Chris Christie's Traffic Jam Scam: "I Has a Sad Now" Update: Bruce Springsteen joins Jimmy Fallon Parody Born to Run Mocking Chris Christie.

by Sunnyjane

I'm so sad that I haven't even had the desire to yell at a teacher lately.

Screeeeecccchhhh!  No, that's not the sound of a vehicle coming to a sudden halt on the George Washington Bridge.  That's the sound of a political career trying its damnedest to keep from going off the bridge.

Tip O'Neill, former Democratic Speaker of the House, coined the phrase All Politics is Local, and that's usually true.  But when a scandal's transgressor is a well known governor who aspires to the lofty position of President of the United States, said scandal becomes national news and garners the media coverage it deserves.  After all,  Americans love a political scandal.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, Let Me Win This Freaking Race

The first motive for the grand plan to shut down two access lanes from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge came shortly after copies of emails were made available on Wednesday, January 8. 

Motive #1:  The lane closings were retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, for refusing to endorse Gov. Christie's candidacy for a second term.  However, that falls short as good reasoning because Christie says he never asked the mayor for his support, as he had done with many other Democratic mayors in New Jersey.  Mayor Sokolich has pretty much confirmed that he was never approached by anyone in the Christie campaign for his endorsement, telling Chris Hayes:  I’ve never viewed myself as being that important. The governor himself said that I’m not on his radar.  But the mayor did add, David Wildstein deserves an ass-kicking. Sorry, there, I said it. 

Motive #2:  Rachel Maddow put forth another theory, that the closings were payback for what he knew would be the state Senate's refusal to confirm his reappointment of a Republican judge to the New Jersey Supreme Court.  In one of his epic rants on the evening of August 12, Christie raged in public that the members of the Senate -- led by Democratic Senator Loretta Weinberg, who happens to live in Fort Lee -- were all animals and suggested that reporters should take a bat to the seventy-eight year old grandmother.  It was the very next morning, at 7:34, that Bridget Kelly sent the infamous eight-word email to David Wildstein: Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.  And Wildstein replied: Got it.

Motive #3:  The latest conjecture comes from MSNBC's Steve Kornacki, who speculates that the Christie administration may have been trying to derail a billion dollar development project of Mayor Sokolich's.  Of course, such traffic jams -- if allowed to continue -- would have meant the end of that project.

Motive #4:  An admittedly small thinker -- and I hesitate to try to out-speculate some of the most respected minds in the media -- I believe the motive for this jam-scam is much simpler.  The lane shutdowns began less than two months before the gubernatorial election in November.  Christie knew he was going to win reelection, and yet he admitted in his press conference on Thursday, January 9, that he was trying to run up the score.  He wanted his opponent's voters.  And who was his opponent?  Barbara Buono of Bergen County, in which Fort Lee was the targeted town.

In an email exchange with David Wildstein, a name-redacted individual wrote: I feel badly [sic] for the kids.  I guess. 

To which Wildstein replied, They are the children of Buono voters.

Gov. Christie won Fort Lee with 55%, Bergen County with 60.2%, and the entire state with 60.4%.  So, his strategy may well have worked.

The truth may be one, some, all, or none of the above.  But with several investigations taking shape, I'm sure we'll find out.

The Governor Doth Protest Too Much, Me Thinks

   

So after trying to block the investigation, I took swift action four months later!

One thing that Chris Christie hasn't learned yet is that most times, saying less is much better than spewing a whole lot of shit on national television for almost two hours.  He used every self-castigating adjective he could think of to display how awful he felt.  The only thing he didn't say was something along the lines of I'm upset because I always assume that the suck-up idiots who work for me are trustworthy.

For the Governor to say he knew nothing about the issue until the morning of Tuesday, January 7, is an outright lie; the cover-up started much earlier.  In the middle of the closures, Pat Foye, Bill Baroni's counterpart on the New York side of the Port Authority, asked in an email to Baroni how he was supposed to explain the lane closings to the public.  Baroni replied, I am on my way to office to discuss. There can be no public discourse.  To which Foye responded, Bill that’s precisely the problem: there has been no public discourse on this.  

