Slate Magazine: Jay Porter: A Small Business Owner's Case For Raising the Minimum Wage

Source:The New Democrat 

There are several reasons why I'm in favor of raising the Federal minimum wage.  Minimum wage workers are under paid for the work that they do and the services that they perform for their employers. Cashier handle most, if not all, of the money that their employer receives. They provide a necessary and essential service to their company.  The company can't stay in business without it.

Underpaying service workers reduces their ability to live a decent life.  Taxpayers then have to assist these workers in meeting their costs of living.  There is also a cost to the economy in decreased economic growth because of the purchasing power that these workers don't have.  Henry Ford realized this at the beginning of the 20th century.

Do I believe everyone is entitled to earn at least a middle class living simply for being alive?  Of course not, I'm not a Socialist but I do believe that everyone is entitled to be paid the money that their work and services bring to the table.  $7.25 an hour for workers who are critical to the success of a business  is underpayment.  The cost of that underpayment is passed to taxpayers as public assistance and lost  economic growth. 

Robert Shiller: 'Better Insurance Against Income Inequality'

Source:The New Democrat  

I could blog about indexing taxation of income for the wealthy in a couple of ways.  One would discuss the fact that it would never pass this Congress, especially with a Republican House.  Also, vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in red states don't want to talk about tax increases in an election year. They want to get reelected and keep the Senate in Democratic control.

This proposal will never become law but, just for the hell of it, we can talk about why its not good policy, which is yet another reason why it won't become law.  The idea that taxes on certain people could  go up automatically without specific congressional or executive branch action is undemocratic.  Money is power and the government should not rule that some people should have less of it without due process and complete transparency.

Minister Malcolm X: 'We're Going to Have to Go to War Against The Racists'

Source:Minister Malcolm X- Minister Malcolm X, talking about racism in 1963-64.

Source:The New Democrat 

Minister Malcolm X: 'We're going to have to win the fight against the racists." The video has since been deleted or blocked on YouTube.

This could easily be interpreted as saying that the supporters of equal rights and freedom for all Americans: "Are going to have to win the war against the racists in the courtroom and on the political battlefield." Which is what they have done for sixty or so years now. The bigots, both racists and homophobes, have been losing ground, since the Eisenhower Administration and Brown V. Board of Education.

The opponents of Malcolm X, especially on the Right and Far-Right, whether they are racists or not, will take his statement to say that he was calling for a violent revolution and for the African-American community to start attacking law enforcement, especially Caucasians and others who are in their way.  This is not what he was saying.  He was saying that if you are physically or verbally attacked, you have a right to defend yourself.

The Washington Post: George Will: Progressives Are Wrong About the Essence of the Constitution

Source:The New Democrat  

The more I hear from today's, so-called, Progressives, the more I believe that they are from a different country or, at least, have lived a long time in another country. They don't seem to see the U.S. Constitution for what it is.  They say, "Look, this is how other countries do it and it works there so we should do the same thing here."  They seem to be ignorant of the Constitution's constraints on the Federal Government.

These people are really Social Democrats.  They believe that the United States should be ruled by majority rule.  If we ever let the will of the majority decide everything without that annoying document that keeps interposing the Federal court system,  we could build the socialist utopia that they've always wanted and take care of everyone.

The Social Democrats, in the absence of the Constitution, would move to a parliamentary social democracy where Congress, actually just the House of Representatives, would pick our President for us.

The Constitution protects our individuals rights, our ability to live our private lives with minimal interference from government.  Today's Neo-Right Republican Party doesn't like that.  They claim to favor democracy but support the banning of homosexuality and same-sex-marriage.  They complain that the courts are thwarting the will of the people and being undemocratic when one of their big government behavioral control proposals is rejected.  They are either ignorant of the Constitution or hypocrites.

As George Will said in his column today, the U.S. Constitution is not about protecting American democracy but  protecting the constitutional rights of individual Americans.  Government at all levels is prohibited from infringing these rights even if certain of them become unpopular and a popular will emerges to limit these.  The U.S. Constitution protects Americans from big government even if an overweening big government becomes popular. 

The Washington Post: Alyssa Rosenberg: If Conservatives Lost the Culture War, That Doesn't Mean Liberals Won it

Source:The Washington Post- 

Source:The New Democrat

When people use the term "Culture War," it's not immediately clear what they're talking about.  It could be some pop culture war between Hollywood and Nashville, the capitol of country music, or, perhaps, the broader Bible Belt. Well, that sort of conflict is really not of much significance.  A more significant  Culture War is in the arena of politics and the way Americans look at life and how they believe they should be living it.

