'What more could be fairer?' Nickels for workers, millions for millionaires

Points to ponder:

1. How cynical can you get?

2. How dumb does Mark Green think the voters are?

Green is talking up an early-morning vote he cast today to raise the federal minimum wage -- something he voted against three times earlier this month.

What changed his mind?

This bill doesn't just raise the minimum wage for people at the bottom of the ladder. It also has a nice little bonus for the richest people in the country -- it slashes the estate tax.

As Wisconsin State Journal columnist Roundy Coughlin used to say, "What more could be fairer?"

People at the bottom get a raise of $2.10 an hour over the next three years, and Paris Hilton gets tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks when Daddy dies.

One House member summed it up pretty well, the NY Times reports:

"In all my years here, this is the height of hypocrisy," said Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who said Republicans were moved to consider a raise in the minimum wage only out of fear of losing House seats in November. "If you really cared, you would have acted long ago. This is not an election-year conversion; it is an election-year trick."

It's the kind of trick Mark Green tries to pull all of the time. He's had election-year conversions on all sorts of issues, including gasoline price gouging and gas tax indexing. He's the kind of politician that has some votes on a lot of issues in both pockets. He's for it here, but against it there. The whole idea is to muddy it up enough so he can tell voters whatever he thinks they want to hear on any given day, while hiding his real record and core beliefs.

It's not going to work this year.

For the first time in his life, Mark Green is in a campaign where he is being held accountable for his actions and his votes. The old election year switcheroo isn't going to be easy to get away with.

He's already finding that out on the stem cell issue, where he brazenly claims to be a big supporter of stem cell research while voting against the kind of research that holds the real promise.

Green may point out that he voted once before, in 2000, for a $1 minimum wage increase. That's true. But, like this time, he voted for it because it was part of a package that included $46-billion in tax cuts, mostly to benefit the richest of the rich.

Whenever he has had a chance to vote to raise the minimum wage, no strings attached, he has voted no.

Gretchen Schuldt says it best: Shame on Mark Green.

UPDATE: Even under current law, 99.7% of Wisconsinites pay no estate tax. Green's vote is to benefit the top 3/10 of one per cent.