The Democrats’ Already Existing Showplace

There’s one place where the Left’s prescriptions for America have been practiced for years; a perfect illustration of the program, right here in the U.S. But the Left is so modest about its years of control you hardly ever hear about the place, though the results have been  spectacular. It’s called: Detroit.

It was the third largest city in the U.S. As Democrats and their unions rose toward political dominance in the country, industrial Detroit was a bellwether for their policies. It provided parks and schools for its hordes of well-paid industrial workers, including a large black contingent under a long succession of Democratic politicians, many of whom have also been black. But as is well-known, the American auto industry ground to a halt between the union rock and the government regulatory hard place; unsustainable pension and medical benefits into retirement closed the factories.

Though bailed out by taxpayers’ money, Chrysler was sold off and GM largely handed to its union after President Obama fired the president. Ironically, the dregs of GM, now touted recovered, is expanding in China, not the U.S. In Detroit, most of the industry has disappeared.

The city isn’t the third largest anymore; it has lost 40% of its population. Empty buildings stretch for miles, the city can’t afford to collect all the trash and a while ago, had no money to bury its indigent dead. Too many streetlights don’t work anymore; crime is up and the city is mulling what to do about the darkness, as: Half of Detroit’s Streetlights May Go Out as City Shrinks will explain. The city is still governed by Democrats though the state is hovering over the wreckage. About three years ago, Detroit had become the 11th largest city and was stampeding toward 12th.

As expected, social welfare costs are high and preempt maintenance of deteriorating physical plant. Detroit is the industrial age’s answer to the Old West’s ghost towns; it’s a ghost city. And it’s something else, too: a monument to the policies of the Democrats.

Why Can’t Mary Lou’s Coffee Use Waitresses Like Hooters’ and Starbucks’?

Here’s a challenge for the thoughtful whether liberal or conservative, seems to me. Marylou’s Coffee is a local (Boston, suburbs and Connecticut) little challenger to mighty Starbucks that has been doing so well it has continued growing. That may be what drew Federal attention; Starbucks is reputedly a consistent donor to the Left. But I may be too cynical. Mary Lou’s Coffee Investigated for Discrimination explains, Mary Lou’s Investigation explains in greater detail. In short: the Feds’ Equal Employment Opportunity Commision is investigating Marylou’s for discrimination in hiring. In practice, this has all the appeal of a SWAT team raid on an alleged meth lab.

Now, let’s get thoughtful. Hooters was put through the same wringer not too far back for its policy of hiring waitresses who all turned out to be young, attractive and positively endowed with Hooters’ attributes. Which is to say, none were elderly, ugly or too boyish to be readily identifed as female from at least 50 feet. What would one expect from a place named “Hooters?” The initial news of that investigation sort of slid away; I never heard of its denoument. But the last time a Hooters came into sight, it still had the same waitresses. Perhaps the company increased its political contributions or something…but there I go again.

It seems notable that Starbucks baristas share similar characteristics with those at little Marylou’s, the main difference being the lack of EEOC investigation. But Marylou’s girls all wear bright pink (and tight) T shirts and (tight) dark slacks; maybe that’s the difference? Dunno.

Let’s get a bit more thoughtful: Does anyone nowadays really believe it’s ok to exclude folks from work for religion, skin color, age, sex or such as a general proposition? Seems doubtful, to me. But the elderly are routinely excluded from hire as pilots or combat soldiers, right? And nary a peep from EEOC, either. Pretty obvious.

Now, turn it around; you’re an entrepeneur aiming to compete with say, Starbucks. You imitate its pattern and add your own shtick. You succeed. That creates jobs, creates new wealth and challenges the giant Starbucks to improve…all good, right? Don’t we want that sort of thing? Well, no, if we’re going to sick the government dogs onto it while ignoring the big guy. And extending the idea, is using the old “sex sells” idea in providing waitresses an evil that government should prevent? If we want commercial prohibition of ‘sex sells’, it’s going to take a lot bigger enforcement program than was ever whomped up for booze or drugs, seems to me. Sounds Quixotic, even. It would have to start with taking all those ‘mad men’ out and shooting them, wouldn’t it? And if we don’t pursue that except in the single case of Marylou’s after giving Hooters a pass and ignoring Starbucks, what does that say? Anything good?

