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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

In the News: Rich guys vote against lifting millions out of poverty

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Senate Republicans Filibuster Minimum Wage Hike

As expected, Senate Republicans voted on Wednesday to block debate on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

The procedural motion to begin debate received 54 votes for, and 42 against — short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster.[…]

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The bill to raise it is sponsored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and strongly backed by President Barack Obama.

But that’s okay, the poors will get a hearing in the House, sort of.

Paul Ryan Won’t Let Poor People Testify At Hearing About Poverty

On Wednesday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will hold a hearing on poverty called “A Progress Report on the War on Poverty: Lessons from the Frontlines.” While it will feature three experts, none of them are actually low-income Americans who struggle to get by.

But that’s not for lack of trying from some poor people themselves. Witnesses to Hunger, an advocacy project that shares the stories of low-income Americans, has tried and failed twice to have some of their members who live in poverty speak at Ryan’s poverty hearings. “When Ryan had his first hearing last July,” Director Mariana Chilton told ThinkProgress, “we wrote to his office to see if we could testify, but they weren’t interested.” While Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) tried to get one of their low-income members to speak, it was too late. They were asked to submit written testimony instead.

Oh great …


… one of the three people who will testify has some controversial opinions about anti-poverty programs. Bishop Shirley Holloway, founder of the House of Help City of Hope, said, “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.”

Dream of eating?

More …

A little birdie told me …

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Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 15 Comments

15 comments

  2. HappyinVT

    I was going to do similar diary ’cause lots of stuff to talk about. Need to get ready for appointment, though.

    Am surprised you haven’t brought up WI voter ID ruling; good stuff in there.

  3. Diana in NoVa

    and yet these creatures are the first to jump on the “I love Jesus” bandwagon when anyone questions their hatefulness.

    How like Republicans to allow only males to testify at hearings on the contraceptive mandate in ACA and only rich people to testify at poverty hearings.

    One has to believe that karma will get ’em one day or else go mad.

    Thanks for the diary, Jan!

  4. princesspat

    A green line of governors: Can Inslee, Kitzhaber stop energy exports?

    Elections have consequences, it is often said, and the elections of 2010 and 2012 brought to the West Coast a solid green line of governors: John Kitzhaber in Oregon, Jerry Brown in California and Jay Inslee in Washington. Climate change is under attack in all three states, and rhetoric is building in the Northwest.

    Conservation leaders are ecstatic about recent climate-change statements from Washington’s Inslee and Oregon’s Kitzhaber. They come as the region is targeted by Big Energy, which is seeking a pathway to Asia, a modern Silk Road carried on rails and ships.

    Kshama Sawant has already won the Seattle $15 wage debate

    If the Seattle City Council passes a $15 wage in the coming months (as appears likely), Sawant will appropriately get credit for coming out of nowhere to commandeer the city’s political agenda.

    Who had heard of her before last August*? For that matter, who (aside from Socialist Alternative newspaper subscribers) had a quick jump to a $15 wage on their radar a year ago? Yet the political fear of Sawant’s organizing skill has put a radical economic policy on greased rails. In process-loving Seattle, the minimum wage is happening as quickly as a lightning strike.

    ‘Very big deal’: UW team uses stem cells to fix monkey hearts

    For nearly two decades, Dr. Chuck Murry, a University of Washington cardiovascular biology researcher, has been intent on transforming powerful human stem cells into heart-muscle cells that can repair damaged hearts.

    ~snip~

    For Murry, his lab’s latest success is bittersweet. His 86-year-old mother, Donna Murry – the inspiration and motivation for his focus on fixing damaged hearts, he said – died last week of multiple infarctions. Heart disease runs in the family, Murry said.

    “She is the kind of person we would like to have helped,” he said. “My mom would have been so proud.”

  6. JanF

    The Huge Obama Transportation Bill You Heard Nothing About

    Republicans have urged the Obama Administration to propose a major transportation bill, calling America’s crumbling infrastructure a natural issue for bipartisan cooperation.

    Well, on Tuesday, the Administration unveiled a four-year, $300-billion transportation bill. It included a 22% increase in highway funding, a 70% increase in transit funding, and a provision allowing states to put tolls on interstates. At a time when one in nine U.S. bridges are rated “structurally deficient,” and nearly half the public lacks access to public transit, it’s a pretty ambitious piece of legislation. And this is probably the first you’re hearing of it, because it got virtually no media attention.

    Not only unsexy but also dead-on-arrival (and thank goodness that Wonkette and Charlies Pierce cover the real news or I would have missed it):

    Obama Unveils Important Transportation Bill That Also Will Not Pass

    Now, everyone knows America’s infrastructure is crumbling faster than a sand castle at high tide, and everyone knows that we need to pour some money into fixing it. Everyone also knows that infrastructure projects would have the added benefit of putting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of unemployed Americans back to work. Grunwald even quotes Republicans leaders Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor as speaking approvingly of infrastructure projects.

    Nonetheless, this bill is dead on arrival in Congress, just like every other infrastructure bill Obama has proposed for five years, because fixing collapsing bridges is suddenly socialism or we’re broke and dog forbid we should raise taxes to pay for a few things or we haven’t gotten to the bottom of that Benghazi thing yet.

    The Fix Is Not In

    Of all the examples of conservatives and their vandalism that we’ve seen since the inauguration of the Kenyan Usurper, their performance on infrastructure repair is the most delicate mixture of negligence and hypocrisy that they yet have produced. Everybody in Congress knows that the country is falling apart. Hell, everybody who drives knows the country is falling apart. (There have been landslides in Baltimore and in Yonkers over the last few days because it rained really hard.) Everybody in Washington knows that a massive infrastructure improvement program would stimulate the economy and provide thousands of jobs. … everybody in Washington knows the bill is going nowhere, so nobody pays attention to it, and the actual problem thereby gets shoved under the rug again until a sinkhole in Council Bluffs swallows a busload of nuns.

  7. JanF

    Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked a bill – cosponsored by Bernie – that would boost the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from today’s $7.25 starvation wage. Only one Republican voted to even consider the measure, something Bernie called disappointing but not surprising. But there’s still hope. Bernie met last weekend in Charlotte, N.C., with fast-food restaurant employees who are part of a growing grassroots movement for a minimum wage increase. “What you are doing is extraordinarily important and brave,” he told the young workers. “You are saying that you are tired of being exploited.”

  8. JanF

    Antonin Scalia’s Blunder Is Unprecedented, Legal Experts Say

    It’s common for the Supreme Court to make typographical corrections and insubstantial edits to a decision after its release. But it’s exceedingly rare to see a factual error that helps form the basis for an opinion. Legal experts say Scalia’s mistake appears to be wholly unprecedented in that it involves a justice flatly misstating core facts from one of his own prior opinions.[…]

    Dan Farber, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, called it “an unusually major mistake, and all the more surprising because Scalia wrote the American Trucking opinion” that he mischaracterized in Tuesday’s ruling.

    So, is Scalia losing it? Or does he simply not even care about the accuracy of his opinions because he just pulls them out of his “bum” (h/t HappyinVT) to match his ideology? And is it funnier that he ranted against a 9-0 decision in 2001 that HE WROTE … or that Clarence Thomas concurred with his rant? How can the law clerks of 22% of SCOTUS miss the mistake?

    When you are one of 9 people out of 316.3 million tasked with rendering the final judgment on the constitutionality of laws that the other 316.3 million people have to abide by, you should be held to a higher standard. Like remembering stuff you wrote … or hiring someone to read your rants who isn’t afraid to tell you that you made a mistake.

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