By Steve Rhodes
1. Macy’s Shares Jump On Plan To Cut 2,500 Jobs.
Bruce Rauner must be a major stockholder.
2. Rauner Makes U-Turn On Minimum Wage: ‘I Was Flippant.’
A) Flippant Rauner Flops Wage Test.
B) Flippant Rauner Flip-Flops.
C) Rauner Flippant, Then Flops.
Or just come up with your own.
3. Rodman Apologizes For Comments, Says He Was Drinking.
Or was he just being flippant?
4. Flippant.
Disrespectfully casual or lighthearted, particularly when someone or something is serious. Usually people behave like this when they honestly couldn’t care less about a situation.
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Rauner: I’m never going to get the votes of 47% of the people on minimum wage anyway!
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Seeing reaction to Rauner’s proposal to lower minimum wage by a dollar, the three other GOP gubernatorial candidates pledge to only try to lower it by 50 cents.
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Actually, Kirk Dillard wants to abolish the minimum wage altogether – and he’s not even being flippant. That means the candidate who started out this race as the closest thing to a moderate is actually more craven than Rauner.
In the wake of the Rauner “gaffe,” Dillard said the “marketplace” should decide the minimum wage.
Also, from December:
“State Sen. Kirk Dillard says Gov. Pat Quinn’s call for an increase in the minimum wage is merely an “election-year stunt.”
But Dillard, who is running for governor in 2014, voted in favor of raising the minimum wage in 2006 when it was being pushed by now-imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Dillard, a Hinsdale Republican, was among eight GOP senators who said “yes” in November 2006 to a plan to bump the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour in 2007. It topped out at $8.25 an hour in 2010.
So Dillard just flip-flopped and he wasn’t even flippant about it.
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Also:
Two of Dillard’s opponents in the GOP race for governor – state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington and state Treasurer Dan Rutherford of Chenoa – voted “no” on the 2006 minimum wage hike.
Dillard’s running mate, state Rep. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, also voted “no” on the 2006 proposal.
So now, given his new position, Rauner is now the only GOP candidate actually supporting a higher minimum wage!
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Lesson: In American politics, you can get away with saying the minimum wage should be abolished because it seems like you are taking a principled stand on behalf of the market, but you can’t get away with saying the minimum wage should be lowered because then you simply want the lowest-paid employees to make even less money, and that sounds cruel, even though it’s less cruel than abolishing the minimum wage altogether. In other words, saying someone should only make $7.25 an hour instead of $8.25 an hour is somehow more horrible than saying employers should be free to pay whatever they want, even if that means $1.25 an hour.
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The federal minimum wage after five years of Barack Obama’s presidency is $7.25 an hour – a dollar less than it is here in Illinois. What if Rauner had said this: “I propose aligning Illinois’ minimum wage with that of America under Barack Obama!” He’d probably get some crossover votes.
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Considering inflation, today’s minimum wage is equal to $4.87 in constant 1996 dollars – just slightly higher than the adjusted 1955 minimum wage of $4.39.
Meanwhile, the stock market is at an all-time high – and it’s going higher thanks to Macy’s laying off thousands of workers!
5. “Rauner even quickly penned a Tribune op-ed that the paper obligingly rushed to print,” Rich Miller notes at Capitol Fax.
Here’s the funny thing: It’s behind a paywall.
6. Quinn Running Mate Paul Vallas Will Continue Working In Connecticut Until March Primary.
Why even then? Lieutenant governors should only be called into work if the governor dies or is indicted.
7. WorldStarHipHop Presents:
The Field: Chicago (A Profile Of The City’s Hottest Artists, The Violence That Surrounds Them And The Hope Music Brings To Their Lives).
Starring Lil Durk, Lil Reese, King Louie, Lil Bibby, Young Chop, Katie Got Bandz, Lil Mouse, Rhymefest & more.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Flippantish.
Posted on January 9, 2014