Uh...here endeth the Gospel According to Nobody. Amen.
Don'tcha just love it when two thousand bigots are gathered together in God's name to affirm their hatred for all the real values America stands for? You know, like those life...liberty...pursuit of happiness thingies? According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Family Research Council -- which proudly sponsors this annual confab of far-right religionistas -- is a hate group that makes false
claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science in order to fight same-sex marriage, hate crime legislation, etc; you get the drift. A prime example of this homophobia is the guy who actually came in second in the VVS straw poll. That would be Dr. Ben Carson, who not only has stated on different occasions that Obamacare is worse than slavery and worse than the 9/11 tragedy, but offered his opinion on same-sex marriage by stating thatNo
group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man-Boy Love Association],
be they people who believe in bestiality ... they don't get to change the
definition of marriage. Yeah, that guy. Since
the Republican Tea Party has no cohesive agenda around which to unify, the only thing left is to urge their base to vote for their religious
extremism so that we can finally have a Constitution based on God’s laws, not
man’s laws. Cause, you know, our rights come from On High, not from mere
mortals. Thus, it seems that the
Founding Fathers had no business writing that darn document in the first
place! No, it doesn’t make one iota of
sense, but there you have it.
Well gee, it must be an election year, because they seemed to have been keeping their homophobia in the closet last weekend. Even Michele Bachmann decided that talking about gay marriageis boring. Maybe she's finally tired of hearing herself talk; I dunno. One does wonder what Tony Perkins, Homophobe-in-Chief at the FRC, thought of that. So absent the occasion to spew vitriol over Teh Gays, the speakers used up most of the oxygen in the room ranting about President Obama. Nothing new there.
A Few Scraps from the Hate Heap
--Ted Cruz played a rollicking good game of Deflection at the Hatefest by calling the Democrats an extreme, radical party that wants to take away the rights of Americans. (Snort!) In an effort to fling every arrow in his own fanatical quiver, the Canadian senator pontificated on every topic he could think of, including Obamacare, gun rights, and the persecution of Christians around the world. He then went on to berate President Obama on Iran's nuclear proliferation negotiations, saying that the Iranians are sitting down swilling Chardonnay with the Americans... and that we needed a president who would take a tougher stand. This prompted Andrea Mitchell, in one of her more astute moments, to respond that perhaps we need a president who knows Iranians don't drink. Cruz won the straw poll for president with twenty-five percent and the poll for vice president with twenty-two percent.
--Sarah Palinlet us know that there's no truth coming out of the venerable Willard Hotel situated at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue; I'm certain the Willard appreciated that a lot. Palin tried to press every tired old button in her already limited arsenal, including the fact that seeing military veterans gives her goose bumps. (Is that something we needed to know?) But, of course, she's afraid that America isn't going to survive the dense, liberal elite and their Orwellian leaders who want to control other people's lives. Surely it must have been an oversight that she didn’t explain how
Republican’s advocating government regulations over women’s health decisions,
people’s right to marry the person they love, and free and open voting doesn’t
constitute controlling our lives. Right? Out of 901 votes in the straw poll, Palin garnered only nine. It's interesting to note that Write-In Candidate beat her with thirteen votes. Better pick up the pace, Sarah.
-- So bored with gay marriage is Michele Bachmann that now she is advocating taking our military back to the 1980s when, you know, we had Peace through Strength! with Ronald Reagan at the helm, and we didn't lose four Americans in Benghazi! She's right; we actually lost 250 servicemen at an embassy in Beirut. Bachmann also wants the President to declare war with Islam. So, at the direction of Secretary of State John Kerry, the Pentagon is reconfiguring its
computer models to locate the elusive country of Islam about which Ms. Bachmann
speaks; so far, there’s only a lot of earlobe-pulling and head-scratching going
on in the War Room. Dick Cheney, ever
anxious to drop a bomb anywhere in the world, is doing his part by snarling at
his computer monitor because Googlemaps.com has let him down again. No word as to when he’ll appear on Fox to
berate the President for not yet declaring war with Google. Bachmann only managed to get eleven votes in the straw poll.
