Senate The US Politics discussion

In that vein, I once read a very strange letter in the letters section of some political periodical(I can't remember which one). It was from someone who was asked by a pollster whether Mitt Romney was "likable". The person said her dilemma was that she thought that he was, indeed, likable, but that she knew if she said yes, it would positively affect Mitt's public "likability" rating, and since she didn't actually support Mitt Romney for President, she didn't want to do that. So her answer to the pollster was that he wasn't likable.

How meta.

But yes, binary approval ratings are problematic, specifically in that they don't show to what end of the spectrum people disapprove of a given politician/policy. For instance, Republicans often breathlessly wield the percentage of people who disapprove of Obamacare, when a significant portion of that disapproval comes from people who felt that the legislation wasn't liberal enough.

 

Obama is raising the minimum wage for government contractors to $10.10/hour.

 

that is just wonderful.

 

No less than 3 GOP responces tonight. I can't wait.

 

Wouldn't it be great if Obama had the fortitude to say that the the state of our union isn't strong? Why can't that happen?!

 

This feels like Obama's greatest hits. "Let's do this year what I said you should do LAST year. And the year before that."

 

10.10$ an hour. Wow. That's about 21k a year full time. That isn't squat.

 

Yes, it is.

 

4 responses... that have a Spanish one now.




I thought it was a solid SOTU. Obama was more light-hearted and comfortable than I expected him to be. The stuff at the end with the injured soldier was strong. He kept his priorities clear, and he stayed assertive and focused. No surprise initiatives, which is good at this point.

 

Why $10.10? Was $10 ever-so-slightly too low?

 

At first it was $9 something, but Obama was convinced to raise his proposal to $10.10. Probably helps that it's easy to remember.

 

Of course, what Obama didn't mention is that his executive order only covers approximately less than 3% of federal contractors-the unskilled labor pool. And the executive order itself may end up violating the law, just not in the "bypassing Congress" sense. Why? Because of the SCA. (or its full name the "McNamara-O"Hara Service Contract Act."

The SCA was signed into law back in 1965 and has been in force during every administration since then. Basically, the law already mandates that for any government contract, the employees have to be paid the prevailing wage for the profession in any area. So, for instance, if electricians in the private sector get $25.00 an hour, that's what the government contract has to pay. Also, for large contracts, the SCA mandates that specialized contractors get paid 1.5 times pay for anything worked over 40 hours under the contract. Under the SCA, any wage is set by contract, so no employee under this executive order will get a new wage until the contract is up for negotiation.

What Obama also didn't mention in his SOTU is that the average wage under government contracts is already 13-15 dollars per hour and almost 98% of all government contracts already pay the employees under the contract MORE than the $10.10 mentioned in the executive order. So, way to go in mentioning an executive order that was basically worthless after the words were spoken.

Here's the SCA from the Department of Labor's own website:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/govcontracts/sca.htm]CLICK[/url] ME BUT ONLY AFTER PAYING 10 BUCKS ....and a dime.

 

$10 an hour would be a nice minimum wage to have. Certainly better than $7.50 an hour.

 

President Obama will now face his most important decision int he history of his Presidency and the result will ring through the ages

 

Allow me to predict the WH response: "No. Thanks for wasting more of our time America!"

 

Rep. apologizes for threatening to break reporter in half.