We need new employers and more jobs now; it seems the worst possible time for this sort of shenanigans. And it leads to questioning whether our leading politicians mean what they’re telling us. (I think I know, but have already admitted my biases.) If the government is going to foreclose hiring physically appealing retail salesfolk as a policy, then land on Starbucks and Hooters first and make the stupidity clear. If government is going to let such policies be, then don’t stomp on little Marylous’. Seems clear to me, am I missing something?

The Left Bags Another Environmental Triumph in L.A…

Plastic Bag Ban Approved For L.A. Markets tells followers of the Foldin’ State of its latest advance-to-the-rear. As always in modern CaliFunya, it’s improving things for the environment by making it more difficult and expensive for people to live in it. Following the environmentalists’ logic, they must soon advocate the extirpation of earth-based humanity if they seriously plan to save the poor, threatened planet. For whom they are saving it has somehow thus far escaped explanation.

The groups of ‘advocates and environmentalists’ that pushed all but one L.A. City Councillor into voting the ban had also demanded banning paper bags but even the shriveled menatalities of the Councillors twitched at that, probably at the thought of their spouses standing at the checkout stand before a pile of groceries lacking a cargo net. They made a gooo-faith effort, though; they have forced the markets to charge 10 cents per bag for the paper ones. It’ll be cheaper for you to bring your own bags, see? How clever is the liberal political mind!

The size of the grocery pile of many weekly family buyers suggests that Mom will need to bring her son’s little red wagon to bring her permanent bags into the store. Since such wagons won’t hold the bags after the store has filled them with groceries, this would seem to be a so far, unaddressed little sticking point. Maybe Mom can borrow a thought from her school-agers and learn to trek through life with a backpack on shopping days…that takes care of Mon, we’ll have to see what Grandma will do.

To be filed with the so far little-reported deaths of millions of birds resulting from electricity-generating windmills, it seems someone has discovered that permanent grocery bags tend to cultivate disease germs as they age…no doubt this is unreported mostly because Obamacare has already solved it somehow, at low cost and without increasing the deficit.

The paper bag inventory at homes will build up pretty fast and the damn’ things are bulky. You once received a bounty for returning used drink bottles to markets but paper doesn’t seem likely to hold up long for re-use and how many of the public school grads working in today’s markets would be able to re-fold them, anyway? A garagefull will be a fire hazard and they’ll take about a quarter of the average trash can, forcing a larger investment in those and thereby, larger trash pickup trucks or at least, more pickups. City unions will like this. While the paper will disintegrate in landfills, the bags will take up more space than limp plastic bags, making landfills bigger than before, unless maybe they can be soaked first. But water is getting scarce too…and they’d likely have to be mashed somehow anyway.

So lucky Angelenos will now pay more for grocery shopping, raising the already leading cost of CaliFunya living. Firemen and surgeons expert at fixing hernias will flock to the Foldin’ State, offsetting the exodus of plastics workers…truly, another triumph of the Left! You have to stand helplessly, wondering how they do it…

How Figure Skating Resembles Congress

A couple dozen elected officers and directors run U.S. Figure Skating all year until in May, they reluctantly answer to the sport’s Governing Council (GC), a congress of several hundred delegates from the skating clubs around the country. The Board of Directors likes to spend money; the GC is more reluctant and has final approval of the budget. The Board looks at the GC much as Congress sees say, Ron Paul.

This month, the Board tried to wrest control from the GC via amending By Laws because the GC has put limits on the Board’s spending when it isn’t raining from the sport’s rainy day fund. The Board likes to send lots of skaters to obscure international competitions because officials get free trips with the teams, often to nice places in Europe or Asia. The GC prefers to send skaters to events where they have a chance to medal while representing the U.S. but that reduces the number of events attended quite a bit, displeasing the Board and the officials it blesses with such travel. This is a big deal.

