American. Samoa. Is. Not. Like. The. Rest. Of. The. United. States. AS relies on one industry/company for a significant amount of their jobs. The rest of the US does not. Thus, raising the minimum wage will do different, and worse, things in AS than it will everywhere else. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Notice the shifting rationales behind his position. Does **Bugle ** think setting the minimum wage in American Samoa to the national figure is a good thing or a bad thing? Would it help the island or hurt it? Give the workers there more money, or destroy their primary source of income?
These are real policy questions worthy of debate. But he doesn’t seem to care about that. He’s for … whatever makes the Dems look bad. He makes post after post arguing that nothing less than a 100% universal minimum wage is evil and wrong, but then snarks at the Democrats for saying that a minimum wage won’t have a significant impact on jobs.
Which is it, Bugle? Are you for a minimum wage, or against one, or are you just trying to score points?
This, my friends, is modern Republicanism in a nutshell. A total abandonment of serious discussion of policies based on their merits, replaced with a game of “Gotcha!” aimed at marginalizing and ridiculing the opposition. It’s exactly this sort of disdain of real-world analysis that has lead to the debacle in Iraq, where the important thing isn’t to win or to fight terrorism, but to **look ** like we’re winning and **look ** like we’re fighting terrorism.
Security theater as national policy.
Thank you. I think the minumum wage issue is strictly political and is employed to deflect attention from our soldiers dying in Iraq. The states were addressing this based on their local conditions, just like the argument for Somoa put forth here. A new thread discussing this issue would have served as a better forum.
I’ve got to call you on that particular claim. There are partisans on both sides of the aisle (and all across the country who never vote) who are more interested in playing “gotcha” than in engaging in serious discussion. Grabbing your widest brush and splattering tar across the landscape would seem to put you closer to the camp of the partisans (either side) than to the people who wish to treat issues seriously.
Rather than hurling unsupportable calumny at people who happen to share some vaguely similar philosophies with those who are not engaging in serious discussion, it might make more sense to let the partisans talk to themselves.
The article doesn’t explain about the different regulations covering the Northern Marianas. According to Wikipedia, "Under the Covenant, in general, Federal law applies to CNMI. However, the CNMI is outside the customs territory of the United States and, although the internal revenue code does apply in the form of a local income tax, the income tax system is largely locally determined. According to the Covenant, the federal minimum wage and federal immigration laws “will not apply to the Northern Mariana Islands except in the manner and to the extent made applicable to them by the Congress by law after termination of the Trusteeship Agreement” [8]
So it appears that Congress has the ability to directly influence the minimum wage for the Nothern Marianas, but they would have to first change the regulations regarding the control of wages through the Department of Labor for American Samoa first.
I’m certainly no expert, so I could very well be wrong. Again, I join my brother in arms Bugles in calling on Elaine Chao to increase wages for all in American Samoa! I’m sure he and I also agree that the raise in the federal minimum wage was appreciated, but still insufficient.
We call for an increase to $10 an hour, which itself is only a good start. Right, Bugles, mon frere?
I don’t have a dog on this fight but note Section 3(a)/(b), same as Samoa?:
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007’.
SEC. 2. MINIMUM WAGE .
(a) In General- Section 6(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1)) is amended to read as follows:
`(1) except as otherwise provided in this section, not less than–
`(A) $5.85 an hour, beginning on the 60th day after the date of enactment of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007;
`(B) $6.55 an hour, beginning 12 months after that 60th day; and
`(C) $7.25 an hour, beginning 24 months after that 60th day;'.
(b) Effective Date- The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect 60 days after the date of enactment of this Act.
SEC. 3. APPLICABILITY OF MINIMUM WAGE TO THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS.
(a) In General- Section 6 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 206) shall apply to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
(b) Transition- Notwithstanding subsection (a), the minimum wage applicable to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands under section 6(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C. 206(a)(1)) shall be–
(1) $3.55 an hour, beginning on the 60th day after the date of enactment of this Act; and
(2) increased by $0.50 an hour (or such lesser amount as may be necessary to equal the minimum wage under section 6(a)(1) of such Act), beginning 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act and every 6 months thereafter until the minimum wage applicable to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands under this subsection is equal to the minimum wage set forth in such section.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110Ia66yS::
Since American Samoa is currently governed by an Act of Congress regarding minimum wage, previous DOL link:
“The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), applies generally to employment within American Samoa as it does to employment within the United States. The minimum wage rates for American Samoa are set by a special industry committee (29 U.S.C. 205, 29 C.F.R. Part 511) appointed by the U.S. Department of Labor, as required by the Act.” [Further note “as required by the Act.”]
It is clear that Congress could have added a Section 4 to the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 [above] substituting “American Samoa” for “Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands.” Conditions in Sections 3(b)(1) and 3(b)(2) could be different.
Therefore, since the Northern Mariana Islands were included in the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, it can be concluded that American Samoa was excluded.
So?
