Like Googling 'Failure' Only Different

Google has been delivering good, clean fun to computer users for years with pranks like the results from Googling the word "failure" (if you don't know, type in "failure" and then hit "I'm feeling lucky"). Now public interest groups are getting in on the action. Punch in the full name of your congressman or woman into Google and you can find out how they treated America's middle class in 2005 by checking the "ad" on the sidebar on the right of your screen. Based on the record of how they voted on bills that affect middle-class Americans, John Boehner earned an "F" and Henry Waxman an "A" in the Drum Major Institute's just-released Middle-Class Scorecard. To promote their scorecard, DMI bought 30 days' worth of Google ads so that every time a member of Congress gets Googled, his or her record on issues from health care to economic security gets outed, too.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/20/like_g...

The House of Representatives was busy yesterday engaging in vicious class warfare against working families.

Their two signature accomplishments were: 1) striking the proposed increase in the minimum wage from the Labor-HHS bill, and 2) reviving the effort to repeal the estate tax.

Late last week, members of the House Appropriations Committee voted to include an amendment to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 on a funding bill. Given that Congress is a few months away from surpassing the Reagan-years record for ignoring the minimum wage, and the fact that its buying power is the lowest it’s been since 1955, it’s time for a raise.

Yet, instead of letting the measure go to the floor of the full House for a vote, the Republican leadership decided to pull the appropriations bill from consideration and the minimum wage increase along with it.

At the same time, conservatives began crafting a compromise measure to revive the estate tax repeal, which died in the Senate last week. As the New York Times reports this morning, “Though billed as a compromise, the measure would cost about three-quarters as much as full repeal of the estate tax.” Estimated cost over 10 years: $280 billion.

It’s hard to find words to express the outrage of these actions. It’s not simply that the policy process has gotten off track. It’s that a key purpose of government has been turned upside down, and done so with apparent impunity.

Instead of seeking ways to address and ameliorate the unbalanced growth which characterizes this economy, they’re exacerbating the problem. Instead of a small, overdue boost to low-wage workers that would help them reconnect, just a bit, to the growing economy, they want to shovel even more of the benefits of our prodigious productivity growth to the top of the wealth scale.

There’s a word for this: shameless. And shame on all of us if we sit back and watch it happen.

Editor's Note: Jared Bernstein is a senior economist and Ross Eisenbrey is the Vice President and Policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank devoted to promoting discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers.

Link Herehttp://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/21/shamel...

I have said it already, I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell. -- Hugo Chavez