The colder temps meant I had to fire up the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove. Normally by this time of year we heat with the propane furnace because it is usually needed only in the evening and first thing in the morning to take the chill off. It looks like we'll be using the woodstove the rest of this week as night time temps will be in the 20's and daytime temps will be 15 to 20 degrees below normal.
I'm just waiting for Al Gore to tell me it's all the fault of Global Warming.
***************
Speaking of Global Warming, I caught a report on ABC's Good Morning America this morning dealing with California's water problems, including a clip of Governor Jerry Brown announcing the statewide water restrictions. Ironic, considering a lot of the blame can be laid on Brown for killing water projects in the 70's that would have helped mitigate the present day problems.Too many people forget that southern and parts of central California are basically arid/semi-arid climes that have been changed through the use of water from elsewhere in California and from other states. Now that the regular drought cycle has gone into the dry phase, water supplies are drying up because the snowpack on the various mountain ranges is all but gone and rainfall totals are well below the amounts needed to help fill reservoirs and restore aquifers.
Some are laying blame on AGW, but paleoclimatologists and geologists are calling “Bulls**t!” on the claim, saying these kinds of droughts are a regular thing and that the past 100 years in California were uncharacteristically wet. Now that the weather is returning to historic patterns it's all of a sudden the fault of AGW.
***************
Coyote Blog digs deep into the reasons why minimum wage increases are a “terrible anti-poverty program.”His list:
Only a tiny minority of workers make the minimum wage.There are plenty of object lessons out there showing how raising the minimum wage, particularly to unreasonable levels, have just the opposite effect, destroying jobs and businesses. We're seeing that in Seattle and San Francisco, where both cities raised their minimum wages well above the federal level. In Seattle a number of businesses, primarily restaurants, are closing their doors because the wage increases have turned them from being profitable into losing money, something that isn't sustainable. Others are packing up and moving to more business friendly climes.
Most minimum wage earners are not poor.
Most people in poverty don't make the minimum wage.
Minimum wage increases kill unskilled labor hours.
Minimum wage laws ignore substantial non-monetary benefits of entry-level jobs.
Of course I expect none of that will dissuade other cities and states from making the same mistake and watching unemployment go up and business growth stop, or even reverse. I also expect some businesses, like the franchise restaurants (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, etc.) will replace some of their workers with ordering kiosks as they're cheaper in the long run. (No benefits, no wage increases, they don't call out from work, and don't complain about their hours.)
***************
State budget battles are always contentious, and so it is with my home state of New Hampshire.The Governor's proposed budget was a bust from the beginning, increasing spending well above the revenue estimates that would have required raising or adding new taxes (again). Many of the towns and cities have level -unded for their coming fiscal year and I think they expected the same thing from the state. But instead the governor went on a spending spree.
The legislature wasn't buying it, and made a number of cuts to the proposed budget. (Here I must remind you that the proponents of expanded state spending have called the lower increase in spending 'budget cuts', their usual tactics and wholly misleading.)
Yes, the legislature did make some actual spending cuts compared to the previous biennial budget, but I think they had to start somewhere. Now that the House has passed its version of the budget, it's time for the state Senate to propose changes.
In the end I think they'll work it out, providing the needed funding while keeping spending in check, but it's going to be a long drawn out process. If nothing else it will be interesting to watch the give and take.
***************
Oh, no!It appears one fragile snowflake at Harvard thinks the university's “safe space” for its totally unprepared-for-real-life students isn't safe enough.
I wonder how traumatic it will be for these cloistered students once they're exposed to the real world?
I expect the billable hours for therapists are going to skyrocket once these folks leave university.
***************
It appears the hate piled upon Memories Pizza has backfired upon the oh-so-tolerant Left, with donations to the media-ambushed Indiana pizza restaurant near $1 million.The faux controversy has ended up focusing more attention on the LGBT community for it's intolerance of those who do not wholeheartedly agree with their agenda. They seem to have forgotten that tolerance runs in both directions, or worse, they really don't care. (Of the two, I'd say it's more likely it's the latter.)
***************
As a follow-on to the above, there's this from Ronald Reagan courtesy of Skip over at Granite Grok.***************
We have many examples of Progressive hypocrisy. Here's another, posed by this simple question:Why do progressives hate Walmart but love Apple?
So why is Walmart so reviled by progressives when its profits (and prices) are so low that it might earn a “profit day” every 31 days, and its main corporate objective is to provide low-cost merchandise to America’s low- and middle-income households? Every day that a Walmart opens its doors for business, it gives everybody in that local community a raise and makes them better off. On the other hand, why do progressives worship Apple so religiously when its extremely pricey products generate such huge profit margins (more than 7 “profit days” every month) that the company’s stock is worth almost as much as the entire Brazilian stock market? Every day that an Apple store opens for business, it stands ready to extract $24.20 in profits for every $100 spent that day, which seems like a huge transfer of wealth from Apple’s loyal customers to Apple’s wealthy shareholders. And yet the progressives worship Apple and revile Walmart – go figure?!What makes this hatred of Walmart even more ridiculous? Walmart's employees are far more diverse than Apple's, with “twice as many women and more than twice as many blacks as a share of its workforce than does Apple.”
The answer is the one I gave above: hypocrisy.