In early December 2013, he personally phoned New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to ask him to stop Pat Foye from pressing so hard on the investigation into Bill Baroni's part in the September shutdown.  Obviously, Cuomo refused.  

Me thinks that NO ONE is going to come out of this smelling like a rose.

Conservative Reactions and Reactionaries

Brit Hume, Fox News: It's this feminized atmosphere that makes Chris Christie a bully.* 

On the day of the released emails, both CNN and MSNBC ran with the story on a full-time basis, while Fox News gave it about fifteen minutes.  After all, it was Roger Ailes who tried to convince Chris Christie to run for president in 2012, and would surely expect him to run in 2016.  And the Governor claims Ailes a confidential adviser and any interactions between the two will be protected under the New Jersey's executive privilege rules.

Known to be sound-bite grabbers searching for a camera if a scandal appears to be taking shape around President Obama, GOP members of congress have been notably silent on the Chris Christie Bridgegate brouhaha.  When asked if Christie was still a viable candidate for 2016, John Boehner said, I think so.  Rand Paul, a wannabe primary challenger of the Governor's was rather frosty when asked, saying that it was a local problem.  However, he could not resist adding, I have been in traffic before, though, and I know how angry I am when I’m in traffic, and I’m always wondering, ‘who did this to me?’  (Did you feel that filet knife that was just plunged into your kidneys, Governor?)

Rudy Giuliani called the closures a stupid political prank that got out of hand.   A prank? 

*If you thought you'd seen Fox News reach its nadir, you might be in for a surprise.  On Sunday, the station's Media Buzz program produced this little gem from Brit Hume, who referred to Chris Christie as masculine and muscular.   Expounding, Hume said, I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct and are kind of old-fashioned tough guys run some risks.  (Hume may have to walk that back a bit; see the End Note.

For more of what the GOP pundits and other talking heads had to say yesterday, read on.

End Note

Say I'm a bully one more time and I'll punch your nose in!

Actual quote:


Using direct and blunt language is something that I've done my whole life. It was the way my mother raised me. I am who I am. And I'm not going to change. 

Thanks for the warning.  The American voters appreciate your clarifying that, and we'll be sure to remember it in 2016.  Please proceed, Governor.

UPDATE by Kathleen. 

I'd like to add this parody of Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" mocking Governor Chris Christie performed by Jimmy Fallon and Bruce Springsteen to Sunnyjane's excellent post. 

Book Review: 'Double Down -- Game Change 2012' (Part 2 of 2)

by Sunnyjane

I refuse to apologize for cheating to get on the NYT Bestseller list!

In 2007, Mitt Romney was told that he had to appeal to the far-right if he wanted to win the 2008 GOP nomination race against such luminaries as John McCain, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, Alan Keys, Duncan Hunter (whoever heard of this guy?), and Rudy Giuliani.  So he did -- but not very well.  After putting forty-five million dollars of his own money into a primary run that cost a total of one-hundred and ten million, he withdrew in February 2008 after losing Iowa to Huckabee and New Hampshire to McCain.

Two weeks after the 2008 election of Barack Obama, Romney was told by one adviser that he lost because he didn't tell his story of being a successful businessman and governor of Massachusetts, blah, blah, blah.   This adviser told him to spend the next couple of years writing a book, lecturing, figuring out who would back him, writing editorials, etc.   The advice was good; the results were not what Romney needed to project himself as what could easily be called Mr. Fix-It of the Economy and Everything Else That is Wrong with Obama and America.  Taking a page from Sarah Palin, he pulled some not-too-ethical shenanigans to get his book on the New York Times bestseller list; most of the books were purchased in bulk.  It was so obvious that the online Paper of Record -- which always awards a dagger to books purchased in bulk -- awarded No Apology two daggers. 

