You would think, what with Cuba’s health care service that is envied by leftists the world over, that Castro could not possibly be wanting for care. You’d be wrong.
Nothing exposes the myth of Cuba’s vaunted health care system quite like the news that ailing dictator Fidel Castro refuses to use it. Instead, he prefers care from Spain. What hypocrisy.
Over the weekend, Cuba flew in Dr. Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, chief of the gastrointestinal care unit at Madrid’s Gregorio Maranon Hospital, to look over the aging dictator and see if there was anything he could do.
Spanish medics also brought in new capitalist-world medical equipment, part of a series of such shipments the Cuban government has been quietly provisioning for Castro since June, well before he ceded power to his brother, Raul.
Nothing quite beats the tehnology and skills developed under the competitive workings of the free market.
Hat tip: Chequer-Board of Nights and Days
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Recently, while vacationing to visit my parents for the holidays, I happened to read the front page of the Arizona Republic, and its remarks about the newly voted-in minimum wage increase in the state, from $5.15- to $6.75-an-hour. An almost one-third increase. So far as Arizona is concerned, there is no job in the entire state whose doing is worth less than $6.75 per hour. Painting fences, washing dishes, stamping mail for eight hours in the back of an office, all of these things are now judged to be worth this new minimum, in the interest of saving people from poverty.
A bit of basic math:
$6.75 per hour, for 25 hours a week – since most minimum-wage jobs are part-time – yields an untaxed income of $675 per month. Remove state and federal income taxes of a total of 19%, and income is reduced to $546.75 per month of true spendable income, or less than $7,000 per year.
Considering that the minimum wage’s stated goal is to preserve the public from poverty, it is difficult to imagine the squalor that a single person, living alone, would live in based on this income. Finding a legal living space for that amount of money would be miracle enough, nevermind the cost of food or gasoline to get to work.
The problem being ignored here is that these part-time jobs are not held by destitute single people, but rather either teenagers living in their parents’ household or people taking second jobs to augment their income. In the meantime, basic economics is lost on the proponents of this miserable feel-good legislation. Every dollar forced from the hand of an employer to an employee whose work is not producing that dollar’s worth of work is taken away from the employer, whose own business interest would instead have him hire a second employee, or create a better product. Labor, being a service, is no less vulnerable to the folly of planned-economy policies than any other good.
Imagine a minimum price for food. Single-serve candies which normally cost five cents are now lumped into the ‘minimum’ category, along with ninety-nine cent chocolate bars and bags of chips. The worth of a single peppermint or lollipop is not the same as that of a full chocolate bar or bag of chips, and when the consumer comes to make a purchase, his best value is with the latter two. Peppermint candies cease being sold, an entire market ceases to be viable, and a demand goes unfilled.
In the same way, a dishwasher who only generates three dollars of productivity per hour is nonetheless paid almost seven. The employer, who without this minimum wage policy could afford to have two dishwashers, must instead pay one worker the value of two, without getting anything from it. In the short-term, this means that the employer’s business suffers, hemorrhaging efficiency in the name of state-forced charity.
But even on the ideological side, this system fails, since now only every second dishwasher can find a job. Unemployment rises, productivity falls, and if enough business owners are similarly affected, the economy slows, resulting in further drops in wages, productivity, efficiency, and employment.
The free market is self-regulating. A market where certain conditions are forced will choke.
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It’s time for a little quiz. The following are all quotes from comments at two prominent liberal websites, the Democratic Underground and DailyKOS. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to determine which recently deceased figure the poster is referring to, President Ford or Saddam Hussein. Be warned, traveling deep into the inner workings of the moonbat brain can be devastating to your sanity.
1) May he rot in hell . . .
2) Just tragic.
3) The guy was an EVIL MOTHERFUCKER . . .
4) There is not one thing sad about this guy passing on
5) [He] was possibly one of the most evil and murderous men . . .
6) [He] was a better leader than Bush could ever dream of being.
