A wage increase to $7.25 would help, but “it wouldn’t put anybody in the clear,” said Cara Prince, 41, of Louisville, Kentucky. She has been working for a temporary agency for two years, doing factory, warehouse and restaurant work at $6 an hour.“There’s a whole lot I can’t do,” because of the low pay, she said. “By the time they take taxes out, there’s nothing left. Just $23 a day.”

Minimum wage hike won’t go far – Stocks & Economy – MSNBC.com

Finally the Congress is proposing to raise the minimum wage. This increase will be the first in almost ten years.  The proposed pay rate is going to be $7.25 an hour; as we all read in Nickel and Dimed, Barbara had a hard time budgeting when she was making seven to eight dollars per hour, and she only had to take care of herself.  It is absurd to say this raise wouldn’t help, but the fact is, it is impossible to take care of a family making this little.  This article talks of a women who began to work for minimum wage, after she started working, the government took away her assistance: her food stamps.  She realized that she was actually worse off working, so she quit.  Why would any sane person leave their children to join the workforce, if when they did they would be worse off?  The answer is, they wouldn’t!  Our government has to help these people, obviously when the aforementioned women went out and found a job, she was trying to better her family, instead of being helped, she was penalized.  If our welfare system isn’t fixed, people in this situation will have no motivation to get a job; and on the flip-side, we will pay for them to live for as long as they live.

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I know many people don’t give poverty a second thought, as long as it doesn’t effect them, it is the furthest thing from their mind.  The poor do need help! Even though the jobs that they are doing need to be done, and the pay cannot be much higher, they need to be filled by young kids, not adults with young kids.  The poor need to want to help themselves, but the moment they begin wanting to better themselves, there should be programs out their to facilitate the transition.  Hopefully Barbara’s book opened some eyes.

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MINNEAPOLIS – The Council on American-Islamic Relations called Tuesday for an investigation into the behavior of airline staff and airport security in the removal of six Muslim scholars from a US Airways flight a day earlier.

6 Muslim imams removed from plane – U.S. Security – MSNBC.com

It saddens me that things like this happen.  Muslims have been  handed major stereotypes due to September 11, 2001 and the several other terrorist attacks that have occurred in recent years. As a nation we are still hurting, and I’m sure it is hard not to think about our recent past under the given circumstances.  Planes were the vehicle that handed the United States the worst terrorist attack in it’s history.  I was deathly afraid to fly for a long time afterwards. I feel sorry for the Muslims that were stereotyped. On the other hand, I can see the airlines view.  It was a group of Muslims that hijacked those planes not to long ago.  I wish that Muslims would not only get angry with Americans for their worries, but empathize with us.  It would also help their cause if they were to stand up to radical groups that give their religion a bad name.

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     Imagine leaving the world of the well to do, and joining the ranks of the unfortunate on purpose.  It must take a tremendous amount of will power to go without, when you know you don’t have to.  It must be the equivalent of going on a diet and being tempted to eat.  To me this makes this documentary not real.  Barbara has the means to buy her way out of a jam; whereas the people she is trying to emulate do not.  The unfortunate don’t have start up money to pay the first and last months rent, or two hundred bucks in their pocket for a rainy day.  Barbara also states that part of the deal she made with herself was, that she would not go without food, or without a place to live, the poor don’t have a back up plan to deflect circumstances that would put them on the street.

     To totally change gears, the one thing that I cannot get out of my mind is her second job at Jerry’s.  As I get older I am becoming more of a germophobe, this did not help.  The way she describes the way the help handles the food is pathetic, “Put your hand down any counter and you risk being stuck to it by the film of ancient syrup spills, and this is unfortunate because hands are utensils here, used for scooping up lettuce onto the salad plates, lifting out pie slices, and even moving hash browns from one plate to another.”  If this is the norm at a restaurant, which it may be more common than we think, we all should think twice before we frequent a food joint chain like Jerry’s.  The bathroom conditions also left a lot left to be desired!

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NEW YORK – O.J. Simpson created an uproar Wednesday with plans for a TV interview and book titled “If I Did It” — an account the publisher pronounced “his confession” and media executives condemned as revolting and exploitive.

Publisher thinks book is O.J.’s ‘confession’ – Sports – MSNBC.com

How desperate have we become, that FOX is sure enough that we will be glued to the television during OJ’s debut of his so called confession.  They are paying him somewhere around 3.5 million dollars for this charade. This is not entertainment, it is sick!  He has the audacity to put his children and the families of the dead through this again!   Most of us are reasonably sure that he committed those murders.  The only reason he is not rotting away in jail is because he had millions of dollars to spend on his defense. 

He was found not guilty of the murders, but found liable to pay 33.5 million dollars in damages, as a result of the civil suit filed by the Goldman family.  Simpson has yet to pay any of the money and apparently told them that he would not pay them if he could find a way not to.  How can our justice system allow this.  It is bad enough that a murderer is running free, to think he is making money on his confession, is absurd.  I know the law double jeopardy says you can’t be tried twice for the same crime if found not guilty, but this law gives this murderer the arrogance to speak of his crime.  Even though the pretense is hypothetical, this is disgusting!

