$15.00 an hour will not make you happy

There is a mini-movement afoot across the U.S. pushing for an almost doubling of the federally mandated minimum wage of $8.25/hour for full time employees.

This movement is primarily focused on the fast food industry, namely McDonald's.  These low skilled disgruntled workers main gripe is that they can't pay their bills on $8.25 per hour.  How can they possibly maintain their 55' luxury yacht payments, pay their beach front condo mortgages in St. Thomas and service the loans on their  Maseratis?  

These were of course rhetorical questions, easily answered by anyone:  they can't.  Anyone currently working for minimum wage just doesn't have the skills in the workplace demanded by employers, they flat out don't.  They are not able to provide any employer any value beyond flipping a burger, or mopping a floor.  These skills are easily obtained with 15 minutes of training, and can be mastered by the most simple minded among the population.

But earning more than a minimum wage requires more than the ability to swing a mop or handle a spatula.  Do these morons know that McDonald's turnover in employees per year is around 480%, and that level is acceptable to the McDonald's front office as a cost of doing business?  That means that a single station behind the counter that only flips burgers has 4.8 different low skilled workers per year on average handling that single spatula.  Or, for those who are really obtuse and feeble minded (typical incumbents of this position, frankly), this means that the average tenure of a burger flipper at McDonalds is something around less than 3 months before they move on to bigger and better things, or are terminated, or die.  

Their skills don't earn McDonalds any more than $8.25 per hour, and if they did, they would receive it.  Simple supply and demand.  If your work exceeds the value of what your employer is paying you, they will recognize such, and reward you accordingly so that you will continue earning them money.  

But that's not what these stupid burger flippers and mop swingers think.  They think that the franchise owners or McDonalds corporate folk have bags of money just sitting around in hallways doing nothing. And these same stupid burger flippers and mop swingers think that they should be allowed to dip into those bags of money, because that would only be fair. And once they get this arbitrary figure of $15/hour, they will be happy.

This is completely not the case.  They will not be happy, and here's why:

A McDonald's franchise and corporate margins are not all that much above 6% of  the total cost of operating a restaurant, maybe 8%, tops.  That is not a huge margin, and forcing labor rates arbitrarily to $15.00 an hour will likely drag those margins underwater at most locations.  No McDonalds can consistently turn a profit at those kind of labor rates given to completely unskilled doofs. 

All of this hooplah displayed by unskilled rabble waving signs and chanting stupid slogans will not result in any desirable outcome.  If the hooligans are successful in swaying some to jack up the minimum wage at these facilities, then that money has to come from somewhere.  And that usually comes at the expense of labor costs: the franchise owners or the corporate office will find a way to operate using less labor: you know, less burger flippers.  An automated burger machine costs much less in the long run than a retarded, unmotivated human doing the same job.  

In the long run, there will simply be less burger flipping jobs.  

This is always they way it goes.  Duh.  But there is no convincing the dummies out in front of McDonald's waving signs.  They want more.  

Don't we all?  But this is not the way to get more.  Getting more requires an employee providing more value to the employer, though hard work, education, improved skills, loyalty and hustle.  

This stupidity isn't going to accomplish anything.

Hillary Clinton has no baggage, folks. None whatsoever.

I suppose nobody except me remembers when the mainstream media (NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, Time magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post....you know, the Democrats) were shoveling dirt over Newt Gingrich's presidential aspirations in 2011, declaring he had just 'too much baggage.'  That baggage included his 'wither on the vine' comment about Social Security, getting paid for an autobiography and shutting down the government in 1995 (none of that is 'baggage' as far as I am concerned).

When discussing Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations, has the MSM even ONCE mentioned the word 'baggage' when talking about Mrs. Clinton?  Even one lousy mention of 'baggage?'  No.  And we won't hear that word about her, even though this woman has more 'baggage' than Paris Hilton on a weekend jaunt to Marseilles.

And we are told she has an excellent chance to capture the White House in 2016.  How dumb are the U.S. voters, anyway?

Time for a Hitler analogy (which of course renders this opinion completely crazy and invalid): imagine if you can the theoretical scenario where Hitler had survived his Nazi defeat, and was allowed to go back to Munich to live out his life unmolested by folks seeking vengeance for his past sins (also known as 'baggage').

And Adolph goes back to Munich, gets bored swilling beer in the Hofbrauhaus with his old Putsch buddies and decides to run for the office of chancellor again, currently held by conservative Angela Merkel..  'Vote for Adolph, he's a nice guy!'  That slogan is then printed on every bill board, every bumper sticker and on the side of every bus.  

