Daily Archives: Sept. 3, 2007

Open thread 9/3

Sept. 3, 20071:04 a.m.

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Open thread | Comments (279)

CEO pay still a poke in the eye to workers

Sept. 3, 20071:03 a.m.

The pay gap between American CEOs and workers is wider this Labor Day, according to an annual report that found corporate CEOs “collected as much money from one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year.”
The average CEO makes $10.8 million in salary and other benefits, compared with an average $30,000 salary for workers.
The new federal minimum wage of $5.85 an hour that just went into effect is still 7 percent less in real dollars than the minimum wage 10 years ago, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies. But executive salaries and compensation have soared by 45 percent over the same period.
Corporate boards still have not reined in runaway executive pay, raising issues of economic fairness that will surely be themes in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Posted by Randy Scholfield

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Business | Comments (244)

One country, three ways of telling time

Sept. 3, 20071:02 a.m.

“Washington’s is a stop watch, where every second longer we stay in Iraq is a problem; the Iraqi Shiite-led government’s watch often seems broken, and you have to regularly tap it to get it to work; and the Iraqi Sunni watch always wants to go in reverse — back to Saddam’s day, when Sunnis were in charge.”
– New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, on the analogy U.S. Army officers use in talking about Iraq
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Iraq | Comments (5)

How Brownback reconciles his social conservatism and cancer goal

Sept. 3, 20071:00 a.m.

“I believe in science. I don’t think there’s a conflict between faith and reason, and if there is, you should check your faith or check your reason,” cancer survivor and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback said at last week’s “Livestrong” presidential forum, pledging to end cancer deaths in a decade. “I will declare a war on cancer before it kills us,” he also said.
Posted by Rhonda Holman

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Presidential race | Comments (16)