More new Republican ideas: cut the minimum wage for waiters; remind the poor they don't live in, say Mumbai

Minnesota's GOP, pro-nullification candidate for governor has a bright new idea for getting the economy moving:

Minnesota state Rep. Tom Emmer, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has put forward a new policy for helping the state's businesses: Lowering the minimum wage for waiters and waitresses, and forcing them to rely more heavily on tips.

Minnesota is one of seven states that do not permit employers to pay less than the standard minimum wage to tipped workers. Federal law permits tipped workers' wages to be as low $2.13 per hour, with tips given to workers credited against the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour employers are required to pay. Emmer's proposal would get rid of Minnesota's law against using that credit, and thus bring the minimum wages for restaurant staff and other gratuity-based workers down to $2.13 per hour plus tips, a reduction of nearly two-thirds.Emmer said this proposal would result in a "level playing field so the employers can continue to exist, survive and thrive."

"With the tips that they get to take home, they are some people earning over $100,000 a year. More than the very people providing the jobs and investing not only their life savings but their families' future," Emmer added. Of course, waitstaff earning more than $100,000 a year are hardly reliant on even the federal minimum wage of $7.25 and hour, if their employers are even actually paying them at that rate.

In a way, this particular Emmer proposal is quite notable in that it uses federal law as a floor, and seeks to standardize Minnesota with the rest of the country. Indeed, many of his other proposals have involvednullifying most federal laws, and taking Minnesota out of harmony with the rest of the country. But in this one case, believe it or not, he is suddenly pro-Union.

Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul tell's America's poor to quit bitching:

Responding to an attack from Democratic nominee Jack Conway at a candidate forum yesterday, Paul tried to defend his past statement that the president criticizing BP is "un-American." Paul launched into a spirited defense of "the engine of capitalism," and worried that assaults on it -- like the criticisms of BP from Conway and his Democratic friends -- could lead to a "day of reckoning" in the U.S., and perhaps a Depression.

This somehow led to a lesson Paul said Kentuckians should hold dear: Sure there are "problems" with the way America deals with the poor, but when they think about it, poor folks should thank goodness they're not stuck in one of those other horrible countries.

"The poor in our country are enormously better off than the rest of the world," Paul said. "Doesn't mean we can't do better, but we have to acknowledge and be proud of our system of capitalism, be proud of our American way."

How'd he get there? Paul told a little story about the Cold War to set up his argument that the poor have it pretty good in America when you really stop to think about it:

One of the important lessons that came out of the Cold War -- and this is an important description that I don't think comes up enough -- the Cold War was won by America because the engine of capitalism defeated the engine of socialism. The Soviets used to show a propaganda film -- they wanted to show how horrible America was and how our poor were doing so poorly. They filmed a building in the poor section of New York with some broken windows and they said, 'Oh this is how the poor in America lives.' But it backfired on them because the Soviet citizens looked at that video closely and they saw flickering color television sets in all those windows.

So, the takeway: Don't worry, freezing poor people with broken windows. At least you've got color TV.