The Edge with Sean Engmann

Muslim Portrayal in America

We are clearly living in a very politically correct era in this country, and the political correctness serves to blunt our collective consciousness as Americans and undermine our national security.  Nowhere is this fact more undeniable than in our relations with Muslims, particularly through the media and pop culture.  Muslim groups consider themselves victims of anti-Muslim discrimination, saying that they are portrayed largely in a negative fashion, as terrorists and as being largely evil.  In some cases, this is how Muslims are portrayed, but Hollywood has bent over backward, as have the press and politicians, to avoid the stereotype of the Islamo-fascist terrorist, going as far as even airing clips of Keifer Sutherland talking about how the Islamic terrorists depicted in 24 are not representative of the whole Muslim population.

The problem with this attitude of sensitivity, inclusion and the absence of a judgemental society is that we are bending over backward so far in the name of tolerance that we lose sight of the true picture.  The fact of the matter is that we are currently in not just a culture war, but a battle for humanity against Islamic terrorists who hate everything about us and seek nothing less than to destroy Western Civilization.  It's time we call an apple an apple, Muslims, and no other group of people, are engaged in a global terror campaign.  Muslims are blowing themselves up with suicide bombs, Muslims are hijacking planes, and Muslims are flying them into buildings.  Of the 19 9/11 terrorists, 19 were Muslim, and of the financiers, all were Muslim.  Now, Muslims are the victims, because our popular culture depicts them as terrorists.  That makes no sense.

The one thing that is glaringly absent from these Muslim groups which portray themselves as the oppressed victim, is a complete condemnation of jihadist terrorism, as well as full cooperation of Imams in Western mosques with our governments in identifying and rooting out terrorists within their ranks.  Where are the Muslim leaders in cooperating with us?  The answer is nowhere, and many of these Mosques throughout the West are being used as breeding grounds for developing homegrown terrorists.  John Walker Lindh is an American example, as was the sleeper cell uncovered in Lodi a couple years ago.  Additionally, the reason we can no no longer bring a bottled water on a plane is because homegrown terrorists from a British mosque thought that would be a neat way to blow up a plane, and the reason we need to remove our shoes everytime we go on a plane is because another Western Muslim tried to bring down a plane with a shoe bomb.  Sure the vast majority of Muslims may be peaceful, but being peaceful is not good enough, they need to be cooperative, or the level of scrutiny for Muslims everywhere should continue to increase.  More than 2/3 of all Muslims identify with their religion before their country, and that is a fact that needs to be considered.  Profiling is simply common sense, and because the vast majority of our terrorist enemies are Muslims, it only makes sense that the Muslim community should be placed under a higher degree of scrutiny.  Common sense dictates that the American Muslim community try to distance themselves from the terrorists, and the proper way of doing so is through full, transparent cooperation with authorities, and condemnation Islamic terrorists, instead, they have, as is so common these days, adopted the oppressed victim stance.

The bottom line here is that Muslims are getting a pass from the media and Hollywood to avoid creating a stereotype, yet they portray themselves as victims anyhow.  Rather than whining about their portrayal, Muslims should be proactive, cooperating with authorities and making it impossible for terrorists to hide within the larger Muslim community, and adopting a zero tolerance attitude to Islamo-fascist teachings.  If we continue to allow political correctness to force us to avoid profiling and to blind us from the facts, we will put ourselves into a very vulnerable and precarious position in the war to preserve our values.

The Politics of Association

The political era that we are living in right now is one of style and rhetoric over substance, and it is very sad.  That will be the unfortunate legacy of the presidency of Bill Clinton.  While I can take a lot, I find the latest political ad in the California gubernatorial race to be particularly nauseating.  In the ad, the California Democratic Party uses the tactic of guilt by association by linking Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to President Bush.  The ad does not address any of the issues and challenges faced here in California, nor does it present any sort of an alternative plan, it is merely a blunt attack ad directed at President Bush and indirectly at Arnold.

