Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Question of the day
Would you believe you already do?
One of our little government entitlement programs is the process of paying prevailing wage. Prevailing wage is essentially the union scale for services. It's a way for cities and states to avoid paying non union workers a lower wage and thus making union workers less competitive.
Every month, I receive an email from some state entity updating the prevailing wage for various trade jobs.
Now I have a client who did landscape work for the city of Cincinnati. This client pays their guys somewhere between $12 and $20 an hour for their workers which is in line with my other landscaping employers.
As a result of accepting a contract with the City of Cincinnati, this employer now pays $38 for doing the same work they do for the average homeowner. (BTW it's $34 if you offer health benefits).
What's disgusting is that the employees making $12.00 actually pay the wages for someone making three times more than they do.
Why would anyone pay a wage that's more than they make for the same work?
If you believe that doesn't make sense, then you'll understand why it is that Governors Kasich and Walker are waging war on these practices.
You'll also understand why the unions will fight this one to the death.
You'll also understand why people flee to the suburbs, where they farm this crap out for a third of the price that a union friendly city/state charges the residents.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Life in "Progress" Cities - Youngstown, Akron, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Canton et al edition.
Some circus clown from Defend Youngstown commented this
I guess none of the following is relevant:
Youngstown, Ohio: Entrepreneur magazine Top 10 U.S. cities to start a
new business 2009-2010.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/topcities2009/index.html
Youngstown-Warren, Ohio: S I T E Selection magazine Top 10 metro area
for business expansion 2009.
http://www.siteselection.com/issues/2009/mar/Top-Metros/
Youngstown: "A Young Town Again" The Economist October 8th, 2009
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14
588263
Inc Magazine (May 2010): "Semper Youngstown":
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100501/semper-youngstown.html
More: www.DefendYoungstown.com
Here's what I want to know from this idiot. If Youngstown is so hoppin' and groovin' for young Ohioans how does this happen.............
The news from the U.S. Census couldn’t be much worse for Youngstown.
Youngstown’s population declined by 18.3 percent between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today.
Just as Youngstown had in the 2000 census compared to the one from 10 years earlier, it had the largest decline of any of the state’s largest 25 cities between 2000 and 2010.
If you think I'm picking on Youngstown, I am. But Youngstown's not the only Ohio city suffering from Blue City Exodus it's an affliction all Ohio's once great cities are suffering from.........
Ohio's major cities continued their drastic decline during the past decade, a sign that hard times are not easing in the industrial heartland.
Places that once prospered from making things — steel, tires, cash registers, bikes — continued a free-fall that started half a century ago and may be getting worse, according to Census Bureau population numbers released Wednesday.
Cleveland lost 17% of its population to fall to 396,815 — its fewest inhabitants since 1900. The city peaked in 1950 at 914,808. More residents abandoned the city from 2000 to 2010 than in the 1990s.
Now class. If you could put your finger on one thing that all of these cities have in common, what would that be?
If you answer democrats, lots and lots of democrats, you get a gold star. They're like cockroaches in a city, well, without the charm.
Seriously, it would be easier to find gold panning the Maumee River than to find a republican in these cities.
But for some reason, no one wants to make the connection.
None the less, I don't see young Berkeley grads lining up to the latest cool hot spot of Youngstown anytime soon.
Coulter criticizes Walker
She makes some good points.
Her belief is that this is a crucial fight with implications for the nation and its future, and while Walker did well on the substance of the policy, he failed as regards the public persuasion part of it.
She thinks Walker should have been on TV "every night" to explain this to Wisconsinites, citing government worker abuses like the one's she writes about in her latest column. Such as a bus driver making $159,000 per year (more than $100 K in overtime).
Or the rule, "negotiated" with politicians looking for union donations, that if a public employee takes a single call of even a second's duration, that employee may bill the state for a half hour of overtime pay.
So if an employee calls out sick for two days, and the boss calls to ask if she'll be at work the next day, that's a half hour of overtime.
Ridonculous.
She keeps contrasting Walker to her obvious favorite, Chris Christie, noting that Chris Christie never would have gone dark during such a crucial fight.
Here is the point she doesn't actually make but should: Republicans have gotten into a bad habit of flinching from public fights. Commenters tell me this every day, and I think they're right.
Republicans assume from the outset that they cannot win the media war as the media itself is too biased against them to even get their words out, and that the natural stupidity of the American people makes them suckers for the Democrats' promises of endless hand-outs and Buy Now, Pay Later funding schemes.
Personally, I believe the reason most republicans cave in on principle is because they don't actually believe in principle. When you believe in what you are doing is right you don't worry about what the media says about you. You take the message to the people, as Christie is doing in New Jersey.
When you believe in a cause no media in the world can twist your passion.
When you believe in being republican because it's better than a day job, you have to spin your communication in your own mind. Usually that means that no cause is worth fighting for..... except your political survival.
IT'S THE PRINCIPLE STUPID!
More.....
Liberalism = Projection
See Joe Biden knows all about greedy rich people since he only gives $300 to charity in any given year.
And the media can only assume that tea partiers are violent protesters given that liberals are known to do things like spike trees, burn down housing developments, etc.
Oh and Ed Schulz knows Rush plants callers because, well, he does..............
Ed Schultz yesterday slammed Rush Limbaugh for doing something Limbaugh denies but Schultz admits doing.
In response to a story in Tablet Magazine about a "custom caller service" offered by Premier Radio Networks, a vast Clear Channel subsidiary that syndicates Limbaugh and other prominent conservative talkers, Limbaugh adamantly denied unsubstantiated allegations that staged calls were made to his show.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Life in "Progress" City - Cincinnati edition
Good enough to leave as soon as you get a chance...........
