Motley Moose – Archive

Edited to add:  I didn’t mean to do it!  I didn’t uncheck the box that says put this on the front page and OMG look where it wound up!  Please, someone who can, move it over to the sidebar where it belongs!

Over at Booman Tribune I got linked into this happy story at Huffpo:  

White House Brings Minimum Wage, Overtime Protections To 2 Million Home Care Workers

It’s definitely a BFD for the many hard-working, unappreciated, peon-wages-paid folks who take care of the most vulnerable among us.  As the article says,

In a move that will change working conditions for two million Americans, the Labor Department announced Tuesday the enactment of a new rule that will extend minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers, one of the fastest-growing occupations in the country.

As of Jan. 1, 2015, the long-awaited change will end a 38-year-old carveout that excluded workers who attend to the elderly and disabled in their homes from the basic labor protections enjoyed by most Americans.

“Now, waitaminnit”, I hear you say, “just where do the giant puppets come into this?”  Thusly:

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

The story of the 2012 French presidential election is quite  interesting. Right-wing incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy entered the election  deeply unpopular. Opinion polls consistently showed him losing by around  20%.

France’s presidential system has two rounds. In the first round,  everybody can be a candidate. The top two winners of the first round  move to a second round run-off.

As election day approached, Sarkozy’s deficit continually shrunk.   Opinion polls just before the first round showed Sarkozy losing by low  double-digits. As the campaign for the second round began, they showed  him behind by high single-digits.

Sarkozy ended up losing by 3.2%. That’s a pretty steep drop-off from the polls that showed him behind by 20%.

More below.