THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2007
Thursday Edition: Gone in Four Seconds
Watch this video from a Florida sheriff's department. Criminals are targeting people who leave valuables in their cars while filling up their gas tanks. Minivans and SUVs are prime targets.
The video includes an example of such a theft, which takes a total of four seconds.
Living on Minimum WageThe House of Representatives yesterday
voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, but it will be 2009 before workers see that level of pay.
The National Restaurant Association reports:
The legislation, introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), calls for a 41 [percent] increase from $5.15 to $7.25 [an hour] over 26 months. The increase would occur in three 70-cent phases ($5.85 -- 60 days after enactment, $6.55 -- 1 year later, $7.25 -- an additional year later).
To put that in perspective, a 70 cents-an-hour raise for a person who works a 40-hour week would add 28 bucks a week to his or her paycheck, before taxes. It would mean $1,400 a year if a person worked 50 weeks.
The Senate almost certainly will follow the House in approving the legislation, and President Bush has said he supports the idea of raising the minimum wage.
A few days ago, I detailed the debate over raising the federal minimum wage. One of the loudest voices speaking out against the raise is the
National Restaurant Association.
The Christian Science Monitor picks up the story by showing readers what it is like for families that depend on a minimum-wage earner. To be fair, many minimum-wage earners are not the head of a four-person household. However, the story points out:
Of the workers who stand to reap higher pay if Congress raises the wage floor, the vast majority are adults, most work full-time, and about one in four have dependent children, according to the
Economic Policy Institute.
Moreover, they are often the sole breadwinner in the household. Of families with children, nearly half of those who would be affected by a minimum-wage hike get all their earned income from one low-wage worker.
My Poynter Online editor
Meg Martin and I like this story from
The Washington Post, which follows a guy as he tries to make his minimum-wage salary stretch. Here is a passage:
Seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour equals $15,080 per year, and out of that comes $313 for the car loan and $100 for car insurance, Iles said, going over his monthly bills. An additional $90 for the 1995 car with 135,000 miles on it that he is buying from a friend for his mother, $150 for the family phone bills, $35 on his credit card, $100 for gas, $100 toward the mortgage on the trailer. "That's about it. Oh yeah, $20 in doctors' bills," he said, and totaled it up on fingers scarred by surgical stitches. Nine hundred and eight dollars. "I bring home 900 a month," he said. "So I very rarely have any money for myself."
Real ID Act 18 Months AwayA big change is just a year and a half away. It is called the
Real ID Act, and if it takes effect as it currently stands, it will change the way you board airplanes, open a bank account, enter a federal building, apply for a driver's license or get government aid and Social Security. Basically, you will need to get a federal ID if you interact with any agency that is under federal mandate to protect your privacy (bank, hospital, doctor, the drug store). The act forbids federal agencies from accepting state driver's licenses as IDs unless the states enact much higher levels of security than they have now.
States face the real possibility of having to reissue driver's licenses to everybody beginning mid-next year.
To get a new license, you will have to dig out a birth certificate or an original Social Security card.
You will need the same sort of documentation to register to vote. But states have no databases to verify such information.
What's this all about? Turn back the clock to the 2005 Congress, when immigration was red-hot. The feds wanted a way to issue a standard federal ID. The new ID will include a federal identification number of some sort, and the card, theoretically, will be readable on some sort of machine. The card may also contain a fingerprint or retinal scan.
Shortly after the bill passed,
CNN reported:
Anita Ramasastry, a law professor at
The University of Washington School of Law, wrote this in
a 2005 column:
Once Real ID is in effect, all 50 states' DMVs will share information in a common database and may also verify information given to them against various federal databases. In addition, it's very possible that such data will be sold to commercial entities: Some states already allow driver's license data to be sold to third parties.
Even with current, unlinked databases, thieves increasingly have turned their attention to DMVs. Once databases are linked, access to the all-state database may turn out to be a bonanza for identity thieves.
States had better start considering this as they work out their 2007-2008 budgets.
Can I PLEASE Just Cancel?PC World magazine tested 32 online service accounts to see how darn difficult it can be to cancel them once you sign up, even for a trial period.
Click here to see the criteria
PC World used to rate the hassle factors of each service. The "big hassle" awards went to:
Here is the nitty-gritty of what happened when they tried to cancel service with one of the "big hassle" award winners -- or, rather, losers.
Fire Departments Need Younger Recruits
Younger folks say they can't make it to the emergency calls, so it is up to older guys to fight fires in areas covered largely by volunteers. This problem will only grow worse as the population ages.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
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