Category: News

Pay floor boost goes to council: Supporters say move will prompt state action:

A Milwaukee Common Council committee voted 4-0 Thursday to support an increase in the city’s minimum wage, a move that advocates hope will pressure state lawmakers to OK a statewide increase.

The measure, which goes to the full council Tuesday, would raise the minimum wage in the city in two steps, first from $5.15 an hour to $5.70 an hour as of Oct. 1. A year later, it would rise to $6.50 an hour.

The steps are the same as those proposed in March by a bipartisan commission appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle. That group’s recommendations, based on a compromise among business and labor groups, have been stalled in the Republican-controlled Legislature, as GOP leaders have said the proposed increase is too high.

Critics said the city would be foolish to increase its minimum wage when surrounding communities have the lower state wage. They argued that it would cause some businesses to look elsewhere.

I’m with the critics. You know what’s going to happen? Let’s examine the unintended consequences:

• Service will suffer in all city businesses, from restaurants to the Grand Avenue Mall shops, as employers will stretch existing employees to cover more tables, more hours, more customers. How do you think customers will react? There’s an Applebee’s in West Allis, and if there’s not, one’s looking for space right now.
• Young people who might have taken summer jobs to silence their parents will have excuses to not find jobs (which don’t exist) and will have to amuse themselves, possibly by participating in the bash mob fad.
• People who want or need these jobs, whether as primary jobs or second jobs, will have to commute to the suburbs, spending twenty five minutes in an unsafe beater car like my brothers immortal Frankencar (no relation to Al) or ride the White and Green Limosine (the MCTS buses, now celebrating its first homicide ever) for an hour. Either one wastes time better spent on reading, spending time with children, or preparing a meal that doesn’t come from a box or a window.

I think the politicos achieve their goals with the boost, though: currently employed people get more money for no more effort, and the politicos get more votes for spending someone else’s money.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has dug deeply and found some ‘Republicans’ incensed about Governor Blunt’s government cuts:

Malinda Terreri, a homemaker from Ballwin, contends that Gov. Matt Blunt is ill-informed and pursuing “a path of political suicide.”

Rajesh Shah, a Creve Coeur physician, accuses the governor of displaying “a lack of maturity” and “playing the ‘class’ card” for political gain.

Both are Republicans who said they voted for Blunt in the fall. They might not do so again.

Blunt angered them and thousands of other parents when the cost-cutting measures he outlined with his State of the State address included eliminating the state’s First Steps early childhood program.

What kind of parents/Republicans are they?

The media-savvy parents have held a news conference, packed a Jefferson City hearing room, appeared on television and flooded the phone lines and computers of the governor and legislators with hundreds of calls and e-mails protesting the plan.

Terreri, the mother of a 3-year-old boy with autism, quickly set up an Internet site – savefirststeps.com. The site has collected more than 40,000 signatures on a petition to preserve the program, and also features a forum where backers regularly post their irritation with the governor’s proposal.

The kind directly benefitting from the program they want to save and who are savvy enough to hold a news conference, get some fawning coverage from the socialist St. Louis daily, and collect 40,000 clicks on an Internet petition–which are not signatures, dear Post-Dispatch.

Too bad these people don’t have the energy to pursue non-coercive charitable solutions to their problems, but that’s much harder, since it requires constant effort, whereas getting a government program requires only an investment to get the program started and then to infrequently fight program cuts.

Although I have to say, it surprises me to see the Post-Dispatch coming down on the side of the upper middle class or lower upper class, but they’re taking government handouts, so they’re okay:

Shah, the father of an autistic son, replied that the wealthy pay plenty of taxes and have just as much right to First Steps as they do to drive the state’s public highways and attend public schools. “To suggest that the very wealthy should not receive these services is inconsistent with the Republican message,” Shah said.

I’m not sure that’s the Republican message.

NBC puts on a brave face:

The suicide of a boxer competing in the upcoming NBC reality series “The Contender” won’t derail plans for the program, according to the network and its production partners.

Pardon my cynicism, but I imagine they’re at least torn. Sad for the loss, but ecstatic about the publicity. At least, I hope they’re torn.

Former TV critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Eric Mink says:

Happy birthday, Kim Jong Il!

