Now Playing: One Editor' View of the Rossi Candidacy Part III
Topic: Opinion
Rossi and the Working Family
Let's start with Rossi wanting to lower or roll back the state minimum wage.
He explained why:
"Minimum wage was not meant to be a family wage; it's meant to be an entry level wage."
That's a curious statement.
Who profits most by an entry level wage?
We know that cheap labor is the basis upon which Wal-Mart has a price advantage in its competition with local businesses in communities all over. Aberdeen, Washington has had a seriously slowed down economy for years ... except at the Wal-Mart store.
Wal-Mart doesn't put Real Estate Agents out of business however. In fact, a Real Estate Developer would be interested in big-box stores.
Can Mr. Rossi can tell me what percentage of families are surviving on that minimum wage he thinks is too high? What does he consider the non-entry-level wage upon which families should be able to make do?
I don't think he cares about that. He just needs a Republican talking point and the level of minimum wage is always a talkable point.
Do you remember how Mr. Bush, the head of Dino Rossi's Republican party who - guided by the likes of Cheney and Rove - tried to capitalize on unemployed victims of Hurricane Katrina by imposing a "prevailing wage" and suspending the minimum wage on the Gulf Coast?
That is the Rossi thought in this state. He needs this current economic disaster to sell his snake oil the same way Bush used Katrina to sell the same kind of nonsense.
I also understand that Rossi says the minimum wage in Washington is part of an overall "unfriendly business" environment in Washington, a state environment that causes employers to flee or not come here in the first place.
I used Google to learn that the number of other states who have raised the minimum wage with cost of living increments like what was done by our own legislature is now up into double digits.
I then ask Mr. Rossi to tell my why more, not less, states are doing it. Is it that his particular talking point has failed many times elsewhere?
Google "Rossi minimum wage" and read what Association of Washington Businesses president Don Brunell said about the state minimum wage:
"AWB is no longer fighting the minimum-wage law, which is adjusted every year in line with the consumer price index.You don't see us screaming out loud about this," said Don Brunell, president of the trade group, which represents 6,300 members.
"... Washington's robust economy, which added nearly 90,000 jobs last year, is proof that even with the country's highest minimum wage, "this is a great place to do business,."
Dino Rossi does not have a valid minimum wage argument.
How about that Wall Street?
How about those Republican Economic Geniuses who were paid by those corporate Lobbyists all those years?
How about that deregulated free-market banking and loan system?
There's what used to be WAMU ...
In Arlington 800 employees lost their job last week.
In my own county, this week a local wood products company laid off their entire production staff.
Is that what we want, someone trying to make hay out of our own suffering by blaming it on a governor who - like the rest of us - has to react after the fact and exerts little or no impact on the national Republican-destroyed economy?
Our kitchen table budgets are definitely not written by comfortable real-estate agents in King County. However, if we put the Real Estate guy in charge, our budgets will get worse very quickly.
Think that running a real estate agency is representative of the small business environment where many hourly wage citizens are employed?
Think again. A real estate agent manages a budget based primarily on sales, commissions, facilities, supplies and clerical expenses. The most vulnerable employees in any real estate agency are hourly or salaried clerical staff at the bottom of the agency earning scale.
Commission-earners only lose their jobs if they cannot sell - or if the economy goes to hell and leaves not much to sell because Republicans took us all to the landfill.
On the other hand, small businesses that employ a staff predominantly paid an hourly rate are much more representative of the type of business where the size of the minimum wage is critical.
For Rossi to imply that his small business experience is greater and wiser than that of the local mom and pop cannery, the bowling alley, the restaurant or independent seafood processor is laughable.
Both Dino Rossi and Chris Gregoire are asking for my vote. I don't live in Kansas and I'm not about to vote according to party affiliation nor philosophical bent.
I'm going to vote my health, well being ... and my wallet. I'm giving my vote to the sitting incumbent who has earned it and demonstrated her ability.
In every debate Rossi has responded to questions about health care with some sort of thin gruel about free-market competition and allowing more insurance companies entry into Washington State.
That means Rossi constantly suggests that market competition in and of itself will drive health care premium costs down to the kitchen budget level.
That's a blatant con ... and an out and out bamboozle from someone who not only thinks we are stupid but that he can sneak one by us.
I'm voting what I think, not what Dino thinks. I'm sixty two and more than ready and willing to retire. I can't WAIT to retire - but in this current economic circumstance I flat out can't do it.
I can't retire while Mr. Rossi's free-market corporate capitalism remains part of America's health care package. I can't do it while too many incompetents act as if good health is a marketable commodity.
Bringing more insurance companies into Washington State or letting me shop insurance companies in other states is not going to work for me. If I retire right now, my monthly health care premium will be $900 and I have that in writing.
If Mr. Rossi is suggesting that more access to health care insurers will lower that monthly rate by even 50% isn't that still like spitting on a bonfire?
The resulting monthly cost would still be too much; the equivalent of paying an additional half my mortgage every 30 days.
Purchasing such a market-valued commodity would still result in my making the equivalent of a car payment on a vehicle I can not afford and still not being able to drive - unless I get catastrophically sick when I might not be able to drive at all.
The average state worker monthly retirement after twenty years is less than $2000. If married - in order to unsure that your spouse will continue getting your pension if she outlives you - that amount is reduced by at least 25%.
Therefore, as currently constituted, a retirement of $1500 will be reduced by $900 health care premium to $600 per month.
So for 20 years work, a retiree takes home approximately $600 per month plus medical.
Now isn't that just deregulated free-market delectable?
To put it in perspective, a Washington State TANF recipient with one child and who has shelter expense obligations receives $453 in monthly cash plus medical coverage.
I certainly am not declaring myself more worthy of a comfortable living than a single parent with one child.
But as a tax payer I am saying that a retiree who has worked all the way to retirement ought to have a right to expect more than an inflexible and irrational political party's lies about free-market treatment of health care as the only choice.
What's with these Republicans who are as tied to corporate capitalism as Ahab was to Moby Dick?
The only citizens who might justifiably vote for Rossi are those upper income Republicans or self-styled conservatives who can afford to be self-styled conservatives. Those are the folks who can talk the conservative talk as if they had intellectual depth and vote their philosophy and or social conservatism moral beliefs because they have much less skin in the game.
Republicans of lesser income who self-style themselves as conservatives or vote with Republicans because they have a moral-values social conservatism WILL vote against their own self interest if they vote for Mr. Rossi.
Among the rest of us - Seniors, single parents, young couples with children, middle-income and low-income voters, students - any tax-payer, consumer, and civic-minded voter will prove that Rossi isn't as smart as he assumes himself to be.
We will tell the former budget writer that we are not moving to Kansas.