Highlight for Answers:
1) Ford
2) Saddam
3) Ford
4) Ford
5) Ford
6) Saddam
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You read that right. The liberal Democrat from California has got one very right.
In a highly unusual move, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has rescinded an award to an Islamic activist in her home state because of the man?s connections to a major American Muslim organization that recently has been courted by leading political figures and even the FBI.
Boxer?s office confirmed to NEWSWEEK that she has withdrawn a ?certificate of accomplishment? to Sacramento activist Basim Elkarra after learning that he serves as an official with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). After directing her staff to look into CAIR, Boxer ?expressed concern? about some past statements and actions by the group, as well as assertions by some law enforcement officials that it ?gives aid to international terrorist groups,? according to Natalie Ravitz, the senator?s press spokeswoman.
So, while the State Department is hobnobbing around at CAIR sponsored conferences, wringing their hands and self flagellating over “Islamophobia”, all the while lending credibility to a terrorist front group that deserves none, this liberal Democrat has taken a stand. Hopefully this will start a new public debate concerning CAIR and force the press to actually cover their unsavory activities and associations.
More on CAIR: CAIR Watch
CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment
Anti-CAIR
Hat tip: Hot Air
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Today marks the end of an era in the death of Saddam. And, we can hope, this date will serve as a turning point in world affairs. The future of Iraq is uncertain. Over the course of the coming years, the country may devolve into unrestrained civil war or it may become a thriving democracy. What is not uncertain is the fact that dictators are now on notice: You are no longer above the consequences of your actions.
The world in which a tyrant could freely slaughter his own people with little to no worry of international action has ended. There has been much talk about the rightness of Saddam’s execution. Some believe it is vengeance instead of justice. His death is not mere vengeance, as vengeance would have seen Saddam killed as soon as he was caught. This is about not only justice for the people of Iraq, but justice for all the world’s people. If the execution of Saddam gives just one oppressed person hope for a future in which their own tormenter is brought down, it will have served a worthy purpose.
P.S. Today also marks a turning point here at the Compendium as Al and I welcome another fine poster, in Steve Spirgis, to the fold.
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Andrew Newman at American Spectator is worried by people who don’t make New Year’s resolutions.
People who don’t make New Year’s resolutions worry me. Are they perfect? Are they simply waiting for the great up escalator to descend from the sky? Are they biding their time until Barack Hussein Obama delivers us from this red-blue valley of tears and into that promised and purple land of prosperity and plenty? Or are they simply lazy?
His questions fly very wide of the mark. He fails to grasp the key point that many people do not make New Year’s resolutions because they make resolutions every day. Those of us who practice continual self improvement do not think we are perfect. Far from it, in fact. Rather, we are simply more serious about self correction than your typical News Year’s resolution practitioner, who is using a training-wheels approach to self improvement.
If I determine there is something in my life worth doing better, it behooves me to start doing it better immediately, rather than waiting for some special day to declare my intentions to fix identified problems. In fact, those who would put off such corrections are typically just using the idea of New Year’s Day as a time for resolutions as an excuse to continue their behavior, guilt free, until Jan. 1st rolls around again. The problem with this approach is that it erodes the will to improve altogether, resulting in your average resolution lasting about a month.
So, Mr. Newman, you need not worry about me. I suggest you worry about your fellow New Year’s resolvers, as their resolutions may be evidence of a personality incapable of correcting bad behavior, even when they know they should.
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And the award for the most meaningless poll of the year goes to the AP for their “Biggest Villain of the Year” poll.
The Associated Press-AOL News poll on who people think were the villains and heroes of the last year was conducted Dec. 19-21 and is based on telephone interviews with 1,004 adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii. The poll was conducted by Ipsos, an international polling firm.(…)
1. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest villain of the year, whom would you choose?
-George W. Bush, 25 percent
-Osama bin Laden, 8 percent
-Saddam Hussein, 6 percent
-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, 5 percent
-Kim Jong Il, North Korean leader, 2 percent
Various news agencies have reported on the results of this poll. The story caught my eye under the header: “Americans Agree – George W. Bush is the Biggest Villain of the Year”. Other news outlets place the story under the headline: “Poll: President Bush Top Villain Of 2006″, or AP Poll: President Bush and Britney Spears top thumbs-down list for ‘06.