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Ron Fournier• E-mailDemocrats captured control of Congress in a nationwide snit of an election that left Republicans humbled and President Bush humiliated. But are voters happy with what they got?The answer is no – not yet. It will take more than a power shift and a reshuffling of office space on Capitol Hill to satisfy most Americans. They want a new era of American leadership, and it’s up to the Democrats to deliver it. Voters are looking for politicians who are accountable, authentic and able to rise above petty partisanship to fix the nation’s problems.

Democrats won’t get a free ride in Congress – Politics – MSNBC.com

    I have blogged about politics before: how much it irks me that we are the pawns in the fight for supremacy between the Republicans and Democrats.  I hope this election and the ousting of the scandal ridden republican party points our country in the right direction.  Even though I do wish for this, I am not all that optimistic.  I often wonder what are the real reasons someone becomes a politician.  Do they really give a damn about the people who’s votes they are spending millions of dollars trying to attain?  There may be a few, but it seems most will say anything to become our ‘representative’(more like their parties representative).  I have a feeling that if we held most of our elected representatives to their campaign promises, they would not have the audasity to run for re-election. 

    Let’s all hope that our new leadership will defy the odds and become accountable and stand up for us (the small fish in the big pond).  After all we elect them into office, after that, it is not a democracy, we have no say in what our government decides to do, from going to war to spending our money.  Hopefully our new officials make their desicions on what they believe to be right, not because that is the way their party sees it.  Good luck to us all! 

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    I believe in the right for companies to survive, and to survive they must advertise to appeal to their consumer base.  I struggle with accepting this sort of behavior from colleges, even though they must also fight for survival.  College catalogs should be about curriculm, they shouldn’t resemble a “Gap ad”.  I also struggle accepting athletes with flawless bodies advertising for McDonalds.  I doubt Michael Jordan ate Mcdonalds at the same rate he was on television pushing their product.  That send the wrong message: if Jordan eats it and looks like that, than I can eat it and look like that. 

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The world’s biggest retailer has vowed to aggressively cut prices this holiday season as it tries to lift anemic sales at its U.S. stores. In October, it cut prices on a selection of toys and games, which it said boosted sales volume.The latest markdowns include a $500 cut on a Panasonic 42-inch plasma television to $1,294. Rival Best Buy Co. Inc. offered a similar Panasonic 42-inch plasma television for $1,708.99 on its Web site.

Wal-Mart announces price cuts on electronics – U.S. Business – MSNBC.com

     Wow, it is already time to count down the days remaining before Christmas.  Wal-mart is at work trying to increase sales volumes by offering incredible sale prices on certain items.  One example of this is the sale of a 42 inch plasma screen television that they marked down almost $500 for a final price of $1294. Best Buy’s price on a similar item was $1708 accoring to the article.  I am amazed by this: can their really be that much room on an item less than $2000 to mark it down $500 to even break even, let alone make a profit.

     Wal-Mart has such great wealth that I think they can offer items at less than cost just to draw people into their stores.  It is hard not to shop there; they have low prices, they have practically everything you could need from milk down to an oil change.  My biggest question is how long will these low prices last?  They seem to be building new stores everywhere, and other stores such as K-Mart seem to be closing everywhere.  As the competition lessens, I wonder how fast the prices will increase.  We need competition to keep the prices low, if Wal-Mart continues to swallow other companies, we will be at their mercy when shopping.

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     Linquist’s central theme says “I see class culture as a local problem, and would likewise contend that local institutions are good places to witness the microdynamics of social production.  My aim is to show “class culture” , to be a localized rhetorical invention.”  I believe that this only to a point.  I think that class culture is invented within our minds: we develop our own sense of where we should be socially and some of us conform to this culture; whereas some people don’t conform to societal pressures and live as they want to: whatever class culture they fell they want to be part of.  It takes a strong person not to conform to class structure: a class structure that has been around for many centuries, the rest of us fall where we think we should be, so we can feel comfortable, like we belong.

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Updated: 1:19 p.m. ET Oct 27, 2006DENVER – Coloradans were digging out Friday after a massive autumn storm left up to 2 feet of snow in the mountains and 4-foot drifts on the Eastern Plains.Hundreds of miles of highways had been shut down the day before as the biggest October storm in years barreled through the state, but all major routes had reopened by Friday and traffic was moving smoothly.

Colo. digs out, restores power after storm – Weather – MSNBC.com

     I miss the days were you couldn’t just barrel out of the driveway without first spending hours doing the back breaking chore of shoveling.  I miss that the piles I would make while shoveling made me pale in comparison.  I miss that the snow forts we would make would stay standing for three to four months.  I miss sliding down hills of snow with no sight of the pine needles or grass popping through the surface.   I miss the days that I coveted my neighbor because he had a snowblower and all I had was a square shovel.  I miss the days that I would wake up on Christmas morning and I would see nothing but pure white snow with the beautifully covered branches bending because of the weight.  Those are the days that I miss.

     I hope that someday my kids can make a snowman and still have it standing three months later.  I hope that someday my kids can walk on a huge mountain of snow, anticipating that the crusty layer is going to break and their feet will become buried.  I hope that someday I can use my snow blower: experience my snowblower failing to shoot the snow high enough to make it over the banks.  I hope my kids someday look back and don’t think of Winter as just the cold season, but think of it as the fun season.  I hope that if the days that I miss are over for now, that we will come together and bring them back.

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