Sarah Solon

Our Blog Roll’s Blog Stroll

It's Saturday morning, and high time for a stroll through our blog roll.

Over on Confined Space, unanimous bipartisanship crops up for the strangest of things: mine workers' safety. In the wake of a telling year, the new mine safety bill that passed with unanimous support in the Senate last week will make some needed improvements, but could still be waiting for a few last minute amendments like a mandated two day supply of oxygen for workers trapped in a mine.

In the unrelenting world of lobbying scandals, Paul Kiel of tpmmuckraker takes on the AP's coverage of the Harry Reid ticket scandal, claiming that it grossly overstates a two-bit blip.

Debunking the powers that be in the world of spin, the Angrybear blog reminds us that regardless of what we might hear, the poor job growth reports issued this week aren't actually good news.

Schoolsmatter.blogspot reprints a David Sirota post in which he 1) showcases ABC newsman John Strossel as saying that the minimum wage actually hurts poor people, because--you know--with the minimum wage we no longer have such bulwarks of the entry level job like washing windshields at intersections and hoping for a tip, and 2) charges that John Strossel is a pathological liar. Shout-outs to the Fiscal Policy Institute for actually providing facts to support Sirota's argument that the minimum wage is indeed a good idea:

"In Oregon, for instance, the state raised its minimum wage in 1998, and the average earnings of newly-employed welfare recipients climbed by 9 percent, while the percentage of welfare recipients who found a job actually rose."

And Edwize uses a discussion about organizing daycare employees to make a point that should be made more often. When elected officials claim that public employees are drying up an inordinate amount of funding, it's important to remind them that "they speak about the 'public' as if the public wasn't union members, state and city employees, poor women, children in need of quality care and average folks seeing their paychecks shrinking." Here, here.

Until next week.

Sarah Solon: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 7:15 AM, Jun 03, 2006 in Blog Stroll | Economic Opportunity | Economy | Government Accountability | Labor | public services
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