I think he goes on to say that Bush has failed on North Korea policy or something. I couldn’t stomach much past his picture.

Those who cannot do television criticism, edit the Op-Eds. According to the Post-Dispatch, anyway.

A story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

David Laslo, director of Metropolitan Information and Data Analysis Services at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, presented his study at a meeting Thursday at UMSL.

His research showed that St. Louis County’s population loss spiked in 1998, but has been on a general upward swing since, although it dipped in 2002 and 2003.

Graph that in your mind. And then send a copy to me care of this blog, would you? I get vertigo when I try to figure out what that professional journalist means.

From an AP article entitled “WWF Warns on Man-Made Arctic Toxins” that apparently seeks to outlaw everything Gaia doesn’t like:

Only a tiny fraction of the estimated 30,000 to 70,000 chemicals made worldwide are banned, even though many more may be harmful, the report said.

In related trivia:

• Of the hundreds of thousands of plants grown in American homes, only a tiny fraction is pot, but many more would stink up your house if you dried them and lit them on fire.
• Of the millions of cars on American roads, only a tiny percentage will be in accidents, although any of them can be lethal if accelerated to their top speeds and run into unyielding objects.
• Of the gazillions of gallons of water in the world, only a small amount causes death by inhalation, but all of it is potentially lethal unless you’re Kevin Costner’s character in Waterworld.
• Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Subtitle this piece Subsets for Effect.

Does Michelle Malkin oppose competition? It’s hard to discern her stance from the sentences in her post entitled The Impact of Immigration of Wages in Arkansas, wherein she frames a link to a Wall Street Journal article. Malkin comments:

The news side of the Wall Street Journal has conceded that immigration depresses wages among blue-collar workers.

That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Competition among workers drives manufacturing costs down and should inspire the best of those employees to aspire to something better–instead of annual or union-driven raises to do the same thing over and over. The competition keeps costs down and makes for cheaper manufactured goods and for easier expansion for business owners. Regardless of from whence the workers come.

I cannot espouse an argument against immigration based on its economic impact to lowering prices. Sorry.

States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile:

It’s [a hybrid car] great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called “tax by the mile.”

Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.

Keep that in mind whenever your government wants to tax a behavior, such as using gas, smoking, drinking, or using a telephone. When that behavior changes, the spending remains, so the government will have to finally demonstrate some creativity–not in cutting spending, but in taxing something else for money to waste.

Lasers warn pilots of restricted airspace:

The U.S. military is planning a final demonstration Friday night of a ground-based laser system designed to warn pilots who have flown into restricted airspace over the nation’s capital.

During the demonstration of the Visual Warning System, a test aircraft will be illuminated with alternating red and green laser lights, said Michael Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“It’s an attention-getter, but it’s not blinding,” Kucharek said. “It’s not a distraction. So pilots can still focus on flying the aircraft without endangering anyone or themselves.”

After warning pilots and law enforcement to watch out for terrorists using lasers to blind pilots and crash jets, the military is going to use lasers to literally light up plane cockpits like a Christmas tree when they enter restricted airspace.

Not a distraction? Whose lives are you betting?

Suggested motto for public schooling, 2005:

Bag ’em and tag ’em.

(First link seen on Cold Fury; second seen directly on KdT’s site because I read it every day to make sure his library remains smaller than mine.)

The cover story from the latest issue of Integrated Solutions frightened me, since it told me about how the state of Washington was earning money: Imaging Success Is No Accident: The Washington State Department of Transportation improves access to collision reports and earns $4 million in additional revenue with a document capture solution.

However, I skimmed to the end of the article and discovered how the state of Washington is "earning" that money:

Due to the increased efficiency of this document management system, WSDOT is no longer in danger of losing federal funding. The system also is helping the agency raise extra revenue. WSDOT estimates it is now collecting between $3 and $4 million annually for damage to state-owned property that it was previously unable to obtain. “It used to take a long time to get the paper reports for a specific accident,” says Stanley. “By the time we tracked down who was responsible, the insurance case was closed.”

They’re recovering damages from insurance companies for state property, probably non-vehicular, damaged in auto accidents. So losing less money is really earning money.

Unfortunately, although I don’t think whomever came up with that turn of phrase–whether a puffing state employee or the writer who was looking for a marketable spin for his piece–meant to engage in Newspeak, but when it’s inadvertent, it’s much more disheartening.

