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Open Thread 2/13

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– Turns out a $15 minimum wage is popular in Seattle.

– And maybe we can get a minimum wage for the Port? Maybe?

– Health Care And Ending The War Secure Obama’s Legacy, Nick Gillespie. Okay, Pot Would Be Nice Too

– 21 Things You Can’t Do While Black

– Not that I would in a million years be able to afford a Tesla, but boo!

– Looks like trouble in the Majority Coalition (TNT link). I mean other than their ideology, just generally.

– In fairness to Rand Paul, nobody likes Mitch McConnell.

– If men got the Titus 2 Treatment…

Comments

  3. 3

    Doc Hasting To Retire From Congress

    Doc Hastings will retire from Congress rather than run for re-election this year, the Seattle Times reports.

  4. 4

    GOP politicians in Tennessee are threatening to revoke special tax breaks to Volkswagen if their workers vote to join the UAW even though the company doesn’t oppose the union. Meanwhile, a Michigan politician has invited VW to move to Lansing.

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: I think what this shows is the GOP’s antagonism toward unions and workers is ideological, and not just pandering to their business supporters.

  5. 5

    Re the white guy who shot himself and then lied to the cops that he was plugged by a black guy: Not only is he a bad liar, he’s a bad shot too. Let’s take up a collection to send him to marksman training, so he’ll shoot straighter the next time he drills himself.

  8. 8

    Four Wisconsin farm workers have been charged with felony animal abuse after an undercover operative for an animal rights group videotaped them abusing cows.

    But Republicans want to make videotaping animal abuse, not the abuse, a felony.

    With a party platform like that, why would anyone against animal abuse vote for any Republican?

  13. 13

    A federal judge struck down a Virginia law banning gay marriage on Thursday, but this won’t stop rightwing crazies like Ted Cruz from pandering to the Sarah Palin crowd by campaigning against
    gay rights.

  14. 14

    4) They are shocked to discover VW is taking a neutral position. Perhaps the TN GOP should look at the VW Board. It includes a couple people from Qatar Holdings, one Cabinet minister from the State of Lower Saxony, and a couple of people from IG Metall, the largest metal workers union in Germany.
    http://www.volkswagenag.com/co.....ement.html
    In Germany, labor unions get Sears on corporate boards. There is also another level of management/labor cooperation, the Works Council, and that is what the UAW is proposing for the Chattanooga plant if they win. The Republican lawmakers that are outraged, are afraid that this one might succeed.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....in_Germany

  15. 15

    Canadian National Railway is going to charge more for Crude Oil carried in tank cars built prior to October 2011. OCT. 2011 is when tougher AAR standards took effect.
    http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=44

    “CN has structured its rates to create an economic incentive for customers to acquire, over time, more robust tank cars that meet the higher safety standard of the more recent CPC-1232 design,” spokesman Mark Hallman told the Grand Forks Herald.

    “[W]e price crude differently for different car types. . . . The CPC-1232 is our favorite car when it comes to pricing or attracting business,” CN Chief Marketing Officer J.J. Ruest said at a Feb. 10 conference

    CN did not comment on the specifics of the rate increase, but a Canadian crude oil shipper told the newspaper that CN was charging up to 5% more to move some DOT-111 cars. The shipper said the additional freight charges could impact the cost structure of CBR, which is now a major method of moving crude oil from areas under-served by pipelines, such as the North Dakota’s Bakken region and Canada’s Alberta oil sands.

    CN’s Hallman said the economic incentive for customers to use safer tank cars applied to all its routes. The railroad supports AAR and RSICTC (Railway Supply Institute Committee on Tank Cars) appeals to the U.S. PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) for a rulemaking retrofitting or phasing out pre-CPC-1232 DOT-111 cars and improving standards for new tank cars.

  17. 17

    About the Port Commission, reading that article, I see Courtney Gregoire is the Commission “Co-President” already. Not surprising, she struck me as a classic climber.

    I had the opportunity to interview her prior to the race last year. Not surprisingly, she not-too-smoothly evaded answering questions about the raised minimum wage when posed by a panel of Democratic Party volunteers. She was also decidedly non-committal on the issue of coal trains. She will blow with the winds of power and money, I’m convinced.

    I spoke out against her candidacy, both in an Exec Board setting and a larger general membership venue. I persuaded the Exec Board to take a pass and not endorse her, but not the general membership. After the latter, she approached me to “talk” – and I was on the receiving end of a truly unhinged harangue. Spittle flecked, red faced, pressured speech – I could barely get a word in, and she didn’t hear a word of what I (and another Dem volunteer) had to say. I don’t know if she carries some sort of diagnosis, but she reminded me, chillingly, of a mentally ill person, and I have seen many, though that’s admittedly not my area of expertise.

    I am convinced by these interactions that she is entitled, easily enraged, and both smart and very ambitious…in a word, dangerous.

    Very, very dangerous.

  19. 19

    Economic research reveals that most of the arguments against raising the minimum wage are empty rhetoric.

    “The argument that a wage floor kills jobs has been weakened by careful research over the past 20 years, beginning with a seminal 1994 study by David Card of the University of California at Berkeley and Alan Krueger of Princeton. The duo compared employment in fast-food restaurants in New Jersey, which had just enacted a minimum wage hike, with fast-food restaurants across the border in Pennsylvania, which had kept its rate the same. The result: no reduction in New Jersey’s employment rolls.

    “The Card-Krueger study touched off an econometric arms race as labor economists on opposite sides of the argument topped one another with increasingly sophisticated analyses. The net result has been to soften the economics profession’s traditional skepticism about minimum wages.

    “If there are negative effects on total employment, the most recent studies show, they appear to be small. Higher wages reduce turnover by increasing job satisfaction, so at any given moment there are fewer unfilled openings. Within reasonable ranges of a minimum wage, the churn-reducing effect seems to offset whatever staff reductions occur because of higher labor costs. Also, some businesses manage to pass along the costs to customers without harming sales.”

    http://www.businessweek.com/ar.....age#r=most popular

  20. 20

    Making it official:

    The venture capitalist offered the unorthodox proposal when asked to name one idea that would “change the world” at a speaking engagement in San Francisco moderated by Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky.

    “The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” Perkins said.

    “But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....howAll=yes

    Ohh.. he was “Joking” Riiiggghhhttt…..

    ….dang. Roger already posted this. Still It’s worth illustrating how the other 1/10000 thinks.

  21. 21

    @20 The last guy who promoted this idea was H.R. Hunt. I wouldn’t say Perkins is Hunt’s logical successor. You’d expect the Kochs to promote this sort of lunacy. It does have one thing going for it, though: It would disenfranchise all the Teahadists.

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