Mixin' it up with Oprah

Oprah has really been on a tear lately. She took some time to rip the current state of education (Salon has a clip here) at a time when Bush's "No Child Left Behind" has meant decreased funding for schools and led school districts to falsify records, seek loopholes, and otherwise invest time and resources in everything but education.

Now she's done a show on the minimum wage. At $5.15 an hour, it hasn't been increased in a decade-- not even to keep up with inflation. This table suggests that the real value of minimum wage in 2005 was $4.15 an hour-- the lowest it's been in fifty years.

The excerpt on Think Progress isn't terribly enlightening, but it's good to know that someone with the massive audience of Oprah Winfrey is raising awareness on some of these issues.