Refuting the refuters

Reader Tim tipped me off to an article refuting the WSJ article on the minimum wage and teen unemployment.

Money Quote

The plunge — which began on Bush’s watch and continued through his “boom” — took place during a period when the minimum wage was $5.15/hour and was not raised until 2007. No explanation for that inconvenient fact. Or the inconvenient fact that the teen employment/population ratio rose after the Sept. 1997 increase in the minimum wage to$5.15 (where it stayed until a decade later, when it went to $5.85).

Let me offer this information.

While the federal minimum wage did not increase until 2007 many states hiked minimum wages in years prior to that. In fact, Ohio's was increased via referendum November, 2006. I'm guessing that well over a third of the states increased the wage prior to Ohio, which might explain the drop prior to the

But just look at the map at the top.

The Blue states are states who follow the national minimum wage law. Green States are states who are higher. Notice how the green states tend to be the more "progressive" of these states.

Does anyone want to bet a lot of money on how the teen unemployment ranks between these states? Buehler? Buehler? Anyone?

Let me know and I'll take your money.

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

Hey, it ain't just whitey fleeing the city like the Exodus................

Chicago’s loss of 200,000 residents — more than 180,000 of them black — will make the process of crafting a new ward map “as challenging as it’s ever been,” a powerful aldermen warned Wednesday.

With Hispanics demanding more City Council seats and blacks determined to hold on to what they’ve got, the once-in-a-decade political sweepstakes to accommodate the 2010 U.S. Census will get under way Aug. 1.

The City Council’s Finance and Rules Committees plan to hire consultants and set up a war room to begin the process of redrawing the city’s 50 wards, each with a population of 53,000 residents, down from 57,000 a decade ago.

It’s not going to be easy.

I'd like to propose some questions to Mr./Ms. "Progressive"

If you had to guess, would you assume that the blacks leaving the city are more or less affluent than the ones who are staying?

What is it about all the amenities city life offers that has blacks leaving rather than staying?

Is it the...
Crime?
Shitty Schools?
High taxes?
Crappy business culture/employment opportunities?

Is it possible that blacks are leaving the city for the same reasons that whites are?



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Life in "Progress" City - Atlanta edition

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes.

Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets.

Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.

Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.

For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal.

How sad is it that you have to cheat and you still don't test out to suburban schools?

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Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

Residents of the Chatham neighborhood have been put on notice to keep an eye on their air conditioners.

Thieves have been sneaking into back yards and crawling onto rooftops to steal entire central air conditioning units.

As CBS 2’s Kristyn Hartman learned, a rash of central air theft on the South Side prompted one neighborhood to put out a warning.

One Chatham resident, who asked to be identified only as “Randi” is using not one lock, but three, to protect her new air conditioner after thieves made off with her old one.

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STUPID LIBERAL TRYING TO PLAY RACE CARD AGAINST A BLACK MAN - LIBERALS =...

"Neither rain nor snow...will keep the president from his appointed roun...

Branch Gorevidians - When faith trumps science

The headline of this post really shouldn’t be controversial. It chimes perfectly with what Kevin “null hypothesis” Trenberth wrote in that notorious 2009 Climategate email to Michael Mann:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

And it’s what Phil Jones admitted in a BBC interview when he said that there had been no “statistically significant” warming since 1995.

Why then am I mentioning it now? W-e-l-l, because just as ze war is to the Germans, Chappaquiddick is to the Kennedy family and that Portland masseuse incident to Al Gore, so the recent lack of warming is to the, er, Warmists. They hate it. It’s an affront to everything they believe in. Damn it, if the world isn’t warming with the alacrity they’d prefer, how are they going to keep the funding gravy train going, and how are they going to persuade an increasingly sceptical populace that the “science” is “settled”, the debate over and the time for action is now? That’s why they can’t reminded of the truth often enough. It’s like salting the slugs that are ruining your garden: necessary, but also kind of fun too.

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Wanted - another liberal

CNN on Wednesday cancelled Eliot Spitzer’s 8 p.m. political talk show, “In The Arena,” after only nine months, and said it would shift Anderson Cooper’s 10 p.m. nightly newscast into the time slot.

The cable news channel also said that Erin Burnett, a new hire from CNBC, would take over the 7 p.m. time slot on weekdays, replacing John King, who will move to 6 p.m. “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” which currently runs from 5 to 7 p.m., will move to 4 to 6 p.m.

The shake-up is intended to stabilize CNN’s television ratings and create better transitions between shows. The only prime time show that is unaffected is “

Piers Morgan Tonight,” the 9 p.m. interview show that was introduced six months ago.