Few Favorable Winds for USS Romney

Though it had been a foregone conclusion by the first of April, Mitt Romney safely secured the requisite number of 1,144 delegate votes to assure him of the GOP presidential nomination on May 29, 2012.  It had been a long, tiring, and very expensive primary, but Mitt and his staff were geared up and ready to make sure that Barack Obama would be a one-term president.  The campaign would make the election all about the economy, hammering Obama for his fecklessness and failures. They had every opportunity; the progressive left was unhappy that the President hadn't made more progress on his agenda, his most loyal 2008 supporters appeared to be having doubts, and the big money wasn't rolling in.  But in typical GOP style, they managed to screw it up royally because they had a bad candidate, a dysfunctional campaign, and lousy, out-of-touch messages for the broad spectrum demographics that makes up 21st Century America. 

A few of the, um, challenges that faced the Romney Campaign:

Maybe we shouldn't have outsourced our campaign literature to China.

The Ricketts Plan:   Things got off to a rather inauspicious start for the Romenyites -- or Boston -- as the campaign was sometimes referred to.   A little backstory: In February of 2012, Romney had said in a radio interview with Sean Hannity:  ...I'm not sure which is worse, [the President] listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation.  (Bold emphasis added.)  

This statement emboldened Joe Ricketts -- a wealthy and influential Republican supporter -- to authorize a highly secret ten million dollar, forty-page plan entitled The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama, which would play up the President's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.  On the same day it was printed up, a copy was handed to the Obama campaign by a mysterious brunette, which got it into the hands of the New York Times through a third party.  The message to the Romney campaign from the Obamans was simple:  that if [the Romney campaign] crossed the line when it came to race,  there would be a price to pay. 

When questioned by a reporter several days later if he stood by his February statement on Rev. Wright to Hannity, Romney uttered those immortal words:  I'm not familiar, precisely, with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.
  
That Detroit Bailout Thingy: One of the things Mitt's 2008 adviser urged him to do was write editorials (op-eds) to start getting his

message out to the American public.  He took this to heart and in mid-November -- right after the election -- he wrote his opinion of the Bush-proposed bailout of the Detroit auto industry.  (President-elect Obama also supported the bailout.)

The New York Times was eager to print it and Mitt Romney was thrilled beyond words.  Unfortunately, the Times has a policy that only their editorial staff writes the title, and this one came out as Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.  Naturally, the Obamans took that line as one of their major campaign themes against Romney, and by October 2012, that archived op-ed had become the Number One most-read, most-emailed Times editorial, and the Romney campaign was never able to put a halt to what they felt was a dramatic misrepresentation of what Romney had proposed back in 2008.

The problems that faced Mitt Romney were far-ranging and politically damaging on practically every issue: his taxes (stored away in more than two dozen bank boxes), women, college students, Latinos, African Americans, the LGBT community, his gaffes, Ann's gaffes and petulance, the 47% debacle, the Etch-a-Sketch moment, his staffer telling reporters to kiss my ass, etc.  After his jaw-dropping  An-Idiot-Abroad trip to the UK, Israel and Poland, a former Bush staffer said, It almost feels like Sarah Palin is his foreign policy adviser.  Haley Barbour said that Mitt was an inept candidate ... incapable of connecting with voters, inspiring conservatives, or restraining himself from planting his penny loafer in his mouth.  That about sums up how most GOP party leaders -- and the GOP electorate in general -- viewed their 2012 candidate.

The Search for a Not-Sarah-Palin Vice President

Code-named Project Goldfish, Mitt's hunt for a suitable vice-presidential candidate began in April, headed solely by Beth Myers.  With a screw-you to political correctness, the final short-listers were given code names based on their weight, ethnicity, or location:   Chris Christie was Pufferfish, Tim Pawlewnty was Lakefish, Rob Portman was Filet-O-Fish, Marco Rubio was Pescado, and Paul Ryan was Fishconsin.  (No, I don't understand Portman's codename, either, but I have my suspicions.)

I'll do it MY way, or it won't get done.  And piss on you all if you don't like it!

