Back to the Minimum Wage Issue

Update!

Mardee on the OAC blog posted the following article, which I thought was excellent from Alternet, but I want to give you a couple of Mardee's introductory thoughts too:

This article in this a.m.'s AlterNet outlining how New Mexico has dealt with the minimum wage was incredibly uplifting. The assessment by New Mexico politicos and elected representatives should be a template for the entire country in debunking Republican myths about the horrors for the economy if the wage is raised. In fact, the lack of a decent minimum wage is being exposed for what it is - a government subsidy to Big Business at the expense of the neediest in the country.

As John Edwards has said so many times and so correctly, "this is a moral issue". New Mexico recognizes the truth in that simple but profound statement.

Selling Voters on the Minimum Wage Hike

By Sasha Abramsky, The Nation. Posted October 23, 2006.

How New Mexico successfully framed the minimum wage as a moral issue, and was able to pass a progressive ballot initiative

David Coss sits at ease behind his large desk, his long, wiry body draped in a gray-brown linen suit. A Georgia O'Keeffe poster of a horned animal's skull hangs on the wall behind him. A second poster, in pastels, shows off a glorious Southwestern desert and mountain landscape, evoking swirling dreams and endless possibilities. With his neatly coiffed hair and graying goatee, Coss looks like a high-end attorney or, perhaps, a CEO. In fact, he has a background as an environmental scientist and a union organizer, and he is currently the mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has risen to power at least in part because of his assertive championing of the most comprehensive living-wage statute in America.

LINK to Mardee's post at OAC

Now, here's JRE on Talkradio News podcasts...they have to be because I hear typing in the background..about the minimium wage issue as referendums in states this year.

First part
Second part

JRE was on a conference call (I don't know if Talk Radio News got their clips from this call) with Senator Kennedy and reporters today, saying that he would try to reintroduce raising the minimum wage within 24 hours in the new Congress. It's in alignment with the 100 hour program the House has if Dems take it back. JRE announced he would be in 3 states this week that have the minimum wage as one of their ballot measures. As you can imagine, Edwards said that "the current national minimum wage[is] an "embarrassment," [and] Edwards described "efforts by Republicans to block the minimum wage" as "offensive."

Tomorrow, Edwards will be in Nevada to stump for a few state candidates and to be at rallies to awareness about the minimium wage initative. I hope it passes, but the SEIU is going to have to GOTV on this issue as there are many liberatarians in Nevada who may be against it, saying the miminum wage is unnecessary and the market will take care of the workers. Sometimes the market does, but we know now that wages are stagnant, and the workers who at hotels and gambling places are not teenagers.

Update: Some news organizations in Nevada think it might pass. In lieu of the raises, health care could be an option. I'd like to hear JRE's understanding of this, but initially, it sounds like an decent alternative.

Tags: John Edwards, minimum wage, Nevada, 2006 elections, Benny's World