“It’s a little too quiet” - US Politics February 2021

This story on Marjorie Taylor Greene is fascinating. She's pretty clearly insane, and I say that not because of what she believes but because of the manner in which she believes it.

Probably one for the 'explaining conservatism' thread but that whole thing of intentionally entering a space which is incongruent with your personal preferences and worldview and then loudly bitching because it's incongruent with your personal preferences and worldview...just...

It’s just maddening. Framing it as though her rights were being violated by the very occurrence of an event that she was not forced to attend. Fits perfectly in with the conservative evangelical mindset. Trumpeting the First Amendment when they want to say/do what they want, but then turning around and trying to trample other people’s rights when they don’t like what they are saying/doing. Like “I have the right for this person not to have the right to read in public” and “I have the right for these people not to have the right to listen”. No. You have the right to either attend or not attend, depending on whether you want to. Don’t attend and then try to manufacture outrage as though you’re being forced to be there.

So was that excerpts from Fritz's speech at Nazicon?

https://slate.com/business/2021/02/minimum-wage-hike-democrats-congress-back-up-plan.html

I don’t think anyone thinks plan b is as good as plan a. That’s why it’s plan b.

It’s not even a plan B, though, since it’s not functionally a minimum wage increase for the majority of low wage workers.

Washington passing a $20 minimum wage isn’t plan B for Mississippi workers earning $9.

besides the enforcement problems (re contractors/outsourcing) -- how are they going to know whether the employees were paid below minimum wage? Do companies have to provide actual payroll records, like paystubs for all employees? I can't see how, with the current reporting requirements, that the government could actually verify this. It would have to be done based on complaints.

Yes. Plan B, as preliminarily sketched out by Wyden, is clearly worse than Plan A. We knew that. Personally, I'd kill the filibuster and move forward, but I am not a US senator and I have no leverage over the couple of Democratic senators who are preventing that from happening. So, whatever mangled mess Plan B ends up looking like, it appears to be what's possible, given the one hundred senators we're stuck with.

Though one thing the slate article says that seems off to me is :

More companies would make like Silicon Valley’s giants and hire contractors to man their cafeterias and clean their hallways, doubling down on the trend toward what Brandeis economist David Weil has called “the fissured workplace.“

Generally those contractors aren't the individual workers, like Facebook isn't going to hire Bill the janitor directly, because they don't want to risk violating labor laws. Facebook contracts with another company that provides the service workers, like Bill the janitor, and the service workers are employees of those companies. The onus would be on that company, which would ostensibly pass on the cost to the tech company.

It is interesting though, how this would effect those third party pseudo-employers in Florida like Trinet and I forget the other ones (they tend to be based in Florida for some reason), that basically handle payroll and benefits for workers at smaller start-ups, but are technically the employer. Those companies would definitely meet a 500 employee threshhold ... unless there are other criteria?

He's not referring to individual contractors - he's referring to the companies contracted for food service or janitorial services, who are far less likely to have 500 employees.

The companies that subcontract service workers to tech giants aren't all that small themselves. ... That bit seems like something the author just wanted to throw in there, but it's misleading, in that it isn't really indicative of who is left out (e.g. low-wage workers for small businesses or small franchises, which it does mention). Another problem is that companies could form subsidiaries and/or hire employees through existing subsidiaries and try and structure it so that no entity has 500 or more employees. ... There would have to be oversight, regulation, and enforcement in relation to shared ownership. ... The more I think about it, and all the things that would be required in terms of implementation and enforcement, it would probably be cheaper for the government to say, "Hey, we will subsidize the pay of low wage workers."

he's referring to the companies contracted for food service or janitorial services, who are far less likely to have 500 employees.

uh, those companies are pretty big dude. Also lots of turnover. ...

Bon Appetit, Sodexo, Aramark are not small companies certainly

He's not suggesting that Walmart #1148 in Podunk, Missouri is going to hire the same outsourcing company as Google HQ. Janitorial services franchises are widespread.

When I worked at a Tom Thumb 22 years ago, the Zamboni looking floor cleaning machines had been outsourced to a small company that handled all the Tom Thumbs in the city and had a crew of about 15 people who rotated in groups of three.

