Thanks, Republicans and wishy washy Dems

I know. My company recently opened our first office in California. The first thing that happened was that our rates for general liability insurance went up by 10%. In addition to much higher corporate and income taxes we also get to pay the California SDI tax ~ $1K/year for each CA employee.

Raises can be effected. There has to be a will to do it. Putting a brake on a few companies is not making a nick in stopping the move to oligarchy.

Fracking - If frackers were so benevolent it would not be illegal, in one state at least, to divulge the chemicals they are using.

I am not to lump you and your right wing people together, but you lump me
" liberals in this country are a bunch of neurotic, depressed people "

You people are collapsing the foundations of government by cutting off taxes, stalling government in congress, rewarding companies that ship jobs and money overseas, hire part time to keep from paying real wages, cut off every social program you get the means to cut, not allow jobs programs or infrastructure work - The list is endless.

Funny thing about that... student workers where I work used to work 10 hours a week and then wages went up. Now they can only work 6 hours. The pool of money that paid them didn't get magically increased when the wage hike went up.

Damn fine post Finn.

One situation, where one one company is involved is no case at all. Read this ****:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/19/job-growth-picks-up-in-states-that-raised-minimum-wage/
WASHINGTON – Maybe a higher minimum wage isn't so bad for job growth after all.

The 13 U.S. states that raised their minimum wages at the beginning of this year are adding jobs at a faster pace than those that did not, providing some counter-intuitive fuel to the debate over what impact a higher minimum has on hiring trends.

Many business groups argue that raising the minimum wage discourages job growth by increasing the cost of hiring. A Congressional Budget Office report earlier this year lent some support for that view. It found that a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour, as President Obama supports, could cost 500,000 jobs nationwide.

But the state-by-state hiring data, released Friday by the Labor Department, provides ammunition to those who disagree. Economists who support a higher minimum say the figures are encouraging, though they acknowledge they don't establish a cause and effect. There are many possible reasons hiring might accelerate in a particular state.

"It raises serious questions about the claims that a raise in the minimum wage is a jobs disaster," said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. The job data "isn't definitive," he added, but is "probably a reasonable first cut at what's going on."

Just last week, Obama cited the better performance by the 13 states in support of his proposal for boosting the minimum wage nationwide.

"When ... you raise the minimum wage, you give a bigger chance to folks who are climbing the ladder, working hard.... And the whole economy does better, including businesses," Obama said in Denver.

In the 13 states that boosted their minimums at the beginning of the year, the number of jobs grew an average of 0.85 percent from January through June. The average for the other 37 states was 0.61 percent.

Nine of the 13 states increased their minimum wages automatically in line with inflation: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Four more states — Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — approved legislation mandating the increases.

Twelve of those states have seen job growth this year, while employment in Vermont has been flat. The number of jobs in Florida has risen 1.6 percent this year, the most of the 13 states with higher minimums. Its minimum rose to $7.93 an hour from $7.79 last year.

Some economists argue that six months of data isn't enough to draw conclusions.

"It's too early to tell," said Stan Veuger, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "These states are very different along all kinds of dimensions."

For example, the number of jobs in North Dakota — which didn't raise the minimum wage and has prospered because of a boom in oil and gas drilling — rose 2.8 percent since the start of this year, the most of any state.

But job growth in the aging industrial state of Ohio was just 0.7 percent after its minimum rose to $7.95 from $7.85. The federal minimum wage is $7.25.

Veuger, one of the 500 economists who signed a letter in March opposed to an increase in the federal minimum, said the higher wages should over time cause employers to hire fewer workers. They may also replace them with new technologies.

The Congressional Budget Office cited those factors in its February report. But in addition to job losses, the CBO also said a higher minimum could boost paychecks for another 16.5 million workers.

Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said that research comparing counties in states that raised their minimums with neighboring counties in states that did not has found no negative impact on employment.

Restaurants and other low-wage employers may have other ways of offsetting the cost of higher wages, aside from cutting back on hiring, she said. Higher pay can reduce staff turnover and save on hiring and training costs.

State and local governments have become increasingly active on the issue as the federal minimum wage has remained unchanged for five years. Twenty-two states currently have higher minimums than the federal requirement.

And 38 states have considered minimum wage legislation this year, the most on record, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. At least 16 will boost their minimums starting next year, the NCSL says.

Birds of a feather.

Was that a fact-based rational counter argument or an attack on the author of the type you recently accused "you people" of doing? You remain very quick to criticize others and hypocritical in doing so.

You seem intent on turning this into a name calling fest. But, I can see why. Preen your feathers. Have a nice day.

http://media.cagle.com/73/2014/08/28/152913_600.jpg

The reason for this is that since Ronny Raygun our conservative government has been bought by industry to vote incentives for industry to move jobs and industry overseas. And dont give me any crap about Clinton and Obama being liberals because they are not. Nor are most Senators and Representatives liberal but all are bought by big business and the rich to do their bidding.

If you look closely at my thread title, you will see that I include Democrats in my complaint list. Clinton and Obama would have been classified as Republicans in the 60s.

I think if you read my post you will find I agree with you. We havent had a liberal government since Ronny Raygun was elected.

I concur. I used to blame the Bushes for much of what Reagan and Clinton did.

This post first appeared at The Nation.

