Secret Recording Reveals Exactly How Establishment Democrats Crush Progressives

(CD) — People have long known these kinds of conversations take place, but rarely is the regular voter allowed to hear exactly how it goes down. The Intercept on Thursday provided a brief and striking look into the Democratic Party’s “strong-arm” tactics by publishing a recording of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the number two Democrat in the House, attempting to […]

Pelosi Vows To Get A Bunch Of Teenagers Fired If Democrats Win Congress

Top congressional Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and Bernie Sanders, held a press conference earlier today to officially introduce their "Fight For $15" minimum wage legislation, dubbed the Raise the Wage Act.  Among other things, the bill primarily serves to more than double the federal minimum wage from it"s current level of $7.25 to $15 by 2024. 

The Raise the Wage Act would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024 and would be indexed to the median wage growth thereafter. These increases would restore the minimum wage to 1968 levels, when the value was at its peak. The bill would also gradually increase the tipped minimum wage, which has been fixed at $2.13 per hour since 1991, bringing it to parity with the regular minimum wage. Moreover, it would also phase out the youth minimum wage, that allows employers to pay workers under 20 years old a lower wage for the first 90 calendar days of work. This legislation would give more than 41 million low-wage workers a raise, increasing the wages of almost 30 percent of the wage-earning workforce in the United States.

The Raise the Wage Act is front loaded to provide the biggest impact to workers. Upon enactment, the federal minimum wage would be increased from $7.25 to $9.25.  The following increases are: $10.10 (2018); $11 (2019); $12 (2020); $13 (2012); $13.50 (2013); $14.20 (2023); $15.00 (2024).

Meanwhile, foreshadowing the Democrats" key campaign promise in 2018, undoubtedly designed to win back working class voters of the Midwest who abandoned them "yugely" in 2016, Nancy Pelosi vowed her party would pass a $15 per hour minimum wage within the first 100 hours if they manage to recapture Congress during the next election cycle.

"We"re willing to fight for $15, and I"ll tell you one thing for sure, we win the election and in the first 100 hours we will pass a $15 per hour minimum wage."

"We"d rather have it now.  We"d rather win on the issue than worry about the election."

Of course, seemingly no amount of empirical evidence will ever convince progressives that raising minimum wages to artificially elevated levels is a bad idea.  Somehow the basic idea that raising the cost of a good ultimately results in lower consumption of that good just doesn"t compute. 

So while it will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears, we would once again point Ms. Pelosi to a recent study from the American Action Forum (AAF) which estimated that 2.6 million jobs will be lost around the country over the next several years as states phase-in minimum wage hikes that have already been passed (see "State Minimum Wage Hikes Already Passed Into Law Expected To Cost 2.6 Million Jobs, New Study Finds").  Shockingly, and only after running a lot of really complicated math using complex equations that most of us stupid people just wouldn"t understand, AAF ultimately concluded the whole elasticity of demand thing actually works (a.k.a. "the higher shit is priced the less people will buy of it").

Moreover, as Dunkin" Donuts" CEO recently pointed out, a significant number of Americans working for minimum wage are teenagers and not the "older, blue-collar workers" that Bernie and Nancy say they want to help.  Which, of course, means that to the extent they get to keep their jobs a fair portion of the minimum wage increases will simply flow to teenagers who may already be a part of affluent families.

But goodluck with the crusade, Nancy and Bernie!  If you get hungry along the way, we highly recommend you try out a sandwich from this new "Big Mac ATM" which comes with McDonald"s special sauce and all the fixin"s but requires exactly 0 of your minimum wage workers to prepare.

Twitter Fight Round 2: Trump Trolls "Lying" Pelosi With Pic Of Her And Medvedev; Pelosi Responds

Trump seems to be having himself a fun Friday afternoon trolling Democratic Congressional leaders on Twitter.  Just a couple of hours ago Chuck Schumer received Trump"s first "shot across the bow" and now he"s turned his focus to Nancy Pelosi for having "close ties to Russia, and lying about it."

"I hearby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi for her close ties to Russia, and lying about it."

I hereby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi for her close ties to Russia, and lying about it. https://t.co/qCDljfF3wN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017

This most recent Trump tweet was apparently derived from a Politico article posted earlier today which revealed a picture of Pelosi in a meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak just after she had denied ever meeting him.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that she"s never met with the current Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

"Not with this Russian ambassador, no," Pelosi told POLITICO"s Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer during a Playbook interview, when asked if she"d ever met with the Russian envoy.

But a file photo from Pelosi"s 2010 meeting with Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev shows Kislyak at the table across from Pelosi — then House speaker — and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). Medvedev had been in the country for a meeting with President Barack Obama a day earlier and stopped in on Capitol Hill to meet with congressional leaders as well.

Meanwhile, Pelosi"s team scrambled to correct the record saying that Nancy made a simple mistake and meant that she had never had a "solo" meeting with Kislyak.

Asked to square Pelosi"s comments with the photo of the meeting, a spokesman said that Pelosi had simply meant she never had a solo meeting with Kislyak.

"Of course, that"s what she meant," said the spokesman, Drew Hammill. "She has never had a private one-on-one with him."

Of course, just yesterday Pelosi called for Sessions" resignation saying "anything less than resignation or removal from office is unacceptable."

We are far past recusal. Jeff #Sessions lied under oath. Anything less than resignation or removal from office is unacceptable.

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) March 2, 2017

And right on cue, we get Nancy"s response:

.@realDonaldTrump doesn"t know difference between official mtg photographed by press & closed secret mtg his AG lied about under oath. https://t.co/YRFCuJkjLA

— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) March 3, 2017