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April 15, 2005
Leading Democrat comes to Blair
Terry Lierman, Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, spoke to and answered questions from approximately 60 students gathered to reflect on the Day of Silence on Wednesday, April 13. The discussion centered on the rights of homosexuals and bisexuals, issues about which the Day of Silence was meant to raise awareness.
Lierman applauded the audience's initiative and willingness to fight for change, saying, "About 5 percent of the people of the world make about 95 percent of the difference."
The main focus of Lierman's speech was to raise awareness of seven Maryland seats, currently held by Democrats, up for grabs in the 2006 mid-term elections. He distributed Democratic bumper stickers and encouraged students to vote and to get involved in the party. "It will all come down to people like you," he said.
Lierman also discussed the problems he sees with Governor Robert Ehrlich's budget, including tuition increases, freezing school construction funds subject to slot-machine legislation, selling public parks to private developers, and vetoing a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage. He encouraged both Democrats and Republicans to "talk issues" rather than labels and emphasized the Democratic Party's past and present fight for "fairness and opportunity." For the remainder of the time, Lierman answered questions on topics ranging from the War on Terrorism to the right to have sexual reassignment surgery.
Doug Duncan, Montgomery County Executive and gubernatorial candidate will be speaking at Blair on Wednesday, April 20, after school.
Lierman applauded the audience's initiative and willingness to fight for change, saying, "About 5 percent of the people of the world make about 95 percent of the difference."
The main focus of Lierman's speech was to raise awareness of seven Maryland seats, currently held by Democrats, up for grabs in the 2006 mid-term elections. He distributed Democratic bumper stickers and encouraged students to vote and to get involved in the party. "It will all come down to people like you," he said.
Lierman also discussed the problems he sees with Governor Robert Ehrlich's budget, including tuition increases, freezing school construction funds subject to slot-machine legislation, selling public parks to private developers, and vetoing a bill that would raise the state's minimum wage. He encouraged both Democrats and Republicans to "talk issues" rather than labels and emphasized the Democratic Party's past and present fight for "fairness and opportunity." For the remainder of the time, Lierman answered questions on topics ranging from the War on Terrorism to the right to have sexual reassignment surgery.
Doug Duncan, Montgomery County Executive and gubernatorial candidate will be speaking at Blair on Wednesday, April 20, after school.
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Bravo to Ehrlich for resisting the temptation to pass a good-looking bill that would hurt each new job-seeker in Maryland.
The minimum wage gives a person a wage of $10,712. Now when all of you are 45 years old, and have two kids, a car (expensive fuel)and a mortgage to pay, you keep that in mind.
Never believe that Social Justice is less important to or not conductive to prosperity because in reality, it really isn't.
HA!, no. Maryland's not a key battlefield for the Democratic Party and for good reason. If you want to make a difference, you'll have to move into those swing states and GASP blue states.
Minimum wage does not cause unemployment. Businesses in Maryland are extremely profitable, but only the business owners profiting. All workers deserve a LIVING WAGE. It is unfortunate that the Maryland General Assembly was unable to override Ehrlich's veto of the living wage bill passed last year, but at least this bill raises the minimum wage to $6.15.
EPI is a LIBERAL thinktank... of course thats what they would claim. I suggest doing some of your own research and looking at some more facts and numbers. Only citing EPI doesn't really support your case.
Sweeden has how many million less people than we do, and the Sweedes are a people that do not identify with the mantra "bigger is better?" Americans are a very wasteful nation, just admit it. Trying to compare them to a Scandinavian country that is not only different in size but ideals and morals is like comparing apples to oranges.
"Minimum wage does not cause unemployment. Businesses in Maryland are extremely profitable, but only the business owners profiting. All workers deserve a LIVING WAGE."
Tell that to the small business owners who cannot afford to pay higher wages on their already shrinking profit margins. Tell that to the farmers who can't afford to pay farm hands extra money because they're lucky if they can break even in a year without government subsidies. Raising mininum wages hurt small businesses, the core of the economy in America and Maryland. Go do yourself a favor, go ask ANY self-owned business what they think about raising the minimum wage to a living wage, odds are they'll tell you they'd go bankrupt before being able to pay a living wage to all their workers.
"... Costco (same volume ofof sales as Wal-Mart with a third of the employees)"
Where did you get this?
According to this article on CNN Money:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/03/news/economy/retail_sales/
In February 2005 Wal-Mart had $22.37 l_sales/
In February 2005 Wal-Mart had $22.37 billion in sales and Costco only had $3.78 billion in sales.
(Just for the record, I do agree that we should raise the minimum wage. I just don't think you should quote such obviously false statistics to prove it.)
Now, on the national scale, while I don't have any facts to back it up, I do believe that higher minimum wages would help to stimulate the economy, because you'd be putting more disposible income into the general population. Its the exact same theory George W. Bush used to support his tax cut - more disposible income = economic growth. (Its a problematic and oversimplified model of course)
As to America being a "Bigger is better" society...is that a good thing necessarily?