Selling Out America
Selling Out America, Jack Lessenberry
Pundit I would follow while living in Michigan. It has been fun reading him then. Now Jack has his own site to which I subscribe. He puts some excellent commentary up. If you get a chance you may wish to follow him from time to time.
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Anyone who thinks the Democrats are all white knights defending the people needs to think again. One of the most disgraceful (and underreported) stories this year was that of the Democrats in the legislature who sold out the poor restaurant servers, denying them a fair minimum wage that, by 2030, would have taken them to the princely income of — gasp — $31,000 a year.
The greed heads lied, of course, and said the servers, many of whom are single moms, more than made up the difference in tips. Maybe at the London Chop House, but not the ones I know at Leo’s Coney Island.
Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court reinstated a ballot proposal illegally sabotaged by legislative Republicans that would have gradually bumped up tipped employees from their then-miserable minimum wage of $3.93 to parity with other workers by that date. But restaurant owners and their lobbyists howled at the thought of having to pay the servers fairly, and eight venial Democrats combined with the Republicans to sell the workers out, presumably with the unspoken promise of campaign contributions to help them cling to their shitty little $71,500 a year jobs.
Not all of them are corrupt, of course, and the Democrats, as imperfect as they are, are vastly preferable to the Republicans, who with rare exceptions are evil, rock stupid, or just contemptible sellouts, one of the worst of whom is pictured above, U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Graham, who is almost 70 and has been in Congress 30 years, once was seen as an independent-thinking maverick.
When Donald Trump first appeared on the scene, he correctly said he was utterly “unfit for office.” But then the orange menace started winning, and Graham soon became among the most fawning of his toadies. What’s especially bad about this is that, unlike many of the MAGA morons, he knows better. Ethically, he’d be far more admirable if he resigned to become a towel boy in a gay bathhouse, if such things still exist.
But it is always stunning to see how low people are capable of sinking for the illusion of, or even the proximity to, power. A former Michigan governor, one of the good ones, once told me that to be in politics is to make a bargain with the people: You get fame and attention and your picture in the paper all the time, and attention is paid to what you say.
But in return, you have to devote yourself to trying to do good for them, to make all of their lives better. Sadly, so few of our elected representatives today got the memo.
More correctly, “to be in politics is to make a bargain” between pandering to one’s electoral constituents and serving one’s economic constituents, particularly the big campaign contributors and the owners of big media. That has always been true in the US despite the occasional accidental ascension of an honest person to political power, but has often been less the case in other nations with less inherent economic inequality between the mass of constituents and the elite class. However, the US was founded by rich white men on the backs of slaves and political change is always slow to occur, even when there is blood on the floor like China and the USSR where revolution only lead to powerful men wearing cheaper suits and wielding even more guns.
If in 2030 Michigan’s tipped workers have the same legal minimum wage protections as everyone else will tipping continue as now or evolve more along European norms of much lower tips? I lived 14 years there and “tips” on the order of 15% to 20% just aren’t offered. Not close. Not getting any tip for a waiter isn’t at all uncommon. Really specific personal services get a little more: hair stylists, home cleaners (if not a service company). Notes on menus that service is included, even sometimes specifically itemizing it in certain ways are customer communications choices, not legally specific pools of money for designated employees. It seems to work pretty well.