Working for a Living

When I was an employer and not really having time to think about such things I offered a package of work for pay that seemed reasonable at the time.  There were not positions that paid minimum wage because it was not that sort of business.  We consistently gave raises yearly even in the years we were not doing as well as other years.  No, I was not probably as good an employer as I could have been given my much broader understanding of that now, but we held our own at the time.

Now that I do have time to ponder the situation I read with interest any article that broadens my understanding.  My spouse worked for the welfare department in her state and has explained to me that many she interviewed over the years were told when they went to work for WalMart that they should apply immediately for food stamps, medical assistance and any other help available at the time.  I was flummoxed by this bit of information... but the continued reading has proven this to be true.  What sort of business model preys on its customers in this way?  With the owners of WalMart very firmly part of the 1% I got a clear view of what greed really looks like.

Walmart-Taxpayers-House-Report

The economic theory at work here is not, "we're in this together..." but, rather, "Give me all you got, I got mine...".  It is the bully's way of walking the path.  It is corporate irresponsibility at its greatest.  Years ago I hired a painter to spruce up the house.  He was struggling a bit at the time and decided to take a job outside his field to tide him over in a down economy.  He ended up at WalMart for a time and told me the stories of their employee abuse.  I was stunned then by the system in place to suppress the workers who made the company run.

So, here come the questions.  What is a fair wage for the worker bees?  Why are unions so vilified and suppressed today?  What is a reasonable minimum wage and why?  Who is writing the laws that favor the abusive practices?  What is to be done to correct the abusive power of corporations AND can it be relatively painless? 

I have read several opinions about what the minimum wage should be.  The easiest of these puts the minimum at around $14.75 and hour on the logic that with steady but small steps would have put it there since its last adjustments.  I have noted that Congress rarely takes up this question and generally acts long after the need has become extremely dire.  That is, or seems to be, the model for this rate.  I have also read that if the MW had been upped all along the way since the 1960's (even though it dates from 1938) the current value would be in the neighborhood of $21 and change.  What does that mean?

The minimum wage as a percentage of the poverty level.

(From study by Oregon State University)

I have to ask why is the minimum wage for a full time worker LESS THAN THE POVERTY LEVEL?

If one is working full time to get to somewhere in the area of 60% of the poverty level there would seem to be something seriously broken in the equation.  This means there is no healthcare in the formula and that we have reached a level of indentured servitude not seen for centuries.  This is not freedom.  This is not acceptable either.  The politicians have failed us in providing for the general welfare.  They have crimped economic expansion and eventually it will lead to a deep collapse of the economy.

As an aside here is the history of the Federal Minimum Wage:

Minimum Wage Chart

If you are in the situation of providing for your family at these levels you are incapable of making a meaningful stand against a specific employer.  The threat of job loss is too great.  Even if you are not truly making a living you are fearful of losing what little you do have.  Given that the employee handbook for so many organizations admonishes against talking about your wages with other employees there is every reason to suppose that you are powerless as an employee.  Given too that appointments to the Labor Relations Board have been stalled in Congress for some time the mechanism for dealing fairly with employee complaints has been hamstrung.  There are so many reasons the scales have been more than just tipped against the worker at this point that general unrest and frustration is begin to form the early cracks in the system.

Which means for me... more on this later.

To Ponder the Second Amendment

While the news has shifted, yet again, to other things for the moment I have revisited the Second Amendment and gun violence thought.  Understand that one of my past times is to comment on articles on various news sources but particularly on Huffington Post.  See earlier posts as to why I like that format but here is the point... I enjoy hunting the Trolls and commenting to correct the misinformation they put out there.

A lot of that stuff is juvenile and thereby easily dealt with but others are more thoughtful and it takes deep pondering to chat with them on a realistic basis.  That's why it's such a fun endeavor.  Some of the time it sinks to name calling after one exchange but often enough you have to look further to see what the real question is.  That's the set up for this entry.

