SOTU: pen and phone edition
by digby
From what we hear this is going to be the president’s “I guess I have to do everything myself” speech, which I frankly hope is what he says. While they’ve used Executive Orders in the past, perhaps this time we’ll see a bit more action beyond the margins. He’s certainly been using them liberally and effectively in the realm of national security so we know the president’s pen has ink in it.
For those who can’t bear to hear the gasbags pontificate as usual about who wore what and how many times someone applauded, there’s an alternative: MoveOn, the AFL-CIO, and the radio show The Good Fight will be livestreaming a progressive response from AFL-CIO HQ right after the speech, co-hosted by Ben Wikler and Thea Lee, where they’ll talk to a number of labor and progressive folks. We might even learn something:
Update: Michael Moore had an interesting little factoid today that we should keep in mind as we watch the garment rending over the minimum wage proposal for federal workers tonight:
One hundred years ago this month Henry Ford began paying his workers a minimum of $15 an hour! (It was $5 for an eight hour day – which would be worth $116.48 now.) That’s right – in a much poorer America, one without TV, radio, phones or House of Cards on demand, Ford could afford it. In fact, Ford later said, he couldn’t afford not to: “The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers.”
Tell THAT to anyone who says we can’t afford a minimum wage of $15 here in 2014 – 100 years later, in a country about eight times as rich per person. The CEOs will scream and weep now just like they did then, and just like then they’ll be wrong. Not only would it not destroy American businesses, it might be the only thing that can save them.
Also too, this. Just for fun:
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