--Rand Paul is still trying to retrofit his image. President Obama is an arrogant autocrat. The President acts like a king. There's a spiritual crisis in America. We've got to rediscover our mojo. We've arrived at the day of reckoning. Yada, yada, yada. Zzzzzzzzz... Rand Paul pulled in sixty-three votes. --Rick Santorum's shtick is so old and tired -- protecting marriage, the glue that holds the family together... Oh, never mind. You've heard it all before. But he did manage to rake in (heh) eighty-seven votes to be the Republican candidate for President of the United States.
Admiral Romney, the USS Pinafore's Ruler of the Navy: "A partnership is the only ship that I ever have seen!"
Military Madness
Readers familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's delightful Victorian-era operetta HMS Pinafore will easily recognize and understand the correlation between that comedy's Sir Joseph Porter character and Mitt Romney.Sir Joseph went on to say:
I grew so rich that I was sent By a pocket borough into Parliament. I always voted at my party's call And I never thought of thinking for myself at all. I thought so little, they rewarded me, By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navy.
The jab here, of course, is that too often people who are extremely unqualified are elevated to positions of power simply because they are wealthy and are willing to kiss the, uh, rings of their puppeteers.
Pinafore also pokes fun at the British class system of the period, to which we can all relate during this election cycle, when Sir Joseph states, A British sailor is any man's equal -- except mine!
Mitt Romney desperately wants the title of Chief in Command. But during the final presidential debate on October 22, President Obama proved conclusively that the Republican candidate's foreign -- and domestic -- policy expertise is limited to sending jobs to China, putting his money in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and lying to get votes. These things make himfrighteningly incompetent to assume the position of Commander in Chief of the United States of America.
The Professor Puts the Dunce in the Corner
Um... Subs? Aircraft carriers? Can I respond retroactively?
After about thirty minutes, the stench of Roasting Romney permeated the air in Boca Raton, FL. Trotting out his wellworn apocalypse-now whine that the United States has fewer naval vessels than it did in 1916, the President took the opportunity to do a little schooling: Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature
of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where
planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear
submarines.Obviously, Mitt Romney's definition of naval supremacy means that the finest citrus fruit comes from Florida. Yes, he's just that daft.
Romney also thought it a dandy idea to bring up the President's oft-debunked 2009 Apology Tour. That was a mistake, a big mistake. A little fact checking would have been helpful, but the Romney campaign does not care about facts or, as we know, the truth. But they thought their candidate could get away with this lie. The President did, indeed, visit other countries -- Europe, the Mid-East, and Latin America -- after he assumed office. It was not, however, to apologize for America, but rather to clean up the mess George W. Bush had made over the previous eight years, when our reputation went into the toilet. Romney was especially gleeful to report that President Obama had skipped Israel. The President did not hesitate to say he had been there as a candidate andI didn’t take donors. I didn’t attend fundraisers. I went to the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself of the nature of evil and why
our bond with Israel
will be unbreakable. The donors and fundraisers jab was, of course, in reference to Romney's embarrassing Geopolitical Magic Carpet Trip in July when he dragged along big-bucks Sheldon Adelson and scheduled a $50,000 fund-raising dinner on a sacred day of fasting in Israel.
The President's Apology Tour-- which was actually a Mending Fences Tour -- seems to have been successful, since of the twenty-one countries listed here, only Pakistan would rather see Mitt Romney in the White House.
Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me a Map
Iran: Big Green Blob, Two Big Waters. Syria: Small Brown Blob, One Big Water. Romney: Big Gray Blob, No Clue.
Cartographers the world over are said to be popping antacid pills at an alarming rate, due to Mitt Romney's five-time claim that Syria is Iran's only route to the sea.
Romney can spout all the correct words -- Syria, Assad, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran, Israel -- without having a clue what he's talking about.