The German media, and particularly his opponent in the upcoming election, bring up the Holocaust, and the millions of people that Hitler had murdered.  "None of that has any validity, it's just a vast right wing conspiracy to besmirch the reputation of a truly nice guy."

"But Herr Fuhrer, we saw 188 thousand people enter Dachau, but nobody ever seems to have left."  'Nothing to see here,' scoffs Adolf.  "They got lost, and wandered away" dismissing the notion. "And besides, what difference, at this point, does it make?"  (old Schickelgruber sure can turn a phrase).

And so it goes during this hypothetical election campaign, Hitler and his election staff systematically deny that there is any 'baggage' associated with the lovable nice guy, Adolf Hitler.  Also imagine the media concluding "well, ladies and gentlemen.  There you have it.  Herr Hitler declares that he has no skeletons in his closet.  Now let's move on to what a nice guy he is...'

Are Americans that stupid that the will allow the media to ignore the following 'baggage' of Hillary Clinton:

• Vince Foster's suspcious death and Hillary's suspicious involvement
• Travelgate
• Rose Law Firm records
• Whitewater
• Cattle futures
• FBI files on republican adversaries found in the White House
• Failed takeover of health care system in 1993
• Heading up controlling hubby's 'Bimbo Eruptions'
• 'Vast right wing conspiracy'
• Clocking hubby with a lamp, resulting in bloodshed
• Continuously trashing those around her and general bad temper
• Russian 're-set' button
• "I ain't no ways tarred (tired), I've come too farrrr (far)"
• Benghazi
• Email and server scandal
• Lying about dodging bullets on visit to Kosovo
• Lying about being named after Sir Edmund Hillary (first to scale Mt. Everest, and who was previously unknown until his feat TWO YEARS after Hillary Clinton was born).

Now THAT'S baggage. Serious, serious BAD, AWFUL baggage. Just the Mt. Everest thing alone, about the least egregious piece of baggage Mrs. Clinton lugs around would have tanked any republican's reputation, such as Dan Quayle's 'baggage' consisting of 'potatoe'. 

Will people just blow all of this off, this huge volume of 'baggage' in the upcoming 2016 presidential election",  just like the citizens of Dachau ignored the thousands of Jews that entered the concentration camp in their little town, and believed what the Nazis told them about it: 'just a protective custody facility, for processing people involved in the justice system.'

I may not know the definition of "is" but I know baggage when I see it.  And Hillary has serious baggage.  Everybody knows it.  Will everybody ignore it?

Vielleicht, vielleicht auch nicht.

The mind of a liberal

I have often pondered why opponents of my political views, namely liberals, think the way they think.  I am only considering opponents within the U.S.  Of course there are opposing external viewpoints from my own that come from dictators, communists, fascists, and all form of tyrants and potentates, but I am only concerned here with those who oppose me at the ballot box.

My frame of political reasoning is primarily conservative; a small government that acts as a defender of individual rights, protects its citizens from foreign threats, promotes commerce, and fairly administers justice to those who would use unjust force in society.  And that would be all that I would want my ideal government to do, and nothing more.  Just the stuff that the U.S. Constitution empowered the government to do.  

My political opponents, the liberals, want almost the exact opposite from the government.  Liberals desire a large, all powerful government that controls with regulations, rewards and punishment any activity within the U.S. that can be gamed, or otherwise unfairly manipulated in order to profit or unfairly advance a participant's interests.  Liberals want a completely level playing field for everyone in every endeavor, regardless of circumstance. They desire as small a national defense posture as possible, and divert the vast resources needed for a strong defense  to social concerns instead. 

On the surface, most of the liberal position seems reasonable.  Who wants people gaming the system?  Nobody, right?  Who wants an un-level playing field?  That's just not right, is it?  Who wants to put up with pollution of our air and water?  Only idiots and rotten people, right?

But on most issues of how best to manage the limited resources of the U.S. citizen, these 'reasonable' positions start becoming impractical, and often are contradictory to other liberal philosophies.  On occasion, I conclude that many if not most liberals are just plain evil, when they vote in droves to take the money from one American by brute force from a ham-fisted federal government and give it away to other Americans who have not done anything to earn it.

But liberal behavior defined as simply being evil doesn't explain things so well.  I can't imagine that 150,000,000 Democrat voters cast their ballots the way they do because they are all evil.  The math just doesn't support the 'liberals are evil' theory, although the immorality of taking one man's resources away and giving them to another who did nothing to earn them is nothing short of evil in itself.

