Cross posted at JoeHoeffelandFriends.com.

The time has come for Pennsylvania to join 17 other states and the District of Columbia in raising the state minimum wage above the paltry federal minimum of $5.15 per hour.   The purchasing power of the current minimum wage has been greatly eroded since the last increase in 1996 and a raise is long overdue.  A Pennsylvania working family cannot have a decent or acceptable standard of living based upon our current state minimum wage of $5.15 per hour.

Starting today, JoeHoeffelandFriends.com will launch a campaign urging the Pennsylvania General Assembly to increase the minimum wage based on three standards that should be used to evaluate the legislation:

1. There should be an immediate jump in the minimum wage level to match the standard that surrounding states have already set.
   
2. Future, incremental increases should be included to at least reach the federal poverty line.  
   
3. Any bill that increases the minimum wage should also provide for future cost of living increases to ensure that all Pennsylvanians can afford to care for their families.

Currently there are three bills in the state assembly that address the minimum wage issue: HB 257, SB 269, HB 216.  While each of the three proposed plans represents a good faith effort to address this problem, only HB 257 meets all three standards.  This bill will raise our minimum wage to $6.15 per hour by January 1, 2006, in line with neighboring states, and further increase it to help bring low wage workers out of poverty with an increase to $7.15 per hour by January 1, 2007.  Perhaps most importantly the bill will incorporate a cost of living increase to be enacted every January 1st after 2007 to ensure that the working poor can provide for their families in the future.

Please click here to sign a petition that will be sent to the Majority and Minority leaders of the House and Senate as well as the Governor urging them to increase Pennsylvania's minimum wage.  

Pennsylvania's workers deserve better -- by coming together we can convince the General Assembly to finally support those who need help the most by increasing the minimum wage.  I ask for your support in this campaign to give PA workers a better and brighter future.

Cross posted at JoeHoeffelandFriends.com and BoomanTribune.com. Our current plan in Iraq is not working.  We are not reaching our goals there, and it is quite possible we never will.
Every American shares the President's goal of establishing a tolerant, pluralistic Iraqi democracy  that would be our ally and help bring peace and freedom to the Middle East.  Few Americans remain optimistic about reaching this goal.
We cannot pull out our troops abruptly and hand the insurgents what would be a devastating victory, but neither can we continue to make an open-ended military commitment to prop up the "Republic of Iraq" at a huge cost in American lives and treasure.
We need a new plan for America's future involvement that sets a deadline - not on us but on Iraq.  We need Iraq to take over her own security against the insurgency.  This new plan must provide clearly that we will stay in Iraq only as long as the Iraqi government and its military and security forces are stepping forward to fight for themselves.  If Iraqis won't fight for their own freedom and for the goal of a unified Iraq by our deadline, which sadly is very possible, then at that point we should bring our troops home.
Our military forces courageously defeated the Iraqi army two and one-half years ago, but we have yet to stabilize the country.  Iraq remains a dangerous place where we are losing on average two soldiers each day since our invasion.  Our troops are the best in the world, but obviously we have too few troops in Iraq, American or international, to control the raging and murderous insurgency.
The new government in Iraq will not be an American-style democracy.  The Iraqi constitution establishes Islam as a primary source of civil law, and the constitution will not fully protect the rights of  women or religious minorities.  Unlike the United States, where the majority rules and the minority has guaranteed and enforceable rights under our constitution,  Iraq will be ruled under the tyranny of a theocratic majority.
Our misadventure in Iraq is the greatest foreign policy debacle in United States history.  It has created more terrorists than we have captured or killed, and has made our country less safe in the war against terror.
Our standing in the world is at a low point, astonishing since the entire world viewed us with sympathy and support following 9/11.  Our arrogance and go-it-alone strategy and cowboy diplomacy has pushed away our friends and encouraged our enemies.
The President argues that we must stay the course in Iraq, which means maintaining current troop levels of about 140,000.  But that level of military force has not been able to stabilize Iraq over the last two and one half years, and the insurgency is getting stronger.
Without security and stability in Iraq,  there is no hope to establish a truly democratic, Western-friendly government or a free and tolerant civil society.
It is time to change the plan.
Clearly, the troops opposing the insurgency need to be at least triple the current force level, as the Army Chief of Staff advised Secretary Rumsfeld in 2003.
Given America's other commitments and growing unhappiness with the war,  we cannot  achieve such an increase.  Given the poor state of our diplomatic relations, our traditional allies and the international community are not interested in that level of support.
That leaves the Iraqis themselves as the only source of the additional military and security forces.  The President recognizes this reality when he says Americans will stand down in  Iraq when the Iraqis stand up.  But when will that day be reached?
Let us set a deadline for the Iraqis- say, in six months, or next March on the third anniversary of our invasion - for their new government to be sufficiently formed and military and security forces sufficiently trained by us for the Republic of Iraq to take over.  It is their country, and at some point they will have to run it and defend it.
If at the time of the deadline the Iraqis are making real progress but aren't yet ready to take over, we could choose to stay on and help.  If they are ready to defend themselves, we could decide to stand down in an orderly fashion.
But if the Iraqis are not ready, and are not making progress, even under the pressure of our deadline, then it might be time for us to leave.  If Iraqis cannot rally around the ideal of a united nation, and won't fight for their own freedom, then the insurgency is guaranteed a victory, sooner or later.  The sooner we know the better.

