Daily Archives: July 8, 2012

Scanton, PA to reduce city workers’ pay to minimum wage (including firefighters and police)

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Think Progress: “Ignoring a federal judge’s injunction, Scranton, Pennsylvania moved ahead with its plan to reduce the pay of city workers to the federal minimum wage starting Friday. Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty claims the city is broke and that the minimum wage payments are all it can possibly pay. [...] Many of those workers are police officers, firefighters, and other public safety workers, industries that have been slammed by contractions in state and local budgets since the Great Recession. Congressional Republicans repeatedly blocked efforts to extend aid to the states that would have helped shore up their budgets and keep these workers on payroll. In the case of Scranton, such aid may have helped the city actually pay its workers a living wage instead of a federal minimum that hasn’t been raised since 2006 and has less buying power than it had in 1968.”

Of course it’s city / state / federal workers who are killing the economy — not Wall Street and greedy corporations and over-compensated CEOs. And HEAVEN FORBID revenues get raised with slightly higher taxes. The Republican Party has completely mind f*cked this country into believing government services should be free or we’ll do without. And, oh, by the way, the wealthy need more tax cuts.

So good luck with that, Scranton — if you call 911 for help, you’ll be getting a minimum wage worker (who USED to make a living wage) responding to your terrible emergency. The new minimum wage workers might ask themselves: why should I? That emergency wasn’t terrible enough to pay a little more in taxes last week, was it? As far as I’m concerned, if I’m making minimum wage I might as well be doing something with a lot less stress — like washing the counters at McDonalds or stocking all the Chinese products over at Walmart.

Maybe they hope everyone will blame the President.

RNC Chair Reince Priebus goes Full Metal Apocalypse on Fox Entertainment

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Today, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appeared on Fox Entertainment and told host John Roberts that President Obama is going to “end our way of life,”  according to Raw Story:

“It’s an issue that we have to win on. The fact is that it’s not a question of can Mitt Romney win, the question is — the statement is Mitt Romney has to win for the sake of the very idea of America. Mitt Romney has to win for liberty and freedom. And we have to put an end to this Barack Obama presidency before it puts an end to our way of life in America.”

Desperate, much? Vote for Mitt Romney because anything other than Mitt Romney is exactly the opposite of liberty and freedom and hamburgers and your mother and stockcar racing and Jesus and Applebees and the flag and football and apple pie and BBQs and white people and shootin’ and boot scootin’ and pickup trucks and truck nutz and drinking beer and… JUST VOTE FOR MITT ROMNEY, OR ELSE!

Sunday prayers: what were the pseudo-Christian Teagelicals up to this week?

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“Mosques are not churches like we would think of churches. They think of mosques more as a foothold into a society, as a foothold into a community, more in the cultural and in the nationalistic sense. Our churches — we don’t feel that way, they’re places of worship, and mosques are simply not that, and we need to take that into account when approving construction of those.”  – Colorado state Sen. Kevin Grantham (R), quoted by the Colorado Statesman, saying a proposal to ban construction of new mosques should be considered.  (via)

All loving Christians are invited to celebrate the word of God at Rev. William Collier’s annual conference — that is, as long as they are white. [...] The Alabama town’s mayor is renouncing the Reverend, saying that such hate speech is unwelcome in the town. But Collier defended the flyer this week, saying that he isn’t a racist — just that “the white race is God’s chosen people.” (via)

During his Thursday Focal Point radio program, Bryan Fischer equated the healthcare mandate with going to church: “We know that going to church is good for you, it’s good for your health. So we are going to mandate that you go to church for your own health and we are going to tax the atheists who don’t go to church. Now we can’t make you go to church, but we are going to penalize you if you don’t,” Fischer continued. “We are going to assess a tax on every atheist who doesn’t go to church because those atheists are endangering their physical health.” (via)

“I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school. Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion. We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools.” – Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges (R), quoted by the Livingston Parish News, upon learning that the recently passed voucher program can go to Muslim schools as well as Christian schools.  (via)

‘Merica, amen.