No, most liberals are not evil.  But why do they support political party that punishes some Americans at the expense of other Americans?  

The only answer I can come up with is that the liberal mind is one of a perfectionist: if something is not perfect, then take steps to make it so.  Most conservatives understand that nothing is perfect, and structure practical arguments to the issues of the day that make the best of an imperfect situation.

Not good enough for liberals, however.  As the old saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good.  Back in the early days of LBJ, Lyndon Johnson attended a single room classroom when he was four years old.  That little classroom in Stonewall, Texas was about as spartan as things got back in the day: 20 wooden desks, a chalk board, and a wood stove to heat the place in the winter.  That's it.  

And LBJ figured that people just didn't care enough about education to make little kids sit in those little shacks, so he did something about the situation.  He started the U.S. down the road to profligate spending by everybody that owned property in the form of property taxes to be committed to public education, and now nobody has to go to school in a one room classroom anymore.

Every citizen now has access to publicly funded mansion-like school properties that have lunchrooms, libraries, school nurses, school psychologists,  and enough administrators to populate an army battalion.  All at the mandated public expense.  

That little one room school was good.  But not perfect.  And LBJ made our education system perfect.  Right?  Wrong.  His goal was to perfect the outdated education system, by simply overwhelming the system with money.  Other people's money, of course, but we got to where we are today in our horrible public school system as a result of the good intentions of a one time little four year old boy sitting at a rickety old wooden desk in a stark, barren one room school house.  

And so it goes with all liberal causes.  A wheel chair bound lady can't get into a public facility to buy a jar of pickles because there are two steps to deal with.  Is this any way to treat our crippled folks?  No siree Bob.  Let's mandate that every public access facility across the Fruited Plains have wheel chair access.  And we as a nation spent perhaps a trillion dollars doing so, and now that lady can access that store and buy her jar of pickles.  

But why don't liberals, in doing their good deeds, ever consider the costs?  Money is no object in seeking perfection in most liberal minds.  

It should be an object, however, because money doesn't grow on trees.  This is something I haven't a clue as to why liberals don't consider the costs in achieving their perfect solutions to many problems, as well as solutions to problems that aren't even problems.

Maybe somebody will give me a hint one of these days as to why liberals think the way they do.  

Dick Cheney is an American hero

Long the punching bag of the socialist pacifist Left in the U.S., Dick Cheney continues to serve the country in his current capacity as Detractor in Chief in his opposition to whom he correctly labels 'the worst president in my lifetime."

And the former Vice President of the United States is now 74 years old, and was born during the FDR administration.  That is a lot of presidents since then, and in his opinion, the current one is the worst.  I think Dick Cheney is really putting quite a happy face on this remark and sugar coating this comparison, since it is arguable that Barack Obama is the absolute worst president the country has ever known. "We'll be digging out from the damage this president has done for years to come."  

Man oh man, don't we all know it.  

And Dick Cheney knows it, as do most of the conservative voters in the country.  The former veep doesn't need to take the kind of heat that is heaped upon him, he could have quietly retired and left the political arena.  But, sadly, the current crop of GOP politicians are not standing up to Barack Obama nearly as aggressively as they should in opposing his socialist agenda.  

Accordingly, Dick Cheney is still swinging, heart transplant and all.  He is a hero of conservative Americans, and has selflessly served our country for decades, even though he could have made millions in the private sector.  As CEO of Haliburton, Cheney took a monumental, staggering pay cut to step up and serve as George W. Bush's vice president, and not simply for the power or as stepping stone to the presidency, which he never sought. He was asked to serve, and he stepped up in a big way.

He was instrumental as the Sec. of Defense during George H.W. Bush's administration in ousting the evil Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.  It was many of the defense policies put into place by Dick Cheney that contained Saddam Hussein after Desert Storm, and steadied the volatile Middle East for decades, or as much as the Middle East could be stabilized considering the ruthless dictators and potentates running most of the regions oil rich kingdoms, emirates and sheikdoms. 

History will be kind to Dick Cheney.  He is one of the greatest Americans to come down the pike in the last 50 years, right up there with Ronald Reagan.

But he's not done just yet.  He's still in there, throwing hay makers. God Bless Dick Cheney, an American hero.   

Hillary Clinton will get away without consequence on the email scandal

Just like all the other scandals that have come and gone.  I don't know if I can count all of her scandals, but there are many.  And this one will simply get added to the list that only her detractors keep.

