Media

As we contemplate the possibly bright future of pre-K laid out in Obama’s state of the union address this year, in which the feds work together “with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America,” along comes a sobering glimpse of what public preschool looks like now. It’s not quite as rosy.

Lucila Ramirez, 55, has been cleaning the bathrooms and tables at Washington, D.C.’s Union Station for 21 years. Despite her long record of service, Ramirez says she makes only $8.75 per hour, and receives no benefits or sick days.

“I work in a federal building doing work on behalf of the government and if I was paid a living wage, I wouldn’t have to go looking for a second job in order to support my family,” Ramirez, 55, told The Huffington Post in Spanish via an interpreter.

The vacuous, cheerful expression of the Walmart smiley face has long been associated with the paradoxically dark reality of low-wage work. With the recent fast-food worker walkouts in New York, the golden arches may go down, too, in the annals of class-war symbology.

Murphy suggested two ways out of this trap. One is crowd-sourced fundraising, which is already occurring over the Internet. Murphy stated that his Senate campaign raised $4 million of its $10 million total from donors giving online. That meant he did not have to call wealthy donors to raise 40 percent of his campaign haul.

From The Washington Post, “Federal taxpayers employ more low-wage workers than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined, a new study calculates. The report from the consulting firm Demos, set to be released Wednesday, estimates that taxpayer dollars fund nearly 2 million private-sector jobs that pay $24,000 a year — about $12 an hour — or less.”

Here's an obvious point that often gets forgotten: Who you know makes a big difference in getting a job, and white people are far more likely to have social contacts that lead to employment. 

Here's a new one: Two Republican state legislators in Tennessee are pushing legislation which would penalize parents whose children have less than satisfactory grades by reducing their government assistance up to 30%.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor really cares about working families. He favors “common sense legislation to protect workers and make life work for more people” and wants to “help working parents who are juggling responsibilities at home and on the job.”