“And There You Have It”: Walker On Minimum Wage; ‘I Don’t Think It Serves A Purpose’
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) debated challenger Mary Burke (D) on Friday, and the issue of the minimum wage offered the candidates a chance to highlight their differences. The question posed summarized the situation nicely: can a full-time worker live on $7.25 an hour? And does the state have a responsibility to even set a minimum wage?
Burke “strongly” endorsed a higher legal minimum, but the Republican incumbent largely dodged the question, though he seemed to express opposition to the law itself. “I want jobs that pay two or three times the minimum wage,” Walker said, adding, “The way that you do that is not by an arbitrary level of a state.”
Daniel Bice at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel followed up on that point in an interview with the governor today, asking Walker whether he believes the law should exist. The 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. Because we’re debating then about what the lowest levels are at. I want people to make, like I said the other night, two or three times that.”
It’s a striking thing for a governor to say during a tough re-election campaign, especially given his economic record – Walker promised Wisconsin voters four years ago that he’d create 250,000 jobs in his first term, and he’s struggling to get to Election Day with roughly half that total.
Indeed, if the governor doesn’t think the minimum wage “serves a purpose,” it’s not too late for Walker to ask someone to explain the law’s rationale.
Establishing a minimum wage is not about creating a target income for an entire population – it’s about creating a floor so that full-time workers don’t have to live in poverty.
Walker’s comments are rather bewildering. When Democrats created the federal minimum wage – after Henry Ford helped prove its value – the point wasn’t to “debate what the lowest levels” would be for most people, but rather, the law was created as a protection against abuse. Its existence did not prevent U.S. workers from creating the world’s most dynamic middle class.
How an incumbent governor of a Midwestern state can still find this confusing is a bit of a mystery.
For that matter, we can look around the country and see plenty of states doing quite well after raising their minimum wage, which makes sense – when more workers have more money in their pockets, they’ll spend more, which creates more economic activity and more jobs.
It’s one of the reasons a higher minimum wage is so popular with so much of the country.
It’s heartening, I guess, that Scott Walker isn’t pushing for the repeal of the wage law, but the fact that he doesn’t see its “purpose” seems like the sort of thing Wisconsin voters will be hearing again in the campaign’s final three weeks.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 14, 2014
“GOP’s ‘Reparations’ Insanity”: Why Thom Tillis’ Latest Screwup Is So Important
History may ultimately remember GOP Senate candidate Thom Tillis as one of the only Republicans in North Carolina history to serve as speaker of the House. And if he manages to defeat Sen. Kay Hagan this November, history may ultimately remember Tillis as a bona fide member of the United States Senate. But while history’s verdict is still to be determined, my estimation of Thom Tillis is already set. Simply put, he’s the (despicable) gift that keeps on giving.
By the second time Tillis made news by giving voice to the base of the Republican Party’s reactionary id — first for promoting a “divide and conquer” strategy to attack recipients of government support; then for contrasting African Americans and Latinos in North Carolina with the state’s “traditional population” — I was beginning to have my suspicions. But a recent report on a 2007 statement in which Tillis claims a “subset” of the state’s Democrats ceaselessly call for “de facto reparations” is the clincher.
In this instance and others, what makes Tillis so valuable is the way his previous statements show what it sounds like when an ultra-conservative tries to reach his fellow travelers by using language intended to signal his membership within (and loyalty to) the tribe. Indeed, as was the case during both his “divide and conquer” gaffe and his “traditional population” slip, the Tillis we see attacking “de facto reparations” is on the defensive, trying to prove to his far-right audience that he’s still on their team. And everyone on that team, to state the obvious, just so happens to have white skin.
In fact, once you learn about the specific context of Tillis’s reparations remark, the connection between the U.S. far-right’s hatred for redistribution and its negative views of non-white citizens becomes even clearer. According to the report, Tillis’s statement was an attempt to persuade his most conservative supporters that the legislature’s apology would not pave the way for reparations, which was apparently their concern. “This resolution acknowledges past mistakes and frees us to move on,” Tillis assured these right-wingers, trying to spin the apology as a way to put the debate over racism and slavery’s legacy finally to rest.