The problem that I have with this ad is similar to the problem that I have with the tactics of San Francisco Democrats who use local government to pass meaningless resolutions, which, among other things direct City workers from cooperating with federal law that they disagree with and call for the impeachment of Bush.  We get it, Bush is not popular here, but the goal of the left is simply to foment hatred for our president, and then try to tap into that hatred to get their candidates elected.  Although I did not vote for him in the recall election, I think Arnold has done an outstanding job as our governor, staring down special interest groups, such as the teachers unions in order to create real reform and fiscal responsibility.

The Democrats, locally, in California and nationally have no plan.  The closest thing Arnold's opponent Phil Angelides has to a plan is to raise several taxes across the board to broaden entitlement programs, which harkens back to the 1970s, a policy that has been soundly rejected.  Nationally, the Democrats are outraged by every move that the Bush Administration makes in the War on Terror, yet they fail to come up with an alternative plan.  The Democratic agenda is not based on ideas, rather, it is based on focus groups and opinion dynamics to tell them what needs to be done to get elected, and the playbook now is to promote as much hate and spew as much venom toward George W. Bush as possible.  Bill Clinton was a brilliant politician in that he was able to reinvent himself on a daily basis, and in doing so, he actually helped the country by signing most of the Contract With America into law.  However, he destroyed his own party, which used to at least stand for something, and now only knows how to try to get elected.

Radical Islam

Radical Islam is the biggest scourge on the world at the moment and the biggest danger to humanity.  Following religion, many of these devout followers seek to upend western civilization and return to a period where women are subservient to men in every way and all the benefits of modern technology have been nullified.  While everyone is trying to be politically correct and not offend Muslims, we are neglecting the fact that in the current world, the radical Muslims parallel the barbarians who succeeded in destroying the Roman Empire.  These people are armed with a fervent ideology that seeks a world full of followers of Islam, with no tolerance for any divergence in opinion, and they will continue to brutalize innocent civilians in order to forward their quest.

One thing to consider is what the fall of the Roman Empire meant to humanity.  Many of the components of the Roman Empire and their great civilization were lost until the 19th century, nearly 1500 years after the fall of the Romans.  Like the Barbarians, Osama bin Laden and the radical Islamists seek only to destroy everything that has made the West and the world great, including our culture and our technology.  We are clearly superior to the Muslim world in every way, especially in terms of our inclusion and our technology.  With the fifth anniversary of September 11th a few days away, it is a great time to review who we are and who our enemy is.  Osama bin Laden, who proudly presided over the attacks that brutally killed several thousand people and destroyed American landmarks has recently released footage showing him with the 9/11 hijackers.  Many in this country say we should try to understand what made them do this, my opinion is that we must destroy them, and we are off to a strong start.

September 11th was a prime example of good versus evil, and the fact that our enemies will kill each and every one of us if they had the chance.  They have proven it by capturing and torturing civilians just because they happen to be of Western descent.  This is an enemy that we should not waste our time trying to understand, rather it is one that, for humanity's sake, we need to destroy.  Additionally, we need to surveille and scrutinize the Muslim community in the West, as that is a community that has yet to convincingly condemn its radicals.  While communism was a threat to our way of life, Radical Islam is a threat to our very existence, and we should use any means necessary to completely eradicate it from the Earth.  We need not repeat the tragedy of the barbarians, led by Attila the Hun, destroying civilization, which these radical Muslims intend to do.  The agenda of radical Islam makes the Nazis look like humanitarians, and we must destroy them.

