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Posted 10:20pm pst, Sunday, March 6, 2005 The GOP's Trojan Horse
Tomorrow (Monday, March 7, 2005), Rick Santorum (Republican, Pennsylvania) is sponsoring a bill to raise the national minimum wage by $1.10. Sounds pretty good right? Except it's a Trojan Horse. Under Santorum's new bill, businesses with revenues of less than a million bucks would be exempt. Not just exempt from the wage hike, but exempt from ANY minimum wage. 6.8 million businesses would be affected, creating a nation of sweatshops free from any sort of government protection. Untold millions of workers would lose the guarantee of a minimum wage. It gets worse. Businesses grossing under $7 million would be exempt from fines, safety, health, pension and other labor laws. Oh yeah, Santorum's bill would kill the 40-hour work week, thus eliminating overtime pay. It would also ban states from requiring employers to pay tipped workers with a guaranteed wage. Employers could pay tipped workers nothing and force them to live off tips. Economic Policy Institute has a full report on Santorum's bullshit plan. So essentially, Santorum's bill would raise the national minimum wage, but exempt small businesses from even having one. Furthermore, it would actually BAN states from creating their own minimum wage laws. Nice try Rick. So you not only want to dismantle Social Security, you want to do away with worker's rights altogether. What an asshole. The most fucked up discussion about privatization I've heard went something like this: Some Senator, can't remember which one, lamented the privatization dilemma by saying, "It's hard to reconcile what the president wants and what the people want." Huh? To me, there's no contest. The voters elected you to represent THEM, NOT Bush. It's time for these jerks to get their heads screwed on right. No one is saying SS is fine; they're saying it needs reform... not dismantling. The right's entire argument for the last 30 years is that SS has done it's job and it needs to be done away with. That's a load of crap. It's one of the best programs to ever come out of the government and a great way to ensure that American citizens have a safety net when they retire. Notice I called it a safety net and not a retirement fund. That is a misconception. In theory SS is supplemental income to the savings you've socked away throughout your life. It's the safety net you can rely on, say if you presonal investments don't work out. That way, you can still get by. How ironic then that Bush wants to put everyone's retirement fallback into a highly risky private investment account. Added a couple of new links to the Blogroll on the top left. Check out the Andrew Report and Jay Says, a couple of ad guy buddies of mine who started blogs last month. Worth your time.
©2005 Ron Lim unless noted |
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