Hammer Mill Days

Had the weirdest dream last night, Anti Lincoln. I dreamed I saw Joe Hill .... I mean, I dreamed there was snow all over the place, like it was mid January. Talk about unrealistic. Hey, pull up the shade ... it's kind of dark in here. What the .... WHAT? Yeah, that snowfall took us all a little bit by surprise here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in frosty upstate New York. Somehow, after a freakishly mild winter (which I personally think was cooked up by our own Mitch Macaphee, mad science adviser), snow has returned in early April. Once again, I think Mitch might have had a hand in this. He's got this big-ass smoke machine that shoots unnamed projectiles into the heavens - missiles loaded with I don't know what the fuck, and lots of it. Mitch cranks it up, the sucker sputters and pops for a few minutes, then it starts snowing. Kind of. (That might be torn up fragments of Mitch's membership agreement with the National Academy of Mad Science.) Okay, so let's...

California and New York both passed minimum wage bills this past week; California's a bit more generous, but both better than the status quo. Quite an accomplishment, given where this issue was just a few years ago: namely, the conservative business class demagoguing the very idea of raising working people's wages, warning of job losses, companies shutting down, etc. The federal minimum wage, enacted in 2009, is $7.25 ... an amount of money so puny that it barely makes it to your pocket before it evaporates. I would like to see some of these business owners, trade association representatives, and conservative political pundits who complain so heartily about raising it try to live on that. The simple fact is, it is not a livable wage, not by a long shot, and yet it is the amount earned by a substantial segment of the population caught up in this weak economic recovery. Frankly, it amazes me how cynical the resistance to a higher, inflation-indexed minimum wage truly is. Peggin...