Tag Archives: politics

Minimum Wage Law Consequence

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that California has enacted one of the highest minimum wage laws in the nation, a $20/hr minimum wage inflicted on fast food restaurants operating in the State.

Now come the consequences, which any schoolboy limited to an allowance could have predicted.

Rubio’s Coastal Grill, a California Mexican restaurant chain, announced the closure of 48 restaurants in the Golden State amid rising business costs.

That’s one-third of the chain’s total operational restaurants in the Southwest, including a few left in California.

Earlier, in anticipation of the labor cost explosion, Red Lobster auctioned off—moved out of—5 California locations, albeit these were among a total of 50 nationwide of which the chain was divesting itself.

In other moves to cut labor costs, Pizza Hut franchises, especially Southern California Pizza Co, has discontinued most delivery services from its California-based restaurants, laying off nearly a thousand drivers.

Can Progressive-Democrats anywhere understand that a high minimum wage requirement—or a requirement at any level—prices unskilled job holders and unskilled job seekers out of those jobs? Can they understand that a wage at any level is vastly superior to no wage at all?

Or is it that Progressive-Democrats are cynical enough to seek to transfer unskilled workers out of jobs where they can gain experience, skills, second incomes, and upward economic mobility and into dependency on Government welfare—where they would represent votes to keep the handouts coming?

Open Border Made Official

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has issued an Executive Order that would allow—apparently not require—him to close our southern border when the number of illegal aliens crossing our border exceeds 2,500 per day, averaged over a week’s time. The closure, if it’s done at all, would end when the number of illegals crossing drops below 1,500 per day, averaged over a week’s time. Biden doesn’t seem to have offered any serious means of enforcing those limits, however, including any mechanism for removing the “excess” illegal aliens from our nation.

It’s important to note, too, that those numbers seem not to include gotaways or those not encountered at all but known only by the traces they leave in the crossing.

With this EO, Biden is attempting to codify the entry into our nation of 500,000+ illegal aliens to just under a million illegal aliens per year.

This is Biden’s active erasure of our southern border, and it wholly ignores our even more porous, and increasingly used by illegal aliens, northern border.

It’s also a demonstration of the lie that is Biden’s claim that no one is above the law. Clearly, Biden considers those 500,000 to a million illegal aliens to be above the law.

We average Americans need to keep this in mind in November.

A Misapprehension

Posted on by
Reply

This one, increasingly unsurprisingly, comes from The Wall Street Journal‘s “news” room. This is the lede from the outlet’s Monday article centered on the 11th Circuit’s decision blocking a Venture Firm’s Grant Program for Black Women:

A federal appeals court on Monday blocked Atlanta-based investment firm Fearless Fund from continuing with a contest that grants awards to businesses owned by Black women, a blow against diversity and inclusion programs that have been under increasing legal attack.

No. It’s actually a blow against segregationist programs that have been under increasing legal attack.

TIFIFY.

Selection on the basis of race or gender rather than merit, as this “venture firm” attempted to do, is intrinsically racist and sexist. Fearless‘ lawyer, Jason Schwartz, in his dismay over the ruling, had this:

The discrimination in access to funding that the Fearless Foundation seeks to address is long-standing and irrefutable[.]

That argument merely adds to the weight of the majority decision: adding discrimination to existing discrimination (stipulating arguendo that Schwartz’ claimed prior is true) merely adds to the discrimination. Further, Shwartz’ argument begins by tacitly acknowledging the inherent racism and sexism of that “existing” discrimination. Schwartz is either disingenuous or broadly oblivious.

Judge Kevin Newsom, writing for the majority, agrees, albeit somewhat more circumlocutorily:

“The fact remains, though, that Fearless simply—and flatly—refuses to entertain applications from business owners who aren’t ‘black females'[.]” If that warranted protection under the First Amendment, “then so would be every act of race discrimination.”

Even the court’s lone dissenter in the decision had no argument against the ruling itself; Judge Robin Rosenbaum argued only that the plaintiff had no standing to bring the case in the first place.

It’s pretty instructive to note that what those so enthusiastically pushing for solutions like Fearless‘; college/university affirmative programs, which also push favoring one group at the expense of others solely on race or sex; et al., miss is that while the problem they claim to want to address is real, the solution lies at the bottom: equal opportunity in the formative years of our children so they enter adult life on an equal footing. Top down solutions, which really are after the fact and too late solutions, don’t accomplish anything other than continued racist and sexist segregation.

That last is a milieu where the Left’s precious mantra of middle out and bottom up actually could have serious effect.

There’s a Hint There

Posted on by
Reply

The farm bill just passed out of the House Agriculture Committee contains a provision barring the Secretary of Agriculture from increasing, on his own alleged authority, SNAP spending above the amounts provided for in the legislation:

[c]orrects egregious Executive branch overreach and disallows future unelected bureaucrats from arbitrarily increasing or decimating SNAP benefits.

Austin Scott (R, GA):

The Farm Bill includes protective language that prevents extreme changes to SNAP benefits without Congressional input and continues the cost-neutral status that the TFP [Thrifty Food Plan] has maintained for over 40 years.

The Progressive-Democrat Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed, though, that

the proposal would amount to a roughly $27 billion cut to SNAP[.]

This is the AgSec’s confession that he fully intended to spend—on his own and without any Congressional spending authority to do so—at least those $27 billion above his authorized level. He’s not alone in this. Congresswoman Yadira Caraveo (D, CO):

…it is necessary that we go back to the negotiating table and remove this provision[.]

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D, MI):

It…does not have the votes to pass on the House floor. And certainly not in the Senate[.]

This is the budgeting and spending paradigm of the Progressive-Democratic Party: Congressional appropriations and allocations are mere suggestions, and they are to be disregarded whenever inconvenient to Party. After all, it’s only your and my money they’re spending.

There’s an election coming up. Maybe us average Americans should vote our tax dollars.

More Party Gaslighting

Posted on by
Reply

This time, it’s Progressive-Democratic Party politicians doing the gaslighting.

Progressive-Democrat Congressman Dean Phillips (MN) wants New York’s Progressive-Democrat Governor, Kathy Hochul, to pardon former President Donald Trump (R) “for the good of the country.”

But is this a Ford pardons Nixon for the good of the country pardon request? Ford pardoned Nixon to reduce (it wound up damping down almost completely) the political divisions growing out of Nixon’s misbehaviors.

No, that’s not the sort of pardon request that Phillips is after. Here’s Phillips in his own words:

You think pardoning is stupid?
Making him a martyr over a payment to a porn star is stupid. (Election charges are entirely different.)
It’s energizing his base, generating record sums of campaign cash, and will likely result in an electoral boost.

Phillips isn’t interested in tamping down our nation’s current divisions. He’s interested only in nakedly favoring his Progressive-Democratic Party, and he has no concerns at all for partisan division mitigation. His “for the good of the country” is just so much gaslighting.