It's just weird for the article to spend time on that point, which is questionable, when there are so many other air-tight examples they could use to show the problems with the plan! It's like he wanted to cite that Fissured Workplace thing and needed to shoehorn it in.

xp thanks for your anecdotal evidence from years ago, super convincing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramark

Bon Appetit, Sodexo, Aramark are not small companies certainly

― Canon in Deez (silby), Saturday, February 27, 2021 12:15 PM (two minutes ago)

^^ knows what their talking about

milo it would be really great if you would just STFU for a while but obviously you have nothing better to do than relentlessly troll this thread 24/7 with a misguided self-righteous crusade to nowhere, regardless you are really showing your ass here, even more so than usual

Anecdotal evidence of how enormous companies (10k+ employees last I heard for the chain) can subcontract out to much smaller companies, arriving at exactly the same situation the article (and Ron Wyden, quoted in the article re: security guards) refers to.

You're arguing that every large business will contract out cleaning to the world's largest site services corporation, rendering the issue moot - which is patently absurd. Mega corps regularly work with smaller local and regional companies.

what I'm saying is that even those smaller local and regional companies are also not that small. But the overarching things are:
1. this plan B is going to leave out a significant number of low wage workers
2. large companies could subdivide themselves into smaller companies to exempt themselves from these requirements

on a totally pragmatic, realpolitik tip, I wonder if they could just implement tax credits for small businesses that raise the minimum wage to $15 hr. There are already programs for employee retention for small businesses and hiring workers in opportunity zones / low-income census tracts. Give the credits for a few years, then phase them out. The larger corporations might raise their minimum wages to compete with the small businesses. idk, maybe that's a horrible idea.

part of me also likes the idea of only employees that are also owners of the company with voting rights are exempt from the minimum -- you want to pay your workers less than minimum wage, you have to give them stock in the company and make them worker-owners.

I think it is pretty obvious that this is a kludge and in order to be effective at all it will require carefully crafted provisions which will make it harder to 'game the system' but simultaneously make it unwieldy and complicated. iow, it will be the usual mess. the only thing that makes it worth the effort is that it will have a net positive effect on the wages of millions of minimum wage workers, but nowhere near all of them. The pressure is on to get it into the covid relief bill, passed and signed asap, so it's going to be an ugly duck no matter what.

I work with a worker's rights org in the Twin Cities who advocate for cleaning workers and other sub-subcontractors that are hired through byzantine arrangements by some of the biggest companies in town. Milo is mostly correctly describing the situation on the ground.

Many of them are "that small" though - 500 employees is a high bar. Big boxes already contract out a variety of work on a city/regional basis, like commercial landscaping - and not to one massive national contractor as you were pointing to. If Wal-Mart's goal was to avoid the $15 nudge via contracting, they'd simply subdivide their contractors in order to not deal with anyone passing the $15 through to them.

Which is why Weissman (and Wyden) raise outside contracting as an issue in the nudge.

thanks dan, ... it sounds like things are different in different places. The SF Bay Area has more consolidation, it seems.

commercial landscaping is a bit different than janitorial and food service in terms of labor needs and frequency ... but I think we are just narc of small d-ing around right now and we all agree that this 500 employee limit is something that companies can easily work around to avoid paying workers a living wage.

Can we? Does anyone honestly believe that corporations won't try to do this?

Corporations will weigh the cost vs. the benefit and try to maximize gains and minimize losses. The details of that calculation will be wholly controlled by the details of the legislation, which no one has yet seen, because it doesn't yet exist. But, sure whatever the system is, corporations will game it to the very edge of legality. Or beyond.

This tax penalty isn’t going to be in the bill that passes, IMO, it’s a clunky idea that is designed to try to force enough Republicans to agree to some level of minimum wage hike. At least that’s what I hope, because as actual federal legislation it would be a mess.

I think we get to something like an $11 wage, phased in over 4 years or so. Maybe they won’t be able to get more than $10, who knows. There’s risk for Republicans in being totally obstructionist on it, too.

But it is also possible McConnell calculates that it’s better to deny Biden any victory. That’s not the judgment I’d make if I were him looking at the ‘22 map, but being relentlessly obstructive has worked for him before.