In the interest of brevity, I will concentrate only on Pufferfish -- or Big Boy, as George W. Bush called him behind his back.  Chris Christie turned the vetting process into a nightmare for Beth Myers, who sent him the vetting package in early April, and wanted to have the complete process wrapped up by May 31.  There had already been issues between Boston and Trenton: Christie had told the campaign that he would not endorse Romney early, and that until he did, he didn't want them raising money in New Jersey.  He went for months telling his adorers and those big money guys that he probably wouldn't run, but they continued to try to persuade him.  This galled Romney, who was certain that he'd be the nominee -- whether the party wanted him or not.  Christie finally said he wasn't going to run, and became a Romney surrogate -- with mixed results.

To the Romney campaign HQ, Christie and his staff were overbearing and hard to work with, demanding in ways that would have been unthinkable from any other surrogate.  Trenton insisted on private jets, lavish spreads of food, and space for a massive entourage.  Christie was chronically behind schedule and made a habit of showing up late for  Romney fund-raising events.  

Because red-flag information had turned up on Christie during Myers' research into his background -- and some of his staff -- she asked very pointed vetting questions.  Trenton refused to answer many of them, whining Why do you need to know that? leading the Romneyites to assume that If they're not answering, it's because the answer is bad.  (Wouldn't the 2016 Democratic aspirants love to see that file?)

Racing Toward the  Finish Line

Yo, Chair!  You do realize that the GOP is full of rich, white, crazy old farts, don't you?

Conventions:  The two party conventions have been well covered: The Republicans' was good, the Democrats' was great.  Where the GOP's stars seemed to have been Clint Eastwood and Chris Christie (now that is a story worth reading!), the Democrats relied on Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton to light up the stars in North Carolina.  No contest!

Please proceed, Governor.

Debates: It's old news that Mitt Romney overwhelmingly won the first debate.  What is news -- but has been recently reported -- is that President Obama's performance was so bad that the campaign had to stage an intervention before the second debate.  You can't have a second debate like the first one, they told him.  It was that bad? asked the President.  Yes, they said, it was that bad. 

It's gonna be OK, Chris.  I'm here and I can help you.  Romney can't.

The Big Blow:  Superstorm Sandy, which ravished ravaged the state of New Jersey, left Romney off the political radar for nearly a week -- a period of time that just happened to be seven days before the election.  Instead, Americans read and watched non-stop coverage of the Republican Governor of New Jersey and the Democratic President of the United States working together as an empathetic non-partisan team to do everything they could to help the citizens and businesses of that devastated state.

Stuck in the mid-west, Romney wanted desperately to be a part of the hurricane recovery action:  Just get me to New Jersey, he told to campaign staff.  Find me a shelter where I can show I care.   They told him that it was impossible, but came up with another idea:  The campaign was making a last swing through Pennsylvania and there was a planned event only ten miles from Trenton, and surely Christie could take a little time to dash right over and appear with Romney on the stage.  The Governor kept telling them No, and finally screamed into the phone, Leave me the fuck alone!

It appears (to me) that Romney believed one roaring debate win and a couple of very well-attended rallies in the three weeks before November 6 could erase all the self-inflicted negative coverage he had received throughout the campaign.

Read 'em and Weep

No, Mitt, I don't mind at all that you've kept me up until after 2:00 AM

The networks (including Fox News) called the election for President Obama shortly after 11:00 PM, after determining that he had won all the battleground states except North Carolina.  Perhaps because Bush's Brain Karl Rove was having a major meltdown on Fox, declaring that it was much too early to project Obama as having won, it took almost three hours for Mitt to make his concession call to the President.  Or, perhaps Ann was hyperventilating so badly they couldn't get her to pull herself together -- I dunno.

Whatever, here's the end of the story:

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama, January 21, 2013

End Note

In a recent interview with Ann and Mitt Romney on CBS, the interviewer asked Mitt if he was mulling another run for the presidency. 

This was Ann's response:

Election night, 2012:  That's all, folks; we're done here.  Never again!

