Welcome to your Friday open thread. It’s another hot, humid day but TGIF! I’m ready for the weekend, how about you?
I don’t think we’ve discussed Tom Emmer, the GOP candidate for governor. Emmer got himself in some hot water last week by proposing that Minnesota reduce the minimum wage for waiters to $2.16/hr, since waiters were making $100,000/yr with tips. He’s been doing damage control ever since.
Emmer last week voiced his support for a policy known as a “tip credit,” which is used in 43 states but not in Minnesota, which allows employers to pay a lower minimum wage to waiters — as low as $2.13 per hour, depending on the implementation, by crediting their tips towards the $7.25 federal requirement. Emmer especially got himself in trouble when he said: “With the tips that they get to take home, there are some that are earning over $100,000 a year — more than the very people that are providing the jobs and investing not only their life savings but their family’s future. Something has to be done about that.”
Since then his damage control efforts have included waiting tables, and insisting that he does not want to cut wages at all, but would only institute a tip credit as part of a package that would raise the overall minimum wage while keeping tipped employees at the current level. (On the other hand, he also opposes raising the minimum wage, and in 2005 he introduced a proposal to abolish it entirely, calling it a “true form of socialism.”) His damage control has also included this town hall event — which like all the other attempts, he might have been better off never doing at all.
At a town hall meeting, someone dumped 2,000 pennies on the table in front of Emmer, a tip.
Louisiana Senator David Vitter is really on the ropes now. Vitter now has a primary challenger and a slowly building scandal with his girlfriend-abusing staffer. He was also caught on tape supporting birthers:
“I know all the information I’ve been able to get my hands on through the media. But obviously with the mainstream media as a filter, that’s not a whole lot. I personally don’t have standing to bring litigation in court. But I support conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court. I think that is the valid and most possibly effective grounds to do it. Let me also say this. I think quite frankly, and I’ll be blunt, I think if we focus on that issue and let our eye off the ball in terms of this fall’s election, in terms of ongoing policy votes, week in, week out in the Congress, I think that’s a big mistake. I think we need (applause) — I think first and foremost, I’m not dismissing any of this. I think first and foremost, we need to fight the Obama agenda at the ballot box, starting this fall, we can (inaudible, due to applause) a new and very different Congress.”
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) is strongly denying that he is a birther, after he was recorded on video approving of birther lawsuits at a Tea Party event this past weekend. And furthermore, he’s denying that he ever praised the lawsuits, either — and blasting the “liberal thought police” for opposing people’s right to bring them.
“This attack is ridiculous,” Vitter said in statement, Politico reports. “I’m not a birther, and I even said the issue is distracting. But I think people should have appropriate access to the courts. Is even that statement unacceptable now to the liberal thought police?”
Liar, liar, diapers on fire.