“A Major Issue In The 2016 Elections”: Walker Dismisses Minimum Wage As ‘Lame’
Just a few weeks before his re-election bid, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) was asked whether minimum-wage laws should even exist. The Republican governor replied, “Well, I’m not going to repeal it but I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it serves a purpose.”
Seven months later, shortly after kicking off his GOP presidential campaign, Walker went just a little further. The Washington Post reported:
Scott Walker appeared to take aim at the national minimum wage on Monday evening, referring to it as one of many “lame ideas” pushed by Democrats.
Walker’s comment came in a lengthy interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity immediately following a speech formally announcing his entrance into the 2016 presidential race. Walker said the next president needs to speak the language of the industrial Midwest and connect with the working class.
According to the video, eagerly disseminated by Democratic officials, Walker told the Fox News host, “The left claims that they’re for American workers and they’ve just got just really lame ideas – things like the minimum wage.”
In context, there was nothing to suggest the governor was talking about his opposition to a minimum-wage increase, so much as the existence of the minimum wage itself. To hear Walker tell it, the law is a “lame” benefit for American workers.
It’s a pretty provocative move for a national candidate – increasing the minimum wage is one of the more popular ideas in the country right now, enjoying broad support for a wide range of voters. Just a month ago, a CBS News poll found 71% of Americans want to see the minimum wage go from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour – and that included a majority of self-identified Republican voters.
The Wisconsin governor, meanwhile, appears to support lowering the minimum wage to $0.
What’s just as interesting is how common this position has become in GOP circles. For decades, the debate was largely limited to those who wanted to raise the minimum wage and those who wanted to leave it unchanged. There were a few folks on the margins opposed to the law itself, but this was a fringe position that few took seriously.
This year, however, a growing number of presidential candidates are practically boasting about their hostility forwards the minimum wage. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), for example, has suggested getting rid of the minimum altogether, arguing it’s not “the government’s business” to interfere with wages. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has said, plainly, “I don’t think a minimum wage law works.”
Earlier this year, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), whom some see as a moderate, went so far as to say, “We need to leave it to the private sector. I think state minimum wages are fine. The federal government shouldn’t be doing this.”
Walker clearly wants to be part of the same club. Expect this to be a major issue in the 2016 elections.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, July 14, 2015
“The Supreme Court’s Ruling Be Damned”: Ted Cruz Isn’t Taking The Marriage Ruling Well
At an event over the weekend, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) was asked about last week’s Supreme Court rulings on the Affordable Care Act and marriage equality. The right-wing Iowan, not surprisingly, wasn’t pleased, calling the court decisions “the heaviest one-two punch delivered against the Constitution and the American people that we’ve ever seen in the history of this country.”
Of course, Steve King is expected to say things like this. When presidential candidates go over the top in the same way, it’s a little more alarming. MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin reported:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) went so far as to call for a constitutional convention to overturn the court’s decision while campaigning in Iowa, according to CNN. In an interview with Sean Hannity he called the back-to-back rulings on health care and gay marriage “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history.”
Hannity, incidentally, found Cruz’s rhetoric quite compelling, responding, “I couldn’t say it more eloquently.”
For what it’s worth, it’s not hard to think of some genuinely tragic 24-hour periods in American history. The Lincoln assassination comes to mind. So does the time British troops burned the White House. There were days during the Civil War in which tens of thousands of Americans died on the battlefield. Just in the last century, we witnessed the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, and a corrupt president resign in disgrace.
For the Republican presidential hopeful, learning that Americans will have health benefits and loving couples will get married belongs on the same list.
To be sure, while much of the country will probably find that odd, it’s equally important to appreciate what Cruz intends to do with his outrage.
On the Affordable Care Act, the Texas senator will, naturally, continue to push a pointless repeal crusade. On marriage rights, Cruz intends to “focus on defending religious liberty by protecting those who act on their conscience and appointing judges who understand the limits placed on them by the Constitution.”
But it’s the Republican’s plans for the high court itself that stand out. The Huffington Post reported:
To challenge that “judicial activism,” Cruz said he is proposing a constitutional amendment to require Supreme Court justices to face retention elections every eight years. […]
Under Cruz’s proposed amendment, justices would have to be approved by a majority of American voters as well as by the majority of voters in least half of the states. If they failed to reach the required approval rating, they would be removed from office and barred from serving on the Supreme Court in the future.
Soon after, the senator said he “absolutely” believes county clerks in Texas should freely refuse marriage licenses to couples who wish to marry, the Supreme Court’s ruling be damned.
As ridiculous as Cruz’s posturing seems, it’s important to remember the broader context: national GOP candidates have a built-in incentive to be as hysterical as possible right now, in the hopes of currying favor with the party’s base. Mild, reasoned disappointment with the court doesn’t impress far-right activists; unrestrained, hair-on-fire apoplexy does.