Interesting points, Sara

looks like CPAC is pretty lit

Walking into #CPAC and I see this pic.twitter.com/3NljOwNFJZ

— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) February 27, 2021

^ that rap unironically calls Trump "the chosen one"

there is fundie Christian rap that is more hardcore than that fuckin jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJVX4svJ8lw

I still don't think we should be talking about possible $11 minimum wage, because it should be $20 based on the reality on the ground.

I appreciate some of the posts here about people like me living ina fantasy land, because in some ways it's true-- there's a whole strain of leftist thought that encourages people to push for everything as hard as possible because that's the only way anything can ever change for the better. Maybe sometimes acknowledging the reality of the political situation we're in would be helpful.

That said, it isn't fantasy to state that we need and deserve a national minimum wage of at least $20/hr. The people who are living a fantasy are the absolute ghouls who pretend like anything else is sufficient, because it isn't, period.

I think this gets at part of what I find so frustrating about this space sometimes-- when politicians (among others) refuse to acknowledge the reality that their constituents are living in, it's seen as "well their hands are tied." But their hands AREN'T tied, no matter how hard anyone here tries to explain it away. Money flows to Raytheon and the military and corporations and people out here are working full-time and getting paid $20k a year.

The hatred of the poor in the country is psychotic, and for the life of me, I simply haven't seen much at the national level to dissuade me of the opinion that many politicians on both sides of the aisle want the poor just alive enough to shovel their shit or bag their groceries.

Not just politicians -- I have these people as neighbors.

Nobody hates the poor quite as much as a liberal Seattle homeowner with an IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE sign out front

I don't think the left is failing to acknowledge of the reality of the political situation. Everyone recognizes that the relief bill is the only realistic chance to pass the $15 minimum wage. The left knows Manchin and Sinema have been ceded all power in the Senate.

An $11 minimum wage - which is only marginally more likely because Manchin has said those words, but given that it requires getting around the filibuster that Manchin and Sinema won't abolish and Biden-Harris-Schumer won't pressure them on - would be an abject failure on the part of Democrats, a half measure impeding necessary progress. $11 in 2025, when Democrats have the ability right now to do the $15 (in 2024) they've put in their last two platforms.

Political realism is that failure to act will lead them to a midterm slaughter. I believe there were millions of words printed between December and February about how Biden and Co. had learned the lesson of 2010.

I indulged myself in a tiny shred of optimism that the filibuster might be abolished and good federal legislation might be passed back in January, hopes dashed against rocks etc, time to immanentize the eschaton

The left knows Manchin and Sinema have been ceded all power in the Senate.

the way our system is set up means that these two chuckleheads are the veto points for the entire federal government. nothing was “ceded,” and it’s this kind of swipey spin zone that makes people not take you seriously even when they agree with what you have to say

nothing was “ceded,”

Have Biden, Harris or Schumer exerted public pressure on Manchin or Sinema re: filibuster or $15 minimum wage?

To say that President Joe Manchin has all the power is to just pretend that the actual President has no power or influence.

I mean, there's also the chance that Manchin in particular is a convenient fall guy.

re: political realism, "we just can't do anything about Joe Lieberman" and a shrug in 2009 worked out super well for Democrats (and the country!)

Manchin and Sinema have been ceded all power in the Senate.

If one thing is true about the legislative process in the Congress, it's that nobody holds sufficient power to pass legislation into law, but plenty of people have the power to prevent a bill from becoming law. Manchin and Sinema are just wielding the most common and widely distributed power in the Congress: the shiv.

If Manchin or Sinema had any kind of positive agenda they actually want to see enacted, they'd be open to vote trading and less inclined to stick a knife into the heart of the agenda Biden and most of their colleagues want. They'd know that their own agenda would be dead if they don't play along. The problem is that, like the entire Senate Republican caucus, they have nothing positive they care to accomplish. This gives them a free hand to destroy, because there's no counter-balancing sacrifice involved.

the dem leadership have made the political calculation that it’s important to pass the covid relief bill (a whole ten days later than the half-size 2009 Bill omg), and they’re concerned if they force the issue on minimum wage then the relief bill might fail.

i don’t necessarily agree with them, i don’t think manchinema would ever vote against the covid bill, but i understand why biden and co. wouldn’t want to play with fire.

in the prez’s mind, part of the reason why he was elected was that he’s not a boat-rocker. i think he’s wrong about that, and he’s gonna need to learn that lesson quickly, but i don’t have my hopes up.