Thank you to Tony at Tonyskansascity.com, for linking our Sly James story today--and sharing with many more people

Tonyskansascity.com shares with several thousand more readers

We are gratified, since this is a brand new blog, not even a website till later this week.

And thank you to Tony's commenters. Go easy on me, please.  I just want to make a difference.   I didn't quite get the one about someone being a snail, but then I am from Iowa, and we don't talk thattaway.

I did smile at being termed a "socialite".  I would say that I am "sociable". An extrovert who loves people.  Especially artists and writers and movers and shakers and voters.  But I am not from the Sunset Hill class of people.

I grew up in Des Moines, had only one outfit with a recognizable label in it.  I got it on sale but was so proud that it was a Bonnie Bell.  Grosgrain ribbon trim down the front of the sweater.  Oooh, ahh...it was like my blankie.  Made me feel good walking around the square at Roosevelt High School before class, when all the soshies ignored me.  I wore that turquoise sweater and skirt to public high school all three years, three times a week, by rotating the polyester blouses I bought in the bargain bin at Sears.  While one of my friends wore Ferragamo shoes; I wore shoes from Bakers (like Payless).  I was a violist who played Beethoven string quartets every day during fifth hour.

I had two or three dates in high school...if you count Sadie Hawkins Day.  I was a great student, very active in my 6000 member church downtown, (I rode the bus there every Wednesday).  I was a civil rights advocate.

That is not my actual photo.
My glasses were much uglier.

Rather than miss "the" supposed social event of my entire young life, going to prom, I finally asked Judy Levine, my Ferragamo friend, to please make her little brother take me.  I wore a princess cut organza sheath dress. My Mom and I invented how to layer two pieces of fabric for a shimmery wow factor.  We considered that pretty snazzy for Norwegian Lutherans.   She sewed it up from a McCall's pattern.  I splurged once in my life and had my pointy kitten-heeled fabric shoes from Bakers dyed to match.  Since my date was in the 10th grade and could not drive, Judy and her older sister Linda drove us four for pizza at Noah's.

Judy and Linda then drove us to the school gym, and waited in the parking lot in their Dad's Lincoln, while Michael and I danced three dances to show off my dress and corsage.  To no one, basically, because the soshies of course still ignored me.  No after parties for me.  We were all home by 11.  At least I could say I had been to prom once.  So, Tony, I am hardly the socialite!

I earned spending money to go to college on a full four year scholarship to Wichita State--by babysitting--for 35 cents an hour.  I still know all the multiples of 35 cents x 1 hour, hour and a half, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 hours.  A babysitter's wage then was definitely not $15 an hour!  Tho I do know a woman with four unruly adopted foster kids here in Shawnee-- and she pays $30 an hour to her sitter.

Oh well, life worked out great.  And on the plus side, I am also not a socialist.  I don't like Bernie Sanders, and I gave up on Hillary in 2008, tho to my mind, she still would have been better as President than Obama.  She at least grew up Republican, before marrying Bill.

Mayor James--Governor Sam Brownback's secret eco-devo hero!!!!

Hosannas and praise to Sly James, Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.  You are doing MORE with your left-handed bungling than even Kansas Governor Sam Brownback thinks he is, to support the stalled economy in Johnson County, Kansas!!!

Sly James --the mayor who does not even own a home here, commenced his second term in August, kissing up to a local push from an organizing group of people all wearing red T-shirts to raise the minimum wage, just in KCMO, to $15 an hour.

Sly loves anything in a red shirt.  Just like he donned a red KCMO Firefighters button down shirt the night that JJ's Restaurant exploded and killed a worker--the night the KCMO firefighters drove away without turning off the gas leak, themselves, claiming (with a perhaps falsified FAX), that was somehow justified or prudent, because of some preposterous goofball policy that the "gas company had it covered"...no need for the Fire Department to actually do their tax-supported job.

So Mr. Big Red Jacket, we all know you love being on the news.  And so you supported the $15 an hour organizers, as well.  You made the news.

