SOME ECONOMICS

High minimum wages create unemployment: "For the past decade, some of the least-skilled and lowest-paid workers in America have benefited from controversial programs known as living wage ordinances. Under these laws, companies with city contracts are forced to pay workers enough to live in that city, often $2 to $3 more than traditional minimum wage. But a new study shows the initiative as having mixed results in combating poverty. ... A 6 percent employment decline in cities that require a living wage, according to the study. Critics say it's no surprise that making companies pay higher wages results in their hiring fewer employees. 'They [the laws] don't work. They don't help the people that they are intended to help,' said Anthony Archie of the Pacific Research Institute. 'They're supposed to help low-skilled workers and they actually crowd them out from getting jobs.'"

Death tax bad for economy: "Permanently repealing the estate tax would save the government money in the long term and could produce 200,000 new jobs a year, according to a study released today that challenges the official congressional estimate that says the government would lose money. The study by the American Family Business Institute (AFBI) contends that congressional actuaries have continually underestimated how a cut in taxes increases economic activity and results in an increase in revenues collected by the government. The study says the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) wrongly claims repealing the estate tax would cost $140 billion in federal revenues. "The JCT is grossly overestimating the cost of repealing the death tax," said Dick Patten, executive director of the AFBI".

Finns doing well: "Fifteen years ago, Finland faced a full-scale depression, brought on by the loss of the country's most important markets as the Soviet Union disintegrated. Unemployment soared to 20 percent. But the Finns took control of their future, made painful adjustments and came out of the crisis with an economy that the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, ranks as the most competitive in the world.... A relatively backward agricultural country became a high-tech powerhouse with labor productivity as good or better than that in the United States, but also a welfare state as generous as any in Europe. Perhaps the most revealing statistic behind this transformation is Finland's commitment to research and development. The Finns put 3.5 percent of their domestic product into R&D last year, second in the world to Sweden (about 4.3 percent) and far ahead of the United States (about 2.6 percent) or the E.U. as a whole (less than 2 percent).... Finland steadily increased government spending on R&D throughout the 1990s, when all other spending was either cut or frozen... Funding from public institutions constitutes only about a third of R&D expenditures; the rest comes from businesses"

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ELSEWHERE

A California Latino conservative says: "Much has been said about the Hispanic�s contribution to this great nation and to the state of California. Many came to this great country of ours to create a better life not only for themselves but for their children. Unfortunately, the Democrats� message has been misleading and has taken the Hispanic vote for granted.... Seems like the depressed Democrats will sink to any level to stir the pot creating discontent and hatred. What the liberals do not understand is that while they view us as needy, poverty stricken or social service seekers, we as a people are in reality, entrepreneurs, and hard workers in pursuit of the American dream. Sure many of us started by working in the fields, picking, pruning, cultivating the crops. But many have pulled ourselves out of poverty by acquiring education or skilled trades that have helped us be successful... In 2004 there were over two million Hispanic owned businesses that generated $247 Billion dollars in the United States. A testament that the Republican philosophy of giving a �hand up� and opportunity, is far better than any �handout� the Democrats can contrive. We are basically entrepreneurs by nature and are not afraid of hard work."

Islamic totalitarians: "Seeing Islam as the basis of a political system touching every aspect of life, fundamentalists are totalitarian. Whatever the problem, "Islam is the solution." In their hands, Islam is transformed from a personal faith into a ruling system that knows no constraints. They scrutinize the Qur'an and other texts for hints about Islamic medicine, Islamic economics, and Islamic statecraft, all with an eye to creating a total system for adherents and corresponding total power for leaders. Fundamentalists are revolutionary in outlook, extremist in behavior, totalitarian in ambition. Revealingly, they vaunt Islam as the best ideology, not the best religion-thereby exposing their focus on power. Whereas a traditional Muslim would say something like, "We are not Jewish, we are not Christian, we are Muslim," the Malaysian Islamist leader Anwar Ibrahim made a very different comparison: "We are not socialist, we are not capitalist, we are Islamic." While fundamentalist Islam differs in its details from other utopian ideologies, it closely resembles them in scope and ambition. Like communism and fascism, it offers a vanguard ideology; a complete program to improve man and create a new society; complete control over that society; and cadres ready, even eager, to spill blood".

Leftist hatreds distort their response to terrorism: "In my estimation, the Left can't get past its overwhelming "Bush hatred" and "blame America first" attitude that predisposes it to have sympathy for America 's enemies. Unfortunately, the political Left is rife with terrorist sympathizers who can't fully fathom the heinous nature of evildoers that target innocent civilians for death. Denial, in my opinion, is an element when considering the Leftist mentality. In the wake of the London terrorist attacks, Bill O'Reilly's comments to a Leftist journalist were spot-on. The journalist thought that we needed to understand the perspective of terrorists: O'Reilly replied, "Serial killers have perspectives, too! We don't take their point of view!" Exactly. Arab grievances? Why should we make any excuses for murderers?"

Public broadcasting is socialist nonsense: "Congress is once again debating the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which partially funds the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR). Public broadcasting doesn't require fine-tuning. Like most other remnants of the Great Society, it needs to be killed. Much of the discussion centers on the question of public broadcasting's bias. That question was settled long ago. PBS' and NPR's programming has had an obvious leftist tilt since their inception."

Leftist blogosphere bad for Democrats: "While Moulitsas recognizes that the left-wing blogosphere is a world unto itself, if establishment Democrats have any awareness of that fact they have yet to betray it. Where Trudeau feels bloggers are a bunch of shut-in half-wits, the Democratic party seems to be under the impression that bloggers are an enormous, important constituency--and that it must go to whatever lengths necessary to win the hearts and minds of this virtual community. This seems like a major miscalculation, because the politics of the left-wing blogs are far out of the American mainstream. Where most of the 120 million Americans who voted in the last election bear a benign indifference to political matters, the left half of the blogosphere seethes with hatred for George W. Bush and his supporters. What's more, the blogs take numerous positions that would strike all but the most passionate Democratic partisans as patently preposterous. For example, several of the left-wing blogs recently ran an advertisement that referred to West Virginia Senator and former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd as an "American Hero.""

Chris Brand has just put up a VERY incorrect proposal for how to deal with suicide bombers on buses and trains.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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