Cross-posted at JoeHoeffelandFriends.com.

What is wrong with the Democratic Party? Why do some commentators and many voters believe we are losing our soul?  Why are the Republicans in control?
We face two great national challenges:  getting our fiscal house in order and keeping the country safe.  Republican policies are failing miserably to meet the first challenge, and many of us feel that our mistakes in Iraq are creating more terrorists than we've killed or captured and are making us less safe.
But the Republicans are winning elections anyway.  Why?  Maybe because they have a simple, understandable and popular two-step program:  cut taxes and shrink government.  They even have a snappy name for it, "starving the beast".  
But when they starve the beast while spending more on defense and security, a fiscal meltdown is unavoidable, resulting in higher taxes, higher interest rates and economic stagnation.
But Republicans are still winning.  So what is wrong with the Democrats?  What do we need to do to start winning again?
First, let's advocate our own two-step program:  balance the budget, then invest in people.  Can it be done?  See Bill Clinton and his budget surpluses and booming economy.
Second, we must acknowledge that we have a real problem.  Too many Americans feel that the Democratic party is soft on national security,  has weak moral values and dishonors religion, and is too liberal on cultural issues.
Now, those accusations are bogus, but perceptions can become reality in the minds of voters, so we should start by fighting back.
We are not soft on national security.  Democratic presidents have led this country valiantly in wartime, and members of both parties in Congress - to this day - vote for the money to wage those wars and fight terrorism.  And Democrats also know that we are even safer when we work with, not against, our traditional allies and when we embrace a multinational approach to foreign policy, not a go-it-alone, cowboy diplomacy.
Weak moral values and disrespectful of religion?  Not the Democrats I know.  Most of us are people of faith, just like most Republicans.  We are guided by the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed and the Jewish prophets.  It's just that we don't campaign against the other guys claiming God favors only our platform.  And Democrats have the most moral and traditional of values underpinning our policies:  feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, caring for the elderly.  Those are biblical values, for heavens sake, that should make us proud.

