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.