Chicago fast-food and retail workers begin mass walkout – Hundreds of fast food and retail employees in Chicago began a mass walkout Wednesday morning, calling for the city’s minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour. WLS-TV reported that the protest, organized by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago (WOCC), included employees from national store chains ranging from McDonald’s to Sears to Victoria’s Secret, most of whom currently make $8.25 an hour, a wage that WOCC members said forces workers to use social service programs like RentAid to make ends meet. “We need wages that we can survive on and support our families,” said committee member Lorraine Sanchez. “These are poverty wages and homelessness wages, and our workers are working two or three jobs, supporting families.”
NBC Chicago – The Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago campaign says many of the 275,000 men and women working in Chicago’s fast food and retail outlets can’t afford things like food, clothing and rent on the minimum $8.25 an hour that most of them make. Some say they rely on public assistance for health care for their children while others say bills are piling up. [...] The group says their companies make more than $4 billion a year on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile and in the Loop yet workers’ wages remain too low to live in the city.
Chicago Tribune – A study last year by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, found that most of the jobs gained since the early 2010 — 58 percent — paid $12 an hour or less. It also found that the workers earning $14 to just over $21 per hour suffered the biggest losses during the recession and that hiring at that pay grade has lagged during the recovery.
But those six- and seven-figure executive bonuses keep growing every year!
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Blake Fall-Conroy, “Minimum Wage Machine,” 2008-2010 (via andrewfishman) – This machine allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like. Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York. This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day at much harder jobs than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage.
The world’s richest woman has equated Australia’s minimum wage to “class warfare,” following her controversial article last week where she called poor workers 
Yesterday at a Fourth of July parade, 
Mitt the Mormon — The uptick in anti-Mormon voter attitudes may come as a surprise to those who predicted Romney’s candidacy would have a mainstreaming effect on his faith. But as University of Sydney scholar David Smith, the paper’s author, writes, just as President Obama’s successful candidacy didn’t put an end to tense race relations in America, Romney’s political assent hasn’t cured the country of anti-Mormonism. In fact, as the data shows, Romney’s rise may have led to increased anxiety about his religion among his natural political opponents. […] Strikingly, the correlation between attitudes about Mormonism and support for Romney is even stronger than political ideology or party identification. Perhaps most potentially distressing to Romney’s campaign is the study’s finding that conservatives who said they were less likely to vote for a Mormon were much more likely to say they were undecided or would not vote at all in a contest between Obama and Romney. Pundits have been predicting for months that anti-Mormon Republicans would stay home in November; this study reaffirms that idea. – 
Romney Endorses Massive Corporate Tax Giveaway That Failed To Create Jobs In The Past – [At the same CEO roundtable, Romney] called for the repeal of the tax on corporate profits that is levied when those profits are returned (repatriated) to America. Repealing the tax, Romney said, would drive investment in the United States and spur job creation. In the past, however, temporary tax holidays for profits stored overseas have not led to the job creation that proponents promised. Instead of creating jobs, companies used a 2004 repatriation tax holiday to line their executives’ pockets, paying stock dividends and buying back shares. The holiday “didn’t accomplish the stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the US,” according to former member of President Bush’s Council on Economic Advisers. – 
Sen. Sanders blasts conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve – Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday explained the importance of ending conflicts of interest at the Federal Reserve, [such as with] Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, serv[ing] on the New York Fed’s board of directors. “The idea that we don’t have a Fed which is sitting there with knowledgeable, intelligent people who are fighting for the middle class and working families and not just for the profits of the large financial institutions — I mean, to me, that’s just a very simple reform,” Sanders said on Current TV’s Viewpoint. “But at the end of the day, if we are serious about trying to rebuild the middle class of this country, rebuild our manufacturing sector, et cetera, no question we need real Wall Street reform. To get Wall Street reform, we need Fed reform. To get Fed reform, we’ve got to get the bankers off of the regional Feds.” Sanders has introduced the Federal Reserve Independence Act to prohibit banking industry executives from serving as Fed directors. – 
This is how America works: lay-off workers and over-compensate CEOs – Verizon Communications announced last week that it would reduce its nationwide workforce by 1 percent, and if enough workers don’t accept the buyouts, it will resort to involuntary layoffs. Verizon paid chief executive Lowell C. McAdam more than $22.5 million in 2011, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of executive compensation. The company has paid its top five executives more than $350 million in the last five years. [...] In 2011, the company’s shareholders saw an 18.8 percent increase in the value of their returns. Workers, however, have not shared in those gains. Verizon eliminated 26,000 jobs over a two-year period in 2008 and 2009 — including 16,000 jobs in 2009 alone — and laid off roughly 13,000 more in 2010. At the same time, Verizon has demanded sizable concessions from workers… – 
WaPo ‘Bullygate’ Profile Foreshadowed Mitt Romney ‘Police Impersonator’ Story – The detail that is revealing is that the uniform was given to Romney by his father, George Romney, rather than being earned through skill and public service. That theme, the desire to wield unearned power, and a broader sense of entitlement, resonates much more strongly, and encompasses Romney’s 
NATION OF MORONS: Apparently people may need reminding that Bush was president before Obama – Obama may have a good reason for name-dropping the nation’s previous Decider, according to a new CNN poll: When asked in the survey whether they are better or worse off than they were four years ago, Americans are split, 44% to 43%. But when asked whether they are better or worse off than they were four years ago “when Bush was president,” a small gap opens — 47% say they are better off compared to 41% who say they are worse off. – 
