Trivial Pursuits...

The latest thing on electoral politics is the judgement from the New Jersey Supreme Court which in essence repeats the Massachusetts gay marriage constitutionality arguments!

It couldn't have happened at a worse time! Perhaps the Jersey court consists of a panel of ultra-conservative fundamentalist Christian judges who wish to ‘pump-up' the lagging ‘values' voters! I can think of no other reason for presenting this two weeks before the election!

It has long been argued that people can't govern themselves but that benevolent dictators are few and far between. Perhaps this election will settle that argument.

Our representative republic has been turned into a real life version of ‘trivial pursuit'! Our foreign policy is centered on the Jewish side of Judeo-Christian politics in the Middle East rather than being centrist or mediatory. This is despite the fact that Jews amount to only 1.7% of the American population. In the same sense only 0.9 to 2.0 percent of American men are gay (depending upon the survey - not the 10% usually quoted) and women (lesbians) who are more difficult to gage are reportedly fewer than that - although, I wonder.

Yet the marriage of gays were the driving force for the 2004 elections and mysteriously have been resurrected again for the 2006 election!? If you couple that with the hot buttons of futuristic "stem cell research" and the old saw of "abortion", you end up with compounded trivia which has very very very little affect on the lives of virtually any of the American people! The numbers simply don't justify the effort. In defense of the Democrats, I don't believe many are arguing those points - that most of the noise is coming from the right.

This trivia is especially true when one considers the daily mass murder of Iraqi civilians and our own American boys in a war perpetrated by our government and big oil. The slaughter will be allowed to continue if we Americans continue to pursue such trivia!

It is also true when one considers the economic recession we are going to experience next year after the elections and regardless of who wins. It will be due in large part from the cost of the war, outsourcing jobs and the gradual destruction of the middle class - all condoned by the political right. It is too late to change from this 'correction', but it can be made worse.

The thing that makes it so sad is that those trivial hot button subjects are generally not part of anyone's legislative agenda - but the war and the economy are!

Even the active duty troops in our military are queuing up to call for withdrawal from Iraq. The effort has just started and will become very strident in the next few months. It is the same phenomenon which occurred during the Viet Nam war and helped end it. This is not trivial!

Other peoples.....

I only post this because of the present primarily Republican furor over ‘illegal' immigration from Mexico! It seems that the argument is that potential immigrants should get in line behind those who have already applied, they all should be able to speak English, that they should not be a burden to local facilities and taxpayers and they should not take jobs away from Americans!

So now our Republican government plans to introduce 10,000 black, presumably impoverished refugees who probably don't speak English, are unskilled and know nothing of our society. I assume that what has happened in the past will happen again and that our government will not provide financial support to the communities where these people will be dumped. The same thing happened at the end of the Vietnam war - especially in California.

I'm not making a moral judgement on this but rather pointing out the incongruities between our government and popular attitudes toward immigration both in Congress and on the street. At least Mexicans are Americans and know something of our culture.

Speaking of ‘other' Americans and culture, the sovereign Navajo nation is having their own election for President during the general election on November 7. As a show of their sovereignty, they are planning to have extensive trade relations with Cuba for their products. They are also negotiating a closer and more friendly relationship with their Hopi neighbors.

"WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. came in first in the Navajo primary, according to unofficial results; but the person in second place, Lynda Lovejoy, claims a victory and title all her own - the first woman to win the Navajo presidential primary and face off in the final race for president."


U.S. offers to take in Burundi refugees
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer Tue Oct 17

WASHINGTON - The U.S. is offering to permanently resettle up to 10,000 refugees from a 12-year civil war in the African country of Burundi, the State Department said Tuesday.

The refugees would be brought to the United States over the next two years with refugee status, and will be given the option of applying for U.S. citizenship, said State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

The resettlement of the refugees, who have been in camps in Tanzania after fleeing from Burundi, is in response to a request in the past year from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Casey said. He said other countries may take in refugees, as well.

