[Thanks to Julia Rosen of Alliance for a Better CA for suggesting I cross post this from The Bayne of Blog.]

One of the arguments leveled against increasing the minimum wage has been the assumed negative effect it would have on small business. The fear expressed by many, mostly outside of small business it seems, is that raising the minimum will drive small businesses out of business as they struggle to pay the help. Of course, this has never happened with previous wage increases. When low-wage workers get a raise they spend it. This in turn puts more dollars in the pockets of businesses of all types which drives the economy because more employees are needed to service more consumers.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, an increase in the federal minimum wage ($5.15) is favored by almost half of all small-business owners. Seventy-five percent of small businesses claim that a 10% increase in the minimum would have no effect on their businesses.

Wouldn’t it be great if these small businesses would get behind the effort to raise the minimum wage. Low-wage workers could earn more, put more back into the economy, and everybody wins as businesses do better and hire more workers which in turn puts more money into more hands continuing the cycle. Bubble up economics sounds a whole lot better to me than trickle-down. But then, I’m not the one doing the trickling, and have seen to many people, including myself, get trickled on. If the small businesses favoring a hike in the minimum wage would get on board and help in our campaign to increase it, we would have a powerful ally that would have to be heard. Alas, many small business owners are under the thumb of big business through Chambers of Commerce and other business organizations.

Everything but CA-50, which is coming up next.

• California Progress Report picked us as their site of the day. Thanks! A guest poster stands up for Prop. 82,
• The Mindful Mission dissects Tom McClintock’s editorial advocating the minimum wage as low as possible. Remember folks, Tom McClintock is Arnold’s running mate, the Dick Cheney of the Schwarzenegger campaign.
• Surfk9 has an interesting meditation on personal history and immigration.
• Bill Bradley reports that the Angelides campaign has hired a new consultant. He also has an interesting post on Arnold’s failure to sell his environmental efforts as better than the leaders of his party. (Better should not be taken to mean good enough.)
• Lying Media Bastards was at the San Diego immigrant march, and shares impressions.

Sorry for the late blog roundup. Been nonstop on other projects today since I posted the News Roundup this morning. Teasers for the flip: More Immigration, Dumptruck of Doolittle, Deep Thoughts on CA-11, Arnolds Ads, Miscellany.

Immigration

• Apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger, or at least his staff, had some things to say about immigration in an LA Times Op-Ed. Frank Russo at California Progress Report puts Schwarzenegger’s remarks in context, which is, ah, unflattering to the Governor. Bill Bradley (occasional commenter here — Hi Mr. Bradley!) is more supportive of Schwarzenegger (Bradley’s pick for Governor in the recall), and he just can’t resist an old-old-old-school jab at people who don’t care for the term “illegal immigrant”.
• Marc Cooper has some good thoughts on immigration, including a note to the effect that the big marches around the country were driven by Spanish-language media, which went right under the radar of the English-speakers in traditional media. I think I speak for Calitics when I say that we would welcome a Spanish-language blogger to Calitics. My Spanish is good, but not good enough.
• Politics in the Zeros says we need to take it to the streets, and wonders why Kos (as a high-profile Latino immigrant) hasn’t been more active on the immigration front. I’ve wondered why Kos doesn’t have a Spanish version of the front-paged posts.
• janinsanfran has a great series of pictures from San Francisco.
• The Idiotarian Savant thinks that Bradley and Kaus have the “blowback” narrative exactly backwards.

Doolittle, Doolittle, Doolittle

• Words Have Power on the Doolittle trickle-down economics of corruption.
• Nite Swimming, riffing on the same source material, talks about the effects of that trickle. And yet again, focusing on the Auburn Dam project as reflected in local letters to the editor.
• Dump Doolittle reports an endorsement of Doolittle from what may be the most inappropriately named newspaper on the planet.
• AnthonySF at DKos has a story on what a class act Doolittle is. The punch line is awesome.

CA-11

All of these links are from Say No To Pombo:

• Time for Thomas to Drop Out?
• More McNerney Endorsements.
• Wes Rolley’s thoughts on the primary, which I can’t summarize so you just need go read them already, ok, just go.

Everything Else

• Alliance for a Better California has some good critiques of the new eentsy-weentsy Schwarzenegger ad buy: Arnold on jobs, then and now, synchronization with “non-campaign” stops, old old news. I think Dowd is reprising the Swift Boat strategy, without the vicious lies yet: make a small ad buy the story, and get the press to do your advertising for you as part of the horse-race coverage.
• Arnold hires still more consultants from Bush/Cheney 2004.
• The California Observer points us to a new California Budget Project report on the minimum wage. I’ve downloaded, but not yet read.
• Julia Rosen (Jay Rosen’s niece — whaddya know?) on Carla Marinucci’s climbing the learning curve from reporter to blogger.