Federal minimum wage laws have sometimes been criticized because it hasn’t been tied to inflation, thus not forcing companies to increase their minimum wages at the rate of prices.

Tying it to inflation would give minimum-wage workers higher pay generally, as prices typically rise more quickly than Congress has increased the minimum wage, thus it might make it easier for minimum wage workers to purchase products.

So if prices rise a lot, low-paid workers see the same relative increase in buying power.

If prices don’t rise much, you don’t need as much of an increase in salary, because you don’t have to purchase any more than you did.

That’s what’s happening now in some states like Colorado and Oregon. Even with their wages being increased with inflation, there are still people complaining.
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Richard Dawkins coming to campus is pretty interesting considering he’s a controversial celebrity atheist–otherwise known as a “fascist” to Bill O’Reilly–but the topic he’s going to be speaking on doesn’t appear to bring with it much controversy.

His speech is billed by the Secular Alliance at IU as a speech on the evidence of evolution. If he speaks on evolution, he will just be confirming what is already strongly accepted as fact in science and academia. The actual process of evolution can be seen as fact, but it’s not clear how the creation of life occurred, so I guess religious people can keep arguing about that.

But regardless of how life began, any explanation wouldn’t cast much additional doubt upon God’s existence. Read the rest of this entry »

DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse issued this urgent statement yesterday:

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

– Politico

This follows Barbara Boxer’s warning that, “The head of the Republican National Committee was very, very harsh … and so the Taliban were very, very harsh, too.”

(Just for the record, Michael Steele asked, “What has Obama accomplished?” and Obama said in his speech, “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformational figures who have been honored by this prize,” so we should keep an eyeout for Osama Obama engaging in terrorism, too.)

Earlier this summer, Baron Hill warned that Republicans might commit Jihad at a townhall meeting:

“There are some people acting like political terrorists by disrupting these town hall meetings going on around the country and it’s not meaningful dialogue.”

Watch out for those Republicans.
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We just spent $787 billion to “stimulate” the economy earlier this year, and that $787 billion has worked out so poorly that the Democrats are planning to spend billions more on a second stimulus.

After the success of the first stimulus, we should definitely trust them to spend billions more on anything they want.

Just to put into perspective how well the stimulus package worked, the Obama administration projected that the unemployment rate would skyrocket to 9% if the stimulus plan didn’t pass. Now it’s 9.8%.

Still, the stimulus package was supposed to be long-term help. Spending continued for three years, and in August, just 12% of the money was spent.

There’s two conclusions: Either the stimulus is long-term, so we should let it work itself out before we embark on another massive spending quest, or the stimulus hasn’t worked, so why should we trust another stimulus?

Considering the state of the economy, I’d say it hasn’t worked, and considering the state of the $1,800 billion deficit, I’d say we shouldn’t spend billions more on something else that won’t work.

Tired of big insurance denying medical claims?

Obama has got the perfect solution for you: big government denying your claims!

According to the American Medical Association, Medicare was the resounding leader in claims denied, beating Aetna by a score of 6.85% to 6.80%. Most of the insurers fells between 2 percent and 4 percent.

In Massachusetts Read the rest of this entry »

After Creating Films That Grossed Over $300 Million, Michael Moore Says “Capitalism Did Nothing For Me.”

UPDATE

Michael Moore’s recent interviews show he has some fundamental misunderstandings about what is capitalism, as his sixth documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story hits theatres.

Most importantly, he denies the fact that people engaging in the voluntary exchange of money for movie tickets and DVDs is capitalism.

Moore said to CNS News reporters that, “Capitalism has done nothing for me.”

“In fact, in Fahrenheit 9/11 if you remember, capitalism, the Disney Corporation, tried to kill that film–tried to make it so that people couldn’t see it. My book Stupid White Men–Harper Collins tried to kill that book so that people couldn’t see it. It’s only because I put the light of day on it and told people what was going on did people get the chance to see these things.”

Neither of those scenarios reflects on capitalism harming Moore. Disney may have “tried to kill Fahrenheit 9/11″ (which would be very counterproductive of them, considering they paid him $21 million to produce it), but it ended up grossing over $200 million worldwide and earning Disney a $46 million profit, so I’d say that Disney did a bad job of denying themselves profit by killing the movie.

The fact is that Moore made an entertaining movie that people wanted to see, and because of that, he made millions through the capitalist system. Disney had good motivation to put the movie out in front of people, because they profited from having people watch it.

If, however, Disney didn’t want to show it, because, say, they didn’t like the politics, as Moore seems to suggest, they would have their right not to show it, but other companies would scramble to finance Moore in hopes of turning a profit.
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Ashley Ames notes in her latest post, that

There are a lot of things that can be argued about health care. That America has the best system is not one of them.

A lot of people from Canada who leave their country for American healthcare when they get a tumor might try to argue that.

America has the highest survival rate in the world for most types of cancer.

- Telegraph

According to the first study of survival rates by country, Read the rest of this entry »

During Obama’s inaugural speech, he had the audacity to mention America’s religious freedom, and for that he is being begrudged by some religious people.

Obama described America as a “nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers.”

Considering the fact that Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and athiests–and satanists and wiccans and buddhists and scientologists–all live in America and comprise our nation and have their rights protected in the First Amendment, I don’t see where he’s wrong.

However, he is wrong, because he is “trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian,” says Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va.

Funny, because I thought America’s culture was distinctively one of liberty and freedom, and I thought some of the first Americans came here to escape religious persecution.

Jackson appeared on a radio show and took calls from many who were offended by atheists for not believing in a God. Jackson elaborated, “Obviously, Jewish heritage is very much a part of Christianity; the Jewish Bible is part of our Bible. But Hindu, Muslim, and nonbelievers? I don’t think so. We are not a Muslim nation or a nonbelieving nation.”

Right, we aren’t a Muslim nation or a nonbelieving nation or a Christian nation. We shouldn’t let religion get involved in politics and define our nation.

On the other side, there are many gay rights fanatics mad that Obama had the Rev. Rick Warren give prayers simply because they disagree with Mr. Warren about whether gay people should have “marriages” or “civil unions” regardless of the fact that they already have the same legal rights.