It has been excluded every year for 68 years. Economic (and political) conditions have changed in the Northern Marianas in the last decade in ways that they have not changed on American Samoa. Barring evidence from you that Starkist has contributed heavily to Ms. Pelosi’s campaign, (preferably along with evidence that an effort was made to change the law regarding Samoa in the same way that the law regarding the Marianas was changed, and that Ms. Pelosi or her staff directly intervened to prevent that from happening), you are simply throwing as much mud as you can in the hopes that something will stick.
That, of course, has been your tactic throughout the length of this tedious thread. Since you are mostly just repeating a mantra more than actually addressing issues, I am not sure exactly what you hope to accomplish in this thread.
In fact, it appears that you are much more interested in simply repeatedly claiming that the Democratic leadership is bad or has failed rather than actually discussing any issues. I’m going to have to consider whether I have tolerated what appears to be nothing more than a rant that should have been started in the BBQ Pit. I might leave this thread here if I see a detailed argument laid out regarding what the Congress should actually do, including a consideration of how the executive veto should be handled, a concern that a hasty withdrawal would actually jeopardize more troops than it saved, and some thought to what will happen to the Middle East if Iraq is left to descend into chaos.
Pelosi Warns? She’s a member of the family? Oh yeah, here my last name is zone, isn’t it? 
(Sorry, it was a family joke when headlines had most words capitalized)
Hey, don’t dis those, um, whatever we call them! My brother used to be Attorney General. Made a massive $24k, too (don’t work for Unca Sam).
I thought I have been perfectly clear on what should be done:
-
Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and the Congress should inform the President now, that they will lead the effort to defund the Iraq war. and inform him to redeploy our troops immediately while protecting their safety. (not my words, Murtha’s)
-
They are going to face a vote for funding or defunding the Iraq war anyway in February, when they are presented with the President’s supplemental for $100 - $120 billion.
-
I keep hearing about this “veto”, what would the President have to veto if the vote in the Congress were to not approve the supplemental next month?
-
Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid, Mr. Murtha and others have called for redpeloyment of our troops from Iraq in the past, not just me (from Murth’s home page):
"My plan calls:
To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq."
-
I don’t believe that these leaders would call for redeployment if it put our soldiers at risk. Plus, I am sure our military is more than capable of performing a safe redeployment.
-
I believe Murtha’s plan can be utilized, as a framework, for peace and stability in Iraq and in the Middle East region.
-
We must make every effort to save the lives of our soldiers now fighting in Iraq for a war we can’t win.
Really?
I’d be interested in learning how holding our troops in secure bases far removed from the violence that is ripping Iraq apart (thanks to our intervention) would provide a framework for anything.
Do we simply wait for the country to dissolve into an oversized Afghanistan, with warlords divvying up the country among them, preventing any attempts to restore power and water to the people and destroying any hope that the Iraqis could actually pump and ship enough oil to pay off their nation’s huge outstanding debts?
Once chaos has reduced the land and people to shambles, do we then hire some mercenary army to go in and rebuild the country?
Just how does this redeployment policy work?
Since Iran cannot stand by while its largest neighbor descends (further) into chaos, (and since Turkey will have a legitimate fear that a separate Kurdish homeland will incite a fair amount of Kurdish rebellion in that nation), do we then stand by while Iran and Turkey intervene to protect their interests? Or do we use the redeployment to provide the recuperation for our troops so that they will be fresh when we need to go to war against Iran and Turkey to prevent those nations from feasting on the corpse of Iraq? (Or, perhaps, we should simply let Iran and Turkey carve up Iraq, with the Iranians suppressing the Sunni minority and the Turks repeating the Armenian genocide against the Kurds?)
I hate that Bush stupidly got us into a mess with no clue what he was doing. I hate that Rumsfeld (with his leaner, faster army) and Wolfowitz (with his “the people will welcome us as liberators” fantasy) teamed up to deny the military the troops they initially sought to actually occupy the country.
However, “redeployment” in the absence of an actual plan to address the issues looks like nothing so much as a Rumsfeldian short-sighted claim that “this” will work when we do not even know what “this” is.
So, if the only plan you seem to have is to “redeploy” the troops, just how is Congress supposed to handle this situation short of just abandoning Iraq to the disaster we imposed on it?
Fighting in a war we can’t win while losing soldiers lives is also short-sighted. I will respond to your full post shortly.
Air and naval power are provided “far removed” from the violence in Iraq. In Vietnam, many engagments were fought by troops inserted from “far removed” bases.
This is a preconceived outcome you are expecting. Giving a new plan a chance is no worse than what is going on now, particulary, in a war we can’t win.
I don’t fully understand your question here. The troops would disengage immeadiately and move to secure bases. They would then be redeployed from Iraq. They would move out in rural areas which pose very little threats and by air. Is Al Qaeda going to attack them in junk cars while they are on the move?
Again, you present a preconceived outcome which could also occur with our current war policy. Having the number of troops in Iraq we have now and given where they are deployed, we couldn’t stop what you postulate anyway. I would suggest that this argument is independent of where our troops are deployed.
