A picture of race relations in America

Meet Bridget and Fran.



Read their story at The Guardian.

When you peruse mainstream media it's easy to get the impression that race relations in America are all about white privilege and black resentment. I think there's a reason the big media platforms push that narrative; the old maxim "divide and conquer" comes to mind.

It is therefore very refreshing to read a story about a couple of working class women who don't seem aware of the "racial divide." Fran and Bridget are both active with "Stand up Kansas City," a group lobbying for a $15/hr minimum wage.

That wage workers in the world's wealthiest country are too often trapped in poverty even when working more than full-time hours should be an embarrassment to every American.

A minimum wage that affords a decent standard of living is long overdue.

Preem Kathleen dips into loot-bag and gifts Ontario min wage workees 30% raise

But it doesn't kick in till after the next provincial election, nudge nudge wink!

On the face of it, that may appear to be a cynical bit of political opportunism - vote for me and get a 30% raise.

In reality, she's gifting a cohort that tends to be under-represented in the voting booth. Min wage workers are often too busy, too disillusioned, too distracted and too discouraged to bother voting. Maybe this will get their attention.

After all, it's beyond the pale that ANY worker in one of the most prosperous jurisdictions on the planet labour in poverty.

Enough already!

Brace yourself for the chorus of bleating that is guaranteed to issue forth from those sectors of the economy that depend on full-time workers toiling for poverty wages.

Whaaaaa!! We're gonna move our restaurant to Alabama...

Well, off you go then.

Somebody else will figure out how to deep fry frozen potatos while paying a living wage.

Sure, prices at restaurants will have to go up somewhat, but look at how many more people will be able to afford a dinner out.


This is a small step in the right direction, but at least it's a start.

How Trump can keep the baying populist mobs at bay, in three easy steps

It's beyond obvious by now that Donald's election campaign is hugely at odds with the clique of billionaires and former generals he is surrounding himself with as he builds his management team. Here's how he could quiet the disquiet that's growing around his perceived bait-and-switch tactics.

1. Toss the plebes their dream of a $15/hr minimum wage. At first blush you'd think guys like Puzder aren't gonna think too much of that, but even he can be convinced. After all, that's a lot more disposable income for the sort of folks who like to dispose of their income at Carl's Jr. and similar venues. Just jack your prices to cover the costs. It's a no-brainer!

2. No matter what you call it, (and obviously you'll have to call it something else) give the masses some version of universal health care. That's gonna piss off the big dogs in the private health care business, but most Americans are OK with the idea that their health challenges shouldn't be somebody else's profit opportunity.

3. Go ape on infrastructure renewal. This can create as many jobs as you need to create. Trump can easily siphon hundreds of billions out of the obscenely bloated military budget and use those billions to create millions of jobs rebuilding America. Yup, time to pull the plug on the F-35 and use the money to revamp the I-35 and all those other Interstate highways that have fallen into decrepitude.

Should be a sure thing!

How is opposition to illegal immigration "racist?"

Apparently it's the illegal immigrant's God-given right to wade across the Rio Grande and snag a job that home-grown Americans don't want to do. Like any job that pays less than the prevailing and pathetic minimum wage.

All those Social Justice Warriors keen on bumping the legal min wage to $15 don't have a clue what to do with those neighbours wading across the Rio Grande to get away from their own ninety cents per hour min wage.

Don't get me wrong; I'm 100% for the $15 is fair campaign. Problem is it's probably more fair in the Dakotas and Maine than it is in NYC and Philly and LA. Not to mention that this is a moot discussion unless the southern border is managed properly.

It's a concept fundamental to the Christian faith that we will be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable among us. From what I see, we don't treat them very well.

While I suspect that Trump is mostly blowing smoke with his "border wall" proclamations, why is it considered offensive when a presidential candidate promises to restore the integrity of America's borders? Every other nation state on the planet works hard to maintain the integrity of its borders, so why not the most "exceptional" nation state?

Canada's pretend socialists try for free ride on "$15 is FAIR" coattails

The Canadian political party formerly known as socialist has decreed that $15 is indeed fair; a fair minimum wage for Canadian workers... IN 2019!

How this bit of shabby headline-mongering succeeded is beyond me. NDP leader Mulcair got headlines all across the Great White North on his call for a $15/hr minimum wage. In every case you don't get the 2019 part until you read the actual story.