More than 250,000 Burundians were killed in the civil war before a cease-fire was arranged last month.

Burundi long has been divided by tension between the majority Tutus and minority Tutsis, who dominated the government after independence from Belgium in 1962. The assassination of the country's first democratically elected president in 1993 ignited the civil war.

The Serpent Still Twitches...

One smart hombre! I suspect that the ‘hated' former ruler, Saddam, is going to end up reuniting the Iraqi people and put us in a position where we can't leave - but we can't stay, either! He's putting us between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

We've been acting like a bunch of arrogant cowboys right out of the fables of the old West - the hated cattlemen vs the poor oppressed sheep-herding homesteaders! – and Saddam is the wolf in sheep's clothing while Bush is a second rate sheriff on the cattlemen's payroll! I guess the American people represent the very confused town's folk who muck along OK as long as they mind their own business. Now, where did Shane ride off to? Little Joey: "Shane--come back, Shane!...

BTW: LONDON: In the highly professional British Army, the articulate and educated generals usually say what they think - in private - but they rarely publicly interfere in politics. Now Britain's top soldier, the Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt, has broken the code of conduct that links the political and military establishments, by openly calling for British forces to be withdrawn from Iraq "sometime soon."

And also, Blair has announced that he will not run again. According to the ‘Guardian' "Blair's luck has run out - and he has no one to blame but himself. Three years of conflict in Iraq has corroded public trust in every aspect of his premiership, both domestic and foreign."

Saddam says victory at hand against U.S. occupation
By Suleiman al Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) - In an open letter, Saddam Hussein told Iraqis "victory was at hand" and urged insurgents to show magnanimity to opponents, saying he himself forgave Iraqis who aided the killers of his two sons

In the letter dictated to his chief lawyer Khalil Dulaimi during a four-hour meeting on Saturday in his prison, the former Iraqi leader also said Iraqis should put aside differences and set only one goal - to drive U.S. troops out of Iraq.

"Victory is at hand but don't forget that your near-term goal is confined to liberating your country from the forces of occupation," Saddam said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters on Sunday.

Dulaimi said the letter was written days before the court trying Saddam over the killing of 148 Shi'ite men from the town of Dujail in the 1980s is due to meet on Monday to review witness testimony.

Saddam urged his Sunni minority community, the backbone of the insurgency, to even forgive Iraqi informants who helped U.S. troops track down and kill his two sons, Uday and Qusay, in a gunbattle at a house in Mosul in 2003.

"When you achieve victory and it is close.. remember you are God's soldiers which means you should show genuine forgiveness and put aside revenge over the spilled blood of the sons of Saddam Hussein," Saddam wrote.

"I call on you to apply justice in your Jihad (holy war) and not be drawn to recklessness and urge you to be forgiving rather than tough with those who have lost the path," he added.

The former leader said he resorted to an open letter for the first time since his trial began in October 2005 on charges of crimes against humanity to give his message without censorship.

But Saddam warned his supporters excessive force against opponents who failed to support the insurgency would only lose the anti-U.S. resistance widespread popular support.

"There should be no settling of scores...and you should not attack for the sake of attacking when an opportunity arises while you are carrying a gun."

Saddam's former officers took up arms after the army was disbanded and built up the insurgency into a devastating force, which has not been broken by military offensives.

Saddam used emotive language to express his pain over the surge in sectarian violence between Shi'ites and Sunnis that has gripped Iraq since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February.

"I cannot bring myself to use the terminology used by the foreigner to sow divisions among us...this was never a real reason for division in the past," he said.

Thousands have been killed in tit-for-tat revenge killings and more than 300,00 have fled their homes.

Saddam, echoing fears of many Sunni Iraqis over the breakup of the country, called on Iraqis to preserve their unity.

"You are sacrificing your lives for these great principles and at the forefront is the great Iraq united," he said.

Evangelicals and Politics....

