The Daily Show on the minimum wage battle

Jon Oliver was on fire in this series of three clips dealing with the strikes by fast-food workers who are trying to get the minimum wages raised from the current $7.25 an hour (which works out to about $15,000 per year for a 40 hour week) to a more realistic $15. Of course this is generating huge amounts of protests by the very same people who think that raising taxes on the rich, even the top 1%, would create enormous hardship on the wealthy. I don’t know if it was ever truly the case that minimum wage fast food jobs were exclusively for adolescents to earn some pocket money but it is clearly no longer true. These jobs have become primary ones for adults and they deserve to have a living wage. [Read more…]

More on the Amash-Conyers amendment vote

The close 217-205 vote defeat in the House of Representatives on the amendment by freshman congressman Justin Amash and veteran John Conyers (both from Michigan) to curb the surveillance powers of the NSA clearly has shaken up the establishment. David Kravets finds that there was a significant pattern in how people voted: “It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.” [Read more…]

Our skewed world

Now that Edward Snowden has temporary asylum in Russia, he has the freedom to travel anywhere in that country and work. Apparently, he may already have a job offer.

Late Thursday, the founder of Russia’s Facebook-like social network site VKontakte, made what sounded like a job offer.

“We will be happy if he decides to supplement the team of star programmers at VKontakte,” Durov wrote on his page.

[Read more…]