Oh. My. God. That’s not just anybody spraying angry spittle at the masses, that’s Kittitas County Republican chair Matt Manweller, a top economic adviser to Dino Rossi, aggressively confronting a lone Democrat before a Rossi rally in Ellensburg.
The young man is holding a sign criticizing Rossi’s proposal to slash our state’s minimum wage by $1.50, and Manweller just goes ballistic, repeatedly calling him “stupid,” and angrily disparaging him and the rest of our state’s minimum wage workers:
“You and those 300,000 people are dumber than a post”
Yup, that is the elitist economic world view of the co-creator of Rossi’s “IdeaBank”: if you work for the minimum wage you must be “dumber than a post,” so really, your problems are just your own damn fault.
I’m guessing Lee and Carl, who are well familiar with Manweller’s ravings over at Whacky Nation, might have more to say about the “Nutty Professor,” but understand that he is not an anomaly. Dino Rossi is running a mean-spirited campaign, as he would run a mean-spirited administration, and his allegiances are clearly to the people with money, not to the people.
Hey goldy, how many of your good friends are minimum wage employees? How about you YLB, how many of your close friends are minimum wage employees? Left foot??
No need to ask steve the goat herder.
Minimum wage employees aren’t all stupid, the old ones, maybe. The young ones are just starting out in the workforce.
Should we give the employees at mcdonalds that can’t figure out how to get your order correct a raise?
Isn’t Manweller our beloved “troll”?
Mission accomplished.
@1 I’m a no-wage ex-employee. I won’t work for what Republicans want to pay. Got any more stupid questions?
Here’s an idea: $1.50 is 17.5% of $8.55. So, the next time you go into a business establishment with a Rossi sign in the window, deduct 17.5% off the bill, and inform the owner that because he’s reducing wages by 17.5% you must reduce his prices by 17.5%. If he objects, leave the merchandise on the counter and walk out.
I’ve never understood the thinking of these Republican business people. If they keep pushing down wages, who do they think will shop in their stores or buy their goods?
@5
Go into a business with a Rossi sign?
There have been about umpteen studies that prove Washington’s high minimum wage creates jobs.
If you want to know what a Washington State run by Republicans would look like, visit Haiti.
What he meant to say was: “why don’t you form a Union and go on strike for higher wages? Just like our republican god Reagan, who was the President of the Screen Actors Guild for 7 years, and “led SAG through eventful years that were marked by labor-management disputes” [Wikipedia].
@6 Yeah, just to fuck with ’em. I didn’t say buy anything.
What an asshat.
@9 Reagan was for unions before he was against them.
The majority of people who work for minimum wage are being overpaid. For the market to work correctly you can only pay people what their value is in an competitive environment. People have so many options now that if the service they are providing is valuable then they can find work. The big problem we have is we protect huge corporations so the majority of the jobs are run by a few companies, this is almost as bad as everyone working for the government. Companies like Boeing and Microsoft are extremely wasteful because of their massive overhead. We need to deregulate and stop enforcing idiotic patents and corporate welfare, so we can have true competition in our marketplaces. Minimum wage is a bad idea and increasing it only make the rest of our dollars worth less.
@1 “No need to ask steve the goat herder”
Silly troll, “Baaaa” means no.
http://buttons.cafepress.com/i...../209341556
Fuck you Marvin! I am glad i have a minimum-wage, part-time job that provides me with excellent, full coverage, health-care benefits. I am retired, with a fixed retirement income (now with no prospects of future COLAs for a long while) and grateful that the State of WA is providing sufficient minimums for folks like me. I must really have been stupid to get my doctorate, teach education at universities, and use my summers to protect and serve the visitors of parks and beaches. If i had been smarter than a post i might have ventured into investment work and skimmed millions off the top before my company went bankrupt.
I don’t know whether this is more or less disgusting than the story of Saint King Dumbfuck having lectured one of his professors in the Harvard MBA program about how all poor people are “lazy”.
13 “We need to deregulate”
Yeah, right. Boeing???? I just can’t wait to ride in an airplane designed and built by people working for starvation wages.
14:
If you are curious as to this post and what “Baaa means no” is all about, look right here:
http://tinyurl.com/goatsinfl
Cyniclown, been to Florida lately?