Meanwhile, rink operators prefer to rent ice to hockey; there aren’t enough figure skaters. Knowing that it costs an upper ranked girl’s family upwards of $50,000 a year to do her thing may help explaing that. Once out of a beginner class, instructors teach one skater at a time. As is well known, few boys are interested and the thousands who once danced ballroom on ice for pleasure have departed like TV coverage.

The sport has based its rewards on multi-revolution jumping; that reduced the average ages of its champions and therefore of its serious participants. A juvenile ectomorph has a better shot at triples than does a nubile teen or grown woman. Some 90% of beginners vanish within 3 years.

Congress goes on spending regardless of lacking the money; its members are concerned with buying votes and aren’t willing to displease voters by cutting the flow of goodies even though the end is economic destruction. They don’t care so long as they’re reelectted first. U.S. Figure Skating’s Board is elected too and depends for reelection upon a cadre of officials (judges and such) in the clubs; these must be rewarded with positions and assignments that in turn depend on investing in events, travel and the like. But the TV income has gone and so have sponsors. How this plays out should be instructive.

Skating’s Board has shown as little interest in the loss of male participants (It was orginally a male-only sport), its mass of ice dancers, its older participants and the declining availability of ice time as Congress has shown in solving the problems in Social Security, Medicare and financing endless war.

There is though, one notable difference: Nobody has to figure skate…

THE NEW RULE FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOL: If You Can’t Move the Ball, Move the Goal Posts!

Florida college football teams didn’t gain their reputation by moving the goal posts when they failed to move the ball, but that’s the approach under way in testing the accomplishments of its school kids, apparently. Florida Eases Passing Grade on Test will bring the reader up to date. In short, a newly tightened testing of writing skills was failing about two thirds of takers; the school officials panicked and loosened the passing criteria to diminish the heat. Chalk up another attempt to improve public school results as a faiure. Regardless of whatever the politicians promise in campaigns, nothing significant changes when the unions dig in after the election. Subsequently to this, the state’s reading tests came up with about half the students found reading at grade level or better; we haven’t heard whether those standards will be lowered.

In New Mexico, America’s second-from-the-bottom schools were supposed to improve when the new Republican Governor Susana Martinez brought in Florida’s allegedly education miracle worker Hanna Skandera to be the state’s Education Secretary. But the  Skandera appointment was refused by the Democrat-dominated legislature and the governor’s program of rather tepid lip-service has been in the same abeyance as Skandera, leaving the status of education very quo, with no identifiable interest in actually improving things so long as  talking about it will serve. This seems the normal U.S. pattern.

While these conditions apply locally, President Obama has exempted some dozen or so states from the No Child Left Behind tests. No child is being left behind but entire states are seemingly a different matter.

Our schools are a scandal if you believe their job is the education of kids. If however, you believe they’re to mold kids’ minds into those of accommodating citizens, they’re doing well. The lack of interest in real change shows which is the real preference of government, regardless of party and especially regardless of lip service, which is only a pacifier for voters. The obvious fact that said voter are in fact, pacified is proof that they aren’t serious either.

We’ll know real change is possible from one single sign: when politicians take on the teachers’ unions. Without that, best imitate the politicians and send the kids to private schools…if you’re serious about educating them.

President Eisenhower Becoming High Roller in His Tomb?

U.S. Sends Troops to Yemen as Al Qaeda Gains Ground adds a new little war to the ever-increasing list of undeclared Obamawars. You probably haven’t heard about it; the media in their inestimable professionalism seem to have decided that, in this election cycle, it’s non-news and we don’t need to know.  A lot of that going around, right?

