Molly Ivins on the Middle Class Overtime Cut
It's an early Labor Day SURPRISE! Congratulations, if you make between $23,660 and $100,000, you have just very likely lost your right to overtime pay, courtesy of the Bush administration.
If this comes as news to you, thank your friendly media, who are much too busy reporting lies abut John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam to bother with this story affecting your life. But next time you hear someone say, "Oh, I just don't care much about politics," you might want to recall this particular connection -- especially if it means you have to go out and get another job.
This stunner is brought to you by President Bush and his big-business campaign donors. The Senate has voted twice to stop the change, so there's no point in raising hell with them. The House of Representatives, the "people's house," dodged the question. So Bush's Department of Labor just up and issued hundreds of pages of new rules on who gets overtime pay.
The administration contends there is some good news buried in the big pile of bad -- that 1.3 million of the working poor, making between $8,000 and $23,000, will be eligible for overtime for the first time. That would be good news except a study by the Economic Policy Institute says only one in seven of those workers actually works overtime.
Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO estimates 6 million people will lose overtime. It's the people in the middle who are getting screwed. Works sort of like Bush's tax cuts: a little help for the poor, lots and lots of goodies for the rich and everybody else -- too bad.
Speaking of Bush and Kerry Vietnam Lies
Bush only had two medals, marksmanship and unit citation, but it turns out he pinned one on he wasn't entitled to for his photograph. I seem to recall a lot of US press about unearned war honors but to make a big splash here they have to be Republican lies and not a simple photograph. The Bush story is moving into the press, the overseas press. Kinda like he once claimed he served in the "Air Force" during Vietnam.
Finally, Janette sends me this on Peak Oil and Global Climate Change. But I already knew this stuff. I have gone out on a limb and claimed we are already past Peak Oil and we will have quadruple gas prices within a few years and I have argued with friends and on email lists that denials of global climate change, including by people I respect, are dead wrong and have fallen for the corporate propaganda campaign.
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