Obama Administration gets behind the Fair Minimum Wage Act, though the Senate may leaven it with some small business tax breaks. I'm pretty sure the Times is wrong to suggest that "small businesses" are the minimum wage's biggest opponents, as big corporations seem to do the most whining about it. And I'd forgotten that the House hosed this bill (attached as an amendment to another bill) back in March -- and that all 227 Republicans voted against it. Think House Democratic candidates will run campaign ads about that? Nah -- that'd be "uncivil."
Also on the fair pay front, Switzerland's voters will vote on a maximum 12:1 ratio between CEO pay and lowest-paid worker pay in two weeks. If it passes, CEOs will no longer be able to pay themselves more in a month than their lowest-paid employees make in a year. No, they don't deserve gajillions of dollars because they take risks -- the only risk they take nowadays is that they'll only get an eight-digit payout if they run their company into the ground. And if this initiative helps goose lower-paid workers' pay upward, as expected, then some of them might get to be CEOs themselves one day.
America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, profiles a hedge fund manager who's in a heap of trouble right now for trading on illegally-obtained inside information. We learn (among other things) that the "liberal" media loves slobbering all over the folks Charles Darwin used to charitably call "cheating tradesmen." And also that the sheen of altruism these "tradesmen" enjoy is just that -- "if you'd let the sheep you fleece keep their skin," Mr. Palast says, "they wouldn't need your charity."
Finally, conservative columnist Cal Thomas, who I used to never, ever agree with on anything, writes about a New York town that used to begin its town meetings with (mostly) Christian prayers. Even though he's been his own man for a few years now, I still sorta expected Mr. Thomas to support public prayers in state functions, but instead he quotes Isaiah to refute the notion that Americans are a "chosen" nation and asks "Why would God be more impressed and more likely to respond to a public prayer than to a private one?" before quoting Matthew. Amen.
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