Good news! We can stop worrying about treachery!

Posted by on

So the Mueller Report has cleared Trump and his staff from conspiring with Putin and Russia to win the election.  Phew!!!!   Thank goodness. The thought that one’s own Head of State was a traitor would have been intolerable. For the sake of peace of mind this is great news.  Mueller is a good man and has been very thorough.

However, we might pause and reflect on the fact that 34 people and three companies have been indicted for a bariety of crimes: 6 former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one Californian man and and London-based lawyer.   Meanwhile, the Russians were clearly wanting to influence the election and it looks as if they will interfere in 2020.  And, unless it is being kept unusually secret nothing is being done to counter it.  We are under constant attack by a Russian head of state riding high and proving to be a dread menace to democracy everywhere.  Not a situation where one can feel serenely calm and confident about the government.   And we have a right to feel calm and confident about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Raise the Wage Act of 2019

Posted by on
An Economic Policy Institute reports that the Raise the Wage Act , now before Congress would , directly or indirectly raise the wages of 40 million workers , or nearly 27 percent of the wage- earning workforce.

The Act raises the federal minimum wage in six steps to $15 per hour by 2024. Beginning in 2025, the minimum wage would be indexed to the median wage. The bill would also gradually increase the subminimum wage for tipped workers, which has been fixed at $2.13 per hour since 1991, until it reaches parity with the regular minimum wage.

It has now been nearly ten years since Congress last raised the minimum wage.  In that time, the minimum wage has lost almost 15 percent of its value to inflation. Many of America’s workers  are paid less today than their counterparts 50 years ago.

According to the Institute’s analysis, the bill would directly lift the wages of 28.1 million workers earning less than $15 an hour, with the average directly affected worker  receiving a $4,000 increase in annual earnings— a rise of 20.9 percent. Another 11.6 million workers would benefit from a spillover effect, as employers raise wages of workers making more than $15 in order to attract and retain employees.

Over the phase-in period, the rising wage floor would generate $120 billion in additional wages, which would ripple out to low-wage workers’ families and their communities. Because lower-paid workers spend much of their extra earnings, the increased wages would help stimulate the economy and spur greater business activity and job growth.

Two-thirds of America’s working poor would receive a pay increase thanks to the Raise the Wage Act of 2019. They would mostly be  adults, working full time in regular jobs, and often with families.

Other findings by the Economic Policy Institute:

  • More than half of all affected workers would be between the ages of 25 and 54.
  • The majority of workers affected by a raise to the minimum wage (57.9 percent) are women.
  • The bill would disproportionately raise wages for people of color, with 38.1 percent of black workers and 33.4 percent of Hispanic workers seeing their wages increase.
  • 5.4 million single parents would benefit, accounting for 13.5 percent of affected workers.
  • The bill would raise wages for the parents of 14.4 million children across the United States, nearly one-fifth (19.6) percent of all U.S. children.

My comment:  About time, too!  Of course this bill has to get through the Senate, but it should  almost certainly be passed by the House.  The low wages and insecurity of low- paid American workers  is a shocking fact, made all the more unacceptable by the huge salaries enjoyed by the company bosses.  If you want to know why the country is so divided and unhappy look no further.  I think this bill is truly Epicurean, but whether  it will become law is another matter.

Unacceptable

Posted by on

Donald Trump has caused widespread indignation by appearing to suggest that he could use force against his political enemies. In an interview, Trump noted how “tough” right-wingers are, compared with left-wingers, and said: “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough – until they [his opponents] go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad.”

This comes as the Democrats are conducting detailed investigations, carrying on where Mueller left off.  He is threatening the opposing party with force and clearly hinting  that, should he lose in 2020, he would be prepared to provoke violence.  Or that is my interpretation; maybe he will correct himself?  Answer: he is never wrong about anything, so won’t.

That we have a President who could be talking like this is bad enough; that his base seems to think such talk is acceptable is even more scary.

