Pigs at the Trough

Time to think of guillotines?

Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday accepted a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
Associated PressHouse says yes to $3,300 pay raiseJune 14, 2006
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A bid to boost the U.S. minimum wage failed Tuesday as Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed back an effort by Democrats to force a vote on the measure.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said last week that he wanted to hold off on debating minimum wage legislation until possibly after the November elections. House Majority Leader John Boehner also said he probably wouldn't allow the legislation to reach the House floor this week.
Bloomberg NewsBid to boost minimum wage suffers setbackJune 20, 2006

I have to admit, even I didn't think the political pimps in control of our national whorehouse would have the gall to sneak through a pay raise for themselves, then turn around a week later and kill the first increase in the
minimum wage in almost ten years. Even I wouldn't have imagined they would think
they could get away with it. Not in an election year. I guess it's their way of
showing Tom DeLay they don't need him around to act like a pen full of swine with a taste for eating their own feces. The Bug Man may be gone, but his pestilence remains. But what it really indicates, I think, is the complete confidence the GOP majority now places in the chronic amnesia of the American voter -- and the willingness of the corporate media complex (particularly its broadcast arm) to avoid doing or saying anything that would jog the patient's memory, at least when doing so might directly damage the interests of a powerful business constituency.

From Billman