This Week in Progress
When will Clive Bundy announce his campaign for president? I’m taking bets.
Onward with progress!
This week in PM blogging:
Elected officials are supposed to represent the will of the people. And that’s exactly what Attorney General Bill Schuette does — when it fits his far-right political endeavors and when the “will of the people” he’s referring to is the “will of Bill Schuette.”
With great resources, comes great responsibility. In Michigan, we’re surrounded by 20 percent of the world’s freshwater. It’s our duty to protect the Great Lakes — the world is depending on us. We’ve come a long way in terms of environmental protections, but there are right-wing forces at work that are trying to undermine how far we’ve come.
Terri Lynn Land’s campaign for Senate is sticking with their messaging strategy in her latest TV ad: Say as little as possible. This time around, Land states that simply being a woman automatically makes her a women’s advocate. We decided to challenge that poorly thought out concept. Not only does the ad fall short on ideas and actual policies, apparently the campaign doesn’t want peoples’ opinions on it because they disabled the comment section.
TWIP Clips:
Raise Rick
Conservative darling Sen. Rick Jones wants to give restaurant servers a raise. How much you ask? Oh, about $4 a week. News broke yesterday that the senator from Grand Ledge wants to raise the minimum wage to $8.15 and the tipped-credit to $2.75. That amounts to a measly $30 a week for minimum wage workers and $4 a week for tipped workers. For families struggling to pay the rent and keep food in their kids’ bellies, this isn’t nearly enough.
Let’s be clear on something: Jones is trying to undermine the Raise Michigan Coalition effort to raise the wage to $10.10 for all workers. He does not care about helping workers — he’s just trying to appease corporate restaurant lobbyists.
Jones’ proposal still forces Michigan taxpayers to subsidize corporations who refuse to pay their workers a decent wage. If the wage were raised to $10.10, Michigan would save over $200 million in food assistance dollars.
I wonder what kind of tipper Rick Jones is…
Bundy Bungles It
The far-right and FOX News had it — or so they thought. They thought they had the conservative, anti-government darling they’d been waiting for in Cliven Bundy. He had guns, a cowboy hat, he looked good riding around on horseback with an American flag and he hated the government.
Unfortunately for the right, their (and Bundy’s) rhetoric and ideology are as backwards as riding around with an American flag when you don’t recognize the federal government.
It turns out Bundy is a whacked-out racist who thinks African Americans may have been better off under slavery. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
Now the Bundy supporters like Rand Paul, who helped open the GOP’s minority outreach office in Detroit, are backing away from the rancher.
While we’re on the subject of race, let’s think about how this Bundy situation would’ve played out if it were a black person refusing to cooperate with government agents and pointing guns at federal officers. Let’s just say FOX News and Sean Hannity would’ve had a very different take on the situation.
Hopefully, Americans will look at the situation in Nevada and realize that this far-right, anti-government, anti-tax ideology being touted by conservatives is hypocritical and bad for our country.
Progressive Reads:
Jase Bolger on his own in his attempt to extort labor unions
Stephen Henderson: I am affirmative action
Growing up in poverty and pollution
New Records: IRS Targeted Progressive Groups More Extensively Than Tea Party
Jon Stewart skewers how the right-wing reacts to male vs. female politicians