But that puzzled me.  Because Mayor James has a day job, as a lawyer.  It is illegal in Missouri for a city to pass a law controlling the minimum wage.  It must be a statewide thang.  So shouldn't he know better?

But oh well.  Details are not Sly's thang.  Like how to build a hotel downtown, without violating securities law, because your secret research report told you and the council that it won't pay for itself.
As of August 29,2015, the City of KCMO is claiming they don't have to release the secret research report, "because it was embedded and bundled inside a request for a sealed bid".  So even tho the taxpayers PAID for the report, they can't see it.  Details.  "It's a secret!"   (More on that soon.  What we need in this town is an Edward Snowden to leak the report.)

Another pesky detail this week:  Sly James now is scheming to borrow money from the Zoo Bond Fund to pay for a completely different project.  Might that be the same downtown hotel?  But wait.  The ballot issue promised the taxpayers when they voted for the penguins that the money would only go to the Zoo?  Details.

So when I read that Sly was grandstanding for the $15 an hour minimum wage, I just smiled.  Four years as a mayor is a LONG time for him to campaign to replace Congressman Emanuel Cleaver in Congress.  (Unless Sly knows something we don't, and is expecting Cleaver to resign early.)  Mayor James is gonna need alot of free headlines.  Like Donald Trump's race, it's far too early for details.

But now the news is reporting that Sly apparently read the state law, and perhaps had a "duh moment".  So now he is joining hands with union workers in St. Louis, and the new battle cry is "Raise the minimum wage across all of Missouri--to $15 an hour."  Coming soon to a red T-shirt near you.

To my mind, Sly James' campaign is the best news that Johnson County has had in a long time. Because every business that CAN migrate across our itty bitty and oh so close State Line Road--into Kansas for regular minimum wages--will do so.

The truth is this.  The economy has not recovered from 2008.  Businesses large and small are doing everything in their power just to survive.  And they are holding off on actual hiring.  Because we don't trust Congress not to jack up the tax code and the labor laws even worse.  And let's not even go there regarding Obamacare.  It's too big to repeal, too hard to repair and too soon to tell.

The second Big Truth is: newbie workers are not worth $15 an hour.  Period.  It doesn't matter if you exclude kids, late teens.  A greeter at Walmart is not worth $15 an hour.  They don't earn their keep. I don't want my prices raised.  Do you?

A new kid out of college, just learning their trade as a copywriter?  Not worth $15 an hour.  A new kid out out college, learning how to load up sod or trees at the Home Depot next to Linwood Costco? Not worth $15 an hour.  A newly hired empty nester Mom, seeking her first job in 18 years, anywhere, since the kids went away to college?  Not worth $15 an hour.  She might be, soon.  But not on Day 1.  So the entrepreneurs and the franchisees in Johnson County or KCMO or Branson are not going to lose money, they just won't hire anyone starting out at $15 an hour.  Including the marcher carrying his sign UPSIDE DOWN!

So please, Sly James.  LET THE MIGRATION BEGIN.  You keep wearing your red T-shirts and your red KCFD button down shirt.  And send ALL your businesses over to Johnson County--it's in the Red State.

Hugs,

Tracy Thomas, publisher of JoCoPost.com
New publisher of KCMOPost.blogspot.com

KCMOPost joins sister site, JoCoPost in opposing the 1% developers fleecing this town

Game on, billionaires and millionaires and development attorneys who are buying elections and then scaring the public into thinking if we don't say NO, if we don't subsidize their construction costs with TDD's or CIDs, if we don't raise OUR sales tax to crazy heights to build THEM another mansion, if we don't give them 20 years of tax abatements, which hurts our schools, then they will take their ball and bat and go elsewhere.

JoCoPost.com is taking this on in Johnson County.  And now launching a sister site, KCMOPost (soon also to be a separate dot com but for now, at KCMOPost.blogspot.com.

More later.  We have planted our flag.

Billionaire developer Stan Kroenke may own five national sports teams. And 1% of all Walmart stock.   But we own our votes.

We're mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore.
--Network