Bush threatens to veto Medicare changes:

President Bush on Friday threatened to veto any changes Congress tries to make to Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit, which takes effect in January 2006.

“I signed Medicare reform proudly and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto,” Bush said at a swearing-in ceremony for Mike O. Leavitt, the new secretary of Health and Human Services.

Yeah, I voted for him. So now he threatens to veto any attempt to rein in the profligate spending-to-buy-votes. As his first veto in five years in office.

With great power comes great irresponsibility, perhaps, but at least he’s not as bad as the other guy would have been, and his foreign policy will allow us to live in a world safer than the alternatives so we can enjoy a future of financial collapse. But man, sometimes I have to work at convincing myself.

Eleven arrested after police find keg party in moving truck:

Police officers broke up a 21st birthday party and charged 11 people with underage drinking after pulling over a U-Haul moving truck with the revelers inside, officers said.

The most encouraging fact:

Officers allowed the partygoers to call for rides and no one was arrested.

But those who weren’t yet 21 were charged with underage drinking. If found guilty, each person could face a $255 fine or 30 days in jail.

Fortunately, though, none of the underage drinkers were elementary school kids with butter knives, because that would have been a different story.

Unfortunately, as I make juxtapose the behavior to prove the outrageousness of the zero-tolerance policy in schools yielding felony arrests, some might think the proper way to put balance into law enforcement would be to riding in the back of a rental truck a felony.

Missing Halliburton shipment of radioactive material found in Boston:

A Halliburton Co. shipment of radioactive material that landed in New York in October was lost en route to Texas, and was not found until Wednesday, when it turned up in Boston.

The material two sources of the element americium, used in oil well exploration was found intact at a freight facility after an intense search by federal authorities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not alerted to the missing shipment until Tuesday.

Boston was under a heightened state of alert in January and didn’t uncover this unexplained radioactive shipment with its radioactivity detectors and whatever other means it employed to investigate the dirty bomb threat.

Sleep tight.

End to Amtrak funding unpopular:

Wisconsin’s top transportation official Monday blasted President Bush’s budget proposal to eliminate all federal funding for Amtrak.

“I think it stinks,” state Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi said.

Who joins this apparatchik in bemoaning the loss of federal funding for a railway used by a few but employing many?

Similar comments came from Amtrak management, the National Association of Railroad Passengers and the United Transportation Union, which represents Amtrak conductors.

Oh, yeah, the cool kids.

A more accurate headline more likely would have been End to Amtrak funding met with general apathy by majority, but that hardly tells Journal-Sentinel readers what to think, ainna?

Neil Steinberg says today:

I never knew the name of the actor who played Dean Wormer in “Animal House” — John Vernon — until he died this week, at age 72. While the obituaries didn’t mention it, he uttered one of the great lines in movie history — “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” At least to those of us who struggle with all three.

Obviously, he does not read blogs every day; that line was mentioned in almost all of the blog memorials I read last week.

Steinberg, like many of other commentators, does Vernon disservice by not remembering Vernon’s role in Terminal Exposure and Sledge Hammer!.

A good fellow who looked a little too much like John Lithgow for true immortality.

When my beautiful wife and I were in the grocery store, a disparate pair of magazine headlines intruded upon the sane world in which we live:

Click for full size

So Brad Wants Jen Back! and Jen Fights to Get Brad Back!? Yeeks, these are direct opposites by implication. Tabloids should be careful since their regular readers, who seem to care about the state of Bradnifer’s marriage, might suffer from brain implosions when trying to comprehend how Brad is fighting for Jen and Jen is fighting for Brad.

Fighting whom?

Yeah, I know, I bought the magazines and only encouraged them. Shaddup.

Professor Bainbridge muses on Donald Rumsfeld’s reluctance to go to Germany:

So Donald Rumsfeld is afraid to go to Germany because he might get arrested on war crimes charges. So much for the NATO alliance, eh?

Well, that’s only on the good end of the spectrum. There’s always a chance that German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and some of his other leather clad apparatachiks might firebomb his motorcade or beat him to death with a brick.

Because that’s the caliber of leaders to which some would have America aspire, or to whom America should kowtow.