Now, admittedly, I am not the sharpest needle in the pin cushion, but I've looked at this map rather closely -- far more than it deserves -- and if Syria is Iran's only route to the sea, then I'm a two-year old Pop-Tart. Did the only candidate for president that the Republican Party could come up with sleep through the 1980s' Iraq-Iran War and the 1990s' Persian Gulf War?
A Village in Indiana Has Found Its Idiot
I disagree with what the fool said, but I fully support what the fool said.
On the same night Mitt Romney was demonstrating to more than fifty-six million American voters that he is unfit for the Office of the Presidency, the only Republican senate candidate he has endorsed in the 2012 General Election was telling the Hoosier State electorate that if a woman became pregnant as a consequence of rape, it was what God intended. While Richard Mourdock made a small effort to, um,purify his statement, let's make one thing clear -- he meant exactly what he said: I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life
is that gift from God. And I think even when life
begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God
intended to happen.
Make no mistake, this is Romney's kind of far-right-wing Christianista nut job. Mourdock is right up there with Rick Santorum who believes that rape babies are gifts from God; Paul Ryan who believes that rape is just another form of conception; and Todd Akin who believes that with a legitimate rape, the woman has magical powers to shut down conception. If there is a Romney/Ryan administration, every rapist will be assured that his violently conceived child will have an advocate in the White House. Yes, seriously.
Hurricane "Superstorm" Sandy
The mother of all hurricanes hit the East Coast of the United States during Week Two, and President Obama cancelled his scheduled campaign stops to take control of the situation. Mitt Romney was taking advantage of that situation by running around Ohio campaigning, but keeping the people in harms way in his prayers. Uh huh. Then Romney decided that he had to get in on the action and started urging people to donate disaster relief items for the victims. Never mind that the Red Cross does not want donated items.
On behalf of all Politicalgates readers and commenters, special thanks to Sleuth1 for her devoted and far-ranging coverage of the hurricane. Excellent and extremely beneficial effort, Sleuth1!
Let's imagine a Romney presidency during this crisis:
Aide: Mr. President, there's a huge hurricane coming that's threatening the United States!
President Romney: Really? OK, get FEMA on the phone and tell them to handle it.
Aide: Um, Mr. President, you got rid of FEMA. You sent responsibility for disaster relief
to the states so you could shrink government and save money.
President Romney: I
saved money? Well, money is more
important than people’s lives, right? I’ll
take a nap now; call me when it’s over. Oh, and if any governors want to whine to me about their state's desperate situation, switch the phones to the Call Center in India.
Remember Michelle Obama's statement at the Democratic National Convention: Being President doesn't change who you are. It reveals who you are.
A natural or national disaster is one of the best arguments for early voting in every state, no restrictions and no justifications required.
Well it seems Michele Bachmann has re-surfaced once again to
offer her warped opinion on all things republican. Too bad she refuses take a
few minutes to actually think for herself and look around to see that it is HER
party that is dividing our country and she is just a pawn in their game by
spewing her own special brand of misinformation. Michele will never realize
that she actually has the right tools to do some good in this country and
reverse the attacks for the woman’s rights.
In other Bachmann news that just isn’t getting the attention
it deserves is Michele’s campaign for President is over $1 million dollars in
debt. Yes folks the woman who repeated incessantly that if elected SHE would go
to Washington and rein in the out of control spending and balance the budget
has left her campaign $1 Million dollars in debt. Sorry republicans but if you can't manage your own spending how in the hell do you expect to manage the nation's budget?
Ah so Ricky Santorum won the LA primary. What a surprise-
NOT. In case anyone missed it here is a
great link to his 1994 Campaign The Opposition File Huffington Post also has a searchable database of the memos
here.
