Bernie Sanders on raising the minimum wage

Bernie Sanders is holding a senate hearing on why the federal minimum wage should be raised to $15 per hour.

US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.

As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.

Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?They declined to appear.
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John Oliver on the Texas freeze fiasco

He roundly criticizes all those responsible for what was a foreseen and avoidable disaster.

Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shames Ted Cruz by raising $5 million to help Texans while he was gallivanting off to Cancun.

We should also recall that Cruz was one of those people who objected to aiding people in other states who got hit with natural disasters. I am sure that he is opposing all federal aid to Texas now because he is a person who stands on principle, right?

Great moments in politics

It always amazes me when politicians get caught behaving in ways that contradict what they tell others to do. During the pandemic, we have seen multiple occasions where political leaders violated the social distancing and other precautionary features that they were urging on others and going to parties, traveling, etc. Then earlier, remember how Chris Christie, when governor of New Jersey, was enjoying with his family a state beach that the state had ordered closed to the public due to a budget impasse? Surely they must realize that their actions are under a microscope and that they should act more circumspectly?
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