After the 2020 election, when Joe Biden won the presidency, I wondered if I would have to retire my ‘snarky snippets’ posts, for surely there wouldn’t be much to snark about. I was delusional … it seems that there will always be something to set off the snarkometer!
Say WHAT???
I was incensed yesterday when I heard that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, asked about who was to blame for the terrorist attacks on the Capitol on January 6th, said …
“I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility.”
Say WHAT???
Oh no, sir, you are dead wrong in that! The fools who participated are to blame, and the bigger fool who incited them is to blame. You Republican members of Congress who stood silently by for the last four years, allowing Donald Trump to believe that he could get by with literally anything, including inciting a riot must share the blame. But, the majority of people in this country have not one iota of blame in this fiasco!
Beau of the Fifth Column, always the voice of reason, gives us his take on Mr. McCarthy’s words and I fully agree with him.
A man without a conscience
Another one of the Republican Party’s bigger fools (so many to choose from) is Rand Paul. Earlier this week, I told you about Paul’s insidious remark that President Biden, in his inauguration speech, had said that all Republicans were white supremacists. Biden neither said nor implied any such thing, but apparently Paul and some of his cohorts are determined to twist and manipulate Biden’s words so that they have something to bitch about.
Well, that apparently wasn’t enough for Mr. Paul, for now he is criticizing the long-overdue and much-needed plan to raise the federal minimum wage rate incrementally to $15 per hour by 2025. Criticizing is one thing, but in order to support his critique, Mr. Paul found it necessary to tell a few big lies.
“But also raising the minimum wage to $15, I think, will also — the government estimates are close to 4 million people will lose their jobs. Particularly hurt among this are minorities and black teenagers, particularly with high unemployment.”
“So raising our taxes will cause corporations to flee, but if you mandate what the wages are, if you mandate a minimum wage of $15, it’s not like everybody gets $15. The people who still have a job get $15, but many people will become unemployed. In fact, government statistics say almost 4 million people will lose their jobs if you mandate a $15 an hour job minimum wage.”
Well, Mr. Paul, the truth is that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, the 4 million jobs was the highest possible, but at the low end of the analysis was that zero jobs would be lost. Frankly, I don’t see a company making money hand-over-fist shutting down just because they have to spend a bit more to pay their employees. Mr. Paul’s own base salary of $174,000 per year breaks down to $85.29 per hour!
H.R. 582, also known as the Raise the Wage Act, was passed by the House in July 2019, with only three republicans voting for it, and then it died in the Senate without even being considered. It would incrementally raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 — where it has been set since 2009 — to $15 by 2025.
Let’s be very clear here … the objections by Mr. Paul and other republicans are lodged only because their big-money corporate donors are against anything that would cut into their profits. Rand Paul is owned, lock stock & barrel, by corporations such as Koch Industries and others. He doesn’t speak for We the People, he speaks only on behalf of wealthy corporations and CEOs. Anything that would reduce their profit by so much as a lousy dollar is going to be fought by the republicans who are slaves to the wealthiest 1% of the people in this nation.
Think about this … the person who is paid minimum wage earns a full-time annual salary of $14,790. Could you live on that? Hell, my rent alone comes to $14,640 per year, and I live in a lower-income area! If I earned minimum wage, it would leave me $150 to pay utilities, car payment, fuel, insurance, and buy food for a full year. C’mon, Mr. Paul – get real! Think about the rest of the people in this country, not just your wealthy donors. Better yet, how ‘bout you just step down from Congress … go home to Kentucky and live happily ever after on your $2.58 million net worth and let those who have both a brain and a conscience govern the nation.
If companies who are making millions of dollars in profit, yet paying almost no taxes, cannot even pay a living wage to their employees, then they do not deserve to be in business. It is my hope that President Biden and the members of both chambers of Congress will take their hands out of the till long enough to do the right thing for the people of this nation and pass the $15 an hour minimum wage bill. If they don’t, then perhaps it’s time for a nationwide strike.