Guarding against the possibility that his support for the apology be interpreted as a sign of a more fundamental disagreement with the Republican base, Tillis then endorsed the redistribution-is-reparations argument in general, claiming that a “subset” of Democrats “has never ceased to propose legislation that is de facto reparations.” All this despite the fact that, according to Tillis, “Federal and State [sic] governments have redistributed trillions of dollars of wealth over the years by funding programs that are at least in part driven by [the subset’s] belief that we should provide additional reparations.” And there you have it, according to Tillis: modern liberalism itself is little more than an elaborate excuse for giving money to blacks.
For people inclined to see most of U.S. politics as heavily influenced by the country’s shameful history on race — a group amongst which I count myself — Tillis’s argument, his conflation of redistribution and race, couldn’t have been more revealing. Yet for those who are not conservative but are still sometimes uncomfortable ascribing so much of our politics to the consequences of race, there may be a temptation to assume Tillis’s argument, while undeniably racialized, has more to do with the ways Republicans have gone backwards on race during the Obama era. But let’s remember: Tillis’s comments came in 2007, before there was a President Obama, before there was Obamacare and before conservative media began talking about reparations as a matter of course.
So Tillis’s latest flub isn’t about Obama, specifically. Instead, it tells us something essential about the conservative movement today as a whole. Namely, that despite what self-styled centrist pundits and Republican Party leadership may tell you, the debate over the welfare state and redistribution — which has once again come to dominate American politics, and is likely to continue to do so into the foreseeable future — is, especially for hardcore conservatives, a debate about tribal belonging and race. Former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said that all politics is local; if I could tweak the phrase for the current era, I’d say that when it comes to American politics, all redistribution is racial.
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, October 14, 2014
“For GOP, Crickets From The Pundits”: The Kentucky Senate Race And The Media’s Double Standard For Disqualifying Candidates
Last week, in the tightly contested Senate race in Kentucky, both Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and his Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes gave newsworthy interviews in which they seemed to stumble over basic questions. But only one of the awkward missteps was treated as big news–treated even as a campaign-ending debacle–by some in the Beltway press: the Grimes interview.
Pundits pounced after Grimes refused, during an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal editorial board, to say whether she voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. (McConnell has spent most of his campaign trying to tie Grimes to Obama, who is unpopular in Kentucky.)
After a Republican opposition group posted the clip of Grimes’ answer, the Washington Post immediately linked to it and mocked the candidate’s performance as “painful.” On MSNBC, morning host Joe Scarborough bellowed, “What a rookie mistake!” CNN commentators criticized Grimes for being “too scripted” and “evasive.”
Keep in mind; the issue itself is of no practical consequence to Kentucky voters — it doesn’t affect their day-to-day lives. But the story revolved around campaign “optics,” which Beltway commentators now thrive on, especially when it’s bad Democratic optics.
“Is she ever going to answer a tough question on anything? You want to be a U.S. senator?” demanded Meet The Press moderator, Chuck Todd. “I think she disqualified herself. I really do. I think she disqualified herself.”
Recall that query (“Is she ever going to answer a tough question on anything?”), and the way Todd described it as a disqualifying trait for a Senate candidate. Because the day before the Grimes interview, McConnell called into Kentucky Sports Radio to talk with host Matt Jones. Days earlier, the popular host had interviewed Grimes with the understanding the McConnell campaign had also agreed to an interview. But after Jones grilled Grimes on the air, McConnell’s campaign refused to answer Jones’ emails and phone calls with regards to finalizing an appearance.
After days of on-air pleas, McConnell, without advance notice, finally called into the show last Wednesday and spoke with Jones for 14 minutes. Among the actual topics covered (in the place of optics analysis) were climate change and gay marriage. McConnell basically refused to answer questions about either:
JONES: That’s a yes or no question. Do you believe in global warming?
McCONNELL: No it isn’t. It is not a yes or no question. I am not a scientist.
And here’s how McConnell danced around the issue of gay marriage:
When asked if he supports gay marriage, McConnell answered, “I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman.” Asked why he believes that, McConnell again repeated he thinks marriage is “between one man and one woman.” Again asked “why?” McConnell repeated the same line. Jones tried one more time. Again, “It is my belief that marriage is between one man and one woman.”
To recap: If you’re a Kentucky Democrat and you don’t answer a straight-forward question, you may as well take your name off the ballot, according to Beltway journalists. But if you’re a Kentucky Republican and you do the same thing, it’s mostly crickets from the same pundits.
And again, Grimes’ election crime was to stumble over a tactical campaign question, while McConnell refused to answer questions about public policy that inform the decisions he makes as a lawmaker. So why does the Democrat get hit harder?
There’s something of a conventional wisdom among commentators that Republicans nominated much stronger candidates this election cycle. And specifically, GOP candidates aren’t out on the campaign trail making up strange and unsupported claims that could jeopardize Republican chances of reclaiming the Senate. This observation is usually made in contrast to 2010 and 2012, when untested Republican candidates such as Todd Akin, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle uncorked a series of verbal shockers and badly lost their campaigns.
Republican candidates this time around are so much more professional and focused and on-message. They’re so mainstream. Or so goes the narrative.
Keep in mind that the Republican candidate in North Carolina, Thom Tillis, says the government needs to “seal” the U.S.-Mexican border in order to protect America from the Ebola virus (via West Africa). The Republican candidate in Arkansas, Tom Cotton, thinks Mexican drug cartels are teaming up with Islamic State terrorists. And the Republican candidate in Iowa, Joni Ernst, suggested Obama be impeached because he’s “become a dictator.
All of that is complete nonsense. But Republicans don’t have to worry about candidates making crazy allegations this cycle, and Grimes is the one who flunked the competency test?
Meanwhile, Colorado Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner repeatedly refuses to directly answer whether “humans are contributing significantly to climate change.”
That type of evasion has become a hallmark of the midterm election cycle: Faced with the very simple, yes-or-no question about whether candidates believe climate change is happening, lots of Republican in tight races now throw up their hands and suggest the topic’s just too complicated and confusing, and that once scientists stop arguing about it, they’ll be happy to address the issue.
Of course, 97 percent of scientists are in heated agreement about the topic, which makes the dodge so comical. But have we heard D.C. pundits condemning the conveyor belt of clunky dodges? Have who heard Sunday morning talk show hosts announce that any candidate who refuses to address a “tough question” about climate change (or gay marriage) has instantly disqualified him or herself?
We have not.
Question: Are there different media standards for Republicans and Democrats this election cycle?
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters For America, October 13, 2014
“A Problem That Doesn’t Exist”: Walker Struggles To Defend Wisconsin Voting Restrictions
Wisconsin’s voter-ID law is such a fiasco, it’s hard not to wonder sometimes how anyone could defend it. In a debate on Friday night, Gov. Scott Walker (R), who fought to impose voting restrictions before his re-election bid, made his best case.
Walker said that the voter ID law, which the U.S. Supreme Court just blocked from being enforced, is worthwhile if it stops one person from fraudulently casting a ballot.
“It doesn’t matter if there’s one, 100 or 1,000,” Walker said. “Amongst us who would be that one person who would like to have our vote canceled out by a vote that was cast illegally?”
This isn’t a good argument, but it’s important to evaluate in the context of the Republican “war on voting” in general.
Walker realizes that there are no documented incidents in modern Wisconsin history of a voter committing voter fraud, at least not in a way that could be prevented by a voter-ID law. The Republican governor also realizes that independent estimates suggest more than 300,000 legal, eligible Wisconsin voters could be disenfranchised by this voter-ID law, which addresses a problem that doesn’t exist.
But note the calculus Walker makes: disenfranchising 300,000 legal voters is a price he’s willing to pay to ensure that one – not one percent, just one literal individual – fraudulent-but-hypothetical vote isn’t cast. Wisconsin’s governor is prepared to create the worst election-related chaos in the nation, on purpose, regardless of the costs or consequences, if it means one individual who might cast a fraudulent vote is prevented from doing so.
If this is the best argument Walker can come up with, voter-suppression proponents really need to come up with new talking points.
Of course, I should mention that the governor’s defense is, at least for now, a moot point. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked implementation of Wisconsin’s ridiculous law last week.
That said, Walker’s administration, and Wisconsin’s Republican state attorney general, are still looking for ways to impose this and related voting restrictions in this year’s election.
