Is this guy ignorant or what? (my local paper)

[carrowsboy]

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031781795594&path=%21editorials%21letters&s=1045855935005

Minimum Wage Votes Called 'Shameful'

Editor, Times-Dispatch Earlier this month Democratic and Republican bills to raise the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour failed. The year the wage was pegged at $5.15 was when Congress passed automatic annual pay raises for itself. Now, the only way to stop its own raises is to pass another bill; thus, it avoids periodic scrutiny about such raises.

The minimum wage -- with weeks off with no pay comes to about $10,300 per year. Those making $5.15 or even a few dollars more don't have to pay much in income taxes, but still get hit with Social Security and Medicare taxes. They're likely candidates for the "ownership society," you know. Perhaps this is part of getting the government out of our lives. We don't need any help from Uncle Sam, not even a decent wage guarantee.

Ted Kennedy sponsored one of the two bills. He's a liberal Democrat, and that was reason enough to kill the bill. But the other bill was sponsored by Rick Santorum, a conservative Republican. It was killed, too.

Let's not worry about the poor. Forbes just noted that the number of U.S. billionaires increased from 135 to 170 (up 26 percent) in 2004, and the number of millonaires is up 14 percent. There's nothing wrong with all those folks enjoying the tax cuts, but when will the minimum-wage workers start enjoying the "trickle-down economics" promised in passing the tax cut? So far the wage has been stuck for eight years. That's our "ownership society." It's shameful, simply shameful. Tom Little. glen allen.

[Tux]

1. I agree that

Min wage is too low but no guarantee for a decent wage? Is he on crack?

[Kenneth ken]

2. or what

'cause I always vote that choice.

But, truly, it sounds heavily laced with bitter sarcasm to me.

[carrowsboy]

3. I brought this up...

cause of his carck about Kennedy being a "liberal Democrat" so it is automatically bad.

[Kenneth ken]

6. I read that as

a pointedly sarcastic slap at Cons who listen to Rubbish Limbaugh and so have a knee-jerk reaction that anything a "liberal Democrat" would favor is automatically bad. So of course his bill would be defeated. The "surprise" is that Santorum's bill would also get killed, after all he is a good Con, so what could be bad in his bill?

[serryjw]

4. This was total sarcasm.....what did I miss?

He is right

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Kennedy's bill, itself too little, too late, was drowned in the tub

because it would have actually helped a little.

Santorum's bill was a sham. It offered a miniscule raise, and included a half dozen proposals that helped businesses screw the very people who were getting the raise. It was a bill that needed to be shut down.