But courtesy of the internet, much creeps out between the cracks; we can no doubt expect the government’s attempts to grab control of the web to become even more frenzied. One question comes to mind here: where is Obama getting the money to pay for his new little war? The one obvious thing, since he’s stony broke, (well, not personally of course, just when he’s spending our taxes) is that the money is either Fed fake or borrowed, with interest (for us) to pay. Note to self: Before the Fed in 1913, government couldn’t pull off this sort of grift…

But this isn’t quite as outre as it seems; did you know the U.S. has military in over one hundred different countries? Without counting visits by our Navy, too. But in the majority of those places, there’s no shooting going on or at least, none by our militaru. That we know of.

I’m beginning to wonder; does the Pentagon have an advance team of specialists that sneaks into countries to plant an “Al Qaeda” flag and a roadsice bomb just before we send in our troops? Nah, my tinfoil hat’s leaking again, right?

Nutjob Ron Paul, right wing Republican-Libertarian that he is, thinks we shouln’t be doing all this; that we should let other coutries run their own affirs and keep our noses out and our budgets, balanced. And we should “end the Fed!” to assure it. Given the enormous benefits we’ve gained from our efforts in this direction (which I will list for you when they come clear to me), maybe he has a point besides the one under his tinfoil hat…

No, no, can’t be! That would be a repudiation of every President after Eisenhower, regardless of party. And what the hell did General/President Eisenhower know? He warned us not to fall into this sort of thing… All he did, was win WWII and preside over the successful transition from a wartime, shorthanded economy to a peacetime one full of returned soldiers while avoiding substantial unemployment and new wars. Oh, and he played golf, too. A real contrast with our present golfer, Eisenhower was smarter than he looked, wheras Obama is lookier than he is smart, seems to me.

Our Evolving Police…

Time was, a cop couldn’t search you without a warrant or probable cause. The pesky Constitution, you know. They couldn’t take your property either, without first obtaining a court order; the Constitution calls it “due process of law.” Most Americans seem to believe in those provisions and a lot of us still think they’re  in force. Probably they are, in smaller cities and towns around the Midwest and a few other places. Red states.

NY Police Defend Frisking With Improved Crime Numbers is a more up-to-date picture of things as they are in blue states and large cities these days. Commonly, if a cop stops a driver who either seems suspicious or uncooperative, a pretext is found for a search; if that turns up a gun or large amount of cash, the car, gun and cash are routinely siezed and too often never returned regardless of the fate of the driver, though more are reclaiming their cars now than was the case for a while. Guns and cash still regularly disappear in too many places. That’s background; the NYPD’s frisking is the next step.

You’re walking along minding your own business when a cop stops you, demands ID and pats you down. Again, too much cash or a gun are big trouble and you may never see the cash again, though you have some chance of reclaiming the gun if it’s legally yours and permitted. But you’re in for a long hassle. We used to think the cops did things like these in police states, not in America. “Your papers!” from a cop was  a movie staple of Nazi Germany or the USSR. America has joined the rest; it’s not only the NYPD. You can expect now to be stopped for a random, warrantless search on Federal highways, a new program of Homeland Security’s TSA folk. If their conduct at airports is reported accurately, they’ll be just as happy to find you with cash and guns as the cops.

The ubiquitous cell phones’ photo and recording ability is another heavy-handed, unconstitutional response area for cops; recording them at work seems to infuriate them. Public servants doing their duty in public may be recorded by the public but doing that has led to arrests, camera confiscations, intimidation, trumped-up charges and physical abuse on increasingly numerous occasions, particularly when they’ve been recorded beating up handcuffed prisoners or other mischievous behavior..

Americans and Brits haven’t thought of their police the way they’re perceived in most other countries. They’ve been seen them as friends and protectors, in spite of the occasional traffic ticket or venal bad cop. Elsewhere, they’re traditionally feared and with reason. New York doesn’t need ‘stop and frisk’ to lower crime nor should cops anywhere be able to benefit from confiscating citizens’ property. These are tools of the police state. The Constitution forbade such things for good reasons but unless constitutions are guarded by citizens, they don’t endure. The L.A. riots followed folks filming police beating Rodney King; this is not to advocate riots, but the level of cops beating folks in L.A. noticeably dropped for a long time after that…