Monitor Radio: (1) Minimum Wage won everywhere. (2) Robt Gates' past.

[Pokey Anderson]

It's your world. Understand it!
The Monitor
www.TheMonitor.wordpress.com
November 12, 2006

Today's Guests:

-- Rev. Steve Copley on the elections and minimum wage initiatives
-- Robert Parry on the Robert Gates nomination for Defense Secretary


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<> 6:00 pm CST -- Headlines

<> ~ 6:15 pm CST -- Rev. Steve Copley on the minimum wage initiatives


Rev. Steve Copley is a member of the Let Justice Roll national steering committee. This is a nonpartisan national coalition of 70 groups working to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level. Minimum wage hikes won in every state they were on the ballot, winning by a resounding 76 percent in Missouri, 73 percent in Montana, 69 percent in Nevada, 66 percent in Arizona, 56 percent in Ohio and 53 percent in Colorado (as of 11-9-06).

--Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, bringing their pay to $165,200, while giving none to minimum wage workers who make just $10,712 a year.
--It takes nearly two workers earning the federal minimum wage to make what one worker made four decades ago.
--Between 1968 and 2005, worker productivity rose 111 percent, but the average hourly wage fell 5 percent, adjusted for inflation—and the minimum wage fell 43 percent. Rising productivity of workers is not reflected in their pay.
-- Almost 2 million people make the minimum wage or less, according to the Labor Department.
-- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the real buying power of $10,700, about what a full-time minimum-wage worker makes in a year, before taxes -- is the lowest in half a century.

Rev. Copley served as chair of the successful Give Arkansas a Raise Now campaign.

SIGNING OF ARKANSAS LEGISLATION TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE



Rev. Copley is President of the Arkansas Interfaith Conference, and Co-Chair of the Arkansas Conference United Methodist Church Hunger Task Force. He is a past Deputy Chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party and currently a member of the State Committee of the Arkansas Democratic Party. He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and is currently serving as Senior Pastor of the North Little Rock First United Methodist Church, a congregation of 2000 members. He has a B.A. from the University of Central Arkansas; an M.Div. from Southern Methodist University; and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock School of Law.

WEBSITE:
http://www.letjusticeroll.org

ARTICLE:
"This Time, Ballot Issues Could Rally Liberal Base;
Wage Initiatives Seen As Favoring Democrats"
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and David S. Broder
Washington Post
October 28, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701634_pf.html

<> ~ 6:40 pm CST -- Robert Parry on the nomination of Robert Gates to be Defense Secretary



Robert Parry will look at the departure of Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush's nomination of Robert Gates to replace him as Defense Secretary.

He has joined us at The Monitor before. Parry is a 27-year veteran of Washington journalism. He left mainstream journalism to start his own news service, Consortium News.

Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. His 1999 book is Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

These articles included the first story about a then-obscure Marine officer named Oliver North; the first account of Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking; and the first stories detailing the White House cover-up of the Iran-contra scandal.

Parry has won numerous awards including the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984, the Pultizer Prize finalist for National Reporting in 1985 and was a Emmy finalist for Best Explanatory Work on Breaking News in 1994.

WEBSITE:
www.consortiumnews.com

CO-HOSTS: Mark Bebawi, and Pokey Anderson
ENGINEER: Byron Jackson

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ARCHIVES for the Monitor

November 5
-- information technology consultant Bruce O'Dell
-- attorney and former political survey research analyst Jonathan Simon, both on election fraud issues

October 29
-- Shannon Young re rebellion in Oaxaca
-- Harri Hursti and Ed Felten on stealing electronic elections -- musician Hank Woji

October 22
-- Dr. LES ROBERTS reports 650,000 casualties in Iraq
-- New York Times columnist FRANK RICH on spin

October 15 - The Monitor was preempted for KPFT board election material.

October 8
-- past board chair of Amnesty International CHIP PITTS
on the current state of human rights law
-- election activist RADY ANANDA of Ohio on the recent conference there, and the hand-counted paper ballot initiative

October 1
-- Law professor MARJORIE COHN on new legislation enabling torture, imprisonment without access to evidence or counsel
-- Journalist HEATHER WOKUSCH on the prospects for an October surprise. Also, what citizens can do.

September 24
-- Joe Galloway on the demise of the US Army; torture
-- Ed Felten of Princeton on their investigation of a Diebold DRE: Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine, http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting