The Undeclared Emergency

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Run! Run while you still can!

Beware. The Illinois State Legislature is on the verge of approving a new minimum wage of fifteen-dollars an hour for Illinois employees. But don't assume this is good news. For the apocalypse is upon us.

Business owners and conservative voices are already warning that this could backfire spectacularly upon working people. Cited most-often is the ominous threat that a wage-hike will impede job creation.

Which is certainly an interesting argument when you consider that even with one of the lowest minimum wages in the nation ($8.25 p/hr.), Illinois pretty much remains Typhoid Mary when it comes to seducing employers to her doorstep.

Nope. I think something else is impeding job creation in Illinois.

It's routine for business owners and conservatives to whine and wag the finger of doom whenever hourly workers stand to improve their lot. Having lived in several areas of the country, I can assure you it is not an Illinois-only phenomenon.

The ski resort of Aspen, Colorado has faced this challenge many times, and each and every time the minimum wage is raised the business community forecasts disaster. But um, the last time I checked (which was today), Aspen remains a thriving community and a high-charting travel destination with some of the most-valuable real estate in the nation.

If this constitutes disaster, could you please ship some to Illinois?

Santa Fe, New Mexico faced a similar problem when the workers employed in the hospitality industry couldn't afford to live there. Once again the minimum wage was raised amidst predictions of ruin.

Shockingly, even the most cursory check assures us that Santa Fe is still a viable and in-demand travel destination even without its wait staffs, hotel staffs, resort and retail staffs living in near-poverty.

So tell me, small business owners: when do Aspen and Santa Fe turn into ghost towns, anyway? Because I'd like to pick me up me some of that gorgeous property—cheap!

It's just my opinion, but I believe one of the most insignificant and infinitesimal problems currently facing the United States is whether the minimum wage is too high.

In an economy that can absorb the fiscal lunacy of an executive receiving a $120 million-dollar severance package, I'm pretty sure a minimum wage-hike portioned out over six (!) years isn't going to put anyone out of business.

And while my yawning, libtard maw is agape, let me add this: no one working forty-hours a week should ever be staving-off homelessness because of an insufficient wage.

No one.

How Tea Baggers Inspired Me to Bridge the Enthusiasm Gap

I just didn’t have the stomach for it. I was going to sit this election out. Such was my disgust with the party that rendered a congressional supermajority into a meek, sniveling, ninety-eight pound weakling.

That is, until I realized what the alternative was.

I realized what the alternative was when I heard people named Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul and Meg Whitman talk about “re-thinking” the minimum wage.

For those not familiar with teabag-speak, that’s code for eliminating it. Because the extravagance that is the minimum wage is stealing food from the table of America’s wealthy.

That’s right. You’re making too much money. Never mind the unpunished folk on Wall Street. Or our similarly unchastised ginormous corporate banks. Or even the unregulated businesses allowed to comport themselves like Bonobo monkeys under sanction from an addled presidential administration.

They’re not the problem. You are. Your indulgent lifestyle and skyrocketing wages are driving this country to the brink of ruin. And you must be stopped.

Taking a deep breath, I will admit this is unlikely to happen—even in the undeclared class war happening beneath our noses. But the fact the cast of Tea Baggers can say this in the midst of the worst economic climate in eighty-years sends up a giant red flare.

They have no fear of reprisal. No concern that the former office manager working as a part-time cashier at Wal-Mart or the ex-machinist working as a security guard or the downsized accountant applying at the local 7-11 will take exception to this outrage.

None.

The same folk who have the temerity to suggest that victims of incest turn lemons into lemonade are now calling for sacrifices from the working poor, the hardest-hit victims of Republican economic policies. And I can't help but wonder who's next.

Like you, the thought of CEOs forced to drive last year’s S-class Mercedes keeps me up at night. As does bankers having to scale-back their annual visits to the Amalfi Coast to just three weeks.

But will someone please tell me what can be culled from a lifestyle that often does not even provide food, clothing and shelter?

Republicans are the Viaga which keeps the diseased dick of wealth and power ready, willing and able to rape anything within its reach. And without unified and strident opposition, we become the pharmacists writing the prescription.

If I can’t support Democrats, I can oppose Republicans. Vehemently. Passionately. And with extreme prejudice.

Consider the enthusiasm gap bridged.