I read a few of the memos, what got my attention is Ricky’s
views and world opinion hasn’t changed much since 1994 the man is living in the
past and believes he can change the United States of America to be a utopia of
peace and love, rainbows and sunshine 24/7 if people would just anoint him
President. His utopia is a place where men will be men aka make all the
decisions for the household, sleep with whomever they choose and make all the
money while woman will be woman you remember, barefoot and pregnant, silent
until spoken too, long hair, skirts down to the floor, will never speak above a
whisper and god forbid there would any enjoyment in the act of making love. Women
will be responsible for hearth and home, bouncing the 10th baby on
her knee while preparing the household meals and then attending to her husband’s evening
bath. Oh gag me!
I have one thing to say to every man or woman whom supports
Rick Santorum: Are you out of your freaking mind? Seriously, what in your life
is so bad that you would to give up the most basic human right that of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness to support a man who is openly stating as fact he will take away the most fundamental right if elected President? If President Obama's skin color bothers you that much then maybe you all need to pick a new church and come up out of the basement and join those of us out here in the sunlight where skin color, sexual preference and social status don't mean a thing. We won't bite but we also won't tolerate your narrow minded and outdated prejudices.
Mitt Romney is the man who hasn’t met a lie he'll not only retell but will gleefully retell as if it is the god’s honest truth until the
next lie comes along that grabs his attention. You just have to wonder if every
time the “Oh Woe is Me Perpetual Victim” aka Sarah Palin goes on Fox News and
climbs up on the her rhinestone bedazzled cross to endlessly retell how
everyone was and still is so mean to her and her family that Mitt isn’t screaming
at the top of his lungs “WTF lady, Every
single pundit uses the phrase or a variation of the phrase “Anyone but Mitt’
when referring to me on everysingle political show every single day all day long!!!!!”
Gotta love that "Frontier Lady" Mitt. Not only in her mind can she swear like a man, she can plow alongside her man, hunt like a man and fish like a man but by goodness in reality she climbs up on her cross every time she feels threaten to pseudo hang like a man also and too [sic], bless her heart. Got to admit it Mitt, that "Frontier Lady" can out lie you any day of the week and still get more media attention than you while retelling the same lie you've been retelling over and over again while both of you claim to be 'Christian'. Funny in my bible one of the 10 Commandments is Thou Shalt Not Lie. What does yours say? Thou shalt lie if for the betterment of one's pocket?
Umm, Sarah one tiny thought regarding your latest ghostwritten FaceBook Frontier Lady Fable- Me thinks thou doth protest too much! Darlin, you can't play the victim day after day after day whining that people are mean to you and then claim to be a tough old bird who is single handily taming the last frontier that is Alaska. Yes we've all seen your show, the endless news clips, the movie Game Change all of which proved you aren't, never were and never will be a Frontier Lady. You are either a victim or you are a tough old bird! Your choice either continue playing the victim or climb down off your cross and toughen up you can't be both at the same time not even in the Republican's Liars Club of which you have earn a lifetime free membership alongside Michele, Mitt and Ricky.
The Republican party has had a long-held opposition toward any talk of a living wage. This latest crop has their own ideas about how to deal with the poor. Rick Santorum, for example, seems to think that marriage is the solution to poverty.
What two things, that if you do, will guarantee that you will not be in poverty in America?” he asked the crowd. “Number one, graduate from high school. Number two, get married. Before you have children,” he said. “If you do those two things, you will be successful economically.
“ If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself ... It is not a person's fault if they succeeded, it is a person's fault if they failed."
This attitude is fairly common with Fox-News-watching public. Reagan played that mish-mash of religion, patriotism and the much-touted work ethic very convincingly. The logical runs like this:
America is the land of opportunity.
We, as a nation, are blessed by God.
Wealth and success is a sign of God's blessing.
Every man's success and failure depends on the his individual attributes.
Therefore, government has no responsibility in the matter.
It is linked with the delusion that that the United States of America is a meritocracy where everyone is treated fairly and anyone can pull himself up by his bootstraps if he or she just works hard enough, pays their dues and keeps their nose to the grindstone.
The only problem is that for millions of Americans, it just not true.
