This Country is SoOo F***** Up

About a month ago I heard on the news another example of the injustice that exists in this country. Here's an article that talks about it. Basically, Congress voted a pay raise for themselves for the beginning of next year. You know how much of a raise? $3,100. So, do you know how much that makes their annual salaries? $165,200. They cited the raise was in order to meet the raising cost of living. Now, what in the hell kinda mess is that? Are they saying they couldn't afford to live without that pay raise? There are people in and around the District who are makin' $30,000 and under. Don't you think THEY, if anybody, should get a pay raise in order to be able to afford to live? I seriously hate how hard life can be in this "great" nation. Richest country in the world and so many, as this Spanish lady who attended my shower was saying: in this country you "trabajas para vivir" and how in Spain you "vives para trabajar". That is, here, you work in order to live; there, you live to work.

On the AFL-CIO website I learned that the Federal minimum wage, which is $5.15/hour, hasn't changed since September 1997. They've tried to pass a bill in Congress to up the low wage, but "the Bush administration and Republican leaders repeatedly have blocked congressional attempts to raise the federal minimum wage. On March 7, 2005, a bill to boost the wage to $7.25 an hour over two years was defeated in the U.S. Senate." (See Minimum Wage)

Some other stats on the website regarding the working class are:

• If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation since 1968 when it was a $1.60 an hour, it would be $7.55 an hour in 2005.
• Since August 2001, worker productivity in the United States grew by 4.1 percent, while worker compensation grew only 1.5 percent—meaning workers received one-third of the benefits of increased efficiency. In the previous seven business cycles, workers gained about 75 percent of those benefits.
• A net 24,000 private-sector jobs have been lost since President George W. Bush took office.
• Workers who have job-based health care coverage are paying more, as employers are passing on health care cost increases.

Don't ya just love this country?! Hmph.

Hey, off topic, guess what I just heard on the news? Good ole Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were once Boy Scouts. No kidding?