Ted Cruz appears to understand this dynamic all too well.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 29, 2015
“I Believe That We Can Win”: The Christian Right Has Lost Political And Cultural Influence
Investigative journalist Brad Friedman has observed that America is moving in a progressive direction, despite the mainstream media’s “center-right nation” shibboleth. Despite the obstacles that have been placed in the pathway of progressives, Friedman is correct beyond dispute.
Think back to a decade ago. Same-sex marriage was considered an abomination in large parts of the country. Christian fundamentalists were flexing their muscles as never before. Rush Limbaugh and Fox dominated the American media landscape. The Bush administration had launched a war on climate science. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was gay-bashing his way to national prominence.
Today, marriage equality is the law of the land. The Christian Right has lost political and cultural influence. Limbaugh’s career is in freefall, and Fox may soon follow. Pope Francis has called upon the world to fight for climate justice. As for Romney, well…
The signs of progressive power are everywhere: the growing momentum of Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, the profound failure of the right-wing effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the increasing acceptance of transgender Americans as full and equal citizens, the smashing success of the fossil-fuel divestment movement.
No, we haven’t reached the promised land yet. There are still so many forces of right-wing depravity in our country–some with positions in Congress, some with platforms on cable, some with pistols in churches. Those forces of depravity will not retreat quietly. However, they can and will be defeated.
We’re moving forward. We’re going to make America into what it should have always been all along: a country were any man or woman can rise to the height of his or her potential regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or income; a country where our public schools never have to lack for adequate funding; a country where we don’t shuffle off to war unless we absolutely have to; a country where we recognize the separation of billionaire and state; a country where we look out for future generations by dramatically reducing our greenhouse gas emissions; a country where a woman can exercise her right to choose in peace; a country where maniacs don’t have easy access to guns; a country where knowledge is embraced and ignorance is scorned.
We’re getting there. Yes, it’s been a long road. We’ve had to endure the racist savagery unleashed by the Southern Strategy. We’ve had to endure that force demonic known as Reaganomics. We’ve had to endure an impeachment over an erection and two stolen elections. We’ve had to endure a lie-based war for oil which left innocent blood on Iraqi soil. We’ve had to endure six years of deranged drama from the bigoted enemies of Barack Obama. It’s been a long time coming…but we’re getting there.
We will leave our children and grandchildren a proud progressive country.
We will repair the damage the right wing has inflicted upon our fair land.
We will remedy the injustices that hurt so many of our fellow citizens.
We will declare independence from ignorance and fidelity to fact.
We will move this country forward forever.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, June 28, 2015
“Closet Confederate Sympathizers?”: The Clinton-Confederate Flag Conspiracy Theory Is A New Low
Out of the swirl of chaos, grief, grace, and courage that has followed the Charleston shooting, partisan politics has mostly kept its rightful place nowhere near the state of South Carolina.
But the national debate over the future of the Confederate flag that flies in front of the state’s capitol has unwittingly given rise to one of the more bizarre Clinton conspiracy theories to date: that Bill and Hillary Clinton, despite decades as civil rights advocates and their right-wing caricature as Northeast liberal elites, are closet Confederate sympathizers.
The meme took off on Sunday, when The Daily Caller ran a story under the headline “Flashback: Bill Clinton Honored the Confederacy on Arkansas State Flag.”
The next morning, the hosts of Fox & Friends debated whether Hillary Clinton had refused to denounce the Confederate flag flying in front of the South Carolina (though she actually did denounce it in 2007) out of loyalty to her husband, who, Elisabeth Hasselbeck said, “signed a law honoring the Confederacy in Arkansas and about the flag’s design in 1987…that stated, ‘the blue star is to commemorate the Confederate states of America.”
The legislation that The Daily Caller, Fox & Friends, and now dozens of conservative blogs are referencing was a bill to make the flag that Arkansas had flown since 1924 the state’s official flag. That flag includes four stars, three to symbolize the countries that held the Arkansas territory—Spain, France and the United States—and the fourth, as Hasselbeck said, “to commemorate the Confederate states of America.”
Nowhere in the state’s legislative history does it explain why the 63-year-old flag needed to be made official, but Arkansas historians have two explanations. First, the legislature was moving to give the state a number of “official” designations—think “official state butterfly,” “official state grain”—as it celebrated its sesquicentennial.
Second, Bill Clinton and the state legislature were pushing through a series of measures to ban flag desecration as the U.S. Supreme Court debated and eventually struck down the 48 state laws against flag burning, including Arkansas’s ban. Historians told me they believed the 1987 flag bill was passed to specify the official design of the state flag in conjunction with that effort. As governor, Clinton later signed a bill making it a crime to burn or deface a flag, a move that drew vocal complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union.
It is true that Clinton did nothing in his time as governor to remove the state flag’s reference to Arkansas’s role in the Confederacy. But by all accounts, the bill he signed making the state’s flag official was not created as a Confederate memorial. The sponsor of the bill, longtime Arkansas legislator W.D. “Bill” Moore, has since died, but former Representative Steve Smith said, “I served with Bill Moore in the early 1970s, and he was hardly a neo-Confederate. Nor was Bill Clinton.”