Mitt Romney: Of Hurricanes and Ground Games and the Arrogance of a Fool in Denial

by Sunnyjane

I did not have sex with that papaya! *

Mitt's back.  Yay.  With hubby-hand-holder Ann. Oh goody.  Sadly, neither has gained a scrap of insight into the real reasons why Americans went to the polls and re-elected President Obama last November.  See, even Pat Robertson promised the Romneys that God said Mitt would win and serve two terms, and when you've got both Karl Rove's polls and God on your side, what could go wrong?  We know all about Rove's polls, but perhaps God was just having the Romneys on a bit, because Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michelle Bachmann all proclaimed that God had told them to run for president in 2012.  Haven't we talked about keeping religion out of politics?  Yeah, I thought we had.

*In an interview with Miami’s most prominent Cuban-exile station during the 2012 campaign, Romney informed his hosts that he loves Cuban fruits and is a big fan of papaya.  Papaya is Cuban slang for, um, vagina.

Here We Go -- Again  

Like another former governor we could name, Mitt Romney has obviously not been perusing any of them, all of them reading materials during his self-imposed exile in one of his many homes.  Perhaps when he and Ann are not shopping at Costco, he's been spending his days building a new house in Utah or doing something or other to the house in La Jolla.  I dunno.  But had he paid any attention at all to the gazillion postmortems of his failed campaign -- including from his own party -- he would have had some inkling as to why he is not referred to today as President Romney.

And it's as simple as this: 

Moving Forward to the Past

Mitt is extraordinarily disappointed in President Obama's second term performance, so he's inserting himself back into the political arena to help shape national priorities.  Well, that's certainly a relief!  I mean, the stock market is at an all-time high and unemployment is going down, so certainly the nation needs his expertise.  Oh wait...

No, what the flip-flopper is hot on right now is helping the GOP with their Latino problem.  Well, who else could stop the Republicans from spewing the verbal diarrhea of their racism but their 2012 candidate?  Sure, he insisted on continually calling undocumented immigrants illegals and recommending that they self-deport and get in line in their own countries, but...

Although he was asked many times to state his policy ideas for immigration reform, he consistently hedged, at one point telling a Latino group that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the president's temporary measure.  From the results of the election, it seems that the attendees were not particularly impressed with that illuminating revelation.

No Fair!  Obama Was Being Presidential!

Pandering to the smaller-government faction of the Republican Party has rarely worked out very well.  During one of the endless Republican primary debates of 2012, Romney answered Absolutely when asked if disaster relief should be transferred to each individual state and added:  Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction.

Still unable to acknowledge that it was his -- and his party's -- policies that turned the majority of Americans toward the Democratic candidate in 2012, Romney's has recently emerged to whinge about the reasons for his loss.  Of the several excuses he's given lately, what may be the most massive and destructive hurricane in our history arrived one week before the election and that haunts him still.  

It's not quite fair to say that Romney believes in the Alex Jones bullshit conspiracy theory that the government (read: Obama) has a weather disaster weapon, but it may have crossed his mind.  No, Mitt's beef is two-fold: #1, the hurricane came at a bad time for his campaign; and #2, the fact that FEMA is a big-government program allowed President Obama to fly into the affected states -- New Jersey and New York -- and act all, uh, presidentially.  So Mr. Romney learned a good lesson: be careful what you wish for; next time it may be a Republican president who has to be presidential during a natural disaster.

And what was the GOP candidate doing during this crisis?  He was soliciting canned goods and clothing for the victims, which were not needed or wanted.  The Red Cross was asking for cash, a commodity Romney certainly understands but one which he is always reluctant to hand over.  It never occurred to him to call the White House and say, Mr. President, what can my campaign and I do to help the people affected by this terrible disaster?  That would have made him appear presidential, at least to a small degree.  Mitt Romney simply has all the wrong instincts when it comes to political leadership.

Experts and Enthusiasts Conference -- What?

 Wanna kill some innocent skeet with Rand Paul?  Play putt-putt with Paul Ryan?  Split a two-foot hoagie with Chris Christie?  Sorry, you missed your chance.  Maybe next year.

But that's what potential puppets and puppeteers were doing at Romney's second-act shindig in Utah earlier this week.  For $5,000 you could have spent three days listening to Mitt tell attendees that they had to become less partisan and develop strategies for 2016.  And there was that Latino thingy, too, as you remember.  Well, telling Paul and Ryan to become less partisan is pretty much like telling a dog in heat to practice abstinence-only in her social life.    

