Minimum Wage.....

Why, why, why is there so much focus on raising the minimum wage? No one gets paid the minimum wage...let free-market forces set minimum wages. Although on paper it sounds good, the reality is that very few employees actually earn the minimum wage. Maybe a few pimple faced teenagers will get paid more for flipping burgers, but there will be no improvement in workers near the poverty level.

What actually disturbs me more is the disparity between low wage earners and top wage earners. Fourty million dollars as a bonus seems extreme to me; paying someone $100 million to play baseball seems obscene. But you know what? That is the price we pay for a free market system. As long as people are willing to pay big bucks to watch a ball game, let the players get paid big. As long was we are willing to shop at Walmart, let Sam Walton get filthy rich.

The stance I take is that I don't watch professional sports anymore; I try not to shop at Walmart; I buy my funds from investment companies with lower overhead. As I suggest that our government do the same. I suggest that if the County or State or Federal government needs to do business with a corporation, legislate that the employees of that corporation get paid fair wages and the the CEO's get paid reasonable compensation.

But let the free market sort the rest out.....

Iraq and Darfur....

Quite a number of loud voices have argued that the US (and the UN) should be doing more, much, much more in Darfur. The Darfur region in western Sudan is a complete mess; a humanitarian disaster. Much like Iraq is today....

So if we should be pulling out of Iraq, why should we be going into Darfur?

The answer might lay partly in the fact that going into Darfur would be a multinational UN force. But that worries me a great deal. The mess in Isreal/Lebanon with Hesbolah showed that the UN is enimic, ploggingly slow, and nothing more that than the apogee of a poweless buraucracy. The fact is that the UN should have acted STRONGLY maybe as early as 2004.

Certainly the US is in no position to open a third front.

At this point all I can do is ask the questions; I have no ready answers.

Goode's idiotic Comments.....

Here is a link to Rep. Virgil Goode's letter, in case you have missed the full text. Here is a link to some left and some right commentary on the issue.

Let me not spend too many words on this, but to sum it up....Michael Richards' racial comments cannot be excused, but they were made in the heat of an emotional moment. George Allan's "macaca” comments, however stupid, were done off the cuff. Goode's letter, on the other hand, took deliberate and willful effort. The letter is racist, completely religiously intolerant, mean-spirited, mis-leading, idiotic and an embarrassment to the State of Virginia.

If you cannot see this, and if you defend Goode on this issue, you are at best ignorant, and at worst racist and hebetudinous.

Goode does touch on an important issues, and that is legal immigration reform and the problems of illegal immigration. But to put those issues in this context completely subverts the basis of his arguments and should remove him from participating in formulating immigration policy reforms.

Non-political ramblings.....

If you have not seen Google's new sketchup it is awesome! It is an easy-to-learn, yet powerful, 3D modeling tool. I was quickly building models and "sculptures" with my daughter (who is eight). She has it mastered; I'm trying to catch up.

I bough the Barenaked Ladies latest album on USB drive. What a fantastic concept; I hope this trend will continue and be adopted by more bands. Basically I buy a 256MB thumb-drive pre-loaded with 29 tracks and bonus material. I am free to do what I want with the MP3 tracks; no copy restrictions to worry about. No, I will not give you the tracks, but I will be putting them on my laptop, my MP3 player, my desktop at work, and the PC at home. If you want me to buy music, this is how I want it. By the way, it is the first music I have bought in several years. I'll buy more if it comes in this format.

Some really cool art.... Too bad it is in the UK, or I'd try to buy some.

This site is in french, and somewhere on it is an amazing video. These guys defy gravity. I am always in awe of physical feats that are well beyond my abilities. I'll post the video if I can find it....

A Troubling Story....

NPR had a fantastic feature on Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis. They spent almost a full 30 minutes on this story. What is pretty clear to me is that PGD can be vital tool for couples at risk for horrible genetic birth defects - defects so bad that the child only has days or weeks to live before dying. But to use this tool for sex selection? Or to KNOWINGLY select embryos genetically pre-disposed for deafness? That seems to me to be insanity.

There seem to be two contrasting schools of thought. First, PGD seems to represent the ultimate in reproductive choice. Second, that it is the ultimate form of eugenics, an immoral practice.

I am trying to find ways to better articulate my apprehension and moral outrage against PGD. But all that I am stuck on at the moment is that some things should be left to God or chance. In selecting an embryo solely on the trait that it lacks the gene for colon cancer, are you then rejecting the embryo that has a higher IQ? A more loving person? A gifted artist?

Ten Weeks Later......

So as it turns out, someone did read my blog. Wow. I am floored...he even left a comment! Thanks!

So reality is that I don't have enough time to "blog". I really hate that term, but for the lack of a better one, I will keep using it for now. Ten weeks have passed, and I have posted some stuff on Staunton News Leader, but those posts "expire".....so I can't link to those posts. In the future, I might copy them here.

One blog I found amusing is Phriendly Jaime ....Thank a Liberal. I do wonder why the word "liberal" has been turned into a four letter word. I suspect many "conservatives" would call me a liberal, when in reality, I want to conserve our environment, conserve the ideals of our constitution, and conserve the principles of "the persuit of happiness" and "Seperation of Church and State". I want to have the government practice the conservative financial discipline of not borrowing money.

To be fair, another blog entry I want to share is from SWACGirl: World Largest Scrapbook

One last note - do NOT expect good grammar nor perfect spelling. My almost straight A's in middle school were tainted by C's in spelling.

Finally.....

After much wrangling and pondering about whether to blog or not to blog, I finally gave in. I am joining the millions with something to say yet no one to listen. Here is goes.....