The Faux Noise Unemployment Plan

If there was ever any doubt that Faux Noise is the GOP Reichsministry of Propaganda, this should settle it.

Back in July, when a scheduled increase in the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour was about to take place, Fox News ran a segment examining how “the hike will hurt,” joining a media chorus about the supposed detrimental effect the increase would have on business hiring.

Now, with its Republican-inspired “Where are the jobs?” campaign in full swing, Fox has gone “on the job hunt” with a “new” idea for increasing employment: cutting the minimum wage. Jumping off from an op-ed by Washington Post editorial board member Charles Lane, Fox yesterday ran a handful of segments on the same basic premise — cutting the minimum wage may be the answer to the jobs dilemma. Watch a compilation:

 

Fox’s anchors seemed very pleased to have stumbled onto this line of thought. Of course, none of the anchors mention that almost all of the economic research on the subject shows that the minimum wage has little to no effect [pdf] on employment. The most well-known researchers on the subject — David Card and Alan Krueger — examined a minimum wage increase in New Jersey, and found that “employment actually expanded in New Jersey relative to Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage was constant.”...

Inserted from <Think Progress>

The motivation here is clear.  Every penny not paid to a worker is a penny a millionaire can keep.

As the Speech Approaches

Discussion of a health care compromise that does not include the public option continues to circulate in Washington.

As President Obama and top advisers drafted his eagerly awaited health care speech to Congress, new details emerged Monday about fees and coverage limits under a proposal being floated by the chairman of a crucial Senate committee.

The proposal from the lawmaker, Senator Max Baucus, who heads the Finance Committee, would impose new fees on some sectors of the health care industry, but none on individuals, to help offset initial costs estimated at $880 billion over 10 years, according to officials familiar with the outline.

The plan, circulating among some committee members of both parties, would also offer the option of lower-cost insurance, with protection only against the costs of catastrophic illnesses, to those 25 and younger. In addition, it would provide basic Medicaid coverage to millions of low-income people who are currently ineligible for the program, but the benefits would be less comprehensive than standard Medicaid.

Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, will try on Tuesday to win support from the three Republicans and two other Democrats on his committee with whom he has been deliberating for months. Ultimately, however, he will need a majority of the committee’s 23 members, several of whom are resentful at being excluded…

Inserted from <NY Times>

I personally think the idea stinks.  Medicaid with less comprehensive benefits  means reduced health care for the poor.  Also it provides a federal mandate to states, already cash-strapped, to provide the Medicaid with no guarantee of funding adequate to cover it.  I also think that Baucus giving Republicans an even (three to three)role in negotiating a health care proposal in a Finance  Committee with a strong Democratic majority was an act of either pure insanity or pure corruption.  If Americans wanted Republicans to have an even say, they would not have voted so many of them out of office.  However Obama’s speech in Cincinnati yesterday left some reason or hope.

In a combative Labor Day speech, President Obama said that the healthcare debate had gone on too long and accused opponents of spreading lies meant to convince Americans that his proposed overhaul would cruelly deny care to the elderly.

The president, speaking at an AFL-CIO picnic, said that "special interests" were determined to "scare the heck out of people."

"I've got a question for all these folks who say, you know, we're going to pull the plug on Grandma and this is all about illegal immigrants -- you've heard all the lies," Obama said. "I've got a question for all those folks: What are you going to do? What's your answer? What's your solution?

"And you know what? They don't have one."...

...He said he wanted to curb rising premiums, bar insurance companies from denying coverage to sick people and create a new marketplace that would offer reasonably priced coverage.

But his overriding message in Cincinnati was that healthcare discussions need to end. In making that case, he was rejecting a Republican suggestion that he "reset" healthcare negotiations and start anew.

With about 20,000 people listening in and outside the pavilion, Obama said "every debate at some point comes to an end. At some point, it's time to decide. At some point, it's time to act. Ohio, it's time to act and get this thing done."

