The Real Cost of a Happy Meal

The video below, released this week by the service employees’ union, shows a concrete example of how private corporations that pay poverty wages profit by imposing part of their labor costs on the rest of us.



In our society, people like Nancy face a significant degree of stigma for accepting public benefits, but the real “welfare queens” in this story are McDonald’s shareholders, who pocket the difference between what the company pays and what their workers’ need to make ends meet. They use their lobbying power to oppose minimum wage hikes, but they haven’t beaten back deep cuts to our social welfare system.



This kind of subsidy is incredibly common in today’s low-wage economy. According to a study released last week by the Labor Center at UC Berkeley…

• More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
• The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year.
• At an average of $3.9 billion per year, spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) accounts for more than half of these costs.
• Due to low earnings, fast-food workers’ families also receive an annual average of $1.04 billion in food stamp benefits and $1.91 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit payments.
• People working in fast-food jobs are more likely to live in or near poverty. One in five families with a member holding a fast-food job has an income below the poverty line, and 43 percent have an income two times the federal poverty level or less.
• Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages.

This isn’t how a “free market” is supposed to work. These workers are selling their labor for less than the cost of production – less than what it takes to provide basics like food, shelter and health care. Low-wage employers are in turn keeping the cost of their products artificially low by socializing a chunk of their labor expenses. And while we may be enjoy a cheap burger, we end up paying more for it when taxes are pulled out of our paychecks.
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All of the above was taken from the billmoyers.com website.

From another site I learned today that McDonalds is buying an additional corporate jet that supposedly goes for $27-$35 million...while the rest of us are helping their employees subsist, with our tax dollars. Granted, the cost of the corporate jet, even at the top end of the price range, only amounts to $50 per employee, but it does symbolize the issue very nicely.

I apologize to my niece and her husband who are probably negotiating the price of that Bombardier Challenger 605 jet that McDonalds is buying, but I don't like that, whatever the final cost, it is another example of corporate welfare, or socialism for the rich.

Ironically, I will bet that, if we were to analyze McDonalds political donations, they are giving money mostly to candidates who want to cut or eliminate the very social safety net programs on which their employees depend.

Pipicat

It seems to me that some things probably don't need to come with instructions, and cat litter is one of them.

Besides, even though Heitor and I think our cats are smart, some things are just easier to do yourself.


Image number two shows that even for felines, it's a man's world.

The second image might also illustrate a point I made recently with a friend that the acceptability or unacceptability of peeing outside is rather a cultural thing and that outside peeing is more accepted in Brasil than in the U.S. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd bet that a manufacturer in the U.S. wouldn't use this image because it is almost certain to offend some prudes somewhere. Think of the children!!

Some Heads Should Probably Roll

My favorite news story in quite a while has to do with the fact that Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are upset that Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of HHS, has declined their invitation to come and testify about the technological problems with the Obamacare rollout.

These are the very same people who shut down the government for two-plus weeks, at an estimated cost to the economy of $24 billion, because they wanted to defund Obamacare. Now they want to grill Sebelius about how this supposedly tech savvy administration managed to screw up the rollout.

Obama is pissed and deserves and answer to that question. Supporters of the law everywhere are pissed and deserve and answer. People who tried to use the system and encountered time-consuming problems deserve an answer. House Republicans, the ones who won´t be disrespected, can shove it. (In fact, Sebelius will probably testify as early as next week.)

You gotta admire those Republican cajones...unfortunately I can´t think of anything else about them that is at all admirable.

'Ol Blue Eyes

Has everyone seen this story but me? Heitor just looked over my shoulder and said he had read all about it.

Even if it's old gossip to everyone else, I will take a break from trying to decide whether the Republicans are more defined by their idiocy or their asshole-ishness.

The young man pictured here is Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia Farrow. Who do you think is his father, Woody Allen or Frank Sinatra?

Farrow supposedly says that she continued a relationship with Sinatra long after their short marriage ended. According to her, Sinatra could possibly be her son's father, despite the fact that Woody Allen is the legal father.

Sinatra's widow says nonsense, but what would she know? Allen says the idea is "extravagantly absurd," but how can he be certain? (Actually, since Allen is estranged from both the son and his mother, one might think he would grasp at the possibility he isn't the father.)