Money: The Key Principle of Journalism

From our early days in school, through the media coverage that we see throughout our lives, the journalist is depicted as this philanthropic crusader to expose the truth about corruption and to benevolently act as the safeguard for democracy.  These mythical journalists risk life and limb to tell it like it is, and take as a religion the "principles of journalism."  The journalist is always portrayed positively, as the agent of change, or the individual with the courage to take on an opponent who, almost always represents a great evil in society.  Woodward and Bernstein are lionized by journalists for their ability to bring down a Presidential Administration.  Unfortunately, this world in which all journalists are courageous heroes is one of fantasy, and it is far from the real world, where todays journalists will go to incredible depths, threaten national security, protect criminals and destroy to protect their journalistic ethics, or, in other words, to get that big scoop and to make a great deal of money.

The thing with journalism is that it is far from a benevolent profession, it is, rather, a very cutthroat world in which journalists scratch and claw to try to get to the top.  In today's world, as in the world of the past, where the media has a dramatic impact on public opinion, the cutthroat nature of the news business damages the country.  Public figures are subjected to an incredible amount of scrutiny, as they should, but there are cases where members of the media go as far as they possibly can to destroy someone's reputation simply to outdo the other media.  The Clinton Presidency was an example of a media feeding frenzy on the personal life of Bill Clinton, with each media outlet trying to dig further and further to find scandal.  It started with Gennifer Flowers before Clinton was even the Democratic nominee in 1992, and it spiraled from there, with key "sources" being paid six figures for their stories.  Did any of this stuff have any bearing on the country beyond gossip?  No, it was frivolous, we all knew the type of guy Clinton was, yet the country elected him twice, the rest was superfluous.

Today, the big issue throughout the sports media is the steroids issue.  Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a tell-all book called Game of Shadows in which, among other things, they did a hatchet job on Barry Bonds.  The fact that they did an exhaustive investigation, and broke down every aspect of Bonds's life is fine, but what's not fine is the fact that they illegally obtained sealed Grand Jury testimony from an "unnamed source" to implicate Bonds and many others in the book.  While Fainaru-Wada and Williams accuse athletes of using illegal performance enhancing drugs to enhance their performance, the two authors essentially did the exact same thing with their book: illegally obtain and publish sealed testimony to beef up their book.  Game of Shadows would not have been nearly as compelling without the Grand Jury testimony, so the two authors stand to make a countless amount of extra money as a result of adding this feature to their book, just as athletes stand to earn more money by injecting themselves with performance enhancing drugs.  The difference: the journalists were following the principles of journalism and exposing injustice.  I say, baloney, it's the same thing.

Journalists hold a tremendous amount of power in their ability to shape opinions, and they do not use that power responsibly.  The standard in the United States for libel against a public figure is extraordinarily high, essentially allowing anyone to freely say anything about a public figure without fear of a libel suit.  The use of unnamed sources can be vital to the ability of a journalist to do his job, however, using unnamed sources to attack individuals should come at a price.  Like in the mob, sometimes going to jail for journalists can be a badge of honor, as these people can refuse to reveal sources and end up in jail to protect their principles.  They should also be civilly liable for libel if they use unnamed sources to attack the reputation of individuals, as the verdict in the court of public opinion is often swift and harsh and the damage to a tarnished reputation is severe.  Journalists should be required to either provide documentation for a source, or face the consequences.

The other major phenomena of modern journalism is the power of the sound bite in making the story.  This is essentially an extension of yellow journalism of the turn of the last century, in which stories were written bombastically in order to sell papers.  Today's journalist takes comments out of context to paint a picture, or utilizes poorly chosen words to paint a picture about a person.  Sure that person may have made a comment, even if he/she didn't mean it, journalists will see blood and pounce.  In an episode of Sports Night, a defunct TV show, the issue was brought up when an athlete made comments about New York similar to John Rocker's, and after the interview, realized how bad they sounded, and wanted them edited out.  The producer was gleeful at the negative comments and refused to take them out, igniting a controversy for the player.

Journalists need to be human beings, not caught up in bringing people down.  It's not about exposing corruption, it's about making a name for the journalist and making money and doing so on the backs of other people.  Not all journalists are like that, but rest assured, they are not looking out for you, they're looking out for their names and their pocketbooks.

