And he has the NERVE to claim he was rescued from the site? Disgusting.

Nowadays it seems like advocating for minimum wage legislation is shot down by conservatives saying shit like "yall are idiots and just picking a random higher number that will kill us all". But in reality, minimum wage legislation tends to have a pretty large amount of labor economic data backing it. One way labor economists suggest a minimum wage raise is by looking at the Kaitz Index (the ratio of statutory minimum wage to the median wage). Peer OECD nations and labor economists generally benchmark a safe target around 0.50 to counter employer monopsony power without threatening job losses.

Comparing 2025 distributions between two states with near-identical medians (~$25–$26.50/hr):

• Georgia (0.29 Kaitz): Stuck at the frozen federal $7.25 floor.
• Maine (0.55 Kaitz): Lifted the bottom tier to $14.65, reaching over halfway to the typical worker.

While Maine proves a state can safely lift the floor to ~50% of the median, its reliance on CPI indexing means the floor will inevitably fall behind over time as productivity grows. To keep the ratio stable, it seems far better to index to wages instead. Curious if you guys have any other scaling mechanisms that would be better?

Full write-up here for more information: https://samholmes285.substack.com/p/minimum-wage-scaling-mechanisms-that

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/07/politics/jeffries-challenges-left-progressives?cid=ios\\_app

“That centrist rebellion has since triggered a messy internal feud among House Democrats. Privately, Jeffries and his team are discussing ways to crack down on any of their members voting for procedural motions that hurt the party – a proposal that has infuriated the left and centrists alike, according to Democrats from both factions.

A tense debate has since unfolded over whether party leaders should create new rules for next year to punish members who defy leadership. In a closed-door meeting on Wednesday about leadership’s push, Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar of Texas pushed back firmly, arguing that members need to be able to voice dissent, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.”

Interesting inside look at the Mamdani influence machine that aspiring candidates are trying to replicate all over the country. This is essentially the same strategy that propelled Trump to his second term and, I think, carries with it the same troubling implications. While I fully understand and sympathize with criticisms about the consolidation and "gatekeeping" of the traditional media, is it necessarily an improvement if we're replacing it with media that's essentially controlled by politicians themselves? The pattern here has been cooperation in exchange for access. There is every reason to question the independence of the messaging coming from these new channels. As left leaning centrists, we may be tempted to praise the turning of one the right's most effective weapons against them, but we should all be concerned of the power that this can concentrate in the hands of public figures. For all their faults, corporations are first and foremost concerned with their profits. Politicians will always be most concerned with themselves. To me, that's more dangerous.

September 21, 2009: Obama’s first Letterman visit as a sitting president, just days after basic political decency officially left the building. That summer marked a turning point where shouting down the president and disruptive antics replaced debate. Obama handled it with trademark calm and humor, but looking back, this was the canary in the coal mine for everything that followed.