Oh my goodness! The shock of it all! – and somebody had to write a book about it?
First paragraph of post below: Obviously 'they' were and obviously 'they' are.

So what don't 'they' understand? You can't take a bunch of big business Capitalists and turn them into Jesus freaks! If you try, you end up with a bunch of sneering hypocrites!

Did 'they' really believe that the administration was actually fundamentalist Christian?

It has been a known fact for a long time that George W. helped his dad in his campaign which as we know lost. He noted at that time that the campaign had neglected to go after the religious right for votes which could have beaten Clinton. That is the reason "W" became a Christian as opposed to a Sundays only Methodist!

Sometimes one has to pay a high character price to become President.

White House denies book's allegations
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer Fri Oct 13

WASHINGTON - A former Bush aide claims that EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS WERE EMBRACED FOR POLITICAL GAIN AT THE WHITE HOUSE BUT DERIDED PRIVATELY AS "NUTS," "RIDICULOUS" AND "GOOFY."

The allegations — denied by the White House on Friday — are in a new book by David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003.

The book describes Kuo's frustration at what he felt was lackluster enthusiasm in the White House for the program, which seeks to steer more federal social service contracts to religious organizations. Details from the book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," were reported by MSNBC ahead of Monday's publication date.

Kuo singled out staffers in the office of Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser and deputy chief of staff, as particularly condescending toward evangelical Christians, viewing them as necessary to help win elections but ridiculing them behind the scenes.

Kuo also described how officials from the faith-based office were systematically dispatched to hold large events in areas where there were key House and Senate races before the 2002 elections.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said he had not yet seen the book. But he said Rove was asked if he made the comments and replied he had not. Kuo, however, doesn't single out anyone by name as making the condescending comments.

"These are people who are friends. You don't talk about friends that way," Snow said. [Even though you may think that way.]

Bush's spokesman also said there was no attempt to exploit the office to score political points, and that the president had specifically directed it not be politicized. [Of course not!]

Snow denied Kuo's charge that the White House's religious charities program wasn't given the status it deserved, saying Bush's personal commitment to the policy was solid. Kuo has complained publicly in the past that the White House did not push hard enough for promised federal funding for religious groups to help the poor. [Bush doesn't even push for helping the middle class - and certainly not the loosers in our society!]

Snow read from what he called a "very warm letter" Kuo wrote to Bush when he left the White House. Kuo told the president he was proud of what the initiative had accomplished and said "it's your staff's keen awareness of your unwavering support for this initiative that's made the difference."

Snow concluded that the reports on the book "seem at odds with what he was saying inside the building at the time he departed."

Kuo's account of how the faith-based office has been regarded inside the White House recalls that of another high-level alumnus of the program. John J. DiIulio Jr., the faith-based office's first director, who quit in 2002, told Esquire magazine that "Mayberry Machiavellis" led by Rove based policy only on re-election concerns. After his comments caused an uproar, DiIulio apologized for making what he said were rude remarks.

Gorbachev's remarks....

Gorbachev's remarks below underline what I've believed for a long time! We Americans - not just our elected politicians and government, have been on a self-destruct course in our attitudes and dealings with the rest of the world. I'm afraid that we're going to have to pay the piper if we don't develop a more conciliatory and respectful attitude and behavior toward our international neighbors.

However, it seems to me that Clinton did attempt to get along with other countries, tried to broker peace between Israel and Palestine, and peace in Ireland. He also reluctantly and with the help of NATO ended the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Even today he along with others is working hard to end misery, especially in Africa and show the world that not all Americans are villains.

Even daddy Bush's limited war in Iraq had the aid and blessings of the U.N. and the rest of the world.

But I can't say the same for Reagan who allowed his CIA to run wild about the world and provided Saddam H. with the WMD's to use against Iran and his own Kurds. But Ronnie was another president with a very limited worldview or even knowledge of what his own government was doing. I recall that we used to call him "dumb-dumb" before our current president made him look quite bright!

U.S. wasted chance to improve the world: Gorbachev

BERLIN (Reuters) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who played a key role in ending the Cold War, said the United States had squandered an opportunity to improve global politics after the Cold War, a paper said on Friday.

In comments that were among the harshest he has made about the United States, Gorbachev compared U.S. foreign policy to one of the deadliest diseases on the planet – AIDS.

"Today our American friends are suffering from an illness worse than AIDS. And I would say this is the victor's complex," Gorbachev was quoted as saying in an interview with the Netzzeitung. Unable to extricate itself from its Cold War mentality, the United States was playing a dwindling role in world politics, while Russia, China, Brazil, Europe, India and Japan were becoming stronger, Gorbachev said.

North Korea, which said on Monday it had successfully completed a nuclear test, was an example. Only China and Russia were in a position to handle Pyongyang, he said.

Washington will in future have to act less on its own and get used to a position of diminished importance. "The Americans will have to understand that in future they will have to cooperate and make decisions jointly, instead of just always wanting to give orders," Gorbachev said.

The United States and other Western countries had missed an opportunity to make the world a better place after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 ushered in the end of communism. "At that point, the West focused more on its geopolitical interests," Gorbachev said, adding that Western countries had been more interested in cashing in on the "unbridled burst of globalization" that followed the end of the Cold War than in improving the international political climate.

Sermon on the Amount....

George and Laura economics. See George run and the country came tumbling after!

As we all know, a "deficit" is a measure of how much more broke we are now than we were before. I can't imagine bragging about how wonderful our economy is because "we aren't much more in debt than we already are"!

Our recent economy has been "good" because of the housing balloon - just as it was during the Clinton administration with the Internet balloon. When it burst we had a mild recession just about the time Bush became president. Nothing to do with him, of course.

Well, now the housing balloon is losing air and hopefully headed for a soft landing with only a mild recession next year or so.

However, I worry that our massive debt being carried by such nations as China along with the fact that we've been hemorrhaging wealth from our inability to make a buck in our international business dealings over the years.

It seems to me that if we continue to give our nation away to foreign interests, we're going to have to pay the piper sometime - and probably when we can least afford it - like during a recession.

After all, if someone owes you money and it looks like he may lose his job, you certainly want him to pay off his debt to you before he goes on welfare! And I don't think that China, et al, would take it kindly for us to get out the printing presses to make more paper money! It doesn't work that way.

If you listen to independent economists like Lou Dobbs, who are concerned about the gradual demise of the middle class in this country (you and I) rather than the prosperity of international business interests, you'll learn that you can't just follow party line - simply because neither party is interested in our class, but rather their own election and the special interests they represent.

Thus, the only voice the middle class has is by picking and choosing among those few politicians from any party who are actually running for the good of the nation and the great washed masses. For example:

Pick the guy, regardless of party who advocates a sizeable increase in the minimum wage.

Pick the guy who is opposed to "Free Trade" with other nations, but advocates negotiated trade (not isolationism) where the so called ‘playing field' is level, profitable and ecological - what you might call, "Win-win trade".

Pick the guy who advocates functional education of the masses rather than, for example, the education George Bush got which left him incompetent to run a company or a nation. We don't need any more MBA's, we need engineers, technicians and competent paramedics, nurses, etc.

Pick the guy who advocates something like the GI Bill for everyone. If you're old enough you remember that the GI Bill was how many, if not most of us were taught how to actually do something. And everyone knows we old geezers were the most successful generation in American history!

Pick the guy who wants us to make stuff again - rather than just sell cars, insurance or spend his life performing useless ‘administrative' tasks.

Federal deficit now lowest in 4 years
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON - The federal budget deficit, helped by a gusher of tax revenues, fell to $247.7 billion in 2006, the smallest amount of red ink in four years.

The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was 22.3 percent lower than the $318.7 billion imbalance for 2005, handing President Bush an economic bragging point as Republicans go into the final four weeks of a battle for control of Congress.

Bush called the 2006 outcome a "dramatic reduction" in the deficit which allowed him to fulfill his 2004 campaign pledge of cutting the deficit in half earlier than his original 2009 target date.

"These numbers show that we have now achieved our goal of cutting the federal deficit in half and we've done it three years ahead of schedule," Bush told reporters at a Rose Garden news conference. "The budget numbers are proof that pro-growth economic policies work."

The pledge to cut the deficit in half was based on the administration's forecast that the 2004 deficit would hit $521 billion, a figure that proved to be too pessimistic by more than $100 billion. However, the administration has continued to use the forecast number as its benchmark for deficit reduction.

Bush said he would continue to urge Congress to make permanent his first-term tax cuts, all of which are due to expire by the end of 2010.

Republicans are hoping to appeal to voters in the upcoming election as the party that champions tax cuts while casting Democrats, who contend that those tax cuts primarily benefited the wealthy, as the party which would increase taxes.

Both spending and tax revenues climbed to all-time highs in 2006. The sharp narrowing of the deficit reflected the fact that revenues climbed by 11.7 percent, outpacing the 7.3 percent increase in spending.

The 2006 deficit was far lower than the $423 billion figure the administration had projected last February and also represented an improvement from a July revised estimate of $295.8 billion.

Republicans said the big improvement showed that Bush's economic policies were working to stimulate growth and boost tax revenues. But Democrats said the narrowing of the deficit would be temporary as the pending retirement of 78 million baby boomers will send costs of the government's big benefit programs soaring.

"The fact that some are trumpeting this year's deficit number as good news shows just how far we've fallen. Our budget picture is extremely serious by any measure," said Sen. Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record), the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the deficit for the current budget year will rise to $286 billion. Over the next decade, the CBO forecasts that the deficit will total $1.76 trillion.

Extending the Bush tax cuts, which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2010, would add another $2.2 trillion to the deficit through 2016, the CBO estimates.

The 2006 deficit was the smallest deficit since a $159 billion imbalance in 2002, a shortfall that came after four straight years of budget surpluses, the longest stretch that the government had finished with surpluses in seven decades.

Since that time, the government has recorded three of the biggest deficits in history including including an all-time record in dollar terms of $413 billion in 2004.

The reason for the improvement this year was a second consecutive big jump in revenues, propelled by strong economic strongth. The 11.7 percent increase in revenues was the second biggest percentage gain in history.

The administration credits its tax cuts for the improving economy, contending they helped the nation withstand the 2001 recession, the terrorist attacks and a wave corporate accounting scandals.

Democratic critics, however, contend that this year's improvement in the deficit will be only temporary. They contend the deficit is set to explode over the next decade as the baby boomers begin to retire and demands on Social Security and Medicare increase.

It isn't about Foley....

Well, I think that if there is a big shift in voting preferences due to the Foley scandal it is not because of the Democrats but rather Republicans who profess some "higher" morality.

Now, Sen. Hastert has never been a favorite of mine, but to bring him down over something like this just shows the mentality of his former supporters.

I think that when you have a party which is controlled by people who are mentally handicapped, emotionally disturbed, and judgementally deficient, you have a party which is in deep do-do! That you have a party which has no basic concept of the struggles of humanity for economic, political and social survival beyond their indoctrination and proselytizing by, should I say it? - the Anti-Christ?

The item which transcends the traditional warfare between the Democrats and the Republicans is, after all, the war in Iraq and the Republican delinquency in handling the war on terror - pure and simple!

I'm sure there are also "Foley's" in the Democratic party and such scandals shouldn't have much to do with overall party politics - any more than Clinton's scandal should have had anything to do with how well he ran the nation. Worrying about such nonsense is childish, and, actually, stupid!

Frankly, I don't understand why our nation and the voting public is so grossly preoccupied with sex politically. We have criminal laws which can handle sexual deviancy and in our system, any violations can be prosecuted - even including the President.