Vegas, Lawyers and Lawsuits

About a week ago, I returned from my third trip to Vegas of the year, this time visiting with family.  Trips number four and five should be upcoming soon.  Anyhow, the point of this is not to tell you how often I go to Vegas, but to compare two evils that often make great bedfellows: casino owners and sleazy lawyers.  Upon returning from Vegas, an interesting dilemma presented itself: my brother returned with a slot voucher from Treasure Island for $27.50.  On the voucher, the casino brazenly states that after 30 days, said voucher would expire and be rendered worthless, and that the voucher could not be redeemed by mail.  This clearly could be the makings of a class action lawsuit, so the dilemma is who would I support in such a case, the greedy casino kings, or the possibly greedier, equally opportunistic lawyers?  Sadly, as much as I hate those who run casinos (and as a card-counter who's been ejected from a casino and escorted from the table by security, that is a lot), I hate the sleazy lawyers more.

The idea for a class-action lawsuit here was not specifically mine, my dad actually happened upon this idea while we were dining out.  Such a lawsuit wouldn't be new as greedy lawyers continue to seek out ways to basically steal money from society and tie up the court system with frivolous lawsuits.  Recently, a man who had won $5 on a $2 lottery ticket, but could not claim his winnings because of a time limit settled a class-action lawsuit against the state for over $10,000.  Basically what we have here is a nothing case where nobody was really harmed, but it ties up our courts, and the plaintiff really won the lottery, with a huge payout courtesy of our ridiculous legal system.

In most class action cases, lawyers are simply seeking ways to sue people and grab a piece of the action from successful companies for themselves.  These blood-suckers provide absolutely no service to society in enriching themselves by using the system and threatening companies and individuals.  In the casino case that I mentioned, the casino's policy is a clever and unsavory way of taking peoples money, in fact it is rather despicable.  At the end of the day, however, we are talking chump change, in the vast majority of cases not even approaching even $100.  More likely, we're talking about dollars and dimes here, which really do not hold any significance.  After all, if the money was significant, wouldn't the player think it prudent to go right away to claim his money rather than holding onto a voucher.  My brother's $27.50 is likely well past the median number, and even so the damage of losing that money is insignificant.  My point is that there is no real damage to anyone here, people, in fact, often forget they even have the voucher, illustrating how important they consider the money in the scheme of things.  Even so, those that disagree with the policy have a valid and real recourse, they can simply choose not to gamble at Treasure Island.

In my opinion, in order for you to have a lawsuit worthy of being heard, there should be some real damages involved.  If someone cares enough about the money, they can go to small claims court and argue their case there.  Since we've established that there is no damage of consequence, there should not be a lawsuit, it is simply a waste of everyone's time.  And enter the sleazy lawyer, posing as Robin Hood, he sees injustice, but more importantly he sees opportunity, and in his $5000 suit with $1500 Gucci loafers, he pounces on the scene.  Raving about injustice, he obtains the names of people who gambled at the casino, sends them letters telling them that the casino screwed them and they can get a payday if they join his merry crusade.  People, who never even thought they had a problem are blindsided, but enough respond and the total becomes staggering.  Our hero then sues, the casino settles for a fraction of the lawsuit, and the lawyer takes 50% off the top for himself for being such a great guy, and, eventually some of the plaintiffs get half of their couple bucks back if they're lucky.  Meanwhile, our courts are filled and real cases must be put on hold.  What a system!!!

Basically to summarize, for filing some paperwork, making a few threats and finding a few thousand "victims" who never knew they were victims to begin with, the lawyer gets a huge payday.  How has society benefited?  It hasn't.  Have the victims been vindicated?  No, they get a couple bucks back, big deal, and half of their money was stolen by the lawyer anyhow.  There is no benefit to these types of cases.  Lawyers like this love to threaten and wave their little law degree over the heads of the rest of society and then use the system to enrich themselves and inconvenience society.  Our courts should not be used to enrich lawyers, just as they shouldn't be used as a forum for philosophical debates, they should be used to settle real disputes, with real damages.

