Another sad anniversary is coming up. Tomorrow is the 9-year anniversary of the last time the minimum wage was raised. For the occassion, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have a new paper on the minimum wage. On relative poverty: For example, in 1978, even before the gap [between executive pay and the minimum wage]began to grow quickly, the average CEO was still paid 78 times as much as a full-time year-round worker earning the minimum wage. By 2005, the average CEO was paid 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner; this is the widest

Yesterday's LA Times had a good op-ed on tax privatization, as follows. ONCE UPON a time, the Internal Revenue Service proclaimed that its mission was "to collect the proper amount of tax revenue at the least cost, serve the public by continually improving the quality of our products and services and perform in a manner warranting the highest degree of public confidence in our integrity, efficiency and fairness."

OMB Watch has been trying for the past year or so to connect the dots to expose the farce that is the administration's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). Here's another great example: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was reviewed under the PART survey in 2003 and given the highest rating of "effective." Some excerpts from the PART survey itself:

• [NCES] makes a unique contribution to knowledge about the conditions and outcomes of education in America.

We've noted that there's been a spate of establishment-types (and establishments) that have come out denying basic conservative talking points on economic policy. Now, here's new Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who says that a raise in the minimum wage will not cause inflation. BNA has the story. In a written response to questions from Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.), Bernanke avoided addressing whether he thought the federal minimum wage should be raised, but he said the small number of workers affected would mean that overall labor costs and inflation would see little upward pressure.