Here is how you can tell when a politician knows he or she has committed a moral wrong, starring Hilda (I Vote Yes) Solis:
The best story of the day is the County Board of Supervisors’ 3-2 vote to delay approving, for county territory, the $15 wage floor the Los Angeles City Council dictated a month ago.
Isn’t it amazing that such a handmaiden of the will of hardline labor unions as Hilda Solis – never known to own a spine — would report to yesterday’s meeting wearing a conscience made beet-red by guilt?
With union muscle guys such as Rusty (Nail) Hicks of the County Federation of Labor lasering a wary eye on the turncoat Ms. Solis, the turncoat cast the determining vote in postponing approval.
Her excuse did not ring out as a latter-day Patrick Henry.
She mumbled that, ahem, she was, ahem, concerned about mom-and-pop businesses being damaged fatally by the politically correct $15 minimum wage. That is what her constituents told her.
Had you been Ms. Solis’s conscience, you would be worn out at this hour from lack of sleep last night. In a corner of her mind, she knew she was speaking truth, but what would her union bosses think?
That such a reliable extension of labor unions should leap overboard tells you that she must have faced huge pressure from East Los Angeles neighborhoods.
She suffered the same guilt pangs that moral deniers on the City Council did when they agreed to grant small businesses a year of grace from the $15 minimum – because the boys know the new wage floor will damage little entrepreneurs.
Like good liberals, it is more important that they make themselves feel good, and ultimately, that is why the Council congratulated themselves with one arm and voted Yes on 15 with the other.
Even though the 57-year-old Ms. Solis’s resume says that she served a term as U.S. Secretary of Labor, you are not likely to see even a fist-sized bust to her heroic legacy in Washington, Pa, Washington Courthouse, Oh, or Washington, D.C., where she is not remembered for anything this side of doffing her coat on bitter winter mornings.
Could the seed of yesterday’s hiccup of dissent grow into a Solis backbone? Not likely.