Imani Clark, Aurica Washington, Crystal Owens and Michelle Bessiake are students at Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern University, two historically black colleges in Texas. They do not have a driver’s license or own a car, and do not possess one of the five forms of government-issued identification required by Texas to vote.

They can no longer vote with their student IDs in Texas, where a handgun permit is a valid voter ID but a student ID is not.

The four students are among the plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of Texas’ voter ID law in federal court in Corpus Christi this week. The trial before Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, an Obama appointee, is expected to last two to three weeks.

In August 2012, a three-judge district court in Washington found that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The court called it “the most stringent [voter ID law] in the country.”

But after the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder freed states like Texas with a long history of voting discrimination from having to approve their voting changes with the federal government, Texas wasted no time in implementing the blocked law. “With today’s decision, the state’s voter ID law will take effect immediately,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced hours after the court’s ruling. Groups like the Justice Department, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Mexican American Legislative Caucus are now challenging the law under Section 2 of the VRA, which remains on the books.

During the first round of court proceedings, Texas admitted that between 600,000 to 800,000 registered voters in the state lacked a government-issued photo ID, with Hispanic voters between 46.5 percent to 120 percent more likely than whites to not have the new voter ID. Those without a voter ID needed to pay for additional documentation to confirm their identifies, with the cheapest option being a birth certificate for $22. Attorney General Eric Holder called it a “poll tax.”

Getting a voter ID in Texas isn’t as easy as you’d think. There are no DMV offices in 81 of 254 counties in the state, with some voters needing to travel up to 250 miles to obtain a voter ID. Counties with a significant Hispanic population are less likely to have a DMV office, while Hispanic residents in such counties are twice as likely as whites to not have a voter ID. (Hispanics in Texas are also twice as likely as whites to not have a car.) So far, Texas has issued only 279 new voter IDs, even though hundreds of thousands of registered voters lack one.

The court based its ruling on three important facts:

(1) a substantial subgroup of Texas voters, many of whom are African American or Hispanic, lack photo ID; (2) the burdens associated with obtaining ID will weigh most heavily on the poor; and (3) racial minorities in Texas are disproportionately likely to live in poverty.

“A law that forces poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionably denies or abridges their right to vote,” wrote Judge David Tatel. “The same is true when a law imposes an implicit fee for the privilege of casting a ballot.”

Those burdened by the law include 92-year-old Ruby Barber of Waco, who has voted in every presidential election since 1944 but could not easily obtain a voter ID because she does not have a driver’s license, birth certificate or marriage license. “I’ve voted all my life, and not to be able to vote — it just breaks my heart,” she said.

During the first test of the law last November, many voters – including a state judge and both candidates for governor – had to sign an affidavit to vote because the names on their IDs did not match their names on the voter registration rolls. Ninety year-old Speaker of the House Jim Wright was denied a voter ID before his assistant procured a certified copy of his birth certificate.

Texas passed the voter ID law as “emergency” legislation at the beginning of 2011. It’s unclear what emergency the Texas legislature was responding to – since 2000, there has been only one successful conviction for voter impersonation, according to the comprehensive News21 database.

This case has important national significance for a few reasons.

Number one: as mentioned earlier, Texas passed the strictest voter ID law in the country and has done little to ensure that every registered voter will be able to cast a ballot. If the law is approved, it will set a precedent for similarly strict measures to be adopted elsewhere.

Number two: Texas has a significant governor’s race between Abbott and State Senator Wendy Davis in 2014. It is also trending blue in the long-term. Texas Republicans believe voter ID will reduce turnout among Democratic-aligned voters. The former political director of the Texas Republican Party argued in 2007 that a voter ID law would add 3 points to the GOP vote.

Number three: Texas is a perfect case study for whether the existing provisions of the VRA can protect voters from discrimination. Since the federal courts have already judged Texas’s law to be discriminatory, any subsequent decision approving the law would show the devastating impact of the Shelby decision. Thus far in 2014, the federal courts have blocked Wisconsin’s voter ID law but did not grant a preliminary injunction against North Carolina’s tough new voting restrictions.

Already, jurisdictions in Texas, like the city of Pasadena, have changed their voting rules to dilute black and Hispanic representation. “The Justice Department can no longer tell us what to do,” Pasadena Mayor Johnny Isbell said when the city passed a referendum last year eliminating two Hispanic city council seats.

Number four: the Justice Department and civil rights groups are arguing that Texas’s voter ID law was enacted with intentional discrimination and the state should have to approve its voting changes with the federal government for a period of time as a result. This little-used bail-in provision has been described by Travis Crum of Yale Law School as the “secret weapon” of the VRA. But it’s very difficult to prove intentional discrimination and only nine jurisdictions have been bailed-in to the VRA since 1975.

However, a federal court also found in 2012 that Texas’s redistricting maps were “enacted with discriminatory purpose.” Like voter ID, that case is now being tried again under Section 2. “The State of Texas has employed a variety of devices to restrict minority voters’ access to the franchise,” DOJ argues. “In the absence of relief…there is a danger that Texas will continue to violate the Voting Rights Act and the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in the future.”

Texas has lost more Section 5 lawsuits than any other state. If there’s any place in the country that needs to be monitored under the VRA, this is it.

Here's criticism from Panetta on Obama that has relevance.
http://news.yahoo.com/katie-couric-interviews-leon-panetta-103323328.html