15 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Obama raises minimum wage for Federal Contract Workers

   Yeah!

   President Barack Obama will announce during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address that he's raising the minimum wage for workers under federal contracts to $10.10 per hour, an administration official told The Huffington Post.

   The new policy, to be instituted via executive order, may affect hundreds of thousands of workers whose jobs are supported by federal dollars. The move is designed in part to ratchet up pressure on Congress to pass legislation raising the minimum wage for all workers. The current federal minimum wage stands at $7.25 per hour, and hasn't been raised since 2009, after the last of a series of increases signed into law by then-President (and Radical Commie Business-hater) George W. Bush.

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2. The following information is pasted from Amazon.  There is a link to the whole description of the book.  If you click on the book, you can get a sample of what is inside. I think it is critical for dems to read this book – it explains why political parties are not important anymore, IMHO.   I think the reason the discussion on this blog dissolves into lame attacks on the other side…it is because most of us here are powerless.  The book, IMHO, discribes why.  It is not an indictmemt, it is a brilliant analysis.  I would really like to know how the rest of you think about it.

    

    

   The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care) by Witwer, Rob and Schrager, Adam (May 1, 2010)

   http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Blue+Print%3A+How+the+democrats+won+colorado

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   1. D – weren't you the one complaining about how OFA and "the campaign" ignored the party stalwarts? The rank and file d's who wer supposed to be so important, crucial even, to success?

      is this a change of heart for you? Or are you hoping your party "wakes up"?

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      1. @JBJK16

         You are absolutely right.  And, I posted that I was wrong based on my reading of the first chapters of the Blue Print.  I can find that posting, if you insist. But that is precisely the first take away from reading Blue Print.  The premise was that campaign financing reform, ie McCain Feingold, limited the ability of political parties to raise money and that was back in 2004, before Citizens United.  So, activitist or people with a political agenda had to find another way to win.  Obama certainly followed that template in 2008 and mastered it back in 2012 with OFA.

         But rendering political parties unimportant has reall significance, IMHO, and is one of those unintended consequence of what looked like good law back in 2002.  

         The other two take aways I have are that back in 2004, the "roundtable" decided to concentrate on the state legislature when all the "political brains" were concentrating on the national race.  Now, of course, the republicans power base is their take over in 2010.   The other take away I picked up on was that all of this happened early, early, on in the 2004 campaign season and the tremendously emphasis was on data collection and using a business model.  They also had more money than god and paid the walkers and data collectors…etc.

         I keep promoting the book because it describes what happened and I missed it because I come from a time when political parties were powerful.  But note, my friend, nobody in all the years that I ranted and raved, nobody told me to read that book or explained what happened in 2004.

         The big question I ask now is this the model still operative?  The book stops in May of 2010 and so misses the teaparty and the Republican wave.  So where are we now?

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      2. Also note, JBJK16, that one of the authors is a Republican.  The other point is that the strategy was focusing on elective positions.  I still think OFA is ineffective because it focuses, now,  on issues and not power. I think republican read the book and dems did not.

          

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         1. I would prefer all interested citizens focus on issues, not power.

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            1. That and 2 bucks will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. 

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            2. Power is what drives this country, and it is a good thing. I hope your republican friends, however, take your advice….beginning with the tea party….which oddly enough is not a political party, it does focus on issues, but somehow winds up in power plays for political offices.

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               1. I would prefer that the political power end up with those most interested in issues.

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                  1. And, pray tell, JFJK15, just how do you expect that to happen????

                     Are you for real? 

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3. RIP Pete

   Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y.

   His death was confirmed by his grandson, Kitama Cahill Jackson, who said he died of natural causes at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

   Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

   For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.

   RELATED IN OPINION
   

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     Dot Earth Blog: Pete Seeger is Gone, but His Circles of Song Ring OnJAN. 28, 2014
     

   In his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall Overcome,” which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.

   Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,”became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

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   1. What is that beautiful quote about "who writes a nation's songs?

      A beautiful eulogy…he will be so missed….but the melodies linger on.

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4.  "Old Frothy" is making yet another presidential bid.

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   1. There is apparently a shortage of social extremist candidates to choose from; Santorum will be a welcome addition for conservatives desperately in need of a candidate with their values.

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5. I watched HBO's new documentary on legendary political cartoonist, Herblock.  This Atlantic article provides many examples of Herb Block's insights from 60 years ago that are relevant today — topics such as too much money in campaigns, mostly coming anonymously from the already powerful corporations seeking to protect their corporate welfare checks, the absurd ease with which people can buy, and use, a gun, and so forth.

   http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/this-shop-gives-every-new-president-of-the-united-states-a-free-shave/283131/

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