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THE number of teenagers working summer jobs has dropped through the years, for a variety of reasons. This trend seems sure to accelerate if Democrats in Congress ever succeed in implementing a $15 minimum wage.

An analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics says one reason for the decrease in teen workers is that more of them are studying instead. In July 2016, more than two in five 16- to 19-year-olds were enrolled in school four times as many as were enrolled in 1985, Bloomberg reported recently.

Teens aren't going to summer school just because they failed a class and need to catch up, reporter Ben Steverman wrote. They're also enrolling in enrichment courses and taking courses for college credit.

There are other theories as to why fewer young people are spending their summers on a job somewhere. One is that older Americans are remaining on their jobs at a higher rate than in years past. Another is that parents are encouraging their children to pad their college resumes by volunteering or enrolling for extracurricular activities instead of working. Another is that more immigrants are competing with teens for entry-level jobs.

These jobs pay a minimum of $7.25, the federal minimum wage, although a majority of states have approved a higher minimum wage. Liberal states lead the way in paying more the minimum wage is $11 an hour in Washington and Massachusetts, for example. California's is $10 ($10.50 for companies with 26 or more employees), Connecticut's is $10.10.

Some places have sought to go even higher, with detrimental effects on smaller businesses in particular. Some governors and city councils have rejected similar efforts, citing concerns about their impact.

Yet liberals in Congress wish to make a $15 minimum the law of the land. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Patty Murray, D-Wash, last month introduced the Raise the Wage Act of 2017, backed by several Democratic colleagues. The House version is sponsored by Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Bobby Scott, D-Va.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a tweet that this latest effort is about dignity in the workplace & making sure American workers can provide for their families. This has long been the go-to argument for proponents of such efforts. But the minimum wage isn't intended to serve in that capacity.

Instead, it's intended as a starting point. Writing in 2013 at U.S. News and World Report, Democratic strategist Penny Lee noted that 50 percent of McDonald's franchise owners were once hourly wage employees, and that Walmart promotes more than 160,000 employees a year. These are all individuals who are able to gain a higher wage and better standard of living through experience and on-the-job training, gaining the kind of skill sets needed to live out the American dream, she wrote.

Lee added that the opportunity for upward mobility seemed to be missing from the debate over hourly wages. When defining what amounts to a fair wage, she wrote, shouldn't the fair question be what corresponds to the market value of what the worker produces?

The answer was yes then and it's yes now.

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Progressives unrelenting in their push for $15 federal minimum ... - NewsOK.com

Republican legislative leaders announced last night that they have agreed to a final agreement on a new state budget that would commence July 1. As usual, neither Governor Cooper nor Democratic members of the legislature were invited to participate in the negotiations, though ,of, course, the Governor can veto the bill. Not surprisingly, given the disastrous track record of the past six years, the proposal comes up woefully short.

Fiscal policy expert Alexandra Sirota of the N.C. Budget and Tax Center put it this way last night:

The final budget that state lawmakers will vote on in the coming days reflects missed opportunities for North Carolina. By pursuing more tax cuts, even as states like Kansas have reversed course and abandoned their own failed tax-cut experiment, leaders of the NC General Assembly have chosen to stay the course and continue to do less for more North Carolinians.

North Carolinas leaders should put forward a budget that truly reflects the priorities of our growing state, including healthy and safe communities, quality educational opportunities and skills training, thriving communities, and broadly shared economic prosperity. They should make a sustained commitment to rebuilding Eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Matthew rather than offering just a fraction of what is needed. Instead, lawmakers have chosen to give even more benefits to the wealthy and profitable corporations. As state leaders continue to dig their heels in on their failed tax cut experiment, it is time for leaders across the state to emerge and demonstrate the harm of another budget that is not worthy of North Carolinians.

And this is from the good folks at Progress NC:

Once again, Republican lawmakers would rather give tax handouts to big corporations and millionaires instead of investing in North Carolinas future, said Gerrick Brenner, executive director of Progress NC Action. This budget provides absolutely no plan to raise teacher salaries to the national average, and short-changes rural communities across the state compared to Gov. Coopers budget. Working families deserve better.