Just askin’…..
The reason I support the “Right to Choose” is that it will eventually eliminate these Republican AFTERBIRTHS like Manweller
17 – well, your riding in them built by people who are lazy, overpaid and don’t care about the quality of their work. I have seen people spend all day playing computer card games at Boeing, its a joke, how is that person a valuable asset? They aren’t. They are protected by an idiotic union and the company is too scared to fire them.
@20 So the converse is hardworking, underpaid and and care greatly about the quality of their work? Humans don’t think like that.
I think it would be, hard working, paid fairly and competitively, and hopefully care about the quality. However, the fact that if your lazy your hungry is a great motivator for those who can’t motivate themselves.
@ 20
I have seen people spend all day playing computer card games at Boeing
How much are you getting paid while you’re posting comments on this blog?
this better be on tv ads by tonight!!!!!
All these comments and nobody points out:
A) This guy with the Rossi sticker tells minimum wage workers that they are “dumber than a post” with cameras rolling. What kind of idiot, who represents a political candidate, gets himself off message in front of a camera like that? The post did not shoot his candidate in the foot, this guy sure did.
B) “Rossi Sticker boy” Makes an economic argument that says that single women should work for less, because then they would make more.
The Republicans…economic and PR geniuses. It sure is fun, fun, fun, watching them melt.
@18 The trolls know full well what “Baaaa” means. I reckon they also understand the protestations of an innocent child.
http://www.republicanoffenders.com/Pedophiles.html
They know, they just don’t care.
#13
“We need to deregulate”.
Please make that your mantra all the way to November 5th. It goes over so well with all the people who have watched the value of their homes drop while simultaneously rushing into money market funds with their 401(k)’s.
Deregulate yourself into only thirty nine
Republican Senators, please.
26
That website makes my skin crawl. ewwwwwwwww.
@28 “That website makes my skin crawl”
Probably not so much the site itself as it is what these Republicans are up to with their pathetic, perverted lives. Family values my ass. These people are sick and we need to get them out of office.
Frozen @ 20: I’ve also spent six hours before dawn on the flight line with Boeing workers trying hard to get an airplane bought off by the FAA and delivered to the customer, with the wind gusting at 50 MPH and the rain coming pretty much sideways. And after they finished with that airplane, I got to go inside while they just moved on to the next airplane.
I also used to think on a beautiful July day that the window washers downtown had the greatest job in the world, until I saw them doing the same job in January.
Sometimes workers have to work very hard, sometimes they have to wait for things that are beyond their control, parts on their way to the factory, engineering changes, waiting for quality control to buy off on a project. Or maybe it’s just their break time or lunch. I’ve been in union and non-union shops, and I’ve seen as much down time at non-union shops as at the union ones. The complaints about playing games on the computer just shows a bias against unions and a lack of understanding complicated industries.
People like Manweller, and the Rossi fans around him thuggishly cheering on his nonsense, are what is wrong with this country. They can’t handle reasoned discourse, dissent, or differences. I’m sure Rossi, too dim to recognize Manweller’s rant as poor politics, is proud of this little show of vile behavior.
Marvin Stamn spews:
“Hey goldy, how many of your good friends are minimum wage employees?”
The problem for most of this crowd is with the word “employee” because it means have a f@cking job!
Goldy et al are allergic to work.
And addicted to blogging nonsense.
My Left Foot spews:
“Cyniclown, been to Florida lately?”
Is that the home of Rep. Tim Mahoney (DEMOCRAT-Florida)?
You know, the guy who cheats on his wife and pays extortion to an aide.
That Florida?
30 No doubt if “frozen” were to take a trip to Baghdad, he’d think our soldiers were slacking off if they weren’t constantly shooting or being shot at.
Or maybe he’d like to have a conversation with “IAFF Fireman” about how he and his co-workers are guilty of unpardonable loafing if a few hours pass that they don’t have a fire to fight or aren’t pulling some poor sot’s smashed-up carcass out of a wrecked car.