The living wage, the Republicans generally say, is a denial of one of the fundamentals of the American economy, namely, the free market principle approach to labor, hiring and wages. This view is expressed by Steven Malanga, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow.
The living wage poses a big threat to their economic health, because the costs and restrictions it imposes on the private sector will destroy jobs—especially low-wage jobs—and send businesses fleeing to other locales. Worse still, the living-wage movement’s agenda doesn’t end with forcing private employers to increase wages. It includes opposing privatization schemes, strong-arming companies into unionizing, and other economic policies equally harmful to urban health.
Incidentally, The Manhattan Institute, founded in 1978 by William J. Casey, who later became President Ronald Reagan's CIA director, is by no means the impartial think-tank it pretends to be. Wikipedia has this to say:
The Manhattan Institute received $19,470,416 in grants from 1985–2005, from foundations such as the Koch Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Scaife Foundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. The Manhattan Institute does not disclose its corporate funding, but the Capital Research Center listed its contributors as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, CIGNA, Sprint, Reliant Energy, Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merrill Lynch.
So much for its understanding about poverty and the needs of low-income Americans. And Sourcewatch adds some icing to the cake with this:
"The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as 'welfare reform' (dismantling social programs), 'faith-based initiatives' (blurring the distinction between church and state), and 'education reform' (destroying public education)," Kurt Nimmo wrote October 10, 2002, in CounterPunch.
According to Malanga, the free market principles in which the wages are set by the employer and not by any kind of government regulation is the only solution.
(I)f living-wage advocates truly understood the free market, they’d know that it ultimately is far more moral than the centrally controlled economic system they endorse. If there is one thing that the last 50 years tell us, it is that the free market provides far greater economic opportunity and a decent standard of living for far more people than government-controlled markets.
And yet, that’s not what has actually happened at all. The free market approach to wages has encouraged a race to the bottom in living standards, pitting non-unionized dirt-cheap labor in developing nations against a highly productive but wage-protected labor in the US and Europe.
In fact, if this graph is anything to go by, the poverty levels in America didn’t begin to climb until after the conservative Republicans began their much-celebrated exercise in free market principles.
Starting from the 1980s and continuing through to the last Republican administration, the poverty rates have climbed and remained high. The free-market solution was no solution at all, as far as the poor were concerned.
According to Richard Caputo, writing in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, the Reagan years resulted in a higher percentage of both individual and family poverty. Forty percent of the nation’s personal net worth was possessed by 2.4 million people out of a population of 240 million. And look how that trend has been allowed to continue.
And yet according to the Malanga , the opposite is true.
What was remarkable about the American economy during the 1990s, when about 13 million low-skilled, low-wage immigrants arrived, is that poverty rates didn’t soar, and actually declined slightly—showing the muscularity of our economy in lifting even many of these newcomers out of poverty.
This kind of spurious arguing shouldn’t surprise anybody. As we have seen in earlier reports, misrepresenting the Reagan years (and the years since) is practically an art with the conservatives. Like the “trickle-down” theory, the real life experiment failed to live up to promise. No matter, the conservatives said, we will repeat the miracle story over and over until it becomes accepted as fact. To paraphrase Reagan, the trouble with our conservative friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't true.
In a typical effort to misrepresent the living wage movement, Malanga resorts to the usual disinformation campaign found in most ALEC-friendly right wing organizations.
Providing the intellectual muscle (such as it is) for the living-wage movement is a small group of Marxoid economists, led by University of Massachusetts–Amherst professor Robert Pollin, a longtime board member of the Union of Radical Political Economists, founded in the 1960s to bring Marxist economics to American universities.
As a matter of fact, the Far Right is now engaging in the same methods of academic deception that it accuses the opposition of. Utilizing a myriad of university studies financed by powerful corporate interests or dubious polls from organizations created solely for the purpose of muddying the debate, conservatives have continued to repeat the same dogma year after year. Whether true or not, in the long or in the short term, for most members of the Far Right, minimum wage limits have a negative effect on the economy. End of discussion.