And Ronan, what does he say? "Listen, we're all possibly Frank Sinatra's son."

Since DNA testing could settle the question easily, one wonders why anyone would take a hard and fast position.

A story from The Week Magazine:

Lincoln, Neb

Abortion denied: A 16-year-old girl in
foster care in Nebraska has been denied
an abortion after the state’s Supreme
Court ruled she wasn’t mature enough
to opt for the procedure and should give
birth instead. The unnamed teenager
had asked a judge to waive the state’s
requirement she obtain parental consent,
arguing that her biological parents’ rights
had been terminated after years of abuse
and that her strongly religious foster parents
would refuse to consent to an abortion.
The girl said she didn’t have the
ability to “be the right mom that I would
like to be right now.” A district judge’s
refusal to grant the waiver was upheld
by the state Supreme Court, which concluded
that because the girl was financially
dependent on her foster parents,
had never lived on her own, and had
no work experience, she wasn’t mature
enough to choose an abortion.

Too bad she hadn´t flipped a few burgers at McDonalds to get that necessary work experience which leads directly to maturity.

Boehner Is The Problem

Practically from the beginning of this government shutdown, now in its third week, I have been reading that there is a majority in the House of Representatives who would vote to pass a clean Continuing Resolution, if only John Boehner would allow it to be brought to a vote.

Boehner claimed on one of the Sunday talk shows a week ago that the reason he hasn't brought it up is that the votes are not there. Democrats have been saying ever since, "prove it."

Boehner has allowed this shutdown to drag on because he would need Democratic votes in addition to the votes of responsible Republicans, to pass a clean funding bill. He would rather drive over the cliff than ask Democrats for a little help.

The bat shit crazy wing of the Republican party that takes orders from a talking microwave, or whatever, is not going anywhere for now. Unfortunately they are being enabled, and the shutdown prolonged, by Speaker Boehner, who is allowing himself and other potentially reasonable Republicans to be led by these crazies. Boehner can complain about the stubbornness of Obama and the Democrats all he wants; the shutdown would probably end immediately if he would just call a vote.

Paul Krugman made a really interesting point in his column today. Starting in the late 1930s the Democratic party held nominal control of both houses almost permanently for nearly 30 years. And they had a similar group of loonies in their midst, the southern Dixiecrats, who prevented not just civil rights legislation, but anything remotely progressive. The majority Democrats had to work with Republicans to pass important legislation and just bypassed their intransigent wing. Instead of caving in to the crazy wing, Boehner has to to cut them out, and work with the Democrats if any progress is going to happen.

There Is No Short-Term Debt Crisis...Hardly Even a Problem

Have you noticed that the original reason for holding the country hostage, the need to defund Obamacare, has melted away and is now pretty much accepted as having been unrealistic all along?

What is astonishing to me is that pundits as well as politicians on the right don´t question the legitimacy of extorting what they want as the price for doing their job. They merely say that the choice of funding for Obamacare was a tactical mistake, that the focus should have been the broader issue of government spending. The practice of extortion does not bother them; they just wrote the wrong ransom note.

All of the people fixated on the supposed debt crisis should read Adam Hartung´s column from last May in Forbes Magazine, which asks the question: "Economically, Could Obama Be America´s Best President?" Hartung´s column takes the form of an interview with Bob Deitrick, the author of the book, Bulls, Bears and the Marketplace.

Among many other things, the point is made that:

The deficit is now only 4% of the GDP, down from over 10% at the end of Bush’s administration – and projections are for it to be only 2% by 2015 (before Obama leaves office.)  America’s “debt problem” seems largely solved, and almost all due to growth rather than austerity.

Note that the quotation marks around "debt problem" are not mine. But this fact, that our short-term debt crisis is imaginary, has been pointed out over and over again by economists who actually study the economy. It apparently means nothing to the professional deficit hawks. They are willing to shut down the government and even see it go into default to solve a non-existent problem.

It's Blackwhite

Since I hope nobody watches Fox "News," perhaps this was missed.

A cople of days ago on Fox,John McCain explicitly stated and emphasized that the government shutdown is a Republican shutdown that was ill-advised from the beginning.