Her supporters have not even logged this one as a scandal.  She says she obeyed the law, there you have it, they say.  Nothing to see here, move along, now, you mean spirited Republicans.  You just hate her because she is a woman.  This email thing is nothing, and it just shows what rotten, no good scumbags you all are for keeping at it.  Just drop it, OK?  She's a good person.

And it will disappear over the course of the next year, and nothing will come of it. Trey Goudy will subpoena her server, and her lawyers will stretch that process out over several years.  By then, it is entirely possible that this server will have disappeared.  

If it hasn't already.

Let's look at a few other scandals that Hillary Clinton has seen come and go without consequence:

• Filegate: 900 FBI files on Clinton enemies found in the White House possession.  No consequences for the Clintons
• Cattle Futures: $1000 investment parlayed into $100,000 by Hillary, no questions asked, not even futures experts could do this.  No consequences.
• Vince Foster dies under mysterious circumstances, Hillary's people spirited off with unknown contents at the crime scene.  No consequences.
• Travelgate: Hillary said "we need those slots."  Fires the lot of the non-partisan travel office and fills the jobs with Clinton cronies.  Hillary accuses Billy Dale, travel office manager of malfeasance and criminal activities.  Dale was acquitted in minutes.  Unprecedented abuse of power.  No consequences.
• Rose Law Firm billing records, which mysteriously showed up in the White House residence two years after being subpoenaed.  No questions asked.
• Whitewater real estate deal, shady Clinton fingers in this mess, no consequences for the Clintons
• Health-Care mess.  Hillary comes up with socialized health care plan, does not name co-conspirators who helped her with all the socialism in the plan.  Done in secret.  No more questions asked.
• Benghazi: four Americans including Libyan ambassador die while Hillary watches.  Requests for boosted security measures from the ambassador prior to the attacks fall on deaf ears.  Hillary blames a video for terrorist attack.  No emails from Hillary turned over to government during this period.  No more consequences for Hillary.
• Clinton Foundation scandal.  Hillary shaking down foreign heads of state for cash while on the job as Secretary of State.  Massive conflict of interest, no consequences for any of this malfeasance.
• Email-gate.  Nothing to see here, either.  Just add it to the list.

How many scandals of at least the seriousness of any of these did it take to bring down Richard Nixon?  

Only one.  

We've all been raised to respect the police

From our earliest memories, we all have been told that the police are our friends.  We've been raised to believe that the police are the good guys, and that whatever they do, it's the law and is right and legal.

Right?  If you wore blue, automatic reverence and deferral to a policeman's judgement was ingrained into all of us.

In most of the country, that is.  In urban high crime areas, maybe not so much, since simply living in that area makes you a suspect and likely criminal.  And if you aren't caught in a criminal act by those in blue 'serving' those areas, you are assumed to have done bad things in the past, it's what you do.  

And when the police are automatically assumed to be out to get you, which is true way more often that it should be within urban areas, their lack of popularity with these urban populations should not surprise anybody.  Crimes such as 'driving while black,' or even 'walking while black,' while not criminal, are often used as reasonable suspicion or probable cause by police in these areas, justifications to pull citizens over, or otherwise question citizens about their activities.

While mistakes were made prior to the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, MO by the police in dealing with a predominantly black area, the general dislike of police in areas such as Ferguson is readily apparent through urban America.  And the 'hands up' gesture is not based on the facts in the Michael Brown case, it is seen used again and again across urban America as a signal to the rest of us that respect for police is not universal, when they use their authority in ways that grate on the public good will decade after decade.

What about the good will given to police forces in predominantly white areas?  This too, is often wearing thin.  Police are, after all, government workers.  They are virtually impossible to fire regardless of their performance, are represented by huge public workers unions and have been documented time and again as behaving badly when it comes to dealing with those whom they have sworn an oath to 'protect and defend.'

All too often, police in predominantly white areas will fabricate evidence, plant evidence, steal evidence, and lie about their activities, lie about the circumstances of arrests they make, and even lie on the witness stand in a court of law, thus abusing the inherent trust that is placed in them. 

I am now seeing lots of television programs about police and their activities filmed in such a fashion as to put the police in the best light possible.  Don't get me wrong, though; there are many policemen and policewomen who are conscientious and honest throughout the country.  But their ranks are lousy with bad apples, and not just one here and one there.  They are everywhere, and way more bad cops are on the take, fabricate evidence and simply lie about the facts than should be in any municipality.  