However, some dared to question that line.
The tenor of this debate began to change in the mid-1990's following some work done by two Princeton economists, David Card (now at the University of California, Berkeley) and Alan B. Krueger. In 1992, New Jersey increased the state minimum wage to $5.05 an hour (applicable to both the public and the private sectors), which gave the two young professors an opportunity to study the comparative effects of that raise on fast-food restaurants and low-wage employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where the minimum wage remained at the federal level of $4.25 an hour. Card and Krueger agreed that the hypothesis that a rise in wages would destroy jobs was "one of the clearest and most widely appreciated in the field of economics."
Both told me they believed, at the start, that their work would reinforce that hypothesis. But in 1995, and again in 2000, the two academics effectively shredded the conventional wisdom. Their data demonstrated that a modest increase in wages did not appear to cause any significant harm to employment; in some cases, a rise in the minimum wage even resulted in a slight increase in employment.
The staunchest Conservatives, like the people of the Manhattan Institute, would like to portray the living wage movement as some kind of New Left socialist / anarchist /Marxist concept that spilled out of the turmoil of civil rights movement. According to Far Right sources, the movement began in 1994, as some kind of attempt to corrupt the "miracle" of Reaganomics, plotted by liberal professors and un-American leftists, those dreaded hangovers from the civil rights era.
In fact, its philosophical roots go back much further. Nearly a hundred years before, to be precise and is not a new thing at all.
Of New and Not So New Things
One of the seminal works on the subject of fair wages came not from the civil right movements of the mid- 20th century but from much earlier. On May 15, 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued an open letter, passed to all his bishops, that addressed the conditions of the working classes and of the poor. It was calledRerum Novarum (Latin for Of New Things).
It is, in fact, a remarkable document, and which elevated the Church from the promotion of a single faith to an ethical code for the advocacy of world social justice. This original papal document would be the source for a series of other social teachings by later popes, all of which related to the morality of fair treatment for the poor.
In the declaration, poverty in itself, Pope Leo explained, is no disgrace. It was unavoidable and part of the human condition. In an effort to maintain social harmony between the classes, he advised workers of the world that damaging or stealing of property of their employers was unacceptable. Had he stopped there, his message would have been nothing more than a carte blanche for exploitation. As one source explains:
But there was something else that concerned him very much: the material well-being of the working poor. He told them in no uncertain terms that they should receive what will enable them to be housed, clothed, secure, and to live without hardship. He made it clear that they were not to accept unjust treatment as though it were inevitable, and that they were to stand up for their rights at the same time that they helped to preserve good order in society. Protect your own interests, but refrain from violence and never riot ; your demands should be reasonable ; press your claims with reason ; form unions but do not strike. The message about preserving good order is clear and unmistakable, but so is the message about standing up for rights.
Leo XIII wanted the working poor to protect their interests, to make demands, to press their claims, and the principal means for doing this was the formation of unions. In their efforts to claim their rights, the working poor should find in the government an ally, and Leo made it clear that the working poor should be given special consideration by the government.
He also spoke directly to employers.
For Leo, employers have clear moral obligations: workers are not to be treated as slaves; the dignity of your workers' human personality must be respected; do not use people as things for gain; do not oppress the needy and wretched for your own profit. The approach to employers is on a high moral plane, but it is also very practical: you need your poor worker, so work with him harmoniously. It is immoral to treat workers unjustly, and it is also not in the best interest of ownership and management.
It was not a call for communism nor socialist but for an ethical re-examination of a capitalist system. According to the Pope, it was a government’s obligation to take a role in protecting workers’ rights and in keeping the peace. Fair wages are defined in Rerum Novarum as at least a living wage, but Leo recommended paying more than that: enough to support the worker, his wife and family, with a little savings left over so that the worker can improve his condition over time.
