Democrats behaving badly?

This week the House of Representatives lead by Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) voted to increase the minimum wage. I am not, at this time, going to debate the pros and cons of this action, that is for a later date, but I do want to point out that this “First 100 Hours” agenda item is really only going to affect an estimated 0.6% of the US population. Rather I want to point out what I see as a corrupt action by the supposedly “more ethical congress”.

The issue I have is that there is an exemption relating to who actually has to comply with this new wage increase. All US state and territories, except American Samoa, have to increase their minimum wage. The reason for American Samoa being exempt is they argued an increase would cripple their economy and force companies to seek workers else where. Here is my first point of contention: Why would a minimum wage increase hurt one economy while helping another? Something is really beginning to stink.

If you look closer, you will see that the major industry of American Samoa is Tuna fishing and tuna processing plants. The industry employs approximately 33% of the islands workforce.

OK, so you’re thinking “Who cares?” American Samoa is such a small portion of the bigger picture of Democrats helping the poor, because we all know the rich would just trample them otherwise.

If you look even more closely you will see that StarKist tuna is one of the major tuna processors. StarKist is owned by Del Monte Foods. Shall we guess where their corporate office is located? Anybody? You guessed it: San Francisco!

While Speaker Pelosi denies any lobbying was done, you cannot help but see this as a little fishy (sorry for the pun).

Here is a story from the Washington Times