That, coupled with Michelle Bachmann's admission early on that "We're very excited. This (the shutdown) is exactly what we wanted, and we got it" should pretty much settle the question. To call this Obama's shutdown, as the party of personal responsibility is doing, is right out of 1984...blackwhite.

Still, having stated clearly that the shutdown is a Republican responsibility, McCain, like all the Republicans, is oh so disappointed that the president hasn't negotiated with them. Well, I am oh so disappointed that the Republicans think we are all idiots.

What a Train Wreck!

Oh my gawd, there were some problems with the computers on the first day to sign up for Obamacare. Guess we´d better scrap the whole thing.

Just a little historical perspective here, from John Perr at the Daily Koz:

What I really love about the frantic attempts by the Kook brothers™ and their allies in the Republican party with their attempts to scare people about signing up for Obamacare, not to mention the extortionist attempt to defund it, is that it is so obvious it is all being driven by a knowledge that Obamacare is going to be popular and permanent. The Kooks™ even funded a campaign aimed at students on college campuses across the country, trying to convince them not to enroll. Somehow I´m just not very worried that they´re going to connect.

Aah, But That Was Then. This Is Now

This headline is just a reminder of the hypocrisy driving the Republican party, if that were still necessary.

104 Current Congressional Republicans Who Voted to Increase Debt Ceiling Under Bush—Without Hostage Threats

Of course the list includes John Boehner antd Eric Cantor. No surprise there.

The New Normal

Time Gets It Right

In a recent post, I criticized Time magazine's different cover stories for domestic and international readers. I would like to now say something nice about Time magazine's covers. Consider it said.

Calling A Moron A Moron. It's Not That Difficult

Despite any humorous earlier posts, I do think this Republican shutdown of the government is extremely serious. It was appropriate in an earlier post that I called these tea bagger cretins terrorists. They are true believers who genuinely believe they have "right" on their side, and that is always scary. Even scarier is that, because of gerrymandering games, they are all from safe districts and will probably be re-elected. Still I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that even Texas isn't batshit crazy enough to re-elect Ted Cruz in 2018. Yep, that mofo will be with us that long at least.

(Just a side note: the reason Texas Republicans are putting so much effort into voting restrictions and bizarre gerrymandering is that the demographics of the state have changed so much that a fair vote would take it out of the "safe" red category. Texas, in a fair election, would literally be "in play.")

Despite the seriousness of what is at stake, once again, comedians are better journalists than the supposed television professionals and we might as well laugh at these assholes.

Thanks, Fred, For Sending This

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OCTOBER 1, 2013

MILLIONS FLEE OBAMACARE

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ

• PRINT
• MORE

UNITED STATES (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Tea Party loyalists fled the United States in the early morning hours today, seeking what one of them called “the American dream of liberty from health care.”

Harland Dorrinson, 47, a tire salesman from Lexington, Kentucky, packed up his family and whatever belongings he could fit into his Chevy Suburban just hours before the health-insurance exchanges opened, joining the Tea Party’s Freedom Caravan with one goal in mind: escape from Obamacare.

“My father didn’t have health care and neither did my father’s father before him,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my children have it.”

But after driving over ten hours to the Canadian border, Mr. Dorrinson was dismayed to learn that America’s northern neighbor had been in the iron grip of health care for decades.

“The border guard was so calm when he told me, as if it was the most normal thing in the world,” he said. “It’s like he was brainwashed by health care.”

Turning away from Canada, Mr. Dorrinson joined a procession of Tea Party cars heading south to Mexico, noting, “They may have drug cartels and narcoterrorism down there, but at least they’ve kept health care out.”

Mr. Dorrinson was halfway to the southern border before he heard through the Tea Party grapevine that Mexico, too, has public health care, as do Great Britain, Japan, Turkey, Spain, Belgium, New Zealand, Slovenia, and dozens of other countries to which he had considered fleeing.

Undaunted, Mr. Dorrinson said he had begun looking into additional countries, like Chad and North Korea, but he expressed astonishment at a world seemingly overrun by health care.

“It turns out that the United States is one of the last countries on earth to get it,” he said. “It makes me proud to be an American.”