Since long before the Sandy Hook tragedy my inclination has been to find a way to understand the path to controlling gun violence in incremental steps.  That means that I get a lot of criticisms saying something like,"...but that would not have prevented Sandy Hook."  Well, that is true enough but irrelevant.

It took a long time to SEE the Second Amendment in a different way simply because the arguments are old... very old at this point.  Some of the misdirection is aimed at obscuring real issues.  So here is the direction I have gone.

Almost every Troll sticks to the idea the 2nd Amendment says that their right to own guns is based on, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."  This is the version that was actually ratified by the states at the time.  There are a few that post differing versions of that but they can be ignored.  What these folks focus on is that the right may not be infringed.  Generally they gloss over the, "...well regulated militia..." part of this so they shout that the right cannot be infringed and it is the right that they have.  The part that says you can KEEP weapons is pretty clear as well, but you need to know what the essential right is before you can begin to bring that into focus.

It took many exchanges to bring this into focus but here it is.  According to this amendment you have the right to bear arms.  Put yourself in the place of the founding fathers and look closely.  It does not even give you the right to OWN a gun (just to keep them).  Okay, back up the bus a bit and look again.  At the time the words were written the concern was that a standing army was a danger to the Republic.  We have all seen in some part of the world the so-called Banana Republics facing their military taking over the government.  We did not want a standing military.  Got that.

Part of an armory at the time of the Revolutionary war.

 

The right to bear arms means that, when called upon, you have the Right to fight against foreign powers.  To maintain that right the amendment further implies that you must be part of that militia!  That you will be part of drills on a regular basis.  That you will be keeping the arms provided for that defense in the armory of the State or the Municipality or some such.  I do not even want to attempt the strange twist in logic that some have made that they have the right to bear arms against their government... in other ways that is called treason.

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Here are some exchanges that have brought this change in view into focus.  More on this later.

 You wrote:
Look, I don't think anyone... repeat, ANYONE... is trying to TAKE AWAY your guns. There is not an infinite right to bear arms at the expense of all other rights, however. Additionally, there ARE already limits on military style weapons. And, no, every citizen is only potentially a member of a WELL REGULATED militia. The 2nd amendment does imply that your right to bear arms is strong but not infinite. It does not even imply that you have a right to OWN a gun; only to have them available in the event there is a military NEED. Other than that you are not actually reading the amendment.

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  You wrote:
The gun folks are not thinking in terms of what is best for the country (once again). Okay, so be it. Waste your time and money on stupid. The restrictions on guns seems a correct one given the off the chain level of gun violence
in the country. I feel safer in some places because there is not some imagined infinite right to carry military weapons around.

But if you really want to exercise your first amendment right to petition the government (first amendment) to attempt to restrict the freedoms of the rest of us to be free from the worry the unrestricted guns create please waste as much money as possible. The lawyers will love you and the rest of us will feel better that you are off the streets and occupied. You cannot hide stupid.

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You wrote:
Look, I don't think anyone... repeat, ANYONE... is trying to TAKE AWAY your guns. There is not an infinite right to bear arms at the expense of all other rights, however. Additionally, there ARE already limits on military style weapons. And, no, every citizen is only potentially a member of a WELL REGULATED militia. The 2nd amendment does simply that your right to bear arms is strong but not infinite. It does not even imply that you have a right to OWN a gun only to have them available in the event there is a military NEED. Other than that you are not actually reading the amendment.

 joeThibo:
Well let's clarify. There is an unconstitutional limit on military weapons, but as you can see if you actually read the second amendment there is no limit applied to military weapons supplied in the amendment. So where does the government get the right to limit the type of arms the people can bear. That's where you have a problem like a lot of other people, they think they can just legislate the rights of the people in the second amendment. That also is not in the second amendment if the founders wanted the government to legislate to regulate the right to bear arms they would have provided that provision.
Since they didn't nobody can infer that their intention was to have the government any government regulate the rights in the second amendment. Since when has the government well regulated anything. They can't regulate a balance budget they can't regulate Banks they can't regulate the mortgage industry. Heck this administration can't even regulate the State
department without getting people murdered. So please the public is better at self regulating than the government. 