 

Semi-comprehensible soundtracks on modern movies

Posted by on

Is it just me, but do other people understand what actors are saying in modern movies?

When I was younger I did a lot of amateur acting.  We performed in the massive great barn of a place called the Wimbledon Theatre in London.  Our director was great, but a bit of a tyrant.  She used to tell us regularly: “ The audience is paying money to hear what you have to say.  They deserve to hear every word, and I mean every single word”.  And while she sat at the very back of the theatre, high up in the gods, she would make us go over lines repeatedly until she could hear and understand every word we uttered.  We learned to project our voices.

So  maybe I have lost a few percentage points of hearing over the  years (I don’t know) but why is it that, during Netflix productions, for instance, my wife and I constantly exclaim, “What did he say? What was that?  I haven’t a clue what they are saying”, and similar.  I don’t think that mumbling is part of good acting, and conclude that must be a dearth of competent sound engineers around – unless there are plenty and they are instructed to accept grunting and mumbling, and unless acting schools are turning out inarticulates.

We are paying to watch – and understand, and have a right to do so.

Does anyone else sympathise?  Is this an older generation problem, or are the generality of audiences happy to accept just a general idea or impression of what is going on on the screen.  I recall that when the French Impressionists first emerged the public were very dismissive of them (amateur daubers).  Maybe we are seeing a new “art form” in movie -making?

The EU and an intelligent person’s despair

Posted by on

With apologies for so many Brexit  postings, but, especially after Theresa May’s pathetic encounter with the EU ministers yesterday, I suspect that any thinking, patriotic and informed person who saw her or his country make such a mindless, incompetent hash of an unnecessary political red herring would also want to express her or his deep  anguish.

The following is courtesy of the London Review of Books:

“The EU is not so much about trade – though it is that as well – as it is about freedom and peace. An extension of ‘we’, not a curtailing of it. Solidarity. Common purpose. Are we – you, they, we – so different? So incomparably better? It’s about being a force for good in the world, a place slightly less rivalrous, less unfair, less short-sighted, less bristling with arms, less overrun by special interests than the places around it. In its weakness is its strength. Its divergence is its coherence.

“At best, at very best, Brexit is a perfect irrelevance. Either it has nothing to do with our – their, your – actual problems, or it will make them worse. Austerity, inequality, lack of foresight, lack of common purpose, democratic accountability. Our difficulties are planetary and grave; for a nation to claim it has – or in Britain’s case, is – the answer, is simply dishonest. A cage or a card or a wall is not the point. Do you trust the Home Office not to cock this up as well? The world is converging. It is mixing, and will continue to mix. This isn’t a great time for nation states. It’s hard to think of one that’s doing well. Not even Canada. Maybe Ireland? Maybe New Zealand?

“The standards, laws, rights, protections and improvements of the last forty years have come from Europe. Whence the strange English faith in the selfless probity, wisdom and insightfulness of their ruling class? What’s this fantasy about being on the outside and retaining one’s influence and one’s freedom to act independently? With one flat-topped aircraft-carrier. So coolly unattached and so desirable, and always nyet? The world needs more internationalism, not less. More co-operation, not less. Remember the ozone hole? Something fixed it, possibly. We fixed it. Now the oceans are full of plastic. Our chemicals are in the air and soil and ground water everywhere.

 “Worldwide, who else apart from Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and the late Steve Bannon thinks it’s a good idea? Shouldn’t that worry you – them, us? Have your misanthropic Brexit, and then – what – a tourist industry?

“A mendacious faux patriotism has been promoted: now it’s the scoundrel’s first port of call. It isn’t compatible with English friendliness abroad or solidarity at home. Is Brexit going to happen in some soft form, in some mild way – or ‘be delivered’, in Mayspeak – on 29 March, or later, after some bitterly contested picayune postponement, and we say, ‘it’s all right, we don’t really mean it, we still kind of like you’? I don’t think so. “.

( excerpt, slightly edited, from  “The Little Island that Could”,  by Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books, 7 Feb 2019)