible GOP alternative to the Affordable Care Act during an appearance on Fox News Monday morning, promising only to replace President Obama’s health care reform with “legislation that does give people more opportunities” and “better ideas.”
Mother Jones Reports – In December, sentiment for keeping the law was slim: keeping and improving Obamacare beat out repeal by only 43 to 42 percent. Today, Obamacare commands substantial support, 58 to 35 percent. The public may still harbor some doubts, but they’re increasingly tired of the debate and accept that the answer to Obamacare’s problems is to improve it, not to burn it to the ground.
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