I’m still wondering how Frozen would do if you told him he had to crawl through a hatch into a wing tank, while wearing protective coveralls and a respirator, in August when it’s 85 degrees outside and about 120 inside the wing tank, and given him some sealant and told him to make sure he does the job right because otherwise the wing tanks going to leak jet fuel. Then check on him about two hours later and let him know that while he’s been dwadling in that wing tank, he’s got four other similar jobs backed up waiting for him to get to them.
Remember that during the Great Depression, some Republican businessmen organized groups of thugs to keep charities out of their communities. Calling the charities “socialist” or “communists” organizations, they would threaten the workers, slash tires and burn cars, and otherwise try to drive them out of town.
What were these charities trying to do? They were trying to set up soup kitchens for the thousands of unemployed who were desperately trying to find work while their children were starving.
Why would these businessmen do such a thing? To keep wages down. They feared that if the unemployed and their children were not starving, they wouldn’t work for the pennies in wages they wanted to pay them for hard physical labor. So their goal was to make them starve.
It’s against that background that the minimum wage laws were established, by people who grew up in the Depression and remembered well those circumstances. They realized that wages which kept dropping only temporarily benefited a few, but in the long run everybody was ruined if the businesses didn’t have customers who could afford their products.
It seems the Republicans have forgotten that lesson, and are determined to repeat it.
I just want to know…
when are the republicans going to outsource their Trolls to India?
McCain’s Shiny New ‘Economic Plan’
John McCain is giving President-To-Be Obama an amazing gift on the eve of their final debate:
CUT CAPITAL GAINS TAXES IN HALF!
And what will workers get? A temporary suspension of taxes on unemployment benefits.
I think Manweller should be more considerate of minimum wage workers. If it wasn’t for wingnut welfare or the generousness of the State, he might well have found himself as one of them.
37 Who says they haven’t already?
38 How about a capital loss tax credit for retirees who’ve been victimized by the crooked shysters who’ve been playing fast-and-loose with the money they were supposed to be able to live on with some sort of dignity in what we laughingly refer to as their “golden years”? Those high-and-mighty Wall Street execs should have to live on dog food when they’re old and fucked up.
Recruiters Kept Soldiers In Military By Forging Re-Enlistment Contracts
This story from the KING 5 News website is nothing less than incredible. At least two former National Guard soldiers from Washington State were “re-enlisted” by crooked recruiters who forged the ex-soldiers’ signatures to re-enlistment papers.
Both men saw combat in Iraq during their initial duty tours. One was working in Iraq as a private contractor at the time he purportedly re-enlisted — and therefore couldn’t possibly have signed the re-enlistment contract or taken the oath of service.
The Washington National Guard has finally released both men from the bogus re-enlistment contracts after lawyers and news media intervened. And WNG admitted to KING 5 News that it has disciplined at least 3 of its 79 recruiters for “serious misconduct,” including 2 recruiters who were kicked out of the military service.
This stupid proposal has been proposed by the Repugs every few years. I remember it in the 60-70’s as “a way to give teens their first jobs.” Now no one wants you if you’re under 20 anyway…..the right really is a one trick pony.
How many of my friends are earning minimum wage?????
Well, not mine, exactly. But several friends of my son (age 23) and my daughter (age 25) are still earning minimum wage, or very close to it. My own children have moved beyond that, but not everyone is that lucky. I’ve run into quite a lot of them when I do financial counseling at my church.
The problem is that most young people can only find jobs in retail these days.
Working in retail can be a viscious cycle, with hours which vary each day (sometime opening the store at 7:00 a.m., the next day closing it at 9:00 p.m.), and the days of the week they work can vary – sometimes Saturday, sometimes Sunday, sometimes they get two days off in the middle of the week – but not two consecutive days.
The companies work the managers by frequentely firing some for “underperformance”, which is usually translated into the bottom one-third of their performance matrix is fired each year. The performance matrix takes into account the staffing level, the total sales, the amount of losses due to theft, and some other less tangible factors. By routinely firing about one-third of the managers each year, they put the maximum pressure on the managers to keep on top of the performance matrix. The ability of the managers to keep on top of the matrix is complicated by the fact that they routinely rotate them from one location to another – as soon as they “fix” one store, they get sent to another store to a store which performs less well.
Remember that for the most part, the level of sales is beyond the manager’s control (except for a small factor). The national office chooses the products, the pricing, the advertising, the store design, return policies, store location, etc. The local and national economy pretty much dictate the rest of the sales equation. All a store manager can do is make sure his employees don’t insult or ignore the customers.