It is certainly proper if an elected person mis-represents himself and or violates protocol - and when caught resigns. But shouldn't that be pretty much the end of it? I certainly don't believe that his entire political party should be painted by the same brush!

I know that there is the tendency to chuckle gleefully that "We finally got ‘em!" And, I'm certainly not mournful over Foley's ‘demise', but I worry that the point of the evils of the Republican party are not because of Foley but rather their whole hearted support of Bush's war and his failure to handle terrorism for the protection of US.

To me, the President is guilty of the evil, not little hypocritical Foley and his sex games.

Democrats have big lead after sex scandal-polls

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic candidates have a big edge on Republicans one month before elections to decide control of Congress, a flurry of new polls said on Monday, with ratings for President George W. Bush and Congress dropping after the Capitol Hill sex scandal.

USA Today/Gallup poll gave Democrats a 23-point edge on Republicans in the battle for Congress, while a CNN poll gave Democrats a 21-point lead.

A ABC News/Washington Post poll found Democrats held a 54-41 percent lead in the congressional horse race among registered and likely voters, which ABC said was the biggest Democratic lead this close to election day in more than 20 years.

And a new CBS News/New York Times poll showed 79 percent of respondents thought Republican leaders were more concerned with politics than the well-being of the teenage congressional assistants who received lewd messages from former Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida.

Republicans, already battered by public doubts about the Iraq war and Bush's leadership, have been scrambling to contain the fallout from the unfolding sex scandal and keep it from sinking their chances on November 7.

Democrats must pick up 15 House seats and six Senate seats to reclaim control of Congress.

Several recent polls have shown declining approval ratings for Republicans in the last week amid a torrent of questions about how the party's congressional leaders handled the Foley issue.

The CNN poll found 52 percent believed Republican House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois should resign, while the CBS poll found 46 percent favored his resignation.

FOLEY SCANDAL
The CBS poll found two-thirds of voters said the Foley scandal would make little difference in how they cast their ballots, but 21 percent said it would make them more likely to vote Democratic.

The ABC poll said the Foley scandal was a more distant concern than Iraq for voters, who doubted whether Democrats would have handled the scandal any better.

The ABC poll found 63 percent said the Iraq war was not worth fighting, a record for that poll. A new high for the poll of 53 percent of respondents disapproved of Bush's handling of the broader U.S. campaign against terrorism -- a supposed White House strength.

The new USA Today/Gallup poll showed Bush's public approval rating at 37 percent, down from 44 percent in mid-September. The approval rating for Congress was 24 percent, down 5 percentage points from last month.

The ABC News poll had Bush's approval rating at 39 percent, down from 42 percent in early September.

Asked which party's candidate they would support if the election were held today, the USA Today/Gallup poll found Democrats favored by 23 percentage points among all voters questioned, including likely voters, registered voters and adults.

That was the largest lead Democrats have held among registered voters since 1978, and up dramatically from last month's 48 percent-48 percent tie among likely voters, USA Today said.

The CNN poll found 58 percent of likely voters say they plan to vote for Democrats in November, compared with 37 percent who say they will vote for Republicans. The 21-point gap is 5 points wider that it was in a CNN poll last week.

USA Today said its poll found two-thirds of respondents were following the Foley scandal very or somewhat closely. More than half, 54 percent, said Republican leaders who knew about Foley's actions did not act against him earlier "for political reasons."

Government corruption, Iraq and terrorism were the three most important issues listed in the USA Today poll, with respondents saying Democrats would do a better job on all three. Democrats had a 21-point edge on handling corruption and a 17-point advantage on Iraq.

The traditional Republican advantage on handling terrorism

vanished, USA Today said, with Democrats holding a 5-point edge.

The wages of sin....

It is nice to learn that being a Christian doesn't mean one has to be selfish, mean spirited and regressive! There is a new progressive side of American religion beginning to be heard - maybe.

