Around the tubes: Sick Pay, Oil, Democratic Values

I’d love to see this happen, but given how ardently our Congress supports business interests at the expense of individual Americans, I doubt it will make it out of committee.

Only 25 percent of low-wage workers have paid sick leave, which makes it a financial hardship for them to get sick and miss work. Those who do stay home to heal or to tend to a family member’s illness fear that they could lose their jobs if they miss too many days.

At a briefing Tuesday morning, Terrell McSweeny, domestic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, called the proposal “an issue of middle-class economic security” for struggling families.

Business groups such as the National Federation of Independent Business and the Employment Policies Institute oppose the measure. They say a government mandate on sick leave — especially during the recession — would hurt the very people it’s intended to help because employers would offset the cost of the benefit by cutting positions and workers’ hours.

And if there wasn’t a recession, they’d oppose it too.  This standard reply is just so much bullshit. So the employers are saying that they count on employees to call in sick so that they don’t have to pay them?  I’ve done budgets, and I’ve never seen unpaid sick time calculated into the bottom line. Labor budgets are calculated on all employees being at work every shift they are scheduled to work. Paying them to stay home when they are sick won’t change the bottom line unless they have to pay someone to cover for them. In most cases, when someone is out sick, co-workers just take up the slack, so I’m thinking that this isn’t the great expense our business “leaders” make it out to be.

Yeah, but has it changed Obama’s?

Oil Slick Changes Fla. Gov’s Mind on Drilling

Crist, who opposed drilling off Florida’s coast until softening his stance over the past two years, said there is no question now that lawmakers should give up on the idea this year and in coming years. He has said previously he would support drilling if it was far enough from shore, safe enough and clean enough. He said the spill is proof that’s not possible.

Stan Brock is doing it again.

His first L.A. clinic last year – his largest ever — served 6,334 patients. He expects 2,000 more this year.

“We’ve got middle class people here, we have a lot of working poor here,” said Dr. Natalie Nevins.

People rocked by recession. Mandatory health care reform doesn’t kick in for four years.

“So meanwhile, do we tell those patients to wait?” Nevins asked. “We can’t.”

Even with health reform, the most affordable plan won’t cover adult vision or dental care.

Like Democrats elsewhere and nationally, Democrats in South Carolina don’t get it. If the leaders don’t know what their party is supposed to stand for, then others will continue to “define” them, and all the radio time in the world isn’t going to change that. And this makes my hair stand on end:

“You’ve got a lot of good people who would make excellent public servants but they don’t believe they can win as a Democrat in South Carolina,” said Cobb-Hunter, one of the House’s most powerful Democrats. “Because Democrats are perceived as the party of color.”

Too many working-class whites wrongly view Democrats as the exclusive party of African-Americans and liberals, she said.

The seeds, planted decades ago with the Southern Strategy, are still bearing fruit, she said.

“It was an organized, planned Republican effort that the Democrat Party was not a party that understood or shared white people’s values,” Cobb-Hunter said of the GOP strategy.

As opposed to non-white people’s values?  And holy shit, when your “most powerful” Democrat doesn’t even know the correct terminology, the Democratic Party has a huge problem.

“And what we Democrats did for all of those decades is allow the Republican Party to continue to sell that line and define us – to call us tax-and-spend liberals, to say we had no family values, to define us as the party of color.“

Some Democrats are working to create an S.C. Democratic identity, including Phil Noble, head of the S.C. New Democrats.

He recently sent out 100,000 e-mails to Democrats across the state, asking them to list their top five priorities for the party. “The party needs to say to voters, ‘Here’s what we believe in, one, two, three, four, five,’” Noble said.

Banging head against wall…dude…there is a national party platform.