Friday, April 23, 2004
MY LIBERAL CONGRESSMAN
My new column at the Spectator.
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MY HEART BLEEDS
A few thoughts on the Des Moines Register’s morose editorial on the end of the legislative session:
First, I suspect they are quite serious about the headline “Disappointing.” It must be when the Register ran countless articles chronicling the supposed sorry state of Iowa’s schools and the darn legislature still didn’t raise taxes!
Second, it’s liberal-code-word time again:
The 2004 Legislature did little to move the state forward. Lawmakers seem to think the measure of success is balancing the budget without raising taxes - no matter how bad things get. They didn't consider Iowa's future.
Yes, we now have a new euphemism for a tax increase. Just like “revenue enhancements” or the “realities of governing,” “consider the future” is a new liberal code word for time to shaft the taxpayer.
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OVERTIME PAY
And here are a few thoughts on the Register’s predictable editorial on overtime pay. First, let’s look at this paragraph:
It's as important now as it was in 1938 to provide workers and employers with clear and fair employment standards. Tilting the balance to allow squeezing employees for more work without extra pay, against the original intent of the law, won't be good for anyone.
Is the Register really serious in thinking that we are the same society now that we were in 1938? Do they believe that a law doesn’t need to be updated to adapt to a changing workforce? And, again, you have the Register invoking “original intent” to prevent a policy they don’t like. (For more on that, go here and here.)
Next, the Register displays its ineptness on matters economic or an inability, as Thomas Sowell puts it, “to think beyond stage one.”
The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act established the 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half pay for work in excess of 40 hours. A major purpose of that law was to encourage employers to hire more workers instead of just piling more work on their existing employees. The proposed rules would appear to run counter to that purpose.
As Mark Smith, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, observed, "Part of crafting the original labor laws was to make it more onerous for an employer to work somebody over 40 hours because that would create new jobs. Now, if I'm the president, I've got a problem with jobs. And his department comes up with a pay plan to work the current employees longer."
Right. The change doesn't make sense.
This assumes that an employer will hire an extra employee if he can’t work his present employees a little longer without paying them overtime. But suppose that he only has 15 extra hours of work per week that needs to be done. The Register assumes that he will hire someone part time. But part time workers are often less reliable than full-timers, and if the job requires some training, it may not be economical to hire a part timer. Thus, the work does not get done, the firm is slightly less productive, and the current workers don’t get paid for working some extra hours. Add those last three together, multiply them by the many firms in our economy, and what do you have? Less wealth in our society and, hence, fewer jobs.
In fact, if forcing employers to pay workers overtime after 40 hours is so good at creating extra jobs, why not reduce it to 35 hours? As I recall, France tried that a few years ago, and justified it exactly along the lines that it would create more jobs. Unless I’m wrong, it didn’t make a noticeable dent in the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys’ unemployment rate.
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THE NEXT GENERATION
Thanks to Cedar Pundit for pointing out this article in the Quad City Times about students at Augustana College hugging trees. I love this photo. Can it be mere coincidence that the girl’s last name is “Nutt”?
And if you want to have a bit of really devilish fun, think of the tree as a phallic symbol.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
AM I MISSING SOMETHING?
Do me a favor and read the Des Moines Register’s account of the Veishea riot that occurred over the weekend at ISU. Is it just me, or does the story come off largely as “it was the fault of police”?
I don’t see anything in the story that gives the police side of the story as to how the violence started. Sure, there are statements by the cops that the level of force was “appropriate,” yet the following quote is typical as to what precipitated the violence:
We definitely didn't start doing anything bad until they started with the tear gas," said freshman Carl Roepcke, 19, who was charged with assault and disorderly conduct after he allegedly threw rocks at police.
and,
"People started puking and coughing," said Justin Kirkegaard, 19, a former ISU student from Indianola who was charged with interference with official acts and marijuana possession. "Then everybody just kind of went nuts."
and,
Several witnesses put the blame for Sunday's incident on police.
"This whole thing could have been averted if the cops hadn't started throwing tear gas," said Kirkegaard. "I think this is the end of Veishea."
Lauren Lahn, an ISU senior who lives near where the problem began, said police were too quick to use force.
"I think the fact that they were tear-gassing everyone instigated everything," she said. "I think it was out of hand for the kids to do that, but I just think they were pushed to that point.
"There was a cloud of tear gas that covered Welch."
Now, perhaps I’m not reading the story carefully enough. Thus, I am quite open to anyone who disagrees with my assessment.
But the way I read this story comes down to this: Mario Savio’s spirit possessed the writers of the Register article.
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Monday, April 19, 2004
MINDLESS REPITITION
To back up their assertion that there “is no indication that the Iraqi people want a democracy,” the Des Moines Register editorialists claim that
when American troops are attacked by insurgents and the American-trained and -paid Iraqi security forces stand idly by. The Iraqi people generally sit on the sidelines, waiting to see which side prevails… if Iraqis truly want a secular, pluralistic democracy as President Bush envisions, they must be willing to fight side-by-side with the Americans to secure it, even if that means fighting against fellow Iraqis. Democracy must be earned. It cannot be gift-wrapped and handed to them.
Can’t the Register do better than repeat the mindless liberal spin on the recent fighting in Iraq? (I know, I know, that’s a rhetorical question.) But it didn’t take me more than two minutes of Googling to find an article showing that there are Iraqi security forces that did fight alongside American troops:
Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the U.S. commander responsible for security in Baghdad, gave a mixed assessment of the police performance during Sunday's battle, in which he lost eight soldiers.
Some officers showed bravery and fought alongside the Americans, while others chose to stand aside, he said.
In Falljuah - where Marines are battling Sunni insurgents - police were conducting operations with U.S. forces, said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But, he said, "There are other instances where Iraqi forces have not been as aggressive."
According to the Register’s standard, then, there is evidence of Iraqis who want democracy. But mentioning that wouldn’t jive with their desire to portray the liberation as little more than a disaster.
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WHILE WE ARE DISCUSSING THE MINDLESS…
The Register also continues its useless semantic games:
One big problem with the war on terror is its name.
As many observers have pointed out, terror is a tactic, not the name of our adversary.
A war on a tactic simply makes no sense.
It appears that the Register is completely unable to understand the idea that sometimes a name infers more than just the strict definition of the words in the name. The Cold War wasn’t a war against low temperatures. It was a war against the Soviet Union and communism, but a war that did not take place on a battlefield (at least with the main adversary). Most Americans understood that.
“War on Terror” means a war against the ideology, Islamofacism, whose adherents are the primary practitioners of terrorism. Yet that understanding would nullify the real reason the Register is playing semantic games:
Calling it a war against al-Qaida might have allowed us to maintain a sharper focus on the enemy. Calling it the war on terror allowed the loss of focus and the broadening of the war. That's how we ended up in Iraq, which had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and was not an ally of al-Qaida.
One reason the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror is that it is our best opportunity to establish democracy in the Middle East. Unless the Middle East is democratized, that portion of the world will continue to produce fanatical demagogues and throngs of angry, frustrated men and women willing to support them. In such a world, acts of terrorism will continue, and the Western World will remain vulnerable.
But who cares about that? The Register would rather play word games.
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