This is a powerful message - if you work full-time, you should be able to survive. It cuts thru bullshit like few other issues Democrats espouse, and its hard to spin - basically, the GOP is trying to say that you deserve whatever your boss says you deserve, because your boss needs to run his business. Its transparent bullshit, and the Dems need to learn to hammer and hammer on these issues - think the GOP cries of “death taxes” - to drive home a greater point: that the GOP is the Party of Despair.
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LOL. I had no idea GA06 was so, um, progressive (when compared to GA08 and GA09, that is).
Clearly, Ms. Handel earns a livable wage, most of which feeds her.
Handel debates like Trump tweets.
She doesn’t seem to realize that the majority of Republican voters in GA are poor whites who want nothing more than to make a livable wage and have a chance to become middle class.
Many are are third or fourth generation rural whites who have always worked minimum wage or existed on disability. Others are middle class workers over age 50 who have fallen into the working poor. And then there are middle class kids who graduate and can’t find jobs in their fields ending up working minimum wage, too.
The Bush Great Depression left many middle class and poor Republicans looking for anything other than a traditional Republican like herself. They voted for Trump because he spoke like Bernie about income inequality. She better get with the program. Everyone making minimum wage knows that tax cuts for the rich don’t result in them earning a middle class standard of living.
She sounds just like Mitt Romney not Donald Trump who promises that everyone will be rich if they vote for him. You sound pretty stingy and don’t offer any chance of a big payoff when they roll the dice and vote for you, you fake job creator.
Where’s the money, Handel?
Exactly - even Trump realizes this is a losing issue for the GOP - that’s why he lies so prodigiously about it.
So glad to hear Karen Handel’s true colors have been finally revealed!
She is the witch that broke the Susan Koman Walk For A Cure organization because SHE wanted to defund Planned Parenthood.
Does she even realize what the h— she just said?
Another example of twisting the meaning of words to justify one’s ideology.
Karen: a “liveable wage” means a wage that supports housing costs (whether you rent or own), the cost of vehicles (and their insurance) you need to get to work (bottom line), food, utilities, health care deductions and copays, school clothes for the kids every year, credit card debt (which grows exponentially as wages stay low) - and all of these costs support the many businesses that provide these services.
Karen: you need to enroll in Economics 101 at your nearest community college.
But there’s the chance you are using “liveable wage” carelessly as shorthand for “minimum wage” in which case you are being doubly ignorant.
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Oh - and you as a businesswoman would be the first to skim the profits off a higher minimum wage in the form of higher rents, higher minimum payments on credit cards, and higher food costs. Wouldn’t you? C’mon, admit it.
The only ways I can understand this phenomenon are: 1. the grandchildren of the Great Depression think Trump is some kind of underdog that has “beat the system” even though his entire life story shows the opposite; 2. they are mentally lazy, 3. they are blindly subservient to the Republican Party, 4. they are either obscenely rich, wish they were, or imagine some day they will be, or 5. they understand very well that this is a capitalist society at heart and intend to keep it that way.
Tribalism. Us vs. them. Our in-crowd vs. their outsiders. And yes, it is infecting both political parties - when political campaigns are reported by the media in terms of horse racing, we should know that the medium has become the message and the message is being lost, if not abandoned.
Tribalism. Us vs. them. Our in-crowd vs. their outsiders. And yes, it is
infecting both political parties - when political campaigns are
reported by the media in terms of horse racing, we should know that the
medium has become the message and the message is being lost, if not
abandoned.
Political campaigns have become a matter of hero worship. Bernie, Trump, Clinton. Us vs. them. Who has the loudest voice, the greater charisma, the people fall between the cracks.
What liberals don’t “get” is that Republicans are actually voting their interests, and they are willing to immolate themselves and burn down the house along with themselves. For decades we have been lulled into complacency by all the forward gains: the New Deal, civil rights legislation, the Voting Act, etc., gained ground. The hatred and greed went underground. Now, like ticks in the grass, they have reemerged as Trump has validated them. We as a nation are getting a good look at ourselves in the mirror.
Thankfully we have very strong laws that, even though the need for such laws may not have been apparent up to now, we have them now that we need them.
The true greatness of America - and any other country, for that matter - is that it is not easily torn down.
She is ignoring that fact that on the local and regional level, many many small businesses and companies, not to mention the local stores of the national chains, depend on your and my wages to keep going. So to imagine that the economy is going to keep ticking along as usual without people being able to buy goods and services is stupid at best and criminal at worst.
In our area: Sears and JC Penney - anchor stores - pulled out of a major mall two years ago. That leaves only the reviled WalMart as the department store of any scale here. EMS and Radio Shack are going also. Small Dog Electronics, who thought they saw an opportunity in the boosterism of our small city, decided they were wrong and has left.
The internet is not the only reason these stores leave. When people must budget their wages on necessities and have less and less to spare, business dies back, small businesses fail and the corporations, always thinking exclusively about their bottom line and not what shoppers actually need, move on.
That is the fallacy of Karen Handel’s fatuous statements - and Paul Ryan, and … and …
She and they are colossally stupid.
Refreshing. Europeans are not burdened with the need to be politically correct and all-tolerant. They’ve been through it all, seen the worst humanity has to offer.
Not where I live.
They have yet to realize that and may never. Trump supporters are the biggest fools yet. At least we might have whittled their numbers down to the do-or-die.
Where you live is flooded…
Not in Georgia, they will vote for her because she is the ideal female republican “Kiss up and Kick down” enabler. She has no education, no empathy and no dignity.I live in Georgia and I can’t eat as much as I want to puke when I think about the entire political situation in this state (and in this country).
This is a classic statist mis-framing of the issue—and Handel apparently got trapped by it.
In answer to the question, “Do you support a livable wage,” who would have any reason to say no? Every responsible parent seeks to get her child a good education, instill a good work ethic and good character, send her child to college or trade school, etc., so her child can gain marketable skills and work habits in order to earn a good, self-supporting living as an adult. Adults make themselves more valuable to employers over time by adding to their skills, experience, and so forth. That’s how adults earn raises and advance. Who in their right mind would be against that? Certainly, not Karen Handel.
The issue is, should government force employers to pay every employee what it deems to be a “livable wage,” whether the employer judges the wage economically justified or not and even if the employee agrees to work for a lower wage? The obvious, moral answer is no. Employee compensation, whether “livable” or not, is only justified if both employer and job-seeker mutually and voluntarily agree. If an employee gets a livable wage through law—that is, by force—he did not earn it. He took it, and will soon enough not have the job. That’s what happens when political do-gooders have outlawed all jobs his level of skill and experience qualifies him for.
It is completely disingenuous and ignorant to take literally Handel’s phrasing. It’s obvious the issue is about whether the candidates are for or against government imposing compensation standards by force, not about being for or against “livable” wages. Agree or disagree with so-called “livable” minimum wage laws, the intelligent honest observer would focus on Handel’s actual argument rather than simple-mindedly focus on her unfortunate slip-of-the-tongue as a “gotcha” moment.