August 9, 2006, evening.  Congress has this whole minimum wage thing all wrong. Minimum wage should not be increased to $7.15, it should be a living wage of $15-20 per hour. That would make up for the nine years that the poor minimum wage earners have been denied cost of living adjustments. The same bill should also outlaw unemployment. Companies should be required to hire anyone who applies. Being rejected hurts applicants' self esteem. Requiring special skills, training or education for a position is discriminatory. First come, first served is a much more equitable and even-handed way of hiring, except, of course, for that percentage of positions set aside for affirmative action.

How would companies pay for all this? Make the minimum wage also be the maximum wage. No employee would be allowed to make more than any other employee. So the CEO and the receptionist would make the same amount. The CEO probably doesn't work any harder. Why does he make a hundred times what the receptionist makes? Does he work 100 times harder? 

But Congress got a pay raise. They always get a pay raise. So do federal employees. They get a Cost Of Living Allowance (COLA) based on the rate of inflation or the Consumer Price Index. Employees of state and local government should be treated equally. For that matter, so should private sector employees. Congress should fix these inequities at the same time they fix the minimum wage. All Americans, including undocumented workers, should get pay raises annually.

Evil companies say they will have to cut jobs if the minimum wage goes up. This is even worse than leaving the minimum wage where it is no layoffs or bankruptcies should be allowed that are tied to the minimum wage increase. Even worse, companies have been turning to outsourcing to save money. This hurts the little guy. What are they supposed to do? Congress should punish companies that outsource any jobs. These same companies say prices will increase if wages are forced upward. People on fixed income would be hurt, so this cruel practice must be prohibited in the same bill. Prices must be frozen, and where possible, rolled back to make consumer goods and services more affordable.

So write, fax, phone and email your congressmen and senators. Pass a living wage now! 

August 7, 2006, evening.  We are engaged in a deep social and political struggle in these United States. We are experiencing class warfare, and we see it waged daily. We have become polarized in our perceptions: liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, socialist vs. capitalist, rich vs. poor, minority vs. majority. Both parties play this game, but the Democratic party has taken it to greater extremes than I have ever seen. 

The Republicans and conservatives certainly stress the differences between their own beliefs and the beliefs of Democrats and liberals. Democrats, IMNSHO, have a professional cadre of race baiters like Jackson and Sharpton. These racists and the professional class warlords throughout the House and Senate continually complain about "tax cuts for the rich". Neal Boortz once said that the primary function of the Democratic Party to take money away from people who earned it so they can give it to people who have not earned it. 

What right does the government have to take away the inheritance that parents might want to leave to their children? That money was already taxed once as income, why does it need to be taxed again, just for dying? What is wrong with leaving money and property to one's descendants? Don't they have more of a right to it than the government? Why is there a gift tax? If I earn more than I need because of all my hard work and sacrifice, why can't I give that money to my children without a huge penalty? Who decided that I can't do that with my money? How many times can the government tax that same dollar? What percentage is right? Is there any percentage that is too high? At what point have we taxed the rich enough? 

The government seems to have the attitude that the money I earn is theirs, and out of the goodness of their hearts, they are going to let me keep some. That is, they think that way until someone decides that I am making too much, and then they want to take my "windfall" earnings and give my money to someone who is "less fortunate". Less fortunate? Most people in poverty are there because of bad choices in life. "Fortune" was not involved. If you have a kid before marriage, marry before age 21, and don't get a high school diploma, there is an 80% chance that you will be poor, at least for a while. That's not luck, those are bad choices. Get a high school diploma, wait until marriage to have children, and hold off getting married until you are 21, and there is only a 20% chance that you will end up in poverty. And rich people? Very few are rich because they inherited their wealth. Most wealthy people worked hard and made intelligent choices, the opposite of what most poor people do. Luck? Luck is where preparation meets opportunity. 

August 4, 2006, evening.  I would like to make an early recommendation on how to vote this November. Consider disregarding your party affiliation and just vote the incumbent out. Then do exactly the same thing the next election and the next. It's not like there is any real difference between the parties these days. Both sides of the aisle pander to get elected and vote for earmarks to buy more votes to get re-elected. The Republicans are now bigger spenders than the Democrats were. Of course, what I fear is that when the Dems once again get control they will look back on the success the GOP had buying votes with earmarks, and they will spend even more.

No, the best plan is to vote out the incumbent every cycle. 

Beinart points out that bashing Bush is more important than national security in the eyes of these liberals. Democratic leaders even wanted Maliki to be barred from speaking to Congress. Beinart writes that, "The Democratic Party's single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party's behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why." Pandering for the Jewish vote is priority one.

Neal Boortz accurately points out today (check his archives) that Hamas and Hezbollah calculated that Israel has grown soft, so it was time to attack. The Democratic Party, in its obsession for power, has a policy of attack Bush, attack, Bush, attack Bush, down with the war in Iraq. Our adversaries have been waiting and hoping  for such signs of weakness, and the insurgency is responding accordingly. All they have to do is outlast us. All they have to do is wait until the media and the liberals pound their negative messages day after day to undermine public support for the war, and we will cut and run. Schumer and Boxer and Pelosi and Reid are dancing to their tune, with CNN on drums, MSNBC on bass, and John Kerry hoping to play lead guitar. Background vocals by Howard Dean and Cindy Sheehan.

What an embarrassment.

What we want vs. what we get

I agree with George Bernard Shaw: "The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it." It is hard to not sound cynical when it comes to observing politics these days. We don't have many public servants in office anymore, just politicians. I probably don't have to describe the difference between a politician and a public servant, but since that is what I am writing about, I will anyway.

A public servant's goal is to serve his constituents and the public interest. A politician's goal is to get elected and then get re-elected. This is not to say that a politician never helps his constituents. It does happen. And certainly a public servant must be elected to serve, but the balance between public service and self-service has been lost. Public service has given way to pandering. Earmarks are paraded about like flags in a parade to impress constituents. Politicians take extreme pride that they are bringing home the bacon. They publicize their earmarks the way scalps were put on display to impress one's fellow warriors. Only these days, it is the taxpayer who gets the scalping.

Look at the immigration problem. The House, having to face the judgment of the voters much more often than their Senate counterparts, is a much better reflection of the will of the people. Most people in this country want the borders fixed, and they oppose amnesty. Our senators seem to think that their constituents will forget how they voted (and they well may be right). But many in Congress seem to be hedging their bets. They seem to see that there is a chance that amnesty might pass, illegal immigrants might end up citizens who vote, and they don't want to be put out of office by 12 million formerly illegal and angry aliens. The president does not face re-election, and I don't know what the hell he thinks he's doing. He's probably thinking about his legacy of compassionate conservatism. These observations scare me, but they fit the observable facts.