So the store manager’s continued existence is dependent upon decreasing costs. In this, he is in competition with every other store manager within the chain, to keep costs lower. He can only do this by keeping his employee’s at part-time status (he usually doesn’t have any discretion in that regard), requiring them to do more work with fewer employees (which usually results in more turnover), keeping wages at minimum wage, and ultimately, forcing employees to work “off the clock” (an illegal practice) by skipping breaks, lunches, holding meetings before or after employees clock in or out, having employees clock out at store closing time even though an hour or two of cleanup and stocking is left to be done.
The companies know that off-the-clock work is happening, they have set up policies which virtually assure that it WILL happen, and yet “officially” condemn the practice, knowing it will be the store manager who gets fired if he gets caught.
So in the end you have a retail employee who’s hours vary so much that they can’t take a second job, have difficulty scheduling job interviews, and only get raises awarded a few days or weeks before the minimum wage rise matches the raise anyway. Not only do they get paid very little, their hours continually fluctuate (ten hours this week, 35 hours the next), and sometimes they have to work split shifts, thereby doubling their commuting expense (“be here for the lunch rush for three hours, then go home, and be back by five for two hours of the evening rush).
Now, you can simply say that they are foolish for working under such conditions, and they should just quit and find a better job. Many of them can’t quit (they have obligations and/or family to support), and many have tried for quite some time to find a better job without success. Some of the more desperate/unethical store managers effectively sabatoge attempts to find better work by refusing to give good references, deliveratly scheduling them for work during interview appointments, etc.
33;
Yes, the same Florida where Rep Mark Foley was ousted from office for terrorizing the underage pages of the Congress with overt sexual advances.
God, Cyniclown, do you ever think before you type something. Cheating on your wife is not a crime. The woman in question is 50 years old and she knew the score. She knew he was married and she knew better too. Both need personal conduct inprovement. Terrorizing underage pages is a crime and that goes to much deeper personal issues and sexual deviancy.
Thanks for playing.
Let’s not overlook the standard Republican approach to anyone who doesn’t agree with their propaganda: personal attacks, name calling, demeaning and threats. Who in their right mind would want these people in charge of ANYTHING???
@ 37
when are the republicans going to outsource their Trolls to India?
They can’t. Not enough people in India who are capable of convincingly acting that stupid.
47
OUCH!!
@32 “The problem for most of this crowd is with the word ’employee’ because it means have a f@cking job!”
I agree! Our capitalist system treats employees like serfs — especially when Republicans run our government! Employees get the highest tax rates, the lowest deductions, and the smallest economic rewards! So … I don’t work! Our capitalist system and Republican government rewards me for flipping stocks instead of doing anything productive with more money and a two-thirds discount on my income taxes! Why the f@ck anyone would ever agree to be an employee under a crazy system like this is a f@cking mystery.
Cut capital gains taxes in half?????
I thought that was the result of the Bush tax cuts, where the 25% – 35% capital gains were reduced to 15%?????
But let’s see: stock market down, so for most investors capital gains = 0. So for most people:
Before McCain plan:
15% tax rate X 0 income = 0 taxes owed.
After McCain tax plan:
15% tax rate divided by 2 X 0 income = 0 taxes owed.
At least for most of us, that would be the effect. How’s that going to improve the economy in the near future? Not so much. But it WOULD improve the economy for those earning in excess of $5 million a year, which is where McCain put the dividing line between the middle class and the rich.
Who cares. You’re all just making this up. There is NO recession anyway. Remember? McCain’s adviser reminded us this is just a “mental” recession. Just stop thinking your 401K lost 40% of it’s value and it will be back. Done.
Are the Republicans TRYING to lose every race in the country? Some days it seems like it.
mr stupid seems pretty damn stupid. if you have lived in Washington Sate – you would understand this better. lots of dumb people up there.
MLF–
You are right, cheating is not a crime.
But Tom Mahoney (DEMOCRAT-Florida) ran on a morals campaign. Kind of hypocritical, isn’t he?
And if Mahoney is not ashamed of what he did, why did he pay over $123,000 of “hush-money”?
