What's the Mystery Topic for today?

Here's your hint: In his post on the subject, Bilmon manages to work the following words into his first paragraph: feces, pestilence, pimps, sneak, swine, and whorehouse --although he doesn't use them in alphabetical order.

That's right--today's Mystery Topic is:

The GOP-controlled House killed a Democratic amendment to raise the federal minimum wage, which hasn't budged from $5.15/hour since 1997--after which they "accepted" for themselves themselves a $3,300 pay raise, only 12 months after they last "accepted" a $3,100 raise.

So, once again, let's take a moment and do the numbers:

At federal minimum wage, working 40 hours a week, it would take four months (a hair over 16 weeks) to earn as much as the raise that the House just "accepted."

At the same rate, and working 52 weeks a year, it would take 15.7 years to earn $168,500, the current salary for members of Congress.

And, as always, let's remember that the House Republicans' continued refusal to consider raising the minimum wage is not the product of their implacable hostility toward people who actually work for a living, just as awarding themselves a raise is not comfort money to make up for the whopping speaker fees they no longer get away with charging.

Hope we've cleared that up.