To a Right Wing conservative, that statement (for Newt and Rick it's an infallible source, by the way) is tantamount to heresy. It's hard to reconcile the statements made by the candidates- who have professed to be Catholic when it comes to abortion and homosexuality- with the official position of the Church on the poor. Why, you can ask, would the GOP be waging a war on religion?
In any case, the Pope’s letter would later have a profound effect on a leading moral theologian, priest, professor, author, and social justice advocate, Monsignor John Augustine Ryan. In 1906, published the book,A Living Wage.
While at St. Paul Seminary in 1894, Ryan read Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and it was to form the basis for Ryan’s socio-economic views. As he saw it, the separation of economic thought from religious and ethical rules were the cause of social injustice brought about by the industrial revolution. The failure of employers to pay a sufficient wage would, in his eyes, inevitably damage the fabric of all society.
The living wage movement was not confined to the religious sphere. Around the turn of the last century, the fascinating English husband and wife reformers, Martha Beatrice Webb and Sidney James Webb wrote a good deal about the necessity of social and economic reform. They advocated the idea that the State should enforce a national minimum of wages which would provide the laborer with "the food, clothing and shelter physiologically necessary, according to national habit and custom, to prevent bodily deterioration."
They considered the industries that took more than they gave back to be little better than parasites on the community. The Modern Conservative has declared it is the poor who are the parasites. And, apparently their only solution to poverty is blame the victims, to remove their government safety nets and to force them to have more babies they cannot afford. All in the name of their professed morality .
In 1919 The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America drafted a program of social reconstruction back which included in its demands “a Living Wage enforced by the State,” and “declared that “this Living Wage should be made the first charge upon industry, before dividends are considered."
Finally, perhaps a more unexpected proponent of the Living Wage concept, was none of than the arch-capitalist Henry Ford. On Jan. 5, 1914, Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, introduced a minimum wage scale of $5 per day, more than doubling the wages for most employees.
James Couzens, the Ford treasurer, said: “It is our belief that social justice begins at home. We want those who have helped us to produce this great institution and are helping to maintain it to share our prosperity. We want them to have present profits and future prospects. … Believing as we do, that a division of our earnings between capital and labor is unequal, we have sought a plan of relief suitable for our business.”
The Wall Street Journal accused him of injecting "Biblical or spiritual principles into a field where they do not belong." The New York Times correspondent who traveled to Detroit to interview him that week asked him if he was a socialist but also added that his decision as “one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career.”
Despite his what was claimed, his main reason for the unprecedented wage increase was more likely to be economic rather than humanitarian. With its high turnover, the motor company faced a constant retraining of new workers. By the keeping and rewarding the best workers, the wage increase was offset by increased production and smaller training programs. Additionally, the wage increase provided Ford employees with enough money to purchase Ford automobiles, which further increased the company’s sales. In the end, through his ostensively labor-friendly policy, Ford’s business goals were realized and his wage increase had its intended effect: turnover declined sharply, and profits doubled to $60 million from $30 million from 1914 to 1916.
One further example of the long pedigree of the living wage movement: in 1917, The Interdenominational Conference of Social Service Unions, comprising ten religious bodies, including Catholics (like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum), spent more than a year formulating a statement of social reconstruction. They issued this statement:
"In an industrial system such as ours, the right to life practically resolves itself into the right to a Living Wage, by which we mean not a mere subsistence wage but a wage sufficient to maintain a reasonable standard of life."
Despite what the conservatives would like everybody to believe, the history of the living wage movement is extensive and historical and it should be a source of pride for any progressive.
The twentieth century was, in fact, one long struggle between the capitalist on one hand who felt that labor was a resource to exploit and progressive social reformers who demanded a fair living wage of labor.
______________
In the final installment, I will take a look at the last great attempt to address the problem of the living wage, the remarkable success of this movement and its catastrophic downfall.
Listen to this incredible emotional speech by Maureen Walsh. A Republican. Miracles never cease, I suppose. By the way, I was also a little worried when she started talking about sex.
