Category Archives: jobs

Minimum Wage Laws

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Some empirical data are starting to accumulate. The following graphs are from AEIdeas. The first one shows the apparent impact of Seattle’s minimum wage law, which hiked the minimum to $15/hr, with the first increment to $11/hr taking effect last April. The graph shows restaurant employment in the Seattle Metropolitan Statistical Area and Washington other than the Seattle MSA from 2010 through Sept 2015.RestaurantJobs

There are a couple of things of interest here. One is the headline comparison: Restaurant jobs went up nearly 6% since January (5,800 jobs added to an original value of 87,000 jobs), while the city’s restaurant employment fell those 700 jobs (a drop a skosh under 1%). The other is the trend. Since January, restaurant jobs have risen at a high month-month rate, while Seattle’s restaurant job growth rate has been flat.

There’s another tale in this graph.RestaurantJobsRecessions

The shaded area are recessions. Only one other time since 1990 has Seattle’s restaurant employment fallen outside of a recession. That was in the year leading into the dot-com bust, with Seattle being nearly as techy as California’s Silicon Valley.

Hmm….

The Obama Administration

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…is targeting another Republican, this time with criminal intent. President Barack Obama’s Secret Service was sufficiently dismayed about being caught at and exposed for their misbehaviors and incompetences by Senator Jason Chaffetz (R, UT), House Oversight Committee Chairman, that Secret Service Assistant Director Ed Lowry suggested that Chaffetz should be targeted with “leaked” personal information of a suitably embarrassing nature. Lowry wrote an email to Deputy Assistant Director Faron Paramore:

Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair[.]

Of course, to “find” the information in the first place, folks would have to violate the US Privacy Act, but never mind about that. This is a Republican. And Democrats are doing it. It’s all good. So at least 45 Secret Service employees set about to do the smear.

Jeh Johnson, DHS Secretary, and so the MFWIC and owner of the Secret Service:

those responsible should be held accountable

while also claiming that “an investigation” into this had been in progress since last April. When will they be held accountable, Jeh? You’ve had six months and done nothing. Define “accountable,” Jeh. What is Lowry’s status in the Secret Service? Other than continuing his job as head trainer, I mean? What is Paramore’s status? Other than still being a DAD? Will the rest be publicly identified and fired for cause along with these two? Or will they all be allowed to retire or resign, with full honors and perks? Will these guys be turned over to DoJ for prosecution? By an Obama DoJ when the victim was a Republican? When?

And all we’re getting is Obamatalk from the Secret Service and the DHS, and even less from Obama himself.

A Cynical Distortion

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And, perhaps, a sign of growing Democratic Party desperation.

Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush, on a campaign stop in South Carolina last week, said this to his black audience:

Our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting and says, “You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side.”

There are few things that terrify Progressives and Democrats more than those trapped into dependency on Progressive Government escaping the trap and being able to do for themselves, without those Progressives doing for them—and collecting personal political power in the process.

So: when a Republican comes along and says he can help those trapped and want out a way out, Democrats come out of the woodwork with their distortions.

You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side. How does that get distorted in to “black folks all want free stuff?” Only a Democrat can follow that pseudo-logic.

Candidate For…

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…Panderer-in-Chief.

Hillary Clinton, Democratic Presidential candidate has decided she opposes the Keystone XL pipeline—because it’s a distraction. With her view of the pipeline on the table, the distraction of it kept her from talking about her climate warming…stuff.

Of course, she could have settled the distraction by supporting the pipeline, too: the question’s unsettled state was the distraction. Thus, her opposition is just naked pandering to the leftist climatistas; it has no other purpose at all.

Hillary Clinton—Special Interest-in-Chief wannabe.