I agree. You forgot Pearl.
I believe a plan, which the Pentagon could draw up, based on the Murtha framework has a better chance of success than the current war policy and will drastically reduce the number of soldier lives being lost. What is Congress going to do if we contine this failed war and we lose anyway, at the cost of 1,000’s more US soldiers lives?
Because it’s nonsense. If minimum wage hikes cause job losses in American Samoa, they’ll also cause job losses in the United States. There are plenty of regions in the United States that have high percentages of minimum wage workers. If I live in a town that has the employment scene dominated by one large minimum wage employer, how is that any different than American Samoa?
People in favor of minimum wage laws have always hand-waved away the idea that substantial increases to the minimum wage will cause job losses. Busineses will ‘take it out of profits’, or just raise their prices, or the extra money the workers make will cause them to be more productive so the company can afford their salaries, or whatever. Why won’t any of that work in American Samoa?
Frankly, I hope they DO enact the minimum wage hike there. Then we’ll have a nice controlled experiment on the effect of minimum wage legislation without all the confounding factors that occur in a much larger economy.
Isn’t this argument over?
— Minimum-Wage Hike May Reach to Samoa
Saturday, January 13, 2007; Page A02
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), dogged by Republican charges of a double standard, said yesterday that American Samoa may join the Northern Mariana Islands as U.S. territories that would have to comply with a higher federal minimum wage.
Under the minimum-wage increase approved by the House this week, employers on the Northern Marianas would for the first time have to pay their workers the minimum wage, which would rise from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. For years, Republicans – with the help of convicted lobbyist Jack A. Abramoff – have fended off efforts to bring the islands under federal labor laws.
The bill would leave American Samoa as the only territory not covered by the $7.25 rate, and because Samoa is represented by a Democrat, Del. Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, Republicans cried foul.
Faleomavaega’s campaign coffers have been well stocked by the tuna industry that dominates his island economy, but Republicans picked up on another issue: StarKist owns one of the largest canneries on the island, and Del Monte Foods, StarKist’s parent company, is based in San Francisco, which Pelosi represents.
“I have asked the Education and Labor Committee, as they go forward with the legislation, to make sure that all of the territories have to comply with U.S. law on the minimum wage,” Pelosi announced yesterday.
Pelosi aides said the committee would be asked to work toward having all territories use the same wage standard.
– Jonathan Weisman
Here’s a very good description of the situation of American Samoa and the minimum wage from the Daily Kos.
And I agree - the Republicans concerns about American Samoa are completely disingenuous, and their discussion of the issue is essentially factually incorrect…
but we nevertheless ought to change the regulations so that American Samoa is treated the same.
Excellent. A government that is responsive to the desires and the needs of the people!
Congratulations Bugles!!! Our long national nightmare is over! Good work, mon ami. Now, let’s deal with another major concern of workers and push for universal health care!
That is fine against organized troops at company or brigade (or, even, platoon) strength. The current need in Iraq is to provide a blanket of power that suppresses the small hit-and-run tactics of five or ten men killing ten or twenty Iraqi civilians and fading into the crowds. Calling up a copter-borne platoon to show up an hour after an attack and look for people to shoot does nothing to stabilize the situation. You complain that I am basing my views on a preconceived outcome, but you are not even addressing the reality on the ground, today. (And I hesitate to use our smashing success in Vietnam as the ideal on which we should base our future actions.)
First, al Qaida is pretty much irrelevant to the current situation. There is far more threat to stability in Iraq from Shi’a who are either trying to establish hegemony (Sadr and his stooge Maliki) by waging violent tactics against the Sunni minority or from retaliatory raids by both Shi’a and Sunnis who are continuing tribal feuds against each other than there is from any battalion of al Qaida operatives marching across the desert–something that al Qaida has never done, anyway. You seem to see this as some sort of battle of armies when it is actually a nation-wide breakdown of civil order.
I am open to suggestions of either increasing or decreasing troop strength to actually carry out a well-considered plan of action. All that you have presented has been a “we have to save the troops” call, (understandable in its way) with some vague notion that we might find a plan to fit the action, later, (based on what apears to be a serious misunderstanding of the current reality). If Congress calls for immediate removal of troops before any serious plan, (and the “surge” is not a serious plan), it will do nothing to either save troops, (who will have to go back in, anyway), or to stabilize Iraq.
You are making my point. Deploying 150,000 boots on the ground to take on 5 or 10 people at a time is ludicrous. If the Iraqi’s can’t take care of that, we are in really big trouble. If true, how can we ever win? I only used Vietnam as an example of “far removed” deployment. Plus, Vietnam was not lost by our soldiers.
Again, why have a standing army to address nonsense like this. It makes no sense. Our military should not be policemen.
I am not the only person to call for this. Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Reid, Rep. Mutha and many others have as well. You appear to be under the impression that we have been fighting a well planned war so far in Iraq. A plan based on Murtha’s framework is just as viable as the “plan” we are currently pursuing. So why not save our soldiers lives if we are going to lose this war anyhow?