Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), a leading advocate of shrinking entitlement spending and the architect of the plan to privatize Medicare, spent Wednesday evening sipping $350 wine with two like-minded conservative economists at the swanky Capitol Hill eatery Bistro Bis.More on Ryan from TPM:
Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25/hour. Assuming a 40-hour workweek and two minimum wage earners, that's $580 before taxes.
Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.
"We were just stunned," said Feinberg, who e-mailed TPM about her encounter later the same evening. "I was an economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out that those two bottles of wine was more than two-income working family making minimum wage earned in a week."
But of course the Tea Party wing of the GOP wants to look at eliminating the minimum wage:
Republican Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has soft-pedaled her opposition to the minimum wage law considerably since 2005, when she was quoted as saying, at a Minnesota State Senate hearing, “Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.” Appearing on CBS’s (CBS) Face the Nation on June 26, Bachmann would say only that eliminating the minimum wage is “something that obviously Congress would have to look at” as a solution to high unemployment.And then there's Senator Orrin Hatch who thinks the poor aren't doing enough to help out:
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) voted against beginning debate on a measure that would have the Senate declare the rich should share the pain of debt reduction Thursday, a day after arguing that it's the poor and middle class who need to do more.The point of all this?
"I hear how they're so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, in reference to Democrats. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."
Hatch's comments were aimed at a motion that passed 74 to 22 to start debating a non-binding resolution that says millionaires and billionaires should play a more meaningful role in reducing the nation's debt.
Just to let you all know that this is the GOP these days. To all my Republican friends (and relatives), I'd like to ask a question: Do you really want to be associated with such mean spirited greed?
And we're not even talking about choice or marriage equality.
9 comments:
Pelosi Spends Hundreds of Thousands on Travel, Alcohol
Link doesn't work.
I think you were looking to post this.
Too bad this Judicial Watch spin was debunked
more than a year ago.
For example:
Judicial Watch has received much attention from the usual right-wing outlets for its recent mini-report claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent $2 million in taxpayer money on Air Force aircraft. The press release seems rather deliberately underwritten, suggesting that much, if not all, of that money was spent solely on Pelosi and her immediate family -- for example, their press release's headline states that Pelosi's "Military Travel Cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a Two-Year Period." But the release later discloses that the data is actually for "103 Pelosi-led congressional delegations" -- i.e., the congressional delegations set up through the Speaker's office, many of which included other members of Congress as well -- not her personal travel.
And:
Judicial Watch is also completely silent about the passenger lists for these CODELs -- perhaps because some of them include Republican members of Congress and their spouses. For instance, Judicial Watch highlighted a May 2008 CODEL to Israel and Baghdad that "included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone," as well as a copious stash of alcoholic beverages. Unmentioned by Judicial Watch was that Republican Reps. David Dreier and Adam Putnam were also on that trip (Republican Leader John Boehner was originally scheduled to go as well but later withdrew). Republican members also brought their spouses on Pelosi-led delegations to Europe in 2007 and Europe and India in 2008.
You're just going to have to do better if you want to be taken seriously.
Nice try, though.
Grasping. At. Straws.
HTTT... LMAO.
CM, "Grasping. At. Straws." ?
So the 9.2% unemployment rate is a joke to you? You are laughing at people whose parents couldn't get a job because of the color of their skin, who grew up in neighborhoods where the schools received a fraction of the funding suburban schools get, who receive a constant barrage of messages (the latest from you) about how they are inferior to white people? You think they should be working 12 hours a night cleaning offices, or mopping floors in hospitals, or replacing rook in ninety degree weather, all for one or two dollars an hour.
When the poor in America wanted to get an education, roadblocks were thrown in their way starting more than two hundred years ago, and every year since.
But you won't respond with an honest debate. You know your buddies the Tea Party/Republicans will lie to the rural poor, scare them with insinuations that the urban poor want to take their money and not work at all. You know that the Tea Party/Republicans will simply force the country to end all social welfare spending, and create a permanent bottom 80% of the poor, with wages of only a few dollars per hour. While we permanently destroy the planet's ecology, causing our progeny untold misery and hardship (and killing no small number of them).
@Ed.. You have serious issues. I probably shouldn't even respond to your rant. In fact, I deleted what I was going to say. You're not worth my time... except to say.. Hey, how's that 'Hopey Changey' thingy workin' for ya?
So by telling me (you think) I have "issues", CM, you are helping me? I will suddenly wake up and see how the Republicans are correct and Democrats are harming the country? Or are you telling other readers of this blog that I am wrong about you? I will accept whatever judgment from other readers.
But just to be clear, let's review. In a previous comment you made a "typo" (actually a math error, but whatever) that undermined the validity of your argument that rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy was somehow taking a sizable chunk of their money. Yet you never walked back that argument.
In a different previous comment, you said that you had studied the economics of finance, but somehow you were not familiar with Paul Samuelson (who wrote the most popular but not the only basic text book for economics for decades). You gave the the distinct impression that the somehow skipped studying basic economics, not to mention advanced macro economics. So any comment you make could be evaluated in light of your unfamiliarity with economic policy, in much the same way you might evaluate a comment I might make about business accounting.
I suspect Susan B Anthony and Frederick Douglas were told that they had "serious issues" (or didn't know their place). To be sure I only make the comparison between myself and Ms Anthony or Mr Douglas because of your comment about "serious issues". And along that line, you can be sure we all know the comment "How's the Hopey-Changey thing working out for you?" is racist code.
How much has unemployment gone down since the Republicans took the House?
For
Paul Ryan Wine Accuser Susan Feinberg Clams Up
“I’m sorry. I thought I would get only positive uncritical attention for my behavior, not negative and/or skeptical attention. I don’t want to play any more.”
Ed, I trust you will not object next time I "change the subject".
How much has unemployment gone down since the Republicans took the House?
htt,
Who actually said "I’m sorry. I thought I would get only positive uncritical attention for my behavior, not negative and/or skeptical attention. I don’t want to play any more.”
Your post, as it is, seems somewhat misleading. (Imagine that!)
HTTT, I was responding to CM, not to you. In any event, it appears your initial comment was little more than a red herring intended to smear Nancy Pelosi for doing what turns out to be her job. And to your second comment about Susan Feinberg, the Washington Examiner apparently has an agenda of it's own, and in any event what does it matter what she was drinking; she is not an elected official and no lobbyist was buying her dinner (at an amount in excess of what Representative's are supposed to accept). In any event, I think the real thrust of Dayvoe's post was about the Republican attack on the minimum wage.
You may trust whatever you want, but in this instance I wasn't even talking to you.
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