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Who did they vote for? The Anthony Jury

There's a certain irony that for both the OJ and Anthony verdicts, I was in court testifying in divorce cases.

Both times, I was coming out of the courtroom shaking my head in disbelief of how crappy our justice system operates only to get the news on these verdicts.

So according to the Anthony verdict, if you kill your kid and can somehow hide the body long enough for the forensic evidence to deteriorate it's a free pass for murder.

Of course, it also helps to lie and obfuscate to authorities so that they can't obtain said forensic evidence that can be used to convict you.

Seriously, what did these bozos think happened to that kid? Did she die picking up a pizza? Do these people understand that there's no reality TV camera to show Casey dumping a body in the woods?

None the less, it's clear that these jurors have the intelligence of a single cellular organism. Which begs the question. In the 2008 presidential election, who carried the Anthony Jury voting block? Obama or McCain?

But hey, how about that hug George Anthony's going to give Casey at her welcome home party. That should be special.

Update Casey's apparently going to start frequenting night clubs in search for the real killer.

When governments "create" jobs

I'm surprised it was this efficient...........

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

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Who did they vote for? #107

During the last presidential election, who carried the "we don't know when we declared independence from England" vote? McCain or Obama.............

American Fourth of July traditions are tightly woven into the fabric of U.S. society, but the history of the country’s independence seems to have slipped through the seams.

A Marist poll released Friday shows that only 58 percent of Americans know when the country declared independence. Nearly a fourth of respondents said they were unsure and sixteen percent said a date other than 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Young people posted the most troubling scores with 41 percent of people ages 18 to 29 saying they were unsure when the Declaration of Independence was signed and 27 percent saying the wrong date.

One in four Americans do not even know which country the U.S. gained independence from. The correct answer, of course, is Great Britain, although 20 percent of respondents were unsure of that fact.

Here's a hint. It probably inversely correlates to the same people who become republicans from going to 4th of July parades.....


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Life in "Progress" City - New York edition

Hey buddy, can you spare a square?

The city is so hard up for cash that it's rationing toilet paper in women's public restrooms -- to the point where bathroom attendants are doling out a few measly squares per patron -- along the world-famous Coney Island boardwalk.

The Post witnessed stone-faced Parks Department employees leave toilet-paper dispensers empty last week and instead force astonished female beachgoers to form "ration lines" in the bathrooms.

Regina Ballone, 25, of Brooklyn visited a boardwalk bathroom at West 16th Street Wednesday and was "grossed out" at the thought of someone else handling her toilet paper.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/ed_off_over_coney_tp_ration_ZLxvCQtk7PMMJa8wPtA39J#ixzz1REVwbzMV

US v the BRIC

Harvard Study: 4th of July Events ONLY Help Republicans

Thune on FOX's Power Play

Obama's greatest hits

As we head into the weekend let's not forget what Obama promised v what he's delivered. How's that mortgage payment working out for you Peggy?

How to create jobs by making them more expensive

So what was the impact of the minimum wage on teenage unemployment?

Who would have thunk it? You make it more expensive for employers to hire young people and they turn around and hire fewer............

Perhaps you've already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job. The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948.

Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001. The nearby chart chronicles the teen employment percentage over time, including the notable plunge in the last decade. So instead of learning valuable job skills—getting out of bed before noon, showing up on time, being courteous to customers, operating a cash register or fork lift—millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out.

The lousy economic recovery explains much of this decline in teens working, and some is due to increases in teen summer school enrollment. Some is also cultural: Many parents don't put the same demands on teens as they once did to get out and work.

But Congress has also contributed by passing one of the most ill-timed minimum wage increases in history. One of the first acts of the gone-but-not-forgotten Nancy Pelosi ascendancy was to raise the minimum wage in stages to $7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007. Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics.

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Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Mr. President

Thaddeus McCotter Teaches Us How to "Speak Democrat"

Life in "Progress" City - Cincinnati edition

Five people were shot and wounded in what may have been a gun battle outside a residence in the 7700 block of Stillwell Avenue, a Cincinnati police official said.

All of the victims suffered non-life threatening injuries and are expected to recover, said Cincinnati Police Captain Paul Neudigate, the night chief.

As many as 20 people may have been standing outside a house about midnight when one, possibly two, of them pulled out handguns and started shooting, he said. Neighbors reported hearing as many as 15 to 20 gunshots.

You know the big difference between "Progress" City and "Redville"? At midnight, our residents are sleeping because they're going to work the next morning. They're not hanging out at midnight on the streets shooting up the neighborhood.

