Justin Miller at The American Prospect reminds us that voters in four states will consider minimum wage hikes on Election Day. Ballot measures are the wave of the present here, since anti-minimum wage Republicans dominate state legislatures just as surely as they dominate our Congress. And in 2014, you may recall, state-level minimum-wage hikes did pretty well in four dark-red states, despite the Republican wave, and despite the onslaught of Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling from rich corporate groups and their lackeys in Congress.
Neil deMause at FAIR catches New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof calling for more government intervention on poverty, but still bemoaning the amount of big-screen TVs poor people seem to have. Why is it dumb to do that? Partly because a lot of poor folks these days have only been poor since the banksters crashed the economy in 2008, partly because "the stresses of poverty," not a lack of "financial literacy," leave poor folk with nothing but bad and less-bad financial decisions to choose from -- and partly because the major costs folks have these days are constant. A big-screen TV can be a one-time cost, but your electric bill, your rent or mortgage, and your health care are all ongoing.
Seen that video supposedly depicting ballot box-stuffing by Democrats in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Arizona? Turns out that video actually uses footage from also-easily-found-on-YouTube clips showing ballot box stuffing in Russian elections. Of course, when you're watching a video supposedly depicting ballot box fraud and the video has no sound, you ought to be a bit suspicious right there. Then again, our paper of record apparently had no suspicions about that first James O'Keefe video from 2009 despite the video's obvious edits, so maybe all that training a lot of journalists get in post-structuralist literary theory isn't as useful as we're supposed to think.
This sure seems like good news: McDonald's will settle a labor-law violations lawsuit employees at a California franchise brought against the parent company. Which would give you the impression that McDonald's has accepted the NLRB's declaration that plaintiffs can hold McDonald's liable for abuses committed by its franchises -- except that McDonald's has not admitted to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, meaning its efforts to fight the NLRB's declaration (and a subsequent court ruling saying employees can hold McDonald's liable if they believe McDonald's is their employer) will no doubt continue.
Finally, the incomparable Digby reminds us that FBI Director James Comey, who informed Congress last Friday that the FBI had begun investigating a series of emails that might relate to Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server, has always been a "partisan hack." The avalanche of details is quite impressive, but I had actually forgotten that his "heroism" in fighting Tha Bush Mobb's warrantless wiretapping program wasn't actually heroism, and I'm glad to be reminded of that. And again: would a President Hillary Clinton finally realize, unlike her two Democratic predecessors, that "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is actually very bad advice?
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