AT&T hiking rates by 10 to 25%

Hey bubble gum blowers! Have you heard the minimum wage is going up by 10 to 25% on January 1?

What? It isn't?

Well, AT&T is hiking rates by 10 to 25% on millions of its customers in California (including many of its lowest-income consumers). It's only fair the minimum wage should go up by 10 to 25% too, isn't it?

(The minimum wage is scheduled to go up by about 10% in July, but that's under a law from 2 years earlier. Welp, AT&T just took that wage increase from us, didn't they?)

This is the same AT&T that conspired with the Bush regime in the illegal wiretap scandal and was granted retroactive immunity by an eagerly compliant Congress. Several years ago, America's Toilets & Testes also kept billing me for charges I didn't owe. They were practicing phone-slamming by signing me up for services I didn't order. Needless to say, I refused to pay. (Who knows what AT&T did to my credit rating in retaliation?)

AT&T has in recent years also been the top corporate contributor to Republican political campaigns.

The notice of the price increase comes right after America's Toilets & Testes announced that it had made a $3,200,000,000 profit in its most recent quarter. Hell of a time for a price hike, huh?

The California Public Utilities Commission - the Puke-O of the Golden State - is partly to blame. The Republican-stacked commission gave utilities the ability to automatically raise rates with inflation (even though wages were stagnant). They considered it to be the utilities' constitutional right to Make Money without having to earn it, you understand.

Just last month, the commission gave phone companies the "right" to increase the monthly cost for basic phone service by $6.50 over the next 2 years. The commission will stop regulating costs altogether in 2011.

Thanks a heap, Rethug-a-lugs.

We all know what happened when California regulators stopped regulating the electric industry, don't we?

Now that the California Public Utilities Commission has created a new "right" for utility companies out of whole cloth, how about if America's workers receive similar rights? There ought to be a law providing automatic minimum wage increases that keep pace with (whoosh...whoosh) inflation.

What's good enough for greedy corporations ought to be good enough for everyone else.

(Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10798659?nclick_check=1)