Now ask yourself these questions.

How many of these people were collecting some form of "public assistance"?

How many of these people have jobs?

How many of these people have concealed carry permits?

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Get rid of the jets

Wednesday's speech by President Obama made it clear that when it comes to dealing with the nation's debt problem, Republican lawmakers need to be willing to raise taxes on the richest Americans.

In the speech, the president said, " If everybody else is willing to take on their sacred cows and willing to do tough things in order to achieve the goal of real deficit to reduction then I think it would be hard for the Republicans to stand there and say that tax break for corporate jets is sufficiently important that we're not willing to come to the table and get the deal done."

What the president may have been referring to is an attempt by some Democrats to close up a tax loophole called "accelerate depreciation." In layman's terms, it is a depreciation method which allows faster write-offs than the straight line method.

I once worked for a large super regional bank that owned a corporate "jet". It was actually an eight seat prop plane that was scarier to ride in than crossing the Brent Spence Bridge.

As a member of the company's due diligence team, I would frequently get a ride on the plane to such destinations as Scranton PA, Lorain OH, Crawfordsville IN to name a few.

Often, the plane was used because commercial travel was too unwieldy to get 10-20 people to such awesome destinations.

But from what I understand most companies have forgone their company jet fleets to outsourcing services like Net Jet, where the company simply pays for what flight time it uses and no more.

If a company does own a jet, it usually allows a company like Net Jet to rent it out for other travelers to use.

So while the president wants to paint a picture of a bunch of Fat Cats hauling their jets off to some tropical island to get a round of golf in. The truth is that unless a company official can tie their business around their personal travel, they have to pick up the use of that jet as taxable income. Kind of like when the president flies to Philadelphia on AF1 for a fundraiser, I mean, official visit.

Changing the depreciation methods is a total canard. The only thing the depreciation method might influence is the timing of a jet purchase not the decision to own one.

But never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

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Life in "Progress" State - CA edition

They called it Paradise
I don't know why
You call some place Paradise
Kiss it Goodbye

California isn't what it used to be. Sure, America's most populous state, with 37.3 million people, is still home to Hollywood, "The OC," Silicon Valley and other cultural and economic engines. But for average Americans, the state seems to have lost its appeal.

No longer is California the larger-than-life destination where anything's possible -- the pot of gold at the end of our collective path westward.

It's too crowded and pricey for that.

Census data outlines the state's fall from grace. California grew at a slower rate from 2000 to 2010 than in any period since statehood in 1850, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released this year. Put another way: This is the biggest population slump in California's history.

Many middle class people are leaving the state for Texas, Colorado, Nevada and Arizona, where taxes and the cost of living are lower. In the past decade, 1.5 million more people left California for other states than came to California from another part of the United States, according to analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Now consider this

California has the most resources of any state in the union; excellent farmland, minerals, oil & gas, the list goes on.

Yet how is it that the Golden State suffers while states like Indiana prosper?

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What about this science?

Liberals are quick to point out the "science" of global warming when formulating policy, well how about this science..........

Better Job, Wage Gains

It seems to be a good deal for the workers, too. The U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1%. In right-to-work states the average is 7.9% — 8.6% adjusted for population.

Between 1977-08, employment grew 100% in right-to-work states vs. the national average of 71% and 56.5% in non-right-to-work states. That's according to a January study that Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder did for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

In this period, real per capita income in the right-to-work states grew 62.3% vs. the national average of 54.7% and 52.8% for non-right-to-work states.

Vedder has studied right-to-work laws for decades and argues that this success is not a coincidence.

" I've been looking for ways to show that these laws don't really (impact) anything. But I haven't found it yet," Vedder said.

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A Failure to Lead

Sen. Ron Johnson: President Obama Is Failing At His Job - He Is Not Leading

President's Revenue Proposals vs National Debt

We'll have to pass it to know what's in it

Older adults of the same age and income with similar medical histories would pay sharply different amounts for private health insurance due to what appears to be an unintended consequence of the new health care law.

Aware of the problem, the administration says it is exploring options to address a potential disparity that could mean added controversy for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The law expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and would require most Americans to carry insurance.

The glitch mainly affects older adults who are too young for a Medicare card but have reached 62, when people can qualify for early retirement from Social Security. Sixty-two is the most common age at which Americans start taking Social Security, although their monthly benefit is reduced.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/30/older-workers-could-face-cost-disparities-in-health-law-glitch/#ixzz1QrH4yJIg

Well we're living here in Allentown