Cincinnati lost more than 10 percent of its population over the past decade, falling below 300,000 people for the first time in more than a century.U.S. Census data released today also show that the city’s losses helped drive down Hamilton County’s population by 5 percent, leaving the county with about 802,000 residents.
The population of Cincinnati’s northern suburbs continued to boom over the past decade, with Warren County once again leading the way with a 34 percent jump. Butler and Clermont counties both grew by about 10 percent.
The Census figures showed a strengthening of a trend that took hold decades ago as growing numbers of people began choosing suburban cul-de-sacs over traditional city neighborhoods.
This should read "a trend that took hold decades ago as growing numbers of people fled to life in Redville, an area devoid of such amenities as horrible schools, high crime, high taxes, crappy city services, crumbling infrastructure, etc."
On the good side, the trolley should slow that exodus to a smooth 9.9% a decade.
More.......
PS for the record, I'm one of those people who fled the city for friendly environs in Warren County.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Abortion
Dear Keith:
Thanks for writing to share your concerns about your “pro-choice” sociology professor. Taking a sociology class is always tough – especially when the professor claims to be your moral superior while simultaneously advocating abortion. I would recommend that you temper your remarks in class whenever you feel you are on the verge of losing your composure. In fact, you should not make any remarks or statements at all. Instead, you should just ask questions. Here are some good ones I wish I had asked while in college:
1. Morally speaking, is having an abortion really just like picking a scab?
2. If abortion is not murder because the fetus is not a person then why make it “safe, legal, and rare”?
3. Do you have a similar desire to make scab-picking “safe, legal, and rare”?
You can read the rest of the questions here........
When it comes to abortion, we claim to not have a definition of when life begins. But we've always had a definition of when life ends..... ask anyone in a emergency room.
So in my mind, why wouldn't we at least use that definition (which I assume is when a heart starts beating) when it comes to a baby?
Most people do not realize that the Blackmun opinion in Roe v Wade (1973) ruled that abortion was constitutional up to the date the fetus became "viable". At that point, the baby had rights. Given that our medical technology has made fetuses viable at earlier and earlier stages of development, how is it that abortions are legal later and later in development? Who? What? What? When? or Where? did that happen?
I know of five women who have had abortions. Two of those women talk about it in terms of the greatest mistake they ever made in their lives. The other three don't talk about it at all, unless you consider their substance abuse issues as some sort of communication tool.
During my dating life, I believe I could tell the women who had abortions during their lives. Mainly, you could tell by their deeply emotional issues (baggage by Samsonite if you will). Now it is possible that I managed to select a few psychopaths, in general, to date, but I think you can tell when someone has serious issues brought on by an abortion in their past.
Years ago, when I was dating my fabulous liberal girlfriend, she indicated that she thought stripping and prostitution should be illegal because of the social and emotional issues these women would get from their profession. Yet when I asked her if we could prove that women who've had abortions have even greater emotional issues, you could hear the birds chirping a mile a way.
So I'll pose the question to those who want to protect women's health so vehemently; if abortions cause more women to have more substance abuse issues, suicide, depression, should that be a factor in whether we should abolish abortion? What about post abortion fertility issues?
If a woman tells you that they've had three abortions and going to have a fourth, do you look at her differently than a woman who's had four sinus infections?
There's been millions of abortions performed in this country and yet few are out their bragging about their "choice". I would be willing to make a wager that more women have regrets about aborting than women who choose life, whether they put the child up for adoption or not.
But it's like all those women want to ignore their own grief so they can share the misery with another generation of women.
If I were king, I'm not so sure that I'd make abortion illegal. But I think it's clear that the glorification of abortion as a "right" has done more to destroy women than to help them.
The senator seems like an appropriate nickname
Ohio State athletics officials are expected to respond today to allegations in a Yahoo Sports story that football coach Jim Tressel was told last spring that several of his players - including quarterback Terrelle Pryor - had sold personal memorabilia in violation of NCAA rules.
If the allegations are proved to be true, Tressel could be in serious trouble, and so could the football program.
SMU better look out, they're looking at another death penalty.
The press acts like the jilted girlfirend
Afterall, when the commies take over the government, what's the first thing they do, well, after killing all their political opponents?
They take over the press.
So the world's smallest violin starts to play when the press gets upset for lack of access to The One.....
This whole thing about how the press loves President Obama? We would like to persuade you otherwise, but it's so hard to prove a negative. He disdains us, avoids us, acts like we are germy. Today he insulted the profession in front of his new bestie, the Australian prime minister!
The indignity!
So this is a recent turn for the prez, right?
Well here's something from last spring.........
You may recall that on Monday President Obama refused take any questions from the press (irony alert!) immediately after signing the "Press Freedom Act" in the Oval Office. The president, who hasn't held a prime time press conference since last July, said this was not a press conference and he would have something later in the week.
He was presumably referring to today's scheduled "Joint Press Conference" with Mexican President Calderon in the Rose Garden. But so-called "press conferences" with foreign leaders usually allow for only two questions from the White House press corps and two from foreign reporters.
In all fairness to King Obama, why should he take questions from a press who will ask the president a question the world's been waiting for. Will he intervene in the Charlie Sheen/CBS dispute?
Four more years of Bush
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that will create a formal system of indefinite detention for those held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who continue to pose a significant threat to national security. The administration also said it will start new military commission trials for detainees there.
The announcements, coming more than two years after Obama vowed in another executive order to close the detention center, all but cements Guantanamo Bay's continuing role in U.S. counterterrorism policy.
Where's the outrage? It must be hiding where the $4/gal gas price outrage is.
More.......