Will Mahoney go to jail? NO.
Is he a hypocrit who will lose this election?
Yup.
McCain’s great idea of cutting capital gains in half will have a huge positive impact on the stock & real estate markets.
People will start investing again.
O-blah-blah==DOUBLE CAPITAL GAINS TAX
McCain==Cut it in half!
Who will I vote for?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
It will also help create needed jobs.
You KLOWNS have twisted Rossi’s position on Minimum Wage beyond all recognition.
He was talking about young people and their 1st jobs…to try & save those jobs.
You KLOWNS can go from talking about tax cuts to goat fornicating all in 1 thought.
Scarey.
53:
When you fish in the company pond, you must pay. You don’t mess with underlings. He was stupid.
He is not a criminal and the voters of Fl will decide. The same as Alaska will decide if Ted Stevens is fit for office as another accused criminal.
It’s time to link the nation’s minimum wage the salaries of Congress. Why should Congress give itself raises while the minimum wage only gets raised about every 20 years or so? It’s a fair thing to do, but good luck getting a law like that passed. A Democratic Congress MIGHT do it, but the GOP will fight it tooth and nail. They just don’t like “minimum wage idiots.”
Why worry? Even if Rossi gets elected somehow, wouldn’t cutting the minimum wage require approval from the legislature? And that getting done would mean a lot of legislative seats would have to change hands, enough so to give R’s majorities in both houses.
Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
Wouldn’t mind having Washington’s minimum wage here in Nevada. The MW here is only $6.50/hr, last I checked. I don’t even get paid a wage, all three of my jobs are paid per diem.
@44;
One of the other problems with split-shift part-time work is that it is really hard to go to school. Most schools expect you to be there for class at set times. Most retail split-shift jobs don’t bother telling you your schedule until a day or two before the new week, if then.
Of course, a number of employers who offer “paid schooling” for their employees also have ways of keeping all but a select few from ever being able to use that benefit, but that is another issue.
I’m afraid I don’t have the patience the young
man in the video does. About the third time
Mr. Dirtbag called me stupid I would have decked his *ss.
So the very people who keep this country growing and are the actual creators of every cent of wealth in the nation are nothing more then trash to be shat upon by the lazy non-working crooks of the GOP. How very feudalistic of them.
58: Good point about the schooling.
But some of the retail managers won’t even stick to a weekly schedule. I know one gal, a divorced mother, who’s store gives her a weekly schedule, but in reality she’s just “on call”. She will show up for work only to be told to clock out and go home because it’s a “slow day”. Or she will be called at 5:00 p.m. and told to be in within 30 minutes to work between 5:30 and the 9:00 p.m. closing, unless it slows down at which point she will be told to go home earlier. If she complains, the manager just tells her to pick “her way or the highway”.
Not only does such a schedule make higher education impossible, but imagine trying to arrange day care!
Of course, she’s been trying to find a better job. One of her co-workers told her that one day the store manager got a call from a potential employer, wanting to check her out. The store manager sighed, and said “It’s no surprise to me that she’s looking for another job. She probably expects to be fired from this job soon, and she’s probably right”. Obviously, she didn’t hear back from that potential employer. But that store manager plays that game with all the staff, she just wants to keep them unemployable elsewhere and starving so they are dependent upon her for small favors – like being able to work for a few hours at minimum wage whenever she deigns to grant them that priviledge.
People doing the hard/ground work get paid minimum wage so that some &#^%@ CEO can take home millions. I’ve worked for executives for years and trust me when I say some of these guys barely know how to send an email but still pay themselves seven figure salaries.
It’s unbelievable that Dino Rossi, whose mother came from a poverty-stricken Native-American background, would want to cut minimum wages. I watched the debate between him and Gov. Gregoire last night, and Mr. Rossi had this smug, arrogant look on his face. I guess that’s what greed does to a person.
Well aside from the fact that that was certainly an ugly way to treat another human being…
Interestingly, I was enlightened today by a TV ad that accused Gregoire of lying about Rossi’s position on reducing the minimum wage.
Doesn’t the Kittitas Co. Republican Chair know that his candidate has flip flopped on this issue? Don’t think it’s this courageous young man who is looking “dumber than a post”!