The casino owners are not the most savory people around, as their whole business is to bilk people out of their money.  At least they're somewhat honest about it though, and they do provide comps and entertainment.  Casino owners do provide a valuable service, while these sleazy lawyers pretend to be noble while lining their own pockets, claiming their piece of the action, by compounding a collection of cases with no real damages.  These types of lawyers are no better than pimps, using blackmail and extortion to claim a piece.

The Problem With Religious and non-Religious Nuts

As the expression goes, more people have died in the name of God than in by other cause.  Throughout history religion has been and still is the major cause of conflict in the world, one needs to look no further than the Middle East to confirm that fact.  Radical Islam is currently the biggest threat to the world.  Rather than focus on world issues and historical issues of religion, I'd prefer to look at domestic problems within the United States regarding religious zealots.  The problem with religious zealots in America is that they try to impose their values through laws on society and largely do not base their arguments on logic or what's best for the country, but rather on what their interpretation of the Bible says.  Additionally, there's a counter lobby of secularist extremists whose arguments, like those of religious zealots, are rooted in their hatred of religion, rather than in logic.  Both extreme elements, the religious right and the Godless left are very dangerous to society and at the heart of the cultural conflict right now that is, unfortunately, being settled in the courts.

The major problem with the religious right is not necessarily that they put blinders on to science and the reality of modern society, but that they have a clear agenda that they seek to impose on the rest of society.  In addition, many of their suggestions are harmful to an element of society, particularly certain minorities.  We'll start in the area of education and the drive against the teaching of the theory of evolution in favor of creationism.  Conceding for a moment that evolution may not be a proven fact, there's an overwhelming amount of evidence suggesting that it took place, certainly enough evidence to make it worthwhile to study in school.  To the religious right, this is an inconvenient fact which gets in the way of their creationist theory from the Bible, so there's a lobby seeking to ban the teaching of evolution in schools.  This policy of ignoring evidence because it contradicts a worldview is very dangerous, and amounts to a policy of indoctronation.  On the flip side, the secularists seek to only teach the theory of evolution, without mention of any other theories, which can be dangerous, but not quite as much as the ultra-religious seeking to ignore a widely supported theory.  If we, as a society, choose to simply ignore inconvenient information, we would be back in the dark ages in a heartbeat.

Another issue with which I take issue with the approach of the religious right on is that of gay marriage.  The far right has a hatred for homosexuality and all that it represents because they consider it a sin.  Rather than viewing gay individuals as people, the ultra-religious view them in the lower class of sinners because they simply have adopted a different lifestyle.  The religious right has chosen not to accept the lifestyle by individual gay people, and tries to impose their values on gay people who have clearly rejected at least some of them.  If Joey wants to marry Vinny, how does that mere fact impact my life?  It clearly does not impact me in any way, so why should it matter to me if it would make Joey and Vinny happy to be married?  It shouldn't.  The whole idea of the institution of marriage is a construct anyhow, and there's nothing particularly sacred about it (especially given the extremely high divorce numbers).  Preventing gays from marrying, assuming there are no additional complications (which, of course there are) is simply eliminating an element of happiness that gay people could enjoy.  That goes for polygamists too, by the way, if some people want to set up a polygamist family and obey all other laws, just for their happiness, they should be allowed to do so.

Now, I did issue a caveat in my last argument and I must now say that I am personally opposed to any type of marriage that is not between a man and a woman at this time.  The reason is because of the faulty rationality of the court system and the knowledge that gay rights activists will continue to push them envelope into the realm of adoption.  In a clear example that the far left has no logic, and won't leave well enough alone, it is almost guaranteed that as soon as gay marriage becomes legalized, there will be a push under the 14th Amendment (equal protection) to require adoption agencies to consider homosexual couples on equal grounds for adoption as heterosexual couples.  This is insanity, and knowing the court system, this precise situation would be legislated from the bench.  For a child, the natural environment in which to grow up is with a single father and a single mother.  That's not to say a homosexual couple may not make great parents, but preference must be given to the heterosexual couple because that is the environment best suited to the child.