And this is from Governor Cooper himself:

While we wait for details, the budget outlined by legislative leaders continues to shortchange education, economic development, and middle class families in favor of more tax giveaways that help the wealthy and large corporations. Those are the wrong priorities.

Poisoned water and poisonous healthcare policy were featured ...

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Progressives: GOP Budget deal represents another missed opportunity - The Progressive Pulse

Democratic Party leaders are up to their old tricks. They have lost at every level of government across the country because they fail to give voters reasons to support them.

This seemingly inexplicable behavior is quite deliberate. Giving the people what they want endangers their relations with wealthy individuals, corporations and big banks. Because they can no longer fool all of the people all of the time, they have returned to a more open and obvious move to the right.

Cast aside They are already planning to throw Black voters and political progressives under the bus. The people who have been relied upon to give them the margin of victory are cast aside in favor of people who either wont vote for them at all or who will pull the party to the right.

Democrats cry out that Trump voters arent all racists and will still vote for Democrats. So says Senator Al Franken among others. He recommends, You have to go and talk to them. And you have to listen. Bernie Sanders joins in and says that Trump voters arent sexist, racist, homophobes even though many of them fall into those categories by their own admission.

Words like these ought to set off alarm bells. While even Sanders talks about winning over people who are quite happy with their political choices, they say little or nothing about meeting the needs of Democrats who have left the party in frustration.

Nothing in return Black Americas rewards for putting Bill Clinton in the White House were the crime bill and the end of public assistance as a right. Black people got nothing for their Clinton love except higher poverty rates and prisons bursting at the seams.

Black voters have been slowly neutered over time and are still recovering from the Obama lovefest.

There isnt even a peep about being so openly taken for granted. In years past, even the most callow Black politician would manage to mutter some complaint about being ignored and disrespected.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor her $1 billion team of campaign consultants knew that she was in danger of losing several key states that traditionally voted Democratic in presidential elections. A mere 80,000 votes would have given her an Electoral College victory.

Own Hillarys defeat The Democrats wont own that this debacle is of their making, a result of making vapid appeals to people who wanted to see real change. Instead, they declare that making overt appeals to Trump voters is a new political goal.

Bill Clinton won the nomination and presidency by making the case for his conservatism. Barack Obama was even more slippery than Slick Willie. He raised more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, while simultaneously marketing himself as a progressive.

So great is Democratic trauma regarding the Trump victory that they may successfully use these or new ruses to pull off another presidential win.

But the Democratic rank and file always end up being the losers, whether their party wins or doesnt. The banks always get a bailout and so does the military-industrial complex. Even Obamacare was a Republican plan promoted by right-wing thank tanks. Election outcomes never give banksters, defense contractors or Big Pharma cause for alarm.

Wont go away Former presidents usually disappear from view and write their memoirs. But Obama is openly making election endorsements in France and Germany, and hanging out with royalty in the United Kingdom. His activities are not accidental, they are an extension of what the Democrats do at home. The ruling classes need to be mollified and that apparently is a permanent job for Mr. Hope and Change.

The Democratic Party is proving itself to be treacherous yet again. There must be a movement away from them, a debate about how to achieve true political success. If not, there will be more repeats of the past with a party emerging victorious while its voters remain the losers.

Margaret Kimberleys column appears weekly in BlackAgendaReport.com. Contact her at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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Blacks, progressives under the Democrats' bus - Florida Courier

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Amid calls for accepting pro-life liberals, the Democratic Party faces a summer of soul-searching that will determine what room the party has, if any, for progressives who value unborn human life and set the table for the 2018 midterms.

Beginning shortly after President Trumps surprise victory, pro-life progressives began calling on the party to moderate its tone on social issues, in particular abortion. This spring, pro-choice progressives drew swords to demand ideological conformity on abortion, arguing that abortion is necessary so women can escape poverty. In response, Democratic leaders have at least stated publicly there was room in the party for pro-lifers.

Time will tell if Democrats in Congress will provide anything more than lip service to pro-lifers. But initial results are not promising, as anything that hints of a pro-life perspective is labeled as anti-choice and vilified.