This is no small matter for the governor’s personal prospects – polls show him in a very tight race against challenger Mary Burke (D), and if Walker can disenfranchise 300,000 voters, his odds of winning improve. In other words, the Republican incumbent has a strong incentive to prevent many of his constituents from voting, and he continues to look for new ways to make that happen.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, october 13, 2014
“Secret Deficit Lovers”: The GOP Deficit Scolds Are Having A Hard Time Letting Go
What if they balanced the budget and nobody knew or cared?
O.K., the federal budget hasn’t actually been balanced. But the Congressional Budget Office has tallied up the totals for fiscal 2014, which ran through the end of September, and reports that the deficit plunge of the past several years continues. You still hear politicians ranting about “trillion dollar deficits,” but last year’s deficit was less than half-a-trillion dollars — or, a more meaningful number, just 2.8 percent of G.D.P. — and it’s still falling.
So where are the ticker-tape parades? For that matter, where are the front-page news reports? After all, talk about the evils of deficits and the grave fiscal danger facing America dominated Washington for years. Shouldn’t we be making a big deal of the fact that the alleged crisis is over?
Well, we aren’t, and once you understand why, you also understand what fiscal hysteria was really about.
First, ordinary Americans aren’t celebrating the deficit’s decline because they don’t know about it.
That’s not mere speculation on my part. Earlier this year, YouGov polled Americans on fiscal issues, asking among other things whether the deficit had increased or declined since President Obama took office. (In case you’re wondering, the pollsters carefully explained the difference between annual deficits and the level of accumulated debt.) More than half of those polled said it had gone up, while only 19 percent correctly said that it had gone down.
Why doesn’t the public know better? Probably because of the way much of the news media report this and other issues, with bad news played up and good news downplayed if it’s reported at all.
This has been glaringly obvious in the case of health reform, where every problem with the Affordable Care Act has been the subject of headlines, while in right-wing media — and to some extent in mainstream news sources — favorable developments go unremarked. As a result, many people — even, in my experience, liberals — have the impression that the rollout of Obamacare has been a disaster, and have no idea that enrollment is above expectations, costs are lower than expected, and the number of Americans without insurance has dropped sharply. Surely something similar has happened on the budget deficit.
But what about people who pay a lot of attention to the budget, the self-proclaimed deficit hawks? (Some of us prefer to call them deficit scolds.) They’ve spent the past few years telling us that budget shortfalls are the most important issue facing the nation, that terrible things will happen unless we act to stem the flow of red ink. Are they expressing satisfaction over the fading of that threat?
Not a chance. Far from celebrating the deficit’s decline, the usual suspects — fiscal-scold think tanks, inside-the-Beltway pundits — seem annoyed by the news. It’s a “false victory,” they declare. “Trillion dollar deficits are coming back,” they warn. And they’re furious with President Obama for saying that it’s time to get past “mindless austerity” and “manufactured crises.” He’s declaring mission accomplished, they say, when he should be making another push for entitlement reform.
All of which demonstrates a truth that has been apparent for a while, if you have been paying close attention: Deficit scolds actually love big budget deficits, and hate it when those deficits get smaller. Why? Because fears of a fiscal crisis — fears that they feed assiduously — are their best hope of getting what they really want: big cuts in social programs. A few years ago they almost managed to bully the nation into cutting Social Security and/or raising the Medicare eligibility age; they even had hopes of turning Medicare into an underfinanced voucher program. Now that window of opportunity is closing fast.
But isn’t the falling deficit just a short-term blip, with the long-run outlook as dire as ever? Actually, no. Falling deficits right now have a lot to do with a strengthening economy plus some of that “mindless austerity” the president condemned. But there has also been a dramatic slowdown in the growth of health spending — and if that continues, the long-run fiscal outlook is much better than anyone thought possible not long ago. Yes, current projections still show a rising ratio of debt to G.D.P. starting some years from now, and uncomfortable levels of debt a generation from now. But given all the clear and present dangers we face, it’s hard to see why dealing with that distant and uncertain prospect should be any kind of policy priority.
So let’s say goodbye to fiscal hysteria. I know that the deficit scolds are having a hard time letting go; they’re still trying to bring back the days when Bowles and Simpson bestrode the Beltway like colossi. But those days aren’t coming back, and we should be glad.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, October 9, 2014
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