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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (49013)	2/13/2008 8:29:12 AM
From: Travis_Bickle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543025

I don't think any president can accomplish all that much (just avoid screwing things all to hell), but he never says what he can accomplish, he talks about what WE can accomplish. In any case he is far more pleasant to listen to and watch than the others, I could go for eight years without being smirked at.

To: Lane3 who wrote (49013)	2/13/2008 8:45:55 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543025

It's all about emphasis and degree. If a President Obama doesn't stroll to the podium and call the other party weak and dangerous and bad for the American people on a regular basis, the partisan poison level starts to go down. If he doesn't condone something like the K Street project to foster a huge lobbying industry to benefit his party's interests, there will be less activity there. Nothing is going to end completely. But at least we would be working in the right directions instead of another 50.x%, our way or the highway administration.

To: Lane3 who wrote (49013)	2/13/2008 11:29:02 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 543025

One of the comments to that blog post - I am a Republican. I have had inklings of voting for Obama. But I am also a small business owner. Obama seems like a good enough guy. I had thought I'd much rather have him than Hillary. Completely honest question here: I've read in his stances that he's in favor of making the minimum wage a "living wage" such that people can pay bills and raise a family on it. If you assume that means making a the minimum wage equal to, say, $25,000 a year...near the poverty line...that equates to about $13.00 an hour...effectively doubling the minimum wage. As a small business owner that employs a lot of kids at a rate ranging from $7/hr to $10/hr, this would impact me. Most of these kids are late teens, early twenties, high school dropouts. They play LOTS of video games and smoke LOTS of pot. Generation Y is what their called. We are just making ends meet because we have a lot of debt on the business that we pay off (about $8,500 a month between three small restaurants). If the minimum wage doubles, it could put us out of business. One option for me would be to raise prices on our food...and all other similar small business would have to raise the prices of their goods in a similar manner to maintain margins. This would drive inflation through the roof...netting bad stuff for the economy. The kids could by more video games and pot, i guess. Also, if my employees (or Panera Bread, or CVS, or your corner coffee store, etc.) are making $13 an hour, what will the employees who work in manufacturing and make $16 an hour think? They'll now want $20 because they are admittedly more skilled than minimum wage workers. So the question: am I missing something when I read about his stances? How does this do anything but crush the small business owner? Or any retail operation? Posted by SmallBusinessOwner \| February 12, 2008 10:07 PM meganmcardle.theatlantic.com -------- I don't think Obama's actually going to try to pass a national $13/hour minimum wage, but is he going to go for something just a bit less? Is a national "living wage" part of his program? Apparently it is - "Create a Living Wage: Obama will raise the minimum wage and index it to inflation to make sure that full-time workers can earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs such as food, transportation, and housing." barackobama.com "Raise the minimum wage" is just standard Democratic policy, but "living wage" usually implies a pretty big increase, not one like the one that passed recently. From the examples I've seen they tend to be $8 to $12 per hour. Such a policy would be harmful.