Ponderable

Bernie Sanders & wife share the wealth (with defense attorneys) – open thread

By Doug Powers • June 25, 2017 10:45 AM
**Written by Doug Powers

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Another Sunday cavalcade of odds and ends is here. We’ll kick it off with the story of how one of America’s highest profile socialists and his wife are sharing their wealth… with defense lawyers:

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) wife Jane Sanders has booked top notch lawyers to defend her against allegations of bank fraud.

The FBI launched an investigation into loans Sanders applied for when she was president of Burlington College, alleging that she lied to qualify for them.

A January 2016 complaint filed by Donald Trump’s Vermont campaign chair, lawyer Brady Toensing, originally requested the investigation.

The complaint alleged that Mrs. Sanders lied on a 2010 loan application from People’s United Bank for $10 million to expand Burlington’s campus.
 


Supreme Court rules for Missouri church in dispute over public funding access


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of a Missouri church that sued the state after being denied taxpayer funds for a playground project because of a provision that prohibits state funding for religious entities.
The ruling was 7-2.
The case, one of the most closely watched of the term, pitted two provisions of the First Amendment against one another – freedom of religion and separation of church and state.
Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor with The Catholic Association, called the ruling “a significant victory for fairness and government neutrality towards religious institutions.”
“The Supreme Court is sharply signaling in this decision that the government must stop its growing hostility towards religion and religious institutions, and that antiquated and anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments should not be used as a weapon to discriminate against people of faith.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ch-in-dispute-over-public-funding-access.html
 
A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberals
By Max Ehrenfreund

When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city's minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they'd hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.

The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They've cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found.

The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.

On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum.

The paper's conclusions contradict years of research on the minimum wage. Many past studies, by contrast, have found that the benefits of increases for low-wage workers exceed the costs in terms of reduced employment -- often by a factor of four or five to one.

"This strikes me as a study that is likely to influence people," said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research. He called the work "very credible" and "sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds."

entire article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...ether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/
 
A ‘very credible’ new study on Seattle’s $15 minimum wage has bad news for liberals
By Max Ehrenfreund

When Seattle officials voted three years ago to incrementally boost the city's minimum wage up to $15 an hour, they'd hoped to improve the lives of low-income workers. Yet according to a major new study that could force economists to reassess past research on the issue, the hike has had the opposite effect.

The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years. Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They've cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found.

The costs to low-wage workers in Seattle outweighed the benefits by a ratio of three to one, according to the study, conducted by a group of economists at the University of Washington who were commissioned by the city. The study, published as a working paper Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has not yet been peer reviewed.

On the whole, the study estimates, the average low-wage worker in the city lost $125 a month because of the hike in the minimum.

The paper's conclusions contradict years of research on the minimum wage. Many past studies, by contrast, have found that the benefits of increases for low-wage workers exceed the costs in terms of reduced employment -- often by a factor of four or five to one.

"This strikes me as a study that is likely to influence people," said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research. He called the work "very credible" and "sufficiently compelling in its design and statistical power that it can change minds."

entire article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...ether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/
This is amazing stuff. You people on here like Fathead Joe and the Idiot Bear whack each other off about how not to pay employees $30K per year? Are you that cheap, or do you just have failing businesses, or what?
 
This is amazing stuff. You people on here like Fathead Joe and the Idiot Bear whack each other off about how not to pay employees $30K per year? Are you that cheap, or do you just have failing businesses, or what?
You need to earn it first, that's what is wrong with you obama supporters, all you want is free handouts from the upper class and middle class. No free lunch.
Fifteen - YouTube
upload_2017-6-26_11-11-52.jpeg▶ 0:55
Hat tip, Bruddah.
 
This is amazing stuff. You people on here like Fathead Joe and the Idiot Bear whack each other off about how not to pay employees $30K per year? Are you that cheap, or do you just have failing businesses, or what?


Whack each other off?...Wow Joe I don't remember that. Did you buy me dinner first?
 
This is amazing stuff. You people on here like Fathead Joe and the Idiot Bear whack each other off about how not to pay employees $30K per year? Are you that cheap, or do you just have failing businesses, or what?

Speaking of fat heads.
The fact is the raise in minimum wage according to the study has had a detrimental effect of those low wage earners to the tune 0f $125.00 per month.
The article was posted to inform those that aren't near as intelligent as you obviously are.
If you have a problem with facts take them up with the University Of Washington, as they are the authors of the study.
Or what indeed?
 
We are talking about how much to pay an employee who works for you. Do you understand that? Do you have employees? What does free have to do with it?
The free lunch is the difference between what your accountant says you can pay an employee to stay in business and what the government mandates you pay regardless of what is good for your business and your employees.
 
We are talking about how much to pay an employee who works for you. Do you understand that? Do you have employees? What does free have to do with it?
I understand, but you haven't a clue. I have 16 employees, and they have been here different amounts of time. You are saying I should give the new guy a raise equal to someone that has been with me for a few years and so on up the pay scale?
Obamanomics does not work, where have you been the last 8 years and 10,000.000.000.000 bucks ago.
 
Economists with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California-Berkeley have found similar results in studies of the six other cities that have raised their minimum wages in the past decade, and in the 21 states with higher base pay than the federal minimum. Businesses, they found, absorbed the costs through lower job turnover, small price increases, and higher productivity.

It’s the taxpayers who ultimately pick up the tab for low wages, because the government subsidizes the working poor.

Obviously, there’s a limit to how high you can raise the minimum wage without harming the economy, but evidence suggests we’re nowhere close to that tipping point. The ratio between the United States’ minimum wage and its median wage has been slipping for years—it’s now far lower than in the rest of the developed world. Even after San Francisco increases its minimum wage to $15 next year, it will still amount to just 46 percent of the median wage, putting the city well within the normal historical range.

The bigger threat to the economy may come from not raising the minimum wage. Even Wall Street analysts agree that our ever-widening income inequality threatens to dampen economic growth. And according to a new study by the UC-Berkeley Labor Center, it’s the taxpayers who ultimately pick up the tab for low wages, because the federal government subsidizes the working poor through social-service programs to the tune of $153 billion a year.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/economic-collapse-prediction-minimum-wage-raise/
 
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