Are we too liberal on cultural issues?  No, but maybe we are too tolerant.  We care most about growing and sharing the economic pie.  So we champion not just the successful and well connected but also those that struggle and toil every day, and the least, the last and the lost among us.  Some of those people and some of those causes are unpopular.
But do Americans really want their national elections fought over abortions, gun safety and gay rights, as Republican operatives seem to think?  Those issues attract a lot of Democratic support but they don't define our party and we shouldn't let the Republicans claim otherwise.  Let's face it:   Democrats won't make you have an abortion, take your gun, or turn you gay.
Back in power, what would the Democrats do?  We would ask all Americans, particularly the successful and well connected, to pay their fair share of taxes and bear their share of sacrifices in restrained spending to get our fiscal house in order and continue to keep the country safe.  And we would invest any restored budget surpluses in health care,  public schools and job creation.
The fact is that we embrace, just like Republicans, the beauty of individual liberty and the economic magic of the free marketplace.  But unlike the governing GOP, Democrats also believe in public action for public good.  We know we are all in the same boat.  We see government as a necessary and positive force that, when properly used, will improve the quality of everyone's life.
So how do we turn things around?  Let's start by facing the facts, fixing mistakes and fighting like hell.
We need to listen to the voters who have been rejecting our message.  We need to sharpen that message to respond to the real concerns of Americans, not to the spin of the other side.  And we need to believe in our message and in ourselves.
If  Democrats respond to the demands and the hopes of the public marketplace with simple authenticity and passionate conviction, then we will win.

Stop Bolton! More on this coming soon--Chris

George Bush just does not seem to get it.  Just when he makes some progress convincing some Americans and some Europeans that he understands the principles of multilateralism and the benefits of working with, not against, our traditional friends, he goes and appoints John Bolton to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

This is a truly terrible appointment.

Terrible not because Bolton is a conservative, although he is.  Terrible not because Bolton is a critic of the UN, although he is.

Conservatives and UN critics are still capable of honorable and effective service in key foreign policy positions like UN Ambassador.

No, Bolton is a terrible appointment, and the President should know better, because Bolton is an ideologue with a closed mind and a blind opposition to international law and international institutions.  He distains the UN and its work and all that it stands for, always has, always will, and is damn proud of his head-in-the-sand position.

I had a memorable run-in (at least for me) with Bolton in late spring 2003 during a public hearing of the House International Relations Committee on which I then served.  We were taking testimony from administration spokespeople about the status of the war in Iraq, and this was several weeks after our invasion.  I was pushing the witnesses about the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction, and Bolton was citing the discovery of two "mobile chemical labs" as proof positive of Hussein's active WMD program.  I reminded Bolton that the CIA had just admitted that those two trucks that were suspected mobile labs had turned out to be support vehicles for weather balloons and very harmless.  Bolton started shouting at me,"They scrubbed them clean!  They scrubbed them clean!"  I tried to follow up and get Bolton to identify who "they" were, and just how they did their "scrubbing", but Chairman Hyde ruled my time was up.

Now we have this same Bolton representing us at the UN -- the one institution in the world that offers the best hope of performing the peacekeeping, the reconstruction, the election staging, the nation building and the democracy spreading so needed in Iraq and around the world -- and this man has spent his public career scorning the United Nations and the important work it tries with mixed success to achieve.

How in the world does the appointment of this right wing, true believing ideologue help us in the world?

Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but a diarist at dailykos, aptly named lorax, proposes new measures we can take to try and save the refuge—Chris

Everybody that cares about the environment has to be outraged by the Senate vote today that gave the green light to drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.  This drilling is unnecessary, would produce at best only a few months worth of additional oil supply for America, and would certainly destroy a pristine and beautiful Artic wilderness that until now has been protected by Congress.

Active exploration and drilling for oil has occurred on the north slope of Alaska for many years.  Prudhoe Bay and ANWR are both on the north slope.  95% of the north slope is open to oil exploration, only 5% (the coastal plain of ANWR) is currently protected.  We should keep it protected -- for the animals, for the birds, for us, for the wildness of it.

Several years ago my wife Francesca and I camped in a river valley of ANWR then flew over the ANWR coastal plain, where the drilling would occur, on our way to visit Prudhoe Bay.  Simply put, ANWR is beautiful, Prudhoe Bay is ugly.

Drilling for oil -- the roads, rigs, buildings and pipes -- despoils the environment, plain and simple.

Every Pennsylvanian should be angry that our two U.S. Senators voted to approve drilling in ANWR.  We need leaders who will fight to protect our environment, in Alaska and at home.