The more recent Clintonian history related to the Confederate flag is easier to find and may be one of the more straightforward positions either Clinton has ever taken. Both have been consistently, unambiguously against its use.
During Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, he endorsed Georgia Governor Zell Miller’s fruitless attempt to remove the St. Andrews Cross from the Georgia state flag, a change that eventually came nine years later, and made Miller the keynote speaker at Clinton’s 1992 Democratic National Committee nominating convention.
In 2000, as South Carolina wrestled with the future of the Confederate flag that still flew above its capitol, then-President Clinton gave the state his unsolicited advice during a visit to Allen University, a historically black college in Columbia, just miles from the state capitol: Take the flag down. “As long as the waving symbol of one American’s pride is the shameful symbol of another American’s pain, we have bridges to cross in this country and we better get across them,”’ he told the students.
When Hillary Clinton became a candidate for president herself in 2007, she said much the same thing during her own visit to the state, telling the AP she thought South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds entirely, not just from the front of the capitol.
And Tuesday, after South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call to finally remove the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds in the wake of the Charleston tragedy, Hillary Clinton called it the right thing to do.
“I appreciate the actions begun yesterday by the governor and other leaders of South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State House, recognizing it as a symbol of our nation’s racist past that has no place in our present or our future,” Clinton said. “It shouldn’t fly there, it shouldn’t fly anywhere.”
There are more than enough reasons for members of the conservative media to be dubious about the Clintons: the deleted emails, the paid speeches, the Friends of Bill you thought went away with the Y2K bug but were actually just sitting on the Clinton Foundation payroll waiting for the next Clinton administration to begin.
But accusing either Clinton of being a Confederate sympathizer, past or present, is a conspiracy beneath even its creators.
By: Patricia Murphy,
“Why Is It So Hard To Call Racism Racism?”: Let There Be No (Pretend) Confusion About Church Shooter’s Motivation
This is for Elisabeth Hasselbeck of Fox & Friends, who described last Thursday’s act of white extremist terrorism at Emanuel AME church in Charleston as an “attack on faith.”
It’s for Rick Perry, who said maybe the shooting happened because of prescription drugs. It’s for Jeb Bush, who said, “I don’t know what was on the mind” of the killer. It’s for South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who said, “We’ll never understand what motivates” a crime like this. It’s for Glenn Beck, who said, “I don’t know why this shooter shot people. He might shoot people because he’s a racist. He might have shot people because he’s an anarchist. He might have shot people because he hates Christians.”
This is also for the reader who called the tragedy a “hoax” perpetrated by the White House to promote racial hatred and gun control, and for the one who said, “Charleston was not a hate crime.” Finally, it’s for any and everyone who responded to the massacre by chanting, tweeting, or saying, “All lives matter.”
For all of you, a simple question: What the hell is wrong with you people? Why is it so hard for you to call racism racism?
It is not news that some people go to extraordinary lengths to avoid conceding that America remains a nation stained by racial discrimination. Bring them a hundred testimonies illustrating it and they are unmoved. Bring them a thousand studies quantifying it and they say that numbers lie. They deny self-evident truth because otherwise, they must concede racism did not, in fact, end 50 years ago, and they are heavily invested in that fiction.
Still, it is breathtaking and heartbreaking to learn that this recalcitrance holds firm even in the face of so blatant a crime. Nine people dead following an attack upon a storied African-American church. The alleged killer: Dylann Roof, a 21-year old dropout with a Moe Howard haircut whose racist motivations were pretty clear to authorities from the beginning and have only become clearer since.
He said he wanted to shoot black people. You don’t get plainer than that.
Yet, even in the face of this utter lack of mystery, some of us professed confusion about the killer’s motives.
An “attack on faith”? Only the “War on Christmas” delusions and anti-gay fixations of Fox could make this about that.
“All lives matter”? Of course they do. But what is it about the specificity of declaring “Black Lives Matter” that some people object to? What is it they find problematic about acknowledging that black lives in particular are under siege in this country? It certainly wasn’t “all lives” Roof sought to snuff out when he entered that church.
And Glenn Beck’s professed confusion about the shooter’s motive? It is simply bizarre that a man who once famously dubbed President Obama “a racist” based on no evidence beyond the voices in his own head has such difficulty being that definitive about a white man who drove 100 miles to shoot up a black church.
A few days ago, a Toronto Star reporter tweeted video of a mostly white crowd that marched through Charleston chanting “Black Lives Matter.” God, but that was a welcome sight — ice-cold lemonade on the hottest day in August. It was a stirring, needed reminder that compassion has no color.
All this obfuscation and pretend confusion, on the other hand, is a less welcome reminder that, for all the undeniable progress we have made in matters of race, there remain among us not simply moral cowards, but far too many moral cripples hobbling about on stumps of decency and crutches of denialism.
Last week, nine people were slaughtered in a house of God for no other reason than that they were there, and they were black. It is a sad and simple truth that some of us, for some reason, have not the guts to say.
For that, they should be profoundly ashamed.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist, The Miami Herald; The National Memo, June 24, 2015
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