Since it was a private conference, no media was allowed to report on it.  As a result, there's no indication on which of the Obama Administration's policies Romney was advocating for.  Healthcare?  Immigration?  Gun reform.  Yeah...riiiight.

But the conference was also an opportunity for two hundred Republican donors to take a look at what may well be shaping up to lead the ticket in 2016.  I'm not sure which were the experts and which were the enthusiasts in this crowd, but it sounded much like giving two hundred wealthy donors an opportunity to choose which loser they would throw money away on come the next general election.

And although not one of them has solicited my advice, I have some...  

End Note

...Make sure you offer Republican  voters a better choice than was presented to them in 2012.

You're welcome.

The Minimum Wage and the Living Wage

by Blueberry T

For months, I’ve had it in mind to write a post about the right to work, as opposed to Right-to-Work laws, and the living wage. The trouble is that I got lost/buried in the topic and couldn’t get anywhere with it. Then, the other day, I saw that Governor Chris Christie – who portrays himself as a pragmatic centrist who represents the interests of his constituents – vetoed a bill that would have raised the minimum wage in New Jersey from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour now, and indexed the minimum wage to inflation thereafter. Wow - he cured my writer’s block!

Christie vetoed the bill despite the fact that 82% of New Jersey residents surveyed by Quinnipiac University, including 67% of Republicans, support increasing the minimum wage to $8.50/hr.  

In the interest of full disclosure, Christie sent the bill back to the legislature, saying he would accept a modified bill with an increase of a whopping 25 cents/hr in the minimum wage this year, and increases over the next three years to bring it up to $8.25/hr., but without inflation indexing. He used the excuse that increasing the minimum wage would threaten economic recovery. This is a common argument used to thwart efforts to raise the minimum wage, along with arguments that raising the minimum wage causes job losses.  Here is the conservative Heritage Foundation’s argument along those lines.  Here are articles from Bloomberg, Think Progress and LearnVest refuting these arguments and laying out the strong case for a raise in the minimum wage.

Now, let’s look at this.  Of course, this is an issue not just in New Jersey, but throughout America. For background, here is current information from the Department of Labor on the federal minimum wage law and how it is implemented. States can now enact their own minimum wage; currently the state of Washington has the highest minimum wage at $9.19/hr. Here is a clickable map showing the minimum wage in each state (you can scroll down to compare the data for each state) and a Q&A that covers exemptions and other issues. 

Today, the national minimum wage is $7.25/hour, which equates to $15,080/year for a full-time worker.  Adding insult to injury, minimum wage workers generally do not get health insurance or much else in the way of benefits.  The national minimum wage has fallen so far behind the pace of inflation that it now only provides 68% of the buying power that it had in 1968. According to Wikipedia, “The minimum wage had its highest purchasing value ever in 1968, when it was $1.60 per hour ($10.64 in 2012 dollars). From January 1981 to April 1990, the minimum wage was frozen at $3.35 per hour, then a record-setting wage freeze. From September 1, 1997 through July 23, 2007, the federal minimum wage remained constant at $5.15 per hour, breaking the old record.” In other words, since 1981 there have been two periods of almost a decade each during which the minimum wage did not increase at all. Even the highest minimum wage in the country currently, $9.19/hr, does not keep pace with inflation when compared to the 1968 wage.

Note this map is now out-of-date; I include it for the data on who earns minimum wage; also note the minimum wage did NOT rise to $8.25/hour in 2010 as estimated here.

The fact that the minimum wage is not indexed to inflation is a huge problem, because raising the minimum wage is always a political football and generally falls prey to legislative gridlock or conservative ideological purity tests. This is the case even though several studies indicate that people earning the minimum wage are likely to spend every dollar they earn, thus increasing consumer spending and stimulating the economy. Ironically, in the recent fiscal cliff compromise, the estate tax exemption was indexed to inflation. Got that? If you earn the minimum wage, you don’t get any adjustment each year, but if you are going to inherit more than $5 million, you are in luck not only because of your obvious wealth, but also because the amount not subject to the estate tax will now be increased each year - because it would have been some kind of unfair hardship otherwise, right? Talk about a tax code and economic system that favor the wealthy! If there is one single economic reform that is urgently needed, it is to index (minimum) wages to inflation.

