and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)

Back to the future: After founder Robert Redford announced Thursday that the Sundance Film Festival was "going back to its roots," the first competition film, "Howl," took on an aura of opening night mayhem, said the Los Angeles Times.

Tom remembers spending his time "breaking laws and causing trouble" a year ago. A high school dropout, Tom (not his real name) lived with his grandmother. Last March, after an eruption of violence at home landed him in court, the Du Page County juvenile court system gave Tom an option: Sign up for at least six months in a new, all-day extended-care program designed for teenagers or spend a lesser amount of time in a correctional facility. Tom, 17, opted for the extended-care program and became oneof middle-class workers, since the raises placed the threshold well above the average wage, as Table 1 shows. For example, the 1975 threshold raise protected overtime rights for workers who made 32 percent more than the average wage.

The 2004 Bush administration threshold change was historic for two reasons: It was the first update since 1975, and it was the first update to place the threshold below the average wage. Both Democratic and Republican administrations had consistently put the salary threshold between $44,000 and $51,000 per year in inflation-adjusted dollars. But the Bush administration put the salary threshold at only $29,178, 28 percent below the 2004 average wage.

Overtime rights on the brink of extinction

The Bush administration’s rule change represented a radical and inadequate redesign of the salary threshold. The