Most police in rural, predominantly white areas find that crime is relatively rare, but they have to justify their salary.  Accordingly, nearly all the citizens that they are supposedly 'protecting and serving' are viewed at every interaction with them as potential perps, or at a minimum a source of revenue; to be written up with a citation for speeding, jay walking, spitting on the side walk or any number of other petty misdemeanors.

Is it any wonder that the police have lately gotten a black eye?  One main reason that the cops are in such a bad light in the public eye is the never ending advance in technology: video cameras are everywhere now, whereas 50 years ago, only news teams had the capacity to record video, and the potential of these news teams of yesterday actually recording cops doing bad things was simply not gong to happen.  No longer, however, thanks to this technology can a cop lie with impunity about what happened during an interaction with the pubic. There are security cameras virtually everywhere, cameras on their vehicles, cameras on private vehicles, and cameras in everyone's hands.  

Cops relying on their inherent trust from the public to always weigh in on their side of the issue is being called into question now.  

And for good reason: our police forces across this country need a complete audit of how they interact with those whom they have sworn an oath to 'protect and serve.'  

It's time the police got back to living that oath that they have strayed from over time.  

Urban living: a lesser life

There's two types of folks in this country: city folks and country folks.  

And typically, most city folks vote for Democrats, and most country folks vote for Republicans.  Just a peek at the U.S. voting results map of 2012, 2008 and 2004, etc, as color coded red for (R) and blue for (D) will clearly indicate.  I am confident you all have seen this map, it's striking as to how beautifully it verifies my claim about how folks vote according to where they live.

Those city folks all vote for Democrats (not all, but most) so that they can obtain government booty, which is more efficiently distributed to the constituents when they are huddled close together.  That's why Democrats love big cities.  It's so easy to pass out the goodies to the city folks that they have taken at the point of a gun from country folks.  

But is everything paradise in the cities?  Hardly.  Because Democrats have promised everyone a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage in exchange for their votes, these city folks sure could use those chickens and cars. Those promises sound real good. So they trudge to the polls, pull those (D) handles with pride, and then sit back and wait for the chickens and cars to flow into their possession.

In reality, it doesn't exactly work out like that, especially in the larger cities, Chicago for example.  Each winter, since Chicago is located in a fairly northern climate, snow falls are a fact of life, and snow removal from the city streets is a big responsibility of the local Democrat government.  Chicago has many, many side streets in addition to the major thoroughfares.  But plowing each and every little side street after major snow falls is just not going to happen, since the Chicago public works only has so many snow plows available to service the streets of Chicago.  Accordingly, only the major streets get plowed in any timely manner, and the rest of the city is on its own, even though each and every resident living on those side streets pays huge city property taxes to fund such things as street maintenance, and yet receive precious little services for their tax dollars.

Police services work much the same.  Urban crime rates are much higher than in the country, and the police presence is just too small a foot print to keep ahead of the massive criminal populations that flock to urban areas.  Crooks know where the police are, and where the police aren't: these criminals are evil, but they are not stupid.  Unless they are begging to go to jail, they commit their crimes in the absence of the police.  Chicago has one of the worst murder rates in the world.  And the current Democrat mayor has no clue as to what to do about it.  His opponent in the upcoming mayoral election, another Democrat, is promising 1,000 more cops on the streets (more chickens in more pots), but when asked where the money will come to fund those additional government jobs, this candidate has nothing to say.  Chicago voters have a choice this election: vote for this Democrat, or vote for that Democrat.  It's tough to live in the city these days.  They are screwed either way, and they don't even know it.

Country folk have no such limitations.  Many of them have snow removal equipment themselves, and many smaller municipalities have adequate equipment to service the local roads. Crime is quite low in rural areas, and police departments are on top of every area of criminal activity; they are all over crime like a Kennedy on a bottle of Scotch.  Criminals know where the pickin's are good, and it's not in the country.  They work best in the big cities, where cops are scarce.  Accordingly, it's very efficient out here in the country, with low crime and plowed roads, where mostly Republicans are calling the shots to ensure that their constituents are living large.  

See how things work in the real world?  Democrats can't figure out how to get chickens into everyone's pots, and cars into everyone's garages, but keep promising them those things every election year.

Republicans running for office out in Fly Over Country (the sticks, the boonies, the back woods, you know, where all the hayseeds, bumpkins, rubes and hicks live) don't promise all of that.  Accordingly, they don't need to deliver all of those expensive services that they can't afford to pay for, and their constituents like it this way: they often fend for themselves, keep to themselves and typically pay less for government.

It's great to live in the sticks.  Makes one want to break out in song, come on, y'all know the words: "I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee...."