But that is only part of the story.  Most importantly, the minimum wage is not enough to live on, almost anywhere in the country – and certainly a single value does not reflect variations in the cost of living throughout the country, in any case. In most areas, the minimum wage is closer to a poverty wage than a living wage. To help illustrate this, MIT has developed a living wage calculator that shows the wage needed to meet the actual cost of housing and other basic necessities in every city or town in the country.  It’s a tremendously helpful tool that also shows how much money is needed not only for a single adult, but for a 1-2 adults with 1-3 children.  It also shows the estimate for each expense category. 

What becomes immediately apparent, in looking at the MIT living wage calculator, is that not even a single person earning minimum wage can possibly come close to the living wage costs, anywhere in New Jersey (and most other places in America). Living wage is around $10/hr or more everywhere in the state. (Okay, I didn’t check every town, but the lowest living wage I found was close to $10/hr and most were much higher.) Even a couple with no children, both earning minimum wage, would fall short of the living wage. With children, forget it. Impossible. You’d have to work more than two full-time jobs.

In fact, the minimum wage is, in effect, a poverty wage for anyone with one child, and even lower than poverty level for someone with more than one child, as is the case for many single mothers, for example. The result is that there is little hope of ever getting out of poverty for many people consigned to the minimum wage scrapheap of the American economy. This is a far more important economic truth, and far more damaging to the economy and society as a whole, that the weak arguments about raising the minimum wage being detrimental to business. Governor Christie should have to confront these facts and address this issue, rather than basing such an important decision, which affects his constituents' lives so directly, on speculation and the wishes of self-interested businesses.

In this article by Robert Reich in Salon, he reports, among other things, that "almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four."  He notes that many of the jobs stemming from economic growth in the coming decade will be low wage. Not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation with the weakening of labor unions. 

Here is more information on the living wage from the Labor Center at UC Berkeley and the Living Wage Action Coalition. 

The irony is that if people made enough to meet their needs, so many of society’s problems would be lessened or resolved.  This lack of a living wage is a far bigger problem than the deficit, but gets far less attention than it deserves.  

UPDATE: Our friend and reader Nomad (Nomadic Joe) reminded us of the role that ACORN played in campaigning for a living wage; here is his post on the subject.  EbbtideMB pointed out the work that labor unions are doing to promote living wages; here is a resolution referring to living wage ordinances passed in  Michigan and elsewhere. The importance of labor unions in promoting the living wage is key, and the weakening of organized labor is such an important factor in wage stagnation.  

Sandy as Metaphor and Message

by Blueberry T

Superstorm Sandy was a storm of epic proportions that has affected millions of people and caused at least $50 billion in economic damages. While the storm is now over, the aftermath and rebuilding will go on for months, or more likely years.  

As we saw directly here on Politicalgates, especially with sleuth1’s tireless updates of conditions throughout the areas that were affected, our readers' support for sleuth’s husband’s work crew that is restoring power in affected areas, and the ways in which our readers have tried to help and look out for each other, this crisis is a time for all of us to pull together and help one another to recover.

   

(More storm images here, here, here and on many other sites)

This is MrSleuth's crew, courtesy Christian Science Monitor and sleuth1

This week, we also saw Leadership with a capital “L”. We saw President Obama in the midst of this crisis: a strong, steady, capable, organized and effective leader who is also caring, compassionate and supportive. He ignored and bridged political divides and bureaucracy to get things done.  He put together a good team and assigned responsibility to tackle priorities.  First and foremost, he has focused on saving lives and helping those in urgent need. Next, get food and water to those who need it. Help get power restored. Coordinate the relief effort.  Get all the key people, federal, state, local and non-governmental agencies working together as a team. Get information to the people who need it, and keep it updated. Get skilled crews and essential resources to the places they are needed.  Get help from other areas of the country (and beyond). Help people cope with their sorrow, discomfort, frustration and the daunting tasks ahead. Make progress every day. Provide moral, physical, economic and logistical support. Comfort, console, and encourage those who have been hard hit. 

