Annoyed this morning

So, while this is not a shock, the Senate repubs defeated an effort to raise the minimum wage while pushing for ways to strengthen creditors and make it harder to declare bankruptcy. Make no mistake about it, I don't like people running up big credit card debt and then declaring bankruptcy, but the credit card companies encourage just that by targeting the young and poor. Why does the Senate reward them?

As for the rest of the world--the working poor, once again the Republicans led by the Religious Right are making their world more difficult. Always defending the people with money, they refuse to raise the minimum wage to a livable level. These are the working poor--the people with a couple of jobs who are trying to raise their families.

But Streak, I thought the Christian Conservatives cared about the family? Wouldn't that be nice. But it turns out that they prefer focusing on the 10 Commandment idol worship statues than the working poor. Or my gay neighbors. Anything but addressing the working poor and the fact that there are 50 million uninsured Americans or that nearly half of bankruptcies occur because of medical costs. So much easier to read Tim Lahaye and believe that if we just had school prayer everything would be fine.

Yahoo! News - Senate Defeats Minimum Wage Increase
"These include an option for employees to work up to 80 hours over two weeks without qualifying for overtime pay; a provision restricting the ability of states to raise the minimum wage for restaurant employees; and waiving wage and overtime rules for workers in some small businesses now covered."

I love how that is phrased--an option for employees to work up to 80 hours over two weeks without qualifying for overtime. As if employees really want that. I am sure they are being held back from the hours because their employers are too cheap to pay overtime, but that doesn't mean that they want to work more hours for less pay.

I think it is fair to say that Repubs have won on the language thing, but their policies are counter to their stated ideals. They make things easier for the rich and harder for the working poor.