Nor is Mulcair making a principled statement about the need for a decent minimum wage for ALL Canadians, right now; he's limiting his "demands" to that small minority of Canadian workers who are covered by federal instead of provincial minimum wage legislation.

In other words, these headlines are the result of a calculated attempt to steal a bit of the spotlight from the "$15 is Fair" campaign.

The NDP under Mulcair's leadership has been steadily losing the credibility it had under the late Jack Layton. Mulcair's gutless refusal to say anything other than parrot Harper talking points during the recent Israeli war on Gaza, for the ludicrous reason that his wife's family is Jewish, alienated a lot of traditional NDP types who expect the Party offer something different from the one-sided support for Israeli militarism that we typically get from the Harper gang.

As for that $15/hr minimum wage, listen up, Tom; that's something that the working poor in Canada need today, not in 2019, and they need it across the land, not just in federally regulated industries.

Why Drake needs a smarter smart-phone

Let's face it; if smart phones were all that smart, Drake's unit would have intervened before he had a chance to push "send" on that rancid Rolling Stone/ Phillip Seymour Hoffman rant he tweeted yesterday.

As it is, his PR folks swung into damage control mode today to undo the damage. He was a bit emotional, don't you know... it was a tough day at the office, and yadayadayada.

But some of the damage can never be undone. Drake has been forever revealed as petty, vindictive, and a narcissist through and through. No amount of PR spin is going to change that.

Then again, maybe that's what we expect from our "stars" in the first place.

The Resurrection of Captain Ludd

The local high school has about 800 cellphone-carrying students. Assuming that they, or more likely their parents, are paying an average of fifty bucks a month for cell service, that's $40,000 every month floating out of that building into the coffers of the cellphone industry.

Twenty years ago no students at that school had cellphones. That's a school that can't afford new helmets for the football team and has multiple fund-raisers to keep alive its breakfast program which costs somewhat less than $500 a month to operate. But $40,000 every month just wafts up through the ceiling tiles.

This is the result of a completely irrational fetishization of technology. What are these kids actually doing with these cellphones? Are they necessary?

Ask the kids and they'll answer that they can't imagine living without one.

As a society we seem to blindly accept that just because someone has come up with a technology, we are obliged to adopt, adapt, consume, and enrich the providers of that technology. Asking "how is this making the world a better place" would mark you as a senile sentimentalist.

But while it's true that the billions worldwide who have adopted this technology have made an infinitesimally small clique of individuals exceedingly wealthy, how has it improved society?

This goes well beyond cellphones. Usually, new technology will promise enhanced efficiencies in the bouquet of propaganda that heralds its debut.

As a society, we're over-the-top about "efficiency."

Efficiency-seeking investment dollars chased manufacturing from the US and Canada to Mexico and then China, and then on to Cambodia and Bangladesh and Haiti, in a constant quest for greater efficiency.

The never-ending search for cheaper inputs on the one hand, and the constant evolution of technology on the other, have conspired to make North America and much of the "developed world" into a job-shedding wasteland.

If we believe that "jobs" are a valuable commodity in a society, perhaps we should manage ourselves accordingly.

When hedge fund driven mergers, rationalizations, take-overs etc. result in the inevitable "synergies,"  i.e. drastic lay-offs, there needs to be a place in the discussion about how this benefits society at large. If the only beneficiaries are the hedge-fund operators and their investors, then the only point would be to further enrich the already rich at the expense of a wide swath of ordinary folks.

Why should that be permitted?

The creation and preservation of decent jobs is a worthwhile end in itself. The elimination of such jobs is not.

And what is a "decent" job?

A lot of low-wage employment is not inherently unpleasant. I served a spell in retail myself once. Putting in an eight hour shift at the mall could be eminently agreeable to a lot of people if the pay allowed them to live a proper life.

That's why the movement in the US by fast food and retail workers to up the minimum wage to $15 is such a positive development. If Costco can pay a decent wage, Wal-mart and McDonalds can too.

Even more important, we can't as a society embrace every new "labour-saving technology" without giving some thought to what will happen to the labour that's going to be saved. When we talk about saving labour we are talking about eliminating somebody's livelihood. Shouldn't they have a say in the matter?

For far too long the discussion about workers and jobs has been monopolized by the Chamber of Commerce types who champion profit maximization over employees, communities, society, the environment, and every other manifestation of the common good.

It's time to reboot the discussion.