Daily Topics - Thursday June 30th, 2011
By shawnt56
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Hour One: Is the debt ceiling unconstitutional? Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR, 4th District) / Plus, latest on the war on democracy - John Nichols, The Nation Magazine
Hour Two: How do we fix the debt ceiling crisis? Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) / Plus, Scholarships for white males only? What's THAT about? Colby Bohannan, The Former Majority Association for Equality
Three: Why do conservatives want to get rid of the minimum wage? Seton Motley, Less Government / Plus, Geeky Science Rocks - Flame retardants and early puberty?
Comments
#2
Bachmann's right. We do need to review all government regulation, specifically regulations that require TSA agents to work in an environment that causes cancer or regulations that permit companies to pump undisclosed materials into our watersheds.
#3
Umm in regards to Mark Halperin's remark, I see it as a somewhat good thing. In fact I'd like to tell the President to be a bigger D**K in regards to his negotiations with the Repugnats. He should be giving them a reason to call him names, they should hate him, and he should welcome that hatred. I'd love to hear Obama get up and say, "if you think that what I said at the press conference was d***y to you, well you haven't seen anything yet!"
I'd be proud to call my President a d**k, so long as he's being a d**k to the con's.
N
#4
Republicans say the are concerned that our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. Bunk. Repubs will NEVER make a principal payment. GWB 2001 said "We have a surplus. That means you are paying too much tax. " They will never collect more tax than it needs to run the gubmint.
#5
Uh Colby, I'm not sure what dictionary your working out of, but majority does not mean 51% of anything, it means to be the greatest percentage out of the subsets. So if you have 3 groups in your set then a majority would be at least 34%, if you have 4 groups then its 26% so on and so forth. The fact that you see 51% as a majority means that you're only looking two groups in your set, White Males and everyone else. That set is so skewed it doesn't even pass the laugh test.
N
#6
Your confusing majority with plurality. The scenario you have described would be a plurality. Majority and plurality are interchangeable only when the result exceeds half of the total.
#7
Seton seems to think the Constitution starts with the amendments and wants to discard everything that precedes them.
#8
I'm not confusing anything. The definition I'm refering to may be obsolete by some standards, but the only thing I'm seeing as referencing a plurality vs majority is voting. The manner in which Colby is using the title of his organization substains this, for in population sets, it is only women that hold a title of 51% or greater. So White Males have never held a majority by that definition. He's not even technically correct.
N
#9
RE: Minimum wage.
Thom, I am on your (our - the peoples') side about the minimum wage. To me it is absurd and inhumane, not to mention destructive to democratic capitalism to think that we should abolish the minimum wage. Nevertheless, when I read Article 8 section 1, it talks about Congress' right to tax for the welfare of the people. This is not a tax, it is a regulation. I think that we need to mine the Constitution for text that allows Congress to establish laws or regulations for the welfare of the People. Please acknowledge and discuss this differentiation between regulation and taxation, as it relates to the minimum wage's constitutionality.
Many Thanks,
Andrew.
#10
Maybe the minimum wage should be treated as an employment tax that is dispensed directly to the employee.
#11
I read somewhere recently that these replacement 'vouchers' (instead of Medicare) will not go to the citizen; those vouchers will go directly to the insurance companies chosen by the recipients. In other words, surprise, surprise, a direct, taxpayer-provided gift to the insurance industry. Again.
Have to run out the door right now or I would google this to get you a link. If I find it later, I'll post it.
Lee
Redmond, WA.
#12
I think the use of "magic numbers" to define the minimum wage needs to be done away with and changed to a percentage of the current poverty level, such as 125%, or 150% (or whatever), for a full time job, and that the hourly amount will be considered 1/40 of that amount when looking at the amount made for working 1 week, so even if someone works a part time job they will still be able to earn a minimum hourly wage. Also the poverty level should be tied into a percentage of the median income. So as median income rises, the minimum wage would rise, automatically. The median income can be determined by state, but the percentage to set the minimum wage should be set at the Federal level, with states being allowed to go higher if so desired (as some do now).
Optionally, the minimum wage percentage, could be based directly on the median income, but I think there should be cost of living baseline for the poverty level. So that in case the median income falls to a point where the upper end of the poverity level falls below the cost of living, the minimum wage would be held at that point.
N
#13
Could be managed as a tax, but that adds unnecessary cost. Now that I think of it, the national minimum wage seems a "natural" enumerated power under the commerce clause. This prevents one state from undercutting another's labor force in order to attract industry. It sets a national baseline for labor, above which commerce must take place.
#14
Try this one from April:
#15
To correct a claim about a Reagan movie being "scrubbed", the "Bedtime for Bonzo" movie starring the chimp is available on Netflix
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I'd like to suggest a new term for the Mega Corporations and Extremely Wealthy, something I think people could really instinctively understand:
"Money Holes"
Like Black Holes suck in everything including light, giving little back, "Money Holes" suck in money and prosperity and give back little. When Repugnants start talking about tax cuts and the trickle down theory, Democrats can counter with the Money Hole Theory, that the more you throw money at an organization the larger it will grow and the more money it will demand. "Money Holes" will devour other weaker "Money Holes" eventually becoming "Super Massive Money Holes".
The supreme court is wrong, money isn't speech, its closer to a body mass that causes gravity, though money is an abstract, and the abstract force exerted by money is greed. The more money that's accumulated, the more greed it exerts... think about it.
Besides, how relieving would it be to call a large corporation or wealthy individuals (like the Koch Bros), a "Friggen' Money Hole!"
A term that can appeal to the intelligentsia and also to the low information citizen.
N