Yet another major issue which is divider is the abortion/birth control argument.  The reality of the world is that abstinence is a thing of the past.  I personally, at age 24, cannot think of one person my age who has decided to abstain from sex before marriage.  It simply is not a part of today's world.   The practical thing for society to do is to allow and to promote birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies from happening, as these types of pregnancies cause society a multitude of problems and cost everyone money.  While societal institutions should not actively encourage teenage sex, they should provide education on how to prevent pregnancies and to promote safety.  That is simply the logical approach.

While birth control is good, and a healthy preventative measure for society, abortion is bad, and it should not be accepted as a reasonable means of birth control.  While I consider whether to have an abortion a woman's choice, as she will have to live with the physical and emotional consequences of that decision, consequences that us men have the convenience of avoiding, society should not encourage abortions, nor should any late-term abortion be allowed without threat to the mother's life.  Additionally, abortion should not be a unilateral decision, as the father should be given the option to solely take care of the baby.  It is not fair that a father has to support an unwanted child for 18 years, while a mother can simply abort an unwanted child that the father wants to raise.  Ultimately, fewer abortions are better for society, and life should be promoted.  While there is a legitimate debate as to whether a fetus is alive, I think a consensus can be achieved that a fetus is more alive than sperm and egg before conception, and it becomes more alive with each passing minute, and that it's better for society in general avoid abortion.

While much of my initial argument has to do with the fallacies of the religious right, there are plenty of secularist extremists whose equal lack of logic is potentially destructive to society.  Their premise, that there is a separation of church and state, is a fallacy itself (I will discuss in future blogs) and they carry this premise to the extreme, seeking to eliminate all forms of religion in this country.  While religious extremists represent a threat to America, the United States is, in fact, a religious country with religious traditions, though not tied to any particular religion. 

A pertinent example is the vigilant opposition to faith-based initiatives, proposed by President Bush at the beginning of his presidency and during his term as Texas governor.  Faith-based initiative are basically programs aimed at helping homeless people, single moms and generally downtrodden people get back on their feet.  Often these programs were tied in with some church or some form of religion.  The plan was for the government to provide funding to these effective programs to help people who needed help.  The plan was noble, however, the anti-religion crowd had a field day opposing these programs, simply on the basis that religious institutions were being funded to do this work.  The plan would be perfectly fine, say the critics, if the institutions were secular.  That argument has absolutely no basis in logic.  Religious institutions are situated perfectly to help the types of people who needed help under this plan, so what's the harm?  How does giving a Catholic church or a Jewish temple funding to carry out a program hurt the country or its citizenry in any way?  Does it promote religion?  Sure, but so what?  The only people who it could "hurt" are those who seek to completely eliminate all forms of religion in this country.

Another example of the secularist crowd overstepping its bounds has to do with the multitude of court cases against religious displays and the use of public grounds by organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, who are quasi-religious.  Recently, lawsuits have been filed to remove Christmas scenes and even a Ten Commandments monument.  Additionally, a lawsuit which attacked the "Under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance was successful.  My question is, what is the harm that these displays are causing?  Very little if any is the answer.  They certainly are not establishing an oppressive environment.  Yet they are part of the local culture, which is being attacked for no clear reason.

Both the religious and the secularist extremes are dangerous to America.  Both are devoid of logic and seek only to promote their narrow ideology, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in their fights in the courts.  America needs to reject both sides of extremism and continue to make logical public policy.  Courts also should adopt the stance that the Constitution is not a means by which they can write law and create policy.  A vigilant minority should not be able to impose on the majority its narrow values through the court system.

