EPI has released a study that sheds some light on the right’s “worry” that minimum wage hikes would have an overall negative impact due to reduced hiring and so on. EPI looked at the data for the states that raised the minimum wage on their own, given the federal government’s reluctance to do so, and here is what they found (summarised here, follow link for the detailed analysis):

State minimum wages: A policy that works

Have these state actions had any effect? Are wages higher than they would have otherwise been, i.e., are these higher minimums reaching their intended beneficiaries? Is employment worse than it would have otherwise been? The evidence presented here suggests that the answers are, respectively, yes, yes, and no.

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I have heard and read about the Japanese internment during WW2, but this I had not previously known:

BBC | US Mexicans haunted by repatriation

[…]

As the depression deepened, state and local governments passed laws restricting employment to native-born or naturalised citizens.

The Federal Government required all firms supplying it with goods and services to hire only US citizens.

And private companies fell in line with the prevailing anti-Mexican feeling and sacked their workers.

Francisco Balderrama, professor at California State University and co-author of Decade of Betrayal, estimates that somewhere in the region of a million people of Mexican origin were driven out of the United States during the 1930s.

Nearly two thirds of those who left were US citizens.

[…]

Around 50,000 people were formally deported in the 1930s.

[…]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to approve Senate bills that would require schools to include the repatriation in the curriculum, and to offer victims compensation.

Time to start deporting Austrians? ;-)

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This is a good one! Utah wants additional Congressional representation due to its growing population and the GOP is trying to hasten the addition of the seat by promising representation for the people of Washington D.C who have no representation in Congress. But some no likey the idea of DC residents getting representation. Why you ask?

Utah, Using Olive Branch, Tries to Add Seat in House - New York Times

[…]

One Republican who voted no, Representative Julie Fisher, noted the state’s rapid population growth and expectations for the next census.

“We will get our seat anyway in 2010,” Ms. Fisher said, “without selling short our nation’s most revered document.”

There you have it. The idea of democracy and representation (no taxation without representation) would be, you know, selling the constitution short.

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Andy Newman, writing in the New York Times, takes a snarky little shot at Castro with this bit about “whichever Castro brother is running the ocuntry”:

If Castro Had a Talk Show, It Might Sound a Bit Like This - New York Times

Come-hither advertisements from Cuba’s state travel agency. Reportage from last weekend’s Fidel Castro birthday parade in Havana, complete with an admiring assessment of Soviet-era tanks. Excerpts from speeches by whichever Castro brother is running the country.

Perhaps he has not noticed that our very own banana republic is ruled by an equal (make that less qualified) dynasty, which includes the outgoing governor of the very Miami he writes from.

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