Obama extends overtime pay over GOP objection

Give credit where credit is due.   The Department of Labor’s new rule on overtime pay for salaried workers would benefit millions of American workers.  Such a rule would not have been proposed under a Republican administration.

But why is the rule being introduced now, and not years ago?  I suspect, although I cannot prove, that this is a response to the Bernie Sanders campaign.

A Republican administration would not have done what Obama just did.  Conservative Democrats are not advocates for working people, but they can be pressured into appeasing working people.  This is not true of conservative Republicans, who oppose high wages and pro-labor legislation.

If Hillary Clinton and other conservative Democrats are elected this fall, the lesson for labor unions, civil rights organizations and consumer advocates is to keep the pressure on to support their interests.

They should follow the example of the LGBT movement.  President Obama originally opposed gay marriage, but changed his position after LGBT supporters withheld campaign contributions.

This is the way to play politics.  Don’t support anybody unless they give you a positive reason to support them.

Politicians who depend on campaign donations from large corporations and rich people will never go against the vital interests of their donors, but they can be forced to strike a balance between donors and their core voters unless the voters passively support them.

LINKS

Obama Is Bringing Overtime Pay to Millions of Workers by Dave Jamieson for the Huffington Post.

The new overtime rule will directly benefit 12.5 million working people: Who they are and where they live by Ross Eisenbrey and Will Kimball for the Economic Policy Institute.

Republicans Move to Block New Overtime Rules by Connor D. Wolf for the Daily Caller.

The passing scene: Links & comments 11/22/14

Whatever Happened to Overtime Pay? by Nick Hanauer for Politico.

Nick Hanauer, the wealthy entrepreneur who wrote “The Pitchforks Are Coming … for Us Plutocrats,” wrote a new article about how the erosion of overtime pay is a reason so many middle-class people are poorer than their parents.

In 1975, the Department of Labor’s definition of eligibility for overtime pay—time-and-a-half for overtime— applied to 65 percent of the American work force.  Now it only covers 11 percent.

President Obama could fix it with a stroke of the pen, Hanauer wrote.  Either millions of workers would get more pay raise through overtime.  Or millions of jobs would be created as employers sought to avoid paying overtime.  But Hanauer said his inside information is that this isn’t going to happen.

Bank of North Dakota Outperforms Wall Street by Ellen Brown for Counterpunch.

The Bank of North Dakota, which is the only U.S. bank owned by a state government, outperforms the big Wall Street banks while promoting the state’s economic development and financing public works.  Ellen Brown said the reason for the bank’s success is that it doesn’t gamble with speculative investments and it plows its profits bank into the state rather than into big bonuses and executive salaries.

How the Government Steals from Citizens by A. Barton Hinckle for Reason magazine.

D.C. police plan for future seizures years in advance in city budget documents by Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Steven Rich for the Washington Post.

 A reminder: The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that “no person … shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”  This is a principle of justice.  It should not be regarded as an obstacle to get around.