The constitution doesn't state the government is the regulator and since they can't regulate anything well the founders had it right to not supply the government should be the regulator of the second amendment.

 You wrote:
Given your failure to connect the dots, this will likely fall on deaf ears.  You cannot own a tank, rocket launcher or machine gun.  It is not a question of Constitutionality that you are prohibited from owning certain weapons at present.  Again, the 2nd amendment SAYS, literally, that you have the right to bear arms... it gives you no particular right (read it again) to OWN any gun.  It is more efficient that you are allowed to own a gun but you have misled yourself in the understanding that leaps from a "right to bear" somehow  means you have a right own.  It does not say that.  Get over it. 

Again, no one is looking to take your gun away but you need to understand that, technically, it is just a privilege not a right.

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 You wrote:
These days the militia IS the National Guard. Pretty straightforward, really.

 agenda21 wrote:
No it not it is called the National Guard, they purposely did not name it the United States Militia. Go look up the debate when the Nation Guard was started.
The Framers and Founder were very adamant about having any standing army in times of peace. The plan was to disband the Army during times of peace. An Army sitting around inside your country during times of peace is a very bad risk to have around.

 You wrote:
It appears you did not understand what you may have read.  The founders did not want a standing army, that part is true.  AND, the NG is not a standing army.  It is the present day version of the militia... organized by state.  Their weapons are kept in armories just as they were at the time of the founding of the country.  A gun, a musket, at that time was a years worth of earnings.  The state bought the weapon and stored it in the armory.  You might actually do a bit more reading before giving out misinformation.

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Further Pondering the First Amendment

From the previous post we can see that, indeed, the government is moving against a newsperson and a news organization.  Further that it is doing so under the Patriot Act designed and promoted for use against foreign and domestic enemies.

Hmmm, a reporter is not an enemy but then what are any of them doing with classified information?  They need to back their stories with fact... I get that.  They need to follow an elusive trail... I get that.  But there is a line there somewhere that says a reporter is acting in the same manner as a spy for ill purposes instead of reporting.  It is not clear that either reporters or the Department of Justice knows where that line might be.

Seeking phone records is not the same as listening in on conversations.  That is a large step (or, perhaps, many steps) from what DOJ has done here.  If a reporter is ding the same job as a spy and showing little or no discretion in how those gathered facts are used does that elevate the criminal side of the job? 

Once again, hmmm, what test of fact would be required to say that our first amendment rights have not been trampled?  Before we are neck deep in the swamp, what level of indiscretion is required to say that a reporter is effectively a spy?  Keep in mind that there are five parts to the First Amendment, one of which is the freedom of journalistic pursuit.

1.)  Freedom of Religion

2.)  Freedom of the Press

3.)  Freedom of Speech

4.)  Freedom of Assembly

5.) Freedom to Petition the government to Express Grievances

There are exceptions to every single one of these parts.  You cannot yell, "Fire" in a crowded theater, for instance.  You are not allowed to assemble on private property for unlimited protest without the owners consent.  There are limits to the words used in freedom of speech... and so forth.  So, this freedom of the press must have somme limits as well in all likelihood.

Ponder the Freedoms

DOJ Fox News Phone Records Filing

 

As "Benghazi" Implodes...

So, the Republican staffers altered the emails that they sought testimony over to shout down the critics but were caught in this lie.  As the Benghazi "affair" winds down to a complete halt the Right needed a new crisis.  They "found" one of their new attacks by claiming that the IRS was acting improperly... or, so they claim.

It turns out to be another fiction and the media has not yet caught up (perhaps because they like readership/viewership numbers to rise) and the story is being distorted by the onslaught of Right-side attackers.