Minimum Wage Blues

One of the biggest issues that is arising once again in this election year is a tired old one, whether or not to increase the minimum wage.  As the Republicans use tax cuts as an election year ploy to stir up their base, so do the Democrats with the minimum wage.  The story is always the same, a worker living solely on the minimum wage is living below the poverty line, and how can we in an advanced, civilized, enlightened country allow people to work for wages below the poverty line.  The solution?  Let's just say that they can't be paid anything below a certain wage and magically everything will be alright.  The problem with such a simplistic plan is simply that it does not work and leads to numerous unintended consequences which serve to hurt many which the minimum wage laws intend to help. 

We are currently living in a time when the issues of globalization and immigration are at the forefront of American politics, and labor is the key issue.  The lines are being drawn between a populist policy of isolation, closed borders and tariffs, and free trade policies.  Many of those who support a raise of the minimum wage also decry companies outsourcing jobs to other nations and see large corporations that sweep up mom and pop operations as being evil.  Additionally, labor unions largely support increasing the minimum wage and strictly enforcing the border simply to line their own pockets by drowning out competition and thus increasing the demand for and price of union labor.  Raising the minimum wage will hurt immigrants, the working poor and small to midsize businesses the most.

A look at the simple economics of having a minimum wage illustrates the pitfalls of such a system.  Establishing a price floor is inflationary by nature, as employees who were making above minimum wage will now have to be duly compensated, creating a ripple effect throughout the economy.  As a result of the ripple effect, the buying power of the new minimum wage will not be what it was before the wage was increased.  Consequently, the reason the minimum wage has to be constantly increased is to keep up with this ripple effect.  The reason this effect exists is because the minimum wage is above market value, and the market will eventually compensate for the discrepancy. The minimum wage is by definition a short term solution.

Additionally, as the minimum wage is above the market value, there will be an increase in unemployment, which is an economic fact.  In France, in provinces where there was rioting last fall unemployment was around 40% and the minimum wage there is twice what it is in the United States.  The key here is to look at the impact of the unemployment and who it's hurting.  To do so, we need to take into account who are, in fact, the majority of minimum wage employees in this country, and how many people use the minimum wage to live on.  Statistics show that the median household income of minimum wage employees is around $40,000 annually.  Most minimum wage employees are seeking entry level jobs or are spouses of family breadwinners looking to gain a foothold in the job market.  Additionally, nearly two-thirds of minimum wage employees gain a raise within the first year of employment.  With labor costs increasing due to the increased minimum wage, middle-upper class teenagers will be much more likely to survive the increased competition than will those from the inner-city who need the jobs the most.

The cold hard fact is that someone whose labor is worth 5.75 an hour is unemployable and out of work when the wage increases to 7.00 an hour.  By raising the minimum wage, we are pricing these people out of jobs.  Additionally, someone who is willing to work more for less money should be allowed to do that if he needs to in order to make ends meet.  Raising the minimum wage means more competition for secondary jobs, and it also forces companies to seek out technological means for more cost-effective labor.  The minimum wage prevents people from working for whatever they are willing to work for.  In doing so, it prevents the poorest and least skilled people from entering the job market to gain skills and prove reliability.

One of the biggest ironies in this story is that those who oppose large corporations feeling they're cold and evil also support the minimum wage increase that gives them an additional leg up on the competition.  WalMart, Blockbuster and the large corporate chains are able to absorb the increased labor costs much easier than say John and Betty's Video store.  I know from my experiences in running a cafe in San Francisco that small businesses operate on a very thin margin.  Increased costs of labor brought on by the government may serve to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, eliminating economic viability.  The result: more large corporate entities entering neighborhoods and replacing mom and pop stores, because the mom and pop stores cannot compete.