The $5.15 national minimum wage presently applies here in Arizona - except for waitresses who are paid $2.25 regardless of whether they get tips or not. I think that tips should be the gratuity or reward for especially good service as originally intended, not a wage for basic labor.

As the article below points out, raising the minimum wage will not affect small businesses for the simple reason that all business floats on the sea of costs which are always passed on to the consumer. As long as all employers are faced with the same labor costs, they are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged. The success of any business depends mostly upon the quality and ability of its management and certainly not the enslavement of its employees.

So, there are seven states who have raised their minimum wages at least 40% above the national wage. There are five other states, including Arizona which has a minimum wage boost on their ballots this November.

We in Arizona also have smoking ban legislation up for a vote in the form of two propositions, one similar to the very successful existing ban in California and the other sponsored by the tobacco companies. That should be interesting - can the voters be bamboozled!? Effectively, the tobacco lobby makes smoking optional for businesses and sneakily nullifies any and all local bans and ordinances! If voters vote for both measures, the one with the most votes prevails and the tobacco company version has the most posted signs and media coverage.

Pastors Push Living Wage as Election Issue
Abid Aslam, OneWorld US Tue Oct 3

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct 3 (OneWorld) - Call them the Religious Left: Church leaders are seeking to rally ''values voters'' ahead of next month's elections in a nationwide crusade to raise the minimum wage.

The LET JUSTICE ROLL CAMPAIGN, a congregation of some 80 religious and community organizations including the National Council of Churches USA, said in a statement it plans to hold hundreds of rallies, workshops, religious services, and prayer breakfasts across the country to urge state and federal officials and candidates to boost working families' fortunes.

So-called Living Wage Days events this month will seek to pass minimum wage ballot measures in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, and Ohio.

"A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you in it," said Rev. Paul Sherry, anti-poverty program coordinator at the National Council of Churches and former president of the United Church of Christ.

The issue appears to be gaining political traction. October's events come on the heels of state minimum wage increases in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

Campaign members cited a recent poll that they said showed 9 out of 10 Americans support a higher minimum wage. They added that they would lead efforts next year to pass state wage hikes in New Hampshire and Tennessee.

Congressional Democrats also are seeking to capitalize on the minimum wage among a raft of bread-and-butter issues they say the Republican-controlled legislature has neglected.

''We haven't had time to increase the minimum wage, to cut the cost of student loans for America's college students, to lower prescription drug prices, to roll back tax breaks for big oil," Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, was quoted as saying Friday before legislators broke for an intense period of campaigning ahead of the Nov. 7 midterm election.

To be sure, members of Let Justice Roll have voiced outrage at the meager earnings of millions of Americans at the bottom end of the labor market. But their campaign also seeks to present faith-based voters with an alternative to the Religious Right agenda.

''We've long seen scorecards from the Christian Coalition and others show how members of Congress vote on so-called social issues but not on help for the poor, which the Bible mandates hundreds of times,'' said Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches.

''Millions of values voters care about fair wages for the people who do some of the hardest, most important jobs in our society--from childcare teachers we entrust with our children to healthcare aides we entrust with our parents,'' Edgar said.

The federal minimum wage rose to $5.15 per hour in 1997 but has lost more than one fifth of its value since then, campaigners said. Today's minimum pay buys less than it did in 1950, they added.

At the federal level, the campaign wants Congress to raise the minimum wage to at least $7.25 per hour and to oppose measures that would weaken existing eligibility, tipped worker coverage, overtime and other labor protections, or link the minimum wage to tax cuts for the wealthy.

''Congressional leaders are holding the minimum wage hostage to a tax cut for wealthy heirs,'' said Johanna Chao Rittenburg, economic justice program manager at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

An estimated 14.9 million workers--11 percent of the work force--would benefit were the minimum hourly wage raised from $5.15 to $7.25 by 2008, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a Washington, DC-based think tank funded by business and labor philanthropies.