All the evidence you need to know that Liberals won that Culture War is that it's no longer 1955.  We no longer watch black and white TV or get together in the living room to listen to the radio. The man of the house is no longer likely to say, "Honey I'm home," when he comes home from work, with honey responding "How was your day dear?  Your favorite drink is by your chair in the living room."  Honey may not be there.  She may still be at work.

This may sound simplistic but we are in a completely different era where both men and women believe that they can do anything they want to if they work hard and get a good education and the skills they need to be successful. Gone are the days of stereotypical masculine and feminine roles.  African-Americans no longer live, for the most part, to serve Caucasian-Americans by working in their homes.  Gays are no longer trapped in the closet. Men and women no longer feel that they have to be married in order to have sex or live with their romantic partner and have and rear children.

The 1960s was obviously not a perfect decade but it was a liberating (great liberal word) decade for millions of Americans, thanks to the Baby Boom generation.  Today, 40-50 years later, we as a country, at least outside of the Bible Belt, feel that we have the freedom to live our own lives and do as we please without the threat of government or the religious and social establishment interfering.  Now, legalized gambling, legalized marijuana, same-sex-marriage, homosexuality, and  adult pornography are all mainstream.  Bye bye, Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Phyllis Schaffly.  You lost the Culture War.

As much as the Christian Right may want to put the whole country in a time machine and take us back to Leave it to Beaver Land (1955), those days are long gone.  America, today, is much more free than it was then and it seeks ever more personal and economic freedom.  It is never going back. 
Source:Secular Talk

The New Republic: Jonathan Cohn: Tax Day 2014: 'More Taxes Would Make For a Better Society'

Source:The New Democrat

Well, I guess it is official now, with this piece from Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic (his link is  above)  the classic American liberal magazine is dead.  Or perhaps, it has just been taken over by Socialists or Communists and the Liberals there are now forced to write pieces endorsing big government and critiquing the Right.  Or perhaps the Liberals at TNR were simply kicked out and sent away.  Maybe the TNR Liberals were kidnapped by the new TNR big government statists.

Jonathan Cohn calls tax day a time to celebrate. What's next?  He and the other big government statists are going to call for making tax day a national holiday or something?  Here's some helpful information. If you believe middle class Americans are under taxed, which apparently Mr. Cohn does, arguing in his piece today that all Americans except for the working poor should be taxed more, you are not a Liberal. 

People who believe that middle class Americans, auto mechanics, law enforcement workers, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, government workers in general (not including politicians, but Representative Jim Moran disagrees with that) and military personal are under-taxed are, simply, wrong.  These are workers who generally make 40-70 thousand dollars in a good year serving their fellow citizens and their country.  Mr. Cohn, playing the role of Uncle Sam, says,  "I have all of this new government that I want to create at your expense and I need your money. I'm the government and I'm a socialist, its my money to begin with and I'm just nice enough to let you have some of it!"

People who believe that hard-working middle class Americans are under taxed are not liberal and, I  argue, not progressive either.  You don't hear socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders or progressive senators Tom Harkin and Sherrod Brown calling for increased taxes on middle class Americans.

People who believe that hard working middle class Americans, who technically aren't poor but who live paycheck to paycheck and will need Social Security to have any type of solid retirement income, are under taxed are socialist, big government, statists.

Slate Magazine: Jamelle Bouie: Jim DeMint, Abolitionism & Constitutional Conservatives

Source:The New Democrat 

Representative Michelle Bachmann announced she was running for president in, I believe, August of 2011.  Her  presidential campaign lasted all of four months.  It was one of the shortest presidential campaigns in American history.  When she announced that she was running for president, she called herself a constitutional conservative.  In the same speech, she came out in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution to prohibit pornography and same-sex-marriage. I remember this well because I wrote a blog, then, about her presidential campaign announcement.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it seems to me that if you call yourself a constitutional conservative,  you believe in conserving the U.S. Constitution.  The fundamental meaning of conservatism is the minimization of change. 

When I heard Representative Bachmann describe her politics as constitutionally conservative and then suggest two new constitutional restrictions on personal behavior, I was thinking, "Could this radical and conservative be the same person?"  The U.S. Constitution is one of the most radical liberal documents ever written on the subject of individual rights.  I would expect that a constitutional conservative would want to conserve and protect the constitution, not amend it to curtail individual rights.  It is very clear that Representative Bachmann understands neither the U..S. Constitution nor conservatism.

The real constitutional conservatives of the past were Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and Ron Reagan. Those of today are Ron and Rand Paul, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and  Reason Magazine.   The love the United States Constitution for what it is and are not trying to amend or change it.  They want it observed as it is.  They, especially, do not want to give more power to government to control the behavior of individual citizens.