The casual news consumer may read the headline and breeze the first couple paragraphs of the story and come away with the conclusion that Americans do indeed rank our President as the villain of the year.
But what if you read the whole thing? The second question of the poll:
2. If you were asked to name a famous person to be the biggest hero of the year, whom would you choose?
-George W. Bush, 13 percent
-Soldiers/troops in Iraq, 6 percent
-Oprah Winfrey, 3 percent
-Barack Obama, 3 percent
-Jesus Christ, 3 percent
So Bush is the biggest villain of the year. And Bush is also the biggest hero of the year. So it appears that this poll serves two purposes: 1)Allow the media to promote it’s anti-Bush agenda with misleading headlines and 2) waste bandwidth. Aside from that, all this poll proves is that America is politically polarized and 25% of the country is nutcases who think Saddam, Osama bin Laden, and Amedinejad are A-OK.
Seriously, Bush is a bigger villain than the entire leadership of the Axis of Evil combined? And Barack Obama is a bigger hero than Jesus? It’s somewhat fitting that Jesus and Obama got roughly the same return given that neither one of them has done much of anything this year! I guess if the media gives your name positive mention ten million times a day that makes you a hero to somebody.
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OpinionJournal takes a look at how Alito and Roberts might rule on McCain-Feingold.
Leave a commentA federal court decision last week upheld the right of citizens to petition their government–a right taken for granted before the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law codified speech restrictions. The ruling is overly narrow but welcome all the same. And if it’s appealed, as expected, the Supreme Court will have another chance to weigh in on Congress’s efforts to chip away at First Amendment free-speech guarantees in the name of “reform.”
. . .
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Polls by the American Research Group show Rudy Guiliani in a strong position in Republican primary states ranging the ideological spectrum.
Rudy Giuliani 29%
John McCain 24%
Newt Gingrich 19%
Chuck Hagel 7%
Mitt Romney 7%
Rudy Giuliani 31%
John McCain 25%
Newt Gingrich 22%
Mitt Romney 4%
John McCain 29%
Rudy Giuliani 25%
Newt Gingrich 14%
Mitt Romney 9%
John McCain 35%
Rudy Giuliani 28%
Newt Gingrich 15%
Mitt Romney 5%
There are, I think, three important points we can take from these numbers. First, Rudy is the front runner. Even though McCain is very close, he has burned too many bridges with conservatives. Rudy’s 28% in traditionally conservative South Carolina is impressive, and reinforces the previous evidence we’ve seen that the conventional wisdom is most likely wrong, conservatives are not going to run away screaming as they get to know Rudy Guiliani. Some will, but many will also see a man who ran a fiscally conservative government in a liberal state, who made strong strides in the areas of crime and education, and who is capable of leading in the war against global jihad.
Point 2: Romney is not a viable candidate. His exposure as a faux conservative, who couldn’t bring himself to be associated with Reagan or even support the Contract with America, means the end of his campaign. With McCain and Guiliani already pulling strong support, there’s no more room for preceived “moderates”. It’s conservative or bust for whoever wants to be candidate number three.
And that also brings us to point number three. Newt Gingrich. He polled a respectable third in every state, ranging in support from 14% to 22%. If no true conservative steps forward before September of 2007, Gingrich will be a force to be reckoned with in the Republican primary. Whether or not he’d have a legimate chance at the nod will depend on a number of factors wholly unpredictable at this time. But it will be good for the Republican party, and good for America, if he’s at least strong enough to be a serious contender, as he’ll have strong influence in setting the debate.
Hat tip: race42008
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Islamists driven from Mogadishu.
Leave a commentSomalia’s Islamic movement abandoned the nation’s capital on Thursday, and clan militiamen poured into the streets to take control of Mogadishu, as government forces approached to within 18 miles.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
