Arkansas Blog

If there's anything left over, maybe they can use it to buy food for the people who will be losing their jobs once the new higher minimum wage goes into effect.

The racists who pushed this idiotic legislation knew what they were doing.

Most of the jobs lost will be will be black teenagers who just aren't worth $6.25/hour.

This is going to hit hardest in the Delta and south Arkansas.

What will we now do for these kids who are out of work?

Umm...racists? Are you seriously calling about two dozen of the state's leading religious groups racists? I'm going to assume that you don't know that the campaign was spearheaded by the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Diocese, Unitarian Universalists, Reform Judaism, Catholics, and (DRUM ROLL) the African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches. Let's also not forget the NAACP.

Step on back through the looking glass. On your side of the mirror, maybe it makes sense that the AME churches and NAACP are racists against themselves, but not over here in the real world. Time to start using a smaller crack pipe, Robert in Hinesville.

They are racists against themselves...they just don't realize it because they have been so blinded by the Democratic party for so many years. It's the very policies supported by the Dems and the NAACP which keep African Americans down. Some great Democratic racist long ago figured out that if you give them just enough to live on for free, and just enough to reduce any incentive to work harder for more, you can keep an entire race down in the dumps, while fooling them into thinking you're really looking out for their best interests. It's the biggest goof of the last century, and it's still working.

Alleging that paying people a living wage will worsen poverty for African-Americans in particular and others in general is the latest twist on an old Right Wing trick: when lying, lie big.

This is the same tired drivel that the most reactionary conservatives have been spewing since the New Deal 70 years ago. They warned that assigning Social Security numbers would require people to wear dog tags stamped with the numbers around their necks They warned that establishing a minimum wage would make factories across the South grind to a halt because they couldn't afford to pay 25 cents an hour.

Having been disproved by 70 years of history with no documented proof that the minimum wage has ever cost a single job, those whose idea of economic prosperity is paying people starvation wages sink even lower: to accuse those who fought for a modest minimum wage increase of being racists.

Joseph Welch during the height of Joe McCarthy's witch hunt hearings asked the craven Wisconsin senator the question that should be asked of those who have the nerve to make these absurd arguments on the blog today:

"At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?"

Liberal ideologues can holla that its "tired drivel" but the simple truth is that forcing employers to pay people more than they are worth doesn't work.

You wouldln't pays someone $100 to mow your lawn. Why would the guy who owns a McDonalds franchise in Pine Bluff pay some illiterate high school kid $6.25/hr when he isn't worth it? Heck, he'll outsource order taking to some kid in India for $2.25 per hour and fire the local black kid in a heart beat. Its already happening in the fast food business all over the place.

There's no mystery why unemployment rates of black teenagers are double those of everyone else. Its the minimum wage law, plain and simple.

LIBERALS = RACISTS
that's the bottom line.

"LIBERALS = RACISTS
that's the bottom line."

And conservatives who want to get rid of the minimum wage law and pay people of all races starvation wages so the conservatives can make a higher profit? They must be the economic equivalent of a KKK Grand Dragon.

More smoke and mirrors, cloak and dagger rhetorical B.S.from a crowd that whenever given a chance will always put profits before people. The fact that Robert and Adam can't make an argument against the minimum wage without mentioning the color of the worker's skins shows their true colors: the idea of paying black people a living wage drives them up the wall.

This is the kind of argument worthy of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, David Duke and Arkansas' own champion race-baiter, Justice Jim Johnson. Probably gets a hearty round of applause in the white sheets and hoods dressing room adorned with swastikas, but in the real world it doesn't fly.

From Roget's Thesaurus:

LIBERAL~ Tolerant, Generous, Enlightened, Broadminded, Lavish, Charitable

Antonym:

CONSERVATIVE- Stingy, Miserly, Regressive, Narrow-Minded, Reactionary, Bogoted, Prejudiced, Biased

Anyone got the guts to put this on a billboard? Feel free to use and share...

Whoops, supposed to read BIGOTED under Conservative.

Excuse the typo.

Congratulations to the members of the the raise the AR minimum wage coalition. I remain very proud of the grassroots folks efforts to make posititve change occur in this state.

Unfortunately, that won't even help them get two gallons of gas.

It's a pitiful and disgraceful shame that it had to take a grassroots movement to get an entire state legislature to raise the minimum wage by ONE DOLLAR.

But that's where we are at foks, the people have to change these things.

Nobody else can or will.

You can't be 41710 serious?!?