Obama's appearance before the union crowd was a delicate one. In any number of ways, the White House has signaled it was willing to compromise on the "public option" -- a government-run program that would compete with private insurers -- rather than let a healthcare bill that includes such a plan collapse.

But labor officials have made clear that they don't want the president to bargain away the public option.

Last week, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard L. Trumka said the union would not back a healthcare bill without the public option.

The union president, John J. Sweeney, appeared on stage before Obama's arrival and called for a "proud public option to bring down costs and keep the insurance companies honest."

Another guest speaker pressed that point. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told the crowd that Congress would pass a healthcare bill "with a strong public option."

But in his speech, Obama did little to clarify matters. He reiterated that he favors a public option but stopped short of an unequivocal statement he would veto any healthcare bill that lacks one. "I continue to believe that a public option within the basket of insurance choices would help improve quality and bring down costs," he said.

That was enough to satisfy some union leaders. Trumka said in an interview afterward: "I take him at face value. He said he was going to fight for the public option. We're excited about that, and we're going to help him."…

Inserted from <LA Times>

To be honest, I no longer have a dog in this hunt.  By the time whatever Congress does takes effect, I’ll be on Medicare anyway.  So my opinion has nothing to do with what I want for me.  I know from personal experience what it is to watch my health deteriorate due to the inability to afford either health coverage or medical care.  I don’t want that to happen to anyone else.  Universal  health care without a public option is nothing but welfare for Big Insurance.

Happy Labor Day

Today is the day America celebrates the accomplishments and contributions of workers to our society, and I think it’s great to have a holiday or and about common people.  Here is a history of Labor day, provided vy the US Bureau of Labor.

HOW LABOR DAY CAME ABOUT; WHAT IT MEANS

"Labor Day differs in every essential from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.

Founder of Labor Day

More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.

Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."

But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.

The First Labor Day

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, l883.

In l884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in l885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Labor Day Legislation

Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 2l, l887. During the year four more states -- Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York -- created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.

A Nationwide Holiday

The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday -- a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement. 

The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio and television.

The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership -- the American worker.

[Source: United States Department of Labor]

Inserted from <USGovInfo>

No before my friends from the lynch me, but ever so politely, let me admit that our government has failed to mention that before it was Labor Day, it was Labour Day.

The holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes ("Nine-Hour Movement") first in Hamilton, then in Toronto, Canada in the 1870s, which resulted in a Trade Union Act which legalized and protected union activity in 1872 in Canada. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers' strike led to an annual celebration in Canada. In 1882, American labor leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labor festivals in Toronto. Inspired from Canadian events in Toronto, he returned to New York and organized the first American "labor day" on September 5 of the same year.

Inserted from <Wikipedia>

Now, as wonderful as it is to wave the flag and celebrate labor, let us not forget that workers’ rights and ability to form and join unions has been seriously curtailed by the GOP No Billionaire Left Behind program.

For the past thirty years, the gospel of lean and mean has reordered the world of work, setting off a race to the bottom in which employers circumvent and evade standards that once seemed inviolate. That race has now taken us to a logical low point: many employers are ignoring workplace laws altogether.

Take the restaurant workers who line up for paychecks after twelve hours of work only to be told there's no money, or the nursing home aide who routinely works well into the night without extra pay, or the temp worker who packs food in an ice-cold warehouse without protective gear only to have the temp agency illegally deduct money from her wages every week.

This is just a sampling of the ways America's laws are failing to protect workers at the start of the twenty-first century. And until recently, public agencies often lacked the resources or political will to respond to such abuses. As Congressional investigators documented shortly after President Obama took office, employers who violate minimum wage and overtime laws are rarely caught or prosecuted.

Inserted from <The Nation>

So if we’re serious about celebrating labor, wouldn’t the the best celebration be to press Congress to pass a meaningful restoration of workers’ rights?

Happy Labor Day to you all!