Tag Archives: jobs

Political Experience

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As the terrorist threat becomes ever more apparent—Paris, for instance—political experience in a Presidential candidate would seem to be at a premium, according to political…pundits. I agree: given the US’ role in the world, even after President Barack Obama’s seven-year retreat, a retreat actively supported by the Democratic Party, political experience is highly important. Especially with the damage done by that retreat, political experience is highly important. So is an ability to learn policy issues and rationally to form policy and adjust it as empirical data flow in.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is often touted as unbeatable in the Democratic primary campaign—she is—and she’s just as often touted (a few too early polls notwithstanding) as virtually unbeatable in the general election. Her political experience is the support for that unbeatability.

Let’s see, then, what are some highlights of her political experience?

  • HillaryCare
  • Bimbo Eruptions
  • For the Iraq War before she was against it (sound familiar?)
  • Successfully passed three Senate bills: created a historic site, named a post office, named a stretch of highway
  • For Keystone XL before she was against it
  • Foreign government “contributions” to her (and her husband’s and daughter’s) Clinton Foundation while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Communications security and classified material handling while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Libya
  • Benghazi

Clinton has remained steadfast in all of these, save for her flip-flopping on Iraq and Keystone. Especially, she has remained steadfast on Obamacare (née HillaryCare), security matters, Libya, and Benghazi.

She should run on her political experience. The Republican Presidential candidate should run on her political experience.

Democrats, Pseudo-Science, and our Economy

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President Barack Obama stopped the Keystone XL pipeline (fortunately, it’s not permanent; a better informed President can undo this damage, but that’s for another post). Obama, supported by his Democrat confreres (though, as I said, it was his decision), offered these excuses for the stoppage:

the pipeline would create few jobs

Even taking that as accurate (thousands of jobs are not “few,” though), job creation in our present economy is not a thing to be dismissed as casually as this. Further, the John Kerry State Department’s analysis that the jobs created would amount to fewer than 0.1% of “the nation’s total employment” is fatuous on its face: other than Big Government, there are vanishingly few enterprises that don’t employ fewer than 0.1% of our nation’s total employment.

would fail to lower gasoline prices

Not initially, perhaps, as the current relative slowness of gasoline prices to fall in line with falling oil prices. However, the increased supply of oil and its associated easier delivery to refineries, can only increase the supply of gasoline relative to demand, and so the pipeline would, ultimately reduce the price of gasoline. Of course there are two sources of reduced prices, only one of which is easily visible. One is an absolute drop in price at the pump. The other, though, is easily ignored by Democrats: that’s the smaller rise in price as demand continues to outrun supply, even as that latter gap shrinks from the pipeline’s influence on supply.

exacerbate[e] climate change

Umm, no. Even were man a serious player in climate warming (this was the climatista panic-mongers’ claim; they don’t get to run away from it with a name change), the pipeline’s influence can’t be seen in the noise, given the PRC’s and India’s contribution to climate warming. However, the pseudo-science of “climate warming” is being more and more debunked—not only through exposure of all the falsified data and failed models, but with actual real data contradicting pseudo-scientists’ claims. There’s nothing present for the pipeline to influence, even minisculy.

No, canceling Keystone is nothing more than a continuation of Democrats’ pushing their crony green capitalists’ welfare, a functional if not purely intentional attack on our economy.

Because There Isn’t Enough Regulation

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Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do Democrats. The vacuum Democrats abhor, though, isn’t a natural one, it’s manmade—gaps in regulation. Americans are just too stupid to manage our own lives, on our own, insist Democrats, and so Democrats demand to regulate our lives for us. For our own good, you see. And for the good of Democrats’ political power. Here are two examples.

In Houston, the Liberal city government didn’t think bathroom accommodations for those who can’t accept who they are should be a matter of negotiation between employer and employee or prospective employee.

More importantly, the Liberal city government thought religious beliefs should be a matter appropriate only to Sundays in churches and not available in the workaday world or to the men and women who operate businesses in the city.

The Liberal city government didn’t think such perks or rights should be competitive offers in free market competition among employers for labor—the way “full dental” was exactly such a competition offer in the last century. So, after having an outright city ordinance struck in court, they put the regulation to the city’s voters in full expectation of being able to ram it through, with the help of millions of dollars from outside Liberals and Democrats.

Houston’s mayor, Annise Parker, even sought to justify this regulatory overreach:

No one’s rights should be subject to a popular vote[.]

No, they shouldn’t. But the Liberal, looking to fill a regulatory vacuum, did exactly that; she put Christians’ and employees’ in general rights to a popular vote.

In San Francisco, the regulatory vacuum involved what private property owners should be allowed to do with their private property when the Liberal city government and its special interest supporters object to those uses.

In another referendum, San Frisco voters rejected the city’s efforts to limit short-term housing rental, a move made by a number of house owners to earn a few extra bucks letting a room to freely agreeing renters needing a place to stay.

[T]enants-rights organizations, a group representing landlords, a hotel workers’ union and hotel associations

all supported the limiting measure because it might compete with their interests. Freedom to compete—or even just to earn some money in an enormously expensive city—should be limited because, well, because competition must be regulated. The argument they put forward wasn’t even intended to be a serious one. Such room-letting would drive up housing costs. By reducing demand for housing, I suppose.

Both of these moves were demonstrations of how much the Left—the Progressives in government and the Democratic Party at large—abhor American citizens’ behavior being unregulated. Americans are just too dumb to handle our own affairs; every action we take has to be regulated to the last detail.

Remember these Democratic Party attempts next year.

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.