While the minimum wage and increasing it are ideas that are meant to help, they end up cutting off the job market to the poor and to immigrants and they make it harder for small businesses to compete.  Additionally, they serve to increase the comparative advantage of foreign countries in terms of labor.  The result: fewer jobs, higher prices and fewer companies that can compete.  The idea of raising the minimum wage is simplistic and hurtful to those it intends to help.

Bread, Circuses and Triviality in the Courts

I know it is an odd subject and title for my first blog, but what's the deal with some of the cases that the federal courts are hearing and have been hearing? Specifically, I am refering to free speech cases in which a couple of doses of common sense and maybe a bit of empathy would go a long way toward saving this country millions of dollars in legal fees. The cases, some of which I will more specifically reference later typically involve offensive behavior, symbolism or an attempt to impose a minority view on the majority. My problem with these cases is that they have no basis in reality and are symbolic in nature, there are no real damages, and the cases generally don't serve to impact society as a whole, and definitely do not positively impact society. So, my question is, why do our courts even bother to hear them and how much money do we end up wasting trying symbolic cases? Shouldn't our courts be concerned with matters of consequence and settling real, meaningful disputes rather than wasting our money settling what amounts to academic "what if" scenarios?

The case that caused me to write this blog was a recently decided case from Southern California where a 16 year old teenager was reprimanded for wearing an anti-gay t-shirt to school.  This is a good case to look at in light of several other cases from the other end of the political spectrum involve students wearing shirts or taking symbolic action to protest war, etc.  The details of these cases are beside the point that I would like to make here.  The teenager in question in our original case was asked by the principal of the school, reasonably, to remove the shirt, and the student said he'd rather be suspended (though he was not).  The actions of the teenager are not reasonable actions, but symbolic actions to try to make a point that somehow some injustice was befalling him.  Who, may I ask, is harmed by this turn of events?  Who is the victim?  My answer is the taxpayer, who is now forced to foot the bill for a federal court case and possible appeal to the U.S Supreme Court.  There's nothing more to this case than the fact that it is a somewhat interesting case study in the 1st amendment meant for a classroom or a mock trial, not a federal court.

The major problem that I have with cases like this is that the plaintiffs usually are people acting out to try to draw attention to themselves, often in a negative way.  The laws of common sense largely do and should govern society as do the considerations of time, place and manner.  Any reasonable principal for the purpose of preventing conflict would restrict that type of shirt from being worn.  Similarly, any reasonable principal should restrict clothing that is offensive to a number of people in the school community regardless of the message because the potential consequences of the resulting outrage far outweigh any damages that may be suffered by someone who is not allowed to engage in the offensive behavior.  That, my friends, is common sense, as the authority here is simply acting to protect a larger number of people, and the damage to the one is negligible.  That is the way society is run, and should continue to be run.

Unfortunately, rather than laughing these cases off as inconsequential, our courts eagerly embrace them, continue to take them and cost us millions.  The reason?  Judicial precedent, which many judges now seem to feel supercedes the law itself.  The case, in other words, isn't simply about whether or not it was right for the principal to tell Johnny he couldn't wear his offensive, anti-gay t-shirt, but rather it becomes about freedom of expression in general and impacts the way the 1st amendment is read.  The judges want to use this case to impact the next case and in effect change the law and the administration of the law to best fit their world-view.  It is the worst form of judicial activism, and it's costing us way too much money. 

On both sides of the aisle there is a push to engineer court cases to manipulate and change the law and it needs to stop.  On the left many are trying to undermine the values of majority America by systematically using the 1st Amendment to attack American institutions and the values of the majority.  The recent attack on the Pledge of Allegiance is a great example, as are the attacks on the Boy Scouts of America.  On the right, many are pushing hard to engineer a case to overturn Roe v. Wade (which itself was a gross display of judicial activism, but that's for another day).  The result?  We are wasting a ton of money and not hearing cases of consequence in a timely manner.  Judges are supposed to use the law to settle disputes and determine guilt and innocence in matters of consequence, not to enter a theoretical, academic world in order to use trivial cases to try to make law.