The Center for Economic Policy Research has released a new report on understanding low wage employment.

Over 40 million jobs in the United States – about 1 in 3 – pay low wages ($11.11 per hour or less) and often do not offer employment benefits like health insurance, retirement savings accounts, paid sick days or family leave. These low-wage jobs are replacing jobs that have historically supported a broad middle class.  This report provides a clear and sobering picture of the low-wage labor market through analysis of labor market data, including: downward wage trends over time, poor work conditions, largest occupations, and declining mobility. The authors used a social inclusion definition of low-wage work that allows for comparison among jobs in the United States.

Report pdf

Get the real story here.

There are a couple of new developments.

First, Gord Smith is the second Republican senator to call for Gonzales to resign:

Second, Josh has a memo from Sampson with this interesting line in it: “Bush41 even had to establish that Reagan-appointed U.S. Attorneys would not be permitted to continue on through the Bush41 administration”. It also says, “In 2001 Bush43 fired the Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorneys, some of which were in the midst of a four-year term . . .”
  Now what was that about how bad Clinton was when he put his own people in?

Third, that same memo makes clear that Rove and Gonzales were directly involved in the firings, disproving previous claims by the administration.

Finally, Snow ran into heavy sledding at the gaggle this morning.

It’s hard to believe Gonzales can hold on much longer, isn’t it?

Rep. Pete Stark is the first member of Congress known to have declared publicly that he is an atheist.

I think this is great news. It’s about time we have someone in Congress who is actively committed to governing based on rationality and reality instead of on superstition.

There’s more in Slate.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance

I used to have a high opinion of Rudolph Giuliani. It was a long time ago, but it’s true, and this is a good time to write about it.

Back in the 1980’s when Reagan was president, one of the things he did was embark on a systemic practice of illegally denying and terminating Social Security disability benefits. It was universal across the country. One of their most egregious practices was a policy they called nonacquiescence, which meant that when a federal court decision went against them on some legal principle, they would simply ignore it, refusing to apply the same legal principle to other cases in which it applied. What was probably even worse, though, was “Bellmon review”. This was a policy they adopted in which the administrative law judges who decided appeals would be pressured and subjected to close scrutiny if they ruled against the government too often. Let me repeat that: the administrative law judges were supposed to be independent, but if they ruled against the administration they would be punished for it. The association of administrative law judges sued the Social Security Administration over that one, and won.

Here’s how Giuliani fits in:

Social Security has a series of steps of administrative review, in which a denied or terminated applicant or recipient can seek to have the initial decision changed, and after the appellant exhausts all the steps of administrative review they can sue the Administration in federal court. I don’t know how many cases are filed now, but it used to be tens of thousands. Like most other cases filed against the federal government, when a case like this is filed it is up to the local U.S. Attorney’s office to defend the government. In these cases, though, most of the actual work is done in Social Security regional counsels’ offices around the country. They would review the record, including the transcript of the hearing and all the medical and vocational evidence, research the law, and write the brief, and then ship the whole thing down to the local U.S. Attorney, who would have one lawyer assigned to handle these cases. That lawyer would sign it all and file it in the U.S. District Court,, and would then have to argue the case when it was ready.

As time went on the positions the Social Security Administration was taking in court grew increasingly outrageous, just without any legal, factual, or moral justification. Things got so bad that when Giuliani was U.S. Attorney in New York he announced that his office would no longer sign off on the briefs they were sent by the Social Security Administration without doing their own independent review of the merits of the case. This may seem like a small thing, but it really isn’t, because it meant that he was standing up not only to the Social Security Administration but also to the whole Department of Justice. (This was in the days of the “Experts Agree: Meese is a Pig” t-shirts.) In other words, he was saying that as a U.S. Attorney, confirmed by the Senate, he was not going to put his name and reputation behind the court filings prepared by his superiors until he could satisfy himself that they were justified. The credibility and integrity of his office, and his personal integrity, were too important for him to simply fall into step behind the bosses.

Turn the clock forward twenty-five years or so to another scandal affecting the U.S. Attorneys. Eight of them are fired for political reasons, whether it’s because they won’t persecute–oops, did I say persecute?–the political enemies of the Bush Administration, or just to give Bush cronies a boost onto one of the stepping stones to a federal judgeship down the road. You would think that someone concerned about the integrity and independence of U.S. Attorneys would have something very negative to say about that, wouldn’t you?

So would I, so I’ll bring you Rudy Giuliani’s official position on the U.S.Attorney purge: there will be no statement. That’s right, no comment.

So much for Giuliani’s integrity.

Every time there is a new constitutional crisis, or, to be more accurate, every time there is a new abuse by the Bush Administration, they trot out Alberto Gonzalez to paper it over, to put up his bland, seemingly open and forthright, countenance, to cover over the latest outrage his boss has perpetrated. One of his more striking public performances lately was his defense of the Bush abolition of habeas corpus. “There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”

Now the Times says enough is enough: Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.

This is clearly right.

Time to contact our congressional delegation and get them to push for Gonzalez to be fired:

Bernie Sanders: 1-802-862-0697 – or – 1-800-339-9834 (In State Only)
Pat Leahy: senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov

Peter Welch

The Montpelier Downtown Community Association is looking for volunteers to help fill bags with sand on Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the recreation fields on Dog River Road.

The sandbags will be available to downtown businesses and property owners for free on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Philip Baruth has come up with the news that one of the papers that haven’t canceled Ann Coulter’s syndicated column is the Caledonian-Record, Vermont’s own version of the Washington Times. Follow the link to Philip’s blog and start applying the pressure to kick Ann Coulter out of Vermont.

The Montpelier Democratic Committee met tonight to nominate candidates to replace newly elected Sergeant at Arms Francis Brooks in one of two seats in the House of Representatives. Although there was speculation that there would be tension or conflict at the meeting, comity prevailed. Five people were nominated, each nominee made a brief presentation of his/her qualifications and interests, and the committee conducted a secret ballot.

The nominees, whose names will be submitted to Governor Douglas Friday morning, are Cary Brown, Mary Hooper, and Matt Levin.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance

You should definitely check out this column by Paul Krugman in Rolling Stone. He thoroughly dispatches many of the myths we hear from the Right about income inequality. As usual, the only people who are criticized for class struggle are those who point out which side is winning.

Here’s a great image that helps to capture the realities of today’s economy:

  The widening gulf between workers and executives is part of a stunning increase in inequality throughout the U.S. economy during the past thirty years. To get a sense of just how dramatic that shift has been, imagine a line of 1,000 people who represent the entire population of America. They are standing in ascending order of income, with the poorest person on the left and the richest person on the right. And their height is proportional to their income — the richer they are, the taller they are.

Start with 1973. If you assume that a height of six feet represents the average income in that year, the person on the far left side of the line — representing those Americans living in extreme poverty — is only sixteen inches tall. By the time you get to the guy at the extreme right, he towers over the line at more than 113 feet.

Now take 2005. The average height has grown from six feet to eight feet, reflecting the modest growth in average incomes over the past generation. And the poorest people on the left side of the line have grown at about the same rate as those near the middle — the gap between the middle class and the poor, in other words, hasn’t changed. But people to the right must have been taking some kind of extreme steroids: The guy at the end of the line is now 560 feet tall, almost five times taller than his 1973 counterpart.