Ruminations - 07/14/09 - Granite Grok

Ruminations – 07/14/09

Life is short, I’ve filled it with too many important things again (gotta work on that "No" thing again), so time for some short takes:

Well, they say that great nations always fall from within.  The United States spent a lot of blood and treasure fighting against Communism in the last century.  Now, the President of the United States has a Communist Czar in the White House:

Meet the Green Czar, Who Is A Red

Consistent with Barack Obama’s leftist ideology and affinity for communists — remember the man he identified as his father figure growing up was a communist who took Obama to communist party meetings, the administration has chosen a man from San Francisco to be Obama’s “green czar.”

It is probably a good thing for the green czar, Van Jones, that he won’t have to go through Senate confirmation. It turns out he’s a member of the communist party with an arrest record.

Jones himself stated in a 2005 interview his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice,” and that he was a “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.

Well, the Obama voters have only themselves to blame for opening the gates…

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On the Epicopal Church leader – Bishop Jefferts Schori:

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.

Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group’s triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with "the great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."

Once again, it seems that the Episcopal Church is hammering down on the pedal to accelerate its ongoing change from a Biblical heterodoxy of "Christ died for MY sins" to a continuation of a socialistic (group vs individual) social gospel. And continuing its headlong decline as membership is heading off the cliff.  Ask yourself – "would I be right with God if I was being measured by ‘my group’ by God?"

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More on the minimum wage boost I blogged about here:

…The unemployment rate in June for American teenagers was 24%, for black teens it was 38%, and even White House economists are predicting more job losses. So how about raising the cost of that teenage labor?  Sorry to say, but that’s precisely what will happen on July 24, when the minimum wage will increase to $7.25 an hour from $6.55. The national wage floor will have increased 41% since the three-step hike was approved by the Democratic Congress in May 2007

…a 2006 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, economists David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Bank reviewed the voluminous literature over the past 30 years and came to two almost universally acknowledged conclusions.

First, "a sizable majority of the studies give a relatively consistent (though not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects." Second, "studies that focus on the least-skilled groups [i.e., teens, and welfare moms] provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects."…

…But about two of every three full-time minimum-wage workers get a pay raise anyway within a year on the job. Meanwhile, those who lose their jobs or who never get a job in the first place get a minimum wage of $0. Mr. Neumark calculates that the 70-cent per-hour minimum wage hike this month would kill "about 300,000 jobs for those between the ages of 16-24." Single working mothers would also be among those most hurt.

Progressive Liberals say that "we" have to help those families earning the min. wage – we do that with EITC.  Problem, as in healthcare – they’re shooting flies with cannons – it is a very small number of people with families at that level – so we hurt entry level workers by shutting the door as it is too expensive to hire them.  Also it is a peverse incentive – effectively, society is telling the most unskilled laborers "go ahead, start families when you are unprepared to do so" – and then lays the burden on the rest of us.

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When Government owns the means of production, it is socialism.  When it merely controls the means of production, it is fascism.  The 9th US Circuit of Appeals is basically ruling that fascism is preferable to capitalism – it is mandating what an owner HAS to sell in their store:

The most overturned appellate court has teed up another case for the Supreme Court to consider — and likely soon. The 9th Circuit overturned an injunction in a district court case, allowing the state of Washington to force a pharmacy to stock and dispense morning-after pills, which causes the abortion of an embryo in the early days of a pregnancy. The pharmacy owners had objected, claiming that the law violated their religious practice:

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the “morning after” contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Wash., failed in a bid to block 2007 regulations that required all Washington pharmacies to stock and dispense the pills.
..

…However, this is something else.  The owners of the pharmacy do not want to stock the pills for their own reasons.  Even apart from religious grounds, that still seems to be their decision in the marketplace.  If they don’t want to sell aspirin, or Ginsu knives, or inflatable life vests for swimming pools, that should be their decision, too.  If their customers object to their policies, they will find other pharmacies to patronize.  The government has a public interest in telling retailers what they cannot sell for safety reasons (like dynamite, as an example), but should not force business owners to sell something they do not want to sell.

So, Bigger Government is enhancing free markets and individual freedom?  I think not…but it fits with the Government continuing to be more and more intrusive…

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So, Obama isn’t content with running 35% of the nation’s GDP (finance, healthcare, cars, energy); now he’s a city architect?  Again, if one goes by the Federalism philosophy, this shouldn’t even be an issue:

"It’s great to have an urban president," said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who joined the discussions. "This is the first urban president we’ve had in a long time. And we’ve had no policy directed at American cities for the previous eight years."

Um, being the Govenor of your state, what have you done for your own cities?  Why SHOULD
AndObama’s past tied to citiesObama tied his own biography to the need to revitalize deteriorating cities and his experience in places that have weathered economic downturns.

"For too long, federal policy has actually encouraged sprawl and congestion and pollution, rather than quality public transportation and smart, sustainable development," Obama said. "And we’ve been keeping communities isolated when we should have been bringing them together." 

And the city mayors have done….what? 

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Yeah, this makes sense but only if you listen to his words….

President Obama told Pope Benedict XVI at a Vatican meeting that he would work to limit how many abortions take place each year in the United States, according to a Vatican spokesman.

…but not his actions.  Let’s see – he is refusing to defend the conscience clause that protects healthcare workers from retribution if they decide to not participate in abortions.  He overruled the Executive order that kept  taxpayer money from paying for abortions abroad.  He is expanding domestic use of taxpayer

You know what Obama is full of now, don’t you?

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