The Long Shadow Of The Progressives: Obama, Teddy Roosevelt & Living Wage

clipped from motorcitytimes.com Progressives have been pushing for a living wage, social justice and a “whatever you think it says is o.k. with me” interpretation of the constitution for 100 years. Obama (February 13th, 2008): Since the Earned Income Tax Credit lifts nearly 5 million Americans out of poverty each year, I’ll double the number of workers who receive it and triple the benefit for minimum wage workers Teddy Roosevelt (August 6th, 1912): As a people we cannot afford to let any group of citizens or any individual citizen live or labor under conditions which are injurious to the common welfare. Industry, therefore, must submit to such public regulation as will make it a means of life and health, not of death or inefficiency. We must protect the crushable elements at the base of our present industrial structure. The people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution

Related articles by Zemanta

• Goar: Living wage becomes a reality - but not here (thestar.com)
• A Living Wage for Seattle, Revisited (slog.thestranger.com)
• Don't Just Write: Do Something (cehwiedel.com)
• Obama Calls for Living Wage Jobs -- Activists Respond with Tax Day Event April 15th, 2010 (prweb.com)
• Why Doesn't Seattle Have A Living Wage Ordinance? (slog.thestranger.com)

New ghost towns: Industrial communities teeter on the edge

clipped from www.usatoday.com RAVENSWOOD, W.Va. — When Henry Kaiser arrived 55 years ago, this place was no place — "a rural problem area," the government called it, so poor and isolated that the population had dropped 15% since 1940. That all changed after Kaiser, the industrialist who'd turned out ships and planes at a record pace in World War II, built the nation's largest consolidated aluminum works here on the banks of the Ohio River. The plant paid Tim Shumaker his first living wage, and he won the right to keep it two decades ago after his union was locked out for 19 months. "The way things are going," he says, "there's not going to be anything here." The difference is that people could leave a ghost town — miners to work new veins, farmers to till fresh land, merchants to move closer to road or rail. Today, Tim Shumaker sees no such options. In past layoffs, he always found work somewhere; now there seems to be none anywhere.

Related articles by Zemanta

• ArcelorMittal Slashing W.Va. Work Force by 171 (abcnews.go.com)
• ArcelorMittal slashing W.Va. work force by 171 (seattletimes.nwsource.com)