Consider my colleague, Lori Szala, who recently wrote about her experience growing up in a working-class, single-parent family and finding herself pregnant in high school. Szala scheduled an abortion, but cancelled the appointment at the last minute. Despite leaving college, she ultimately succeeded without an abortion, and holds that society should engage in the difficult but critical task of supporting women like her rather than leaving them to feel they must abort.

Despite its moderate tone and focus on the needs of serving women in crisis, Szalas piece generated outrage on the political Left. Her crime? She works for Human Coalition, a pro-life organization. The New York Observer complains the organization is far from impartial when it comes to abortion. Media Matters dismisses Szalas arguments as denouncing abortion access and Human Coalitions work as misleading people.

One of the most substantive responses, and representative of the prevailing critique of pro-life work, comes from the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU agrees that support should exist for women who want to keep their children, but it dismissively states it would be easier to take her argument seriously if Ms. Szala didnt work for an organization whose mission is to outlaw abortion.

To belittle Szalas argument because she is pro-life completely misses the point. Cataloging a parade of horribles that might result from an unplanned pregnancy, the ACLU fails to consider the unborn child who will be aborted. Central to the ACLUs position is the belief that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to end the life of her preborn child if thats what she wants to do.

This is a position for which there can be no common political ground, because a worldview that values the life of the unborn cannot subordinate that childs right to life to the mothers economic interest, no matter how important. The argument treats other humans distinct, living persons, just like us as an economic commodity whose life depends on a cost-benefit analysis. Many Americans agree that childrens lives cannot and should not be measured in dollars and cents though perhaps not the ACLU.

The argument also places an unreasonable and unjustified degree of hope in abortion as a benefit to humanity. At Human Coalition, where we work with hundreds of abortion-seeking women every month, we find that nearly four out of five of the clients we have seen this year state they would prefer to keep their children if their circumstances would allow it. But abortion clinics make no pretense of addressing these underlying issues.

The ACLUs argument reinforces the false narrative that a woman facing a crisis pregnancy must choose between poverty and childbearing. Even beyond choosing adoption, economic challenges amplified by pregnancy can be mitigated albeit with great effort. Conversely, every abortion takes a life that will never return.

It is unsurprising that efforts like Human Coalitions, to provide women with material help and the practical ability to choose life, are met with scorn by the pro-abortion political class. The abortion movement has to trivialize abortion and ensure that abortion is both legal and common in its attempt to silence opposition to the practice.

This mindset is fundamentally at odds with helping women find solutions other than abortion. Because of the abortion lobbys intimate ties with the Democratic Party, progressive support for life-affirming policies is virtually nonexistent. That is why Hillary Clinton notably dropped rare from her slogan that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Acknowledging that abortion should be rare admits that abortion is not a good thing and raises unsettling questions that suggest progressive politicians should try to reduce abortion.

The tragic irony of the abortion movement is that free abortion access facilitates rather than limits systemic injustice. By proposing a quick and cheap solution to unplanned pregnancy, abortion implicitly pressures women to bear the entire burden themselves and allows partners, families, and communities to sidestep their obligations to these mothers.

The data counterintuitively suggest abortion may limit economic mobility. It has long been noted that the rise in abortion produced a rise in out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families. The changing mores surrounding childbirth and marriage mean that women who refuse to abort are left to go it alone. But as University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox explains, children are more likely to escape poverty if they live with two married parents, and theyre even more likely to escape poverty if they live in a community with a higher percentage of married parents.

How to best help women with unplanned pregnancies overcome the economic challenges they face is a complex issue with no easy answers. Because unborn children are innately valuable, pro-lifers cannot overlook the need to rescue children. But programs explicitly designed to help women avoid abortions they do not want is an effort on which progressives and conservatives can and should find some common ground. Abortion is usually the last resort of women who believe that they have no choice. We must work together to give them better options.

Colin LeCroy is associate general counsel at Human Coalition, one of the nations largest pro-life nonprofits, which utilizes a metrics-focused, technology-driven method to serve families and save children from abortion.

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Pro-life progressives? Why not | The American Conservative - The American Conservative