Of those workers, 6.6 million now earn less than $7.25 and would be directly affected by an increase. The additional 8.3 million workers earning slightly above the minimum also would benefit. That is because even though a raise is not legally mandated for workers earning a few more dollars than the proposed new minimum wage, many employers raise their pay anyway to preserve internal wage structures. This makes raising the minimum wage an important part of a broader strategy to end poverty, EPI researchers said.

Employers' groups and economists critical of proposed wage hikes have countered that such measures can condemn small businesses to insolvency but EPI researchers said there was no evidence that the 1997 wage gain had led to job losses.

State and municipal officials have commissioned their own studies even as they have enacted living wage measures.

In September, University of New Mexico researchers told members of the Santa Fe City Council that the municipality's two-year-old experiment with pay hikes had neither hit businesses with higher costs nor hurt low-skilled workers, contrary to employers' fears that higher wages would force businesses to cut jobs or relocate away from the city.

Council members commissioned the study after adopting a measure two years ago that required employers with more than 25 workers to pay $8.50 per hour, above the state and federal minimum of $5.15. Santa Fe raised its floor to $9.50 per hour in January and expects to raise it further, to $10.50, in 2008.

Whether the moves have provided significant succor to workers or the city's economy remained to be seen, the daily Santa Fe New Mexican quoted the researchers as saying.

Yiddish with George

I get these promos from Amazon.

However, I probably won't buy the book because; 1. I don't live in New York or even read the Times, 2. I'm not Jewish, 3. I can't speak Yiddish (because of 1.)

Yet, it probably is very funny with us WASP's being the butt. I've always had a problem with the term WASP because all Anglo-Saxons are white and most are protestant - seems there is a certain redundancy there. Fortunately, the term only applies to people who live on the East Coast - I heard it all of the time when I used to live there... Out west, we're ‘Gringos' because our critics are a different people.

I did find one statement in the description of the book below which I found to express very nicely one of my pet peeves about people - especially the young and inexperienced:

"... both exhibit a natural resistance to moral complexity (i.e., reality)"

I believe that just the other day I mentioned to Dennis that very few things, especially moral and political issues are ‘black and white' - that most of life is a mottled grey. We do tend as a people to get ourselves in serious trouble because we create simplistic views of life (like God).

I wonder if part of that mental laziness is our early training and hyperfocus on team sports. Such participation encourages such concepts as "us and them", "good guys vs bad guys", "you're either for us or against us" because sports creates well-defined adversaries.

The reality is that not all Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans, Italians, Germans, French, Chinese, Indians, Christians, or even children are bad!

It makes me wonder too whether the social ‘smushing' effect of estrogen provides girls with more mental balance (despite their typical ‘giddyness') than the alienation and aggression imparted by testosterone on boys who, perhaps for that reason, should not be leaders in our relatively new and complex society....? Any other opinions out there?

Yiddish with George and Laura (Hardcover)
by Ellis Weiner (Author), Barbara Davilman (Author)

"Book Description (Amazon)
In this inspired follow-up to the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane, Yiddish--the mother tongue of irony--invades the ultimate bastion of American WASP culture: Kennebunkport, home of the Bush clan. What do George and Laura Bush have in common with Dick and Jane? Well, both hail from prototypical WASP families. And, perhaps more to the point,. That's the premise of this hilarious new primer-style book in which George, Laura, and the entire Bush family communicate with uncharacteristic expressiveness, conveying shades of feeling and nuances of meaning that plain old English can't deliver--by peppering their conversation with Yiddishisms. See George's mother. Her name is Bar. She wears alot of pearls and is a farbisseneh. "You are late, George," Bar says. "Of course I am late," George says. "I am the President of the United States. I am a big macher." Like all good primers, YIDDISH WITH GEORGE AND LAURA tells a simple story--and, in the end, important life lessons are imparted."