Don's Tuesday Column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   3/05/2019

   Are rent and wages too damn high?

Another business is leaving California. We heard of the closing of Famous Dave’s BBQ on Hilltop Drive over lunch while waiting for tech support at Best Buy across the street. Their pork ribs compare well to the best ribs we have ever eaten, in Stanley, Idaho.

The waitress informed us that they’ll close on March 10. She cited the high rent and their choice to concentrate on their Reno, NV, location. It occurred to us that 1) the high rent might be driven by a Bay area property owner unconcerned with the relatively lower market rents up here, 2) the likelihood that the People’s Republic of Sacramento is certainly going to mandate higher minimum wages, as “progressive” Democrats seem obsessed to do in Oregon and elsewhere. Certainly, the food quality (excellent) and meal time crowds (full when we ate) weren’t a factor.

From Seattle to New York City, such foolish wage laws have resulted in considerable job losses and cutbacks on hours worked. Studies of Seattle’s law have quantified the average loss of income to workers. Counterproductive results—who would guess? The political elites in NYC have a little legislative fix; they now want to make it harder to fire a worker. Anemic French and Greek economies started out just this way.

Leftists cannot comprehend that government creates neither wealth nor jobs. Government can only regulate the private sector into stultification and then tax/punish the declining business revenues. It’s “bad luck” as the economically ignorant might say; Hillary Clinton infamously bemoaned that she couldn’t be responsible for “undercapitalized” businesses driven to failure by the massive taxes needed to implement her quasi-socialist health care “reforms.” Lessons, anyone?

Venezuela enjoyed one of the highest standards of living before Socialist Chavez rode to office on class envy, promises of free stuff and confiscation of the “goose that laid the golden eggs” (oil industry profits). It seems “bad luck” and “undercapitalized” businesses follow collectivist schemes wherever tried; consider the lemming-like Democrat clamor: “Medicare-for-all.” They “don’t need no stinkin’ high taxes” to make health care free, do they?

To whom it may interest, highly reputable Marist polling shows current public opinion on abortion; the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, commissioned the poll but Marist’s methods are solidly neutral. The bottom line is that Democrats, particularly their hard-left base and progressive presidential candidates, are increasingly out of line with public opinion on abortion. Pro-choice fanatics care not for factual opinions; extremists are in a bidding war on the issue.

Summed up by Paul Mirengoff: “Only 13 percent said they believe that abortion should be available to women at any time during her pregnancy. Another 8 percent said they believe abortion should be allowed in the first six months.

“Of the remainder, 17 percent think abortion should never be allowed; 12 percent said it should be allowed only to save the life of the mother; 29 percent said it should be allowed to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest; and 22 percent said it should be allowed only in the first three months of pregnancy. Even among Democrats, only 35 percent said they believe abortion should be permitted at any time during the pregnancy (22 percent) or during any time up to six months into pregnancy (13 percent).

“The most surprising result was the change in public sentiment between January and February…The self-described ‘pro-life’ segment rose from 38 percent to 47 percent, while the “pro-choice” side dropped from 55 percent to 47 percent…So what explains the shift Marist measured (toward the pro-life position)? Perhaps the extreme positions on abortion taken recently by some Democratic legislatures and presidential candidates have given ‘pro-choice’ a bad name.”

When nearly two-thirds of Democrats side against nearly unrestricted abortion, I see potential support for a pro-life President Trump on the issue. There’s certainly room for a moderate Democrat to run for their nomination on the issue—however, the fanatical base won’t allow it.

Readers understandably tire of single-issue opining, let alone quarrels among columnists where laws have no chance of being changed. Roe v. Wade won’t be overturned and even if it was, California would only be encouraged to allow legal abortion up to delivery so as to set it apart from pro-life, red states.

However, it is instructive to watch the methods, positions and personal insults resorted to by Mr. Minch, arguing by derogatory aspersion (calling me a “kid” who lacks stature to talk of “rights”). From my first words on the subject, the laws passed in New York, proposed in Virginia and other states by Democrats, and now agreed to by Democrats in Congress—that allow for literal infanticide when a baby survives an abortion—have been the issue. Not early term abortions or any other birth control.

There will, I suppose, be no acknowledgement of the crimes of Dr. Gosnell in Philadelphia, convicted for allowed living babies to die in a closet because the mother wanted an abortion; the “women’s choice” mantra, like a verbal “tic” or Tourette’s syndrome, is the reply. I say choose life!

On racial statistical patterns (which is what “propensity” or “proclivities” really mean), the FBI and DOJ aren’t racist to provide the data showing higher criminal convictions as a percentage of population for blacks compared to whites. Obama’s Civil Rights division of the DOE wasn’t racist to see the pattern of misbehavior and criminal offenses in schools by black students. Obama forced schools to not punish black students for their violations, and demanded fewer black student suspensions and arrests.

Jesse Jackson wasn’t racist to express, in an interview, his relief in Washington, DC, that the sound of approaching footsteps belonged to a white man, not a black man. Black talk host Ken Hamblin’s dad wasn’t racist to tell his son to avoid groups of young black men standing on sidewalks.