h/t sleuth1

I recognize that we are still in the midst of this crisis, and it’s not yet time to draw too many broad conclusions.  But I will say this anyway: what also strikes me today is that Sandy is an apt metaphor for President Obama’s first term. He came into office as the economy was in free fall, suffering the most extreme job losses, GDP and other economic indices since the Great Depression. It was an economic superstorm. Even before taking office, the President assembled a strong team to do triage, identifying the actions needed immediately to pull us out of the nosedive that the Bush Administration (and predecessors’) policies had engendered (along with corporate mismanagement and recklessness), and then developed a plan to rebuild the economy stronger and better. He has accomplished a great deal – here is a series of graphs showing how much the economy has recovered. He has also prevented the dire economic straits that plague European economies that are finding that austerity is not the answer. He is accomplishing as much as is feasible, given that the Republicans in Congress are not only uncooperative and obstructionist, but are deliberately trying to sabotage his economic recovery initiatives. Here is more on his plan going forward. 

The President also cautioned, even before the storm hit, that this storm would be a major disaster with potentially fatal consequences, that would cripple part of the country for some time, and it won’t be fixed overnight. Some people are lost forever and we are left to honor their memories; and some people lost everything they had. He reminded us that making sure that our neighbors are okay, and helping and supporting those who need our help or who have lost everything, is the top priority; we need to get people the food and shelter and care they need right away, get essential services restored, and we’ll get to the other items on the list of priorities as quickly as possible, but rest assured, we will get to them. We. 

Is it poetic justice that this happened just a week before the election, and offers such a stark comparison to the inept disaster responses of the Bush Administration? The contrast is striking: during Katrina, the Bush Administration seemed more a part of the disaster than the relief. During and after Sandy, most Americans see that the Obama Administration is doing everything in its power to help our people and our states in their time of great need.  But, just in case some people were too shell-shocked to connect the dots (and/or lost power and haven't heard too much news),  Michael Brown, Bush’s unqualified and utterly inept FEMA Director ("Heckuva Job Brownie") reminded us once again of what an idiot he is and how woefully inadequate he and Bush were during Katrina. 

At the same time, Governor Christie and Mayor Bloomberg put partisanship aside, and reminded us how much better we are as a country when we work together.  While downplaying the political, numerous reports made note of Mitt Romney’s comment that disaster relief is "immoral" and that he would transfer disaster relief to the states or, better yet, to private enterprise, where people like him and Jeb Bush could make fortunes off other people’s misfortunes. Let's not forget that he thinks we should get rid of firefighters and other first responders, and the Romney/Ryan budget would drastically cut not only disaster relief funding, but also funding for scientific programs that help accurately predict storms. (What are voters in "hurricane and tornado alleys" in the South thinking by voting for R/R?) Then there was Mitt's idea of non-political disaster relief, which would be comical if it were not so cravenly opportunistic.  (Where else has Mitt been cravenly opportunistic in the midst of a tragedy? Oh, yeah.)  

Sandy has another message: global warming is real, and it is a real, major threat to our well-being. No one is immune from the impacts (not even Wall Street).  Here is Nicholas Kristof from NYT on this subject. Mayor Bloomberg himself made this connection in crossing party lines to endorse President Obama for a second term. Al Gore also made the connection.  Here is the White House report on steps that Obama has taken to address global warming and a transcript of his recent comments on MTV. The National Memo wrote this piece on all that President Obama has done to address global warming.  Romney, on the other hand, has treated the issue with scorn. I wonder if Romney thinks his mocking remark about global warming is so clever now? Here is President Clinton, calling Romney's comments on global warming out.

(h/t Leadfoot)

With the election just days away, maybe Sandy is a message from the cosmos.  Please take heed. Please vote for President Obama, who has proven himself through the economic crisis, tornadoes, hurricanes, wars and challenges of every sort: he is the right leader for our times.