My comment back has been (FB):

"Hmmm, let's see here... of groups under review at the time were about 29  Tea Party out of a larger batch and stated that they would undertake political activity (in their applications). The other roughly 200+ were neutral to left (including the NAACP) and these dim-bulbs want to spin this how??? None of the Rightie groups were denied the status. The letter of the law says that ANY political involvement means they should have been denied 501(c)4 status but the IRS, for well over 40 years, has softened that law by saying the primary purpose cannot be political (thereby obscuring the letter of the law). BTW, the NAACP has had the status since 1909!!! At the time this additional scrutiny was occurring the head of the department was a Bush appointee. Hmmm. The president fired the wrong guy, perhaps... Miller was the one to clean up the mess created by Citizen United even if the folks sorting the influx of applications made a poor sorting choice. In any event the groups didn't even have to seek the status of 501(c)4... they could have simply said they were and offered the proof of not making a profit or acting politically. All the hair-on-fire commentators are crazy. Where are the jobs???"

There is more that can be pointed out here but I will save that for later.

Gun Deaths SInce Sandy Hook

On this day there have been 3819 gun deaths in the U.S. since the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

For an update go to:  Current Count

Beyond the Pale, or is that Pail?

The Senate vote that failed to give us reasonable background checks for gun purchases is over for the moment, but it is so clearly not over.

While the four Democratic Senators who voted against the bill (not counting Harry Reid who needed to vote no to be able to bring the bill back at a later time) are from Red states.  In pondering the question some my wife and I wondered aloud how many people those four Senators represent?  Well, Sandy looked it up before I got around to it and here is a bit of a window on political logic.

North Dakota     699,628 people
South Dakota     833,354
Montana          1,005,141
Arkansas            731,449

This adds up to the staggering sum of 6,539,144 people represented by those four Senators.  On first glance that calculation seems like a significant number.  If these four Democrats were feeling the heat of their constituents then it makes some sense, if they want to keep their jobs, that they would come down on the side of voting against the bill.  They live in states that may not be in line with the national polls showing that 90% or so of the people who want to have background checks for gun purchases.  It takes a bit of pondering to see what Heidi Heitkamp, for example, had in mind when explaining her position after the vote.  What she said was, paraphrased, that the problem is what is in peoples minds not what is in their hand.  In other words, mental health is what she wants to see worked on rather than directing our efforts at gun control of any sort.  Hmmm, for a Congress that is shorting the funding of everything in sight she might as well have said that there is no real reason she voted, "No" on the bill.

Given that there is another observation about the population number that bears repeating.  While 6.5 million people are hounding the Senators from those Red states if you look at just the population of New York (19,570,261) or even just 90% of New York City (8,244,910) you might notice that these Red State Dem's are not focused on the real questions about reducing gun violence.

In the last few days I heard one commentator say that perhaps we just don't understand the gun culture in the middle of the country and that we have to give these Senators some slack because they live where people hunt more.  I know of no state where there is no hunting and as far as I can see there are guns everywhere anyway, even without hunting.  We actually do UNDERSTAND gun culture more than that.  In fact, we understand it so well that we have ignored that there are about as many gun deaths in United States per year as there are automobile related deaths.  We have worked together, as a country, to lower the automobile deaths and have had considerable success in reducing the number and percentage of fatalities over the years.  We have done virtually nothing to slow the gun related deaths since 1994.

Representative government means that we have people putting our wishes, the majority wishes, into law.  It is not just the four Democratic Senators that failed us, of course.  There are the Republicans that voted to kill the gun violence despite the will of the people... it's just that we noticed the four stand out votes more than those from representatives who have blocked some much legislation in the last 5 years.  It is shameful but I don't have much expectation for those Senators anyway. It is a question of how we bring this up for a vote again as quickly as possible.  It is just a drop in the bucket.