Lower Minimum Wage To $0 by Katie Kieffer

If you love In-N-Out burgers and care about the workers who flip your burgers, then you should support a minimum wage of $0.

Deep down, I know you’re tired of seeing actors jump up and down for TV cameras while waving professional signs that read: “McGreedy! McStingy! McPoverty!” or “McShame. McDonald’s. Raise That Wage.”

You weren’t born yesterday. You doubt that these protestors come up with these slogans on their own or fashion them into makeshift signs with their own cardboard, sticks and markers. You suspect they were given signs and paid to wave them. Indeed, in recent protests, 84% of McDonald's "protesters" were not real McDonald's employees but paid and trained professional rioters.

Professional rioters pout and shout in public for a one-time cash payment—not a cause. Since rioters are not entrepreneurs, they do not empathize with the challenges of competing in the restaurant business where profit margins hover at 4%. Nor do they understand the feat of turning a profit while relying on a staff of over-paid and inexperienced high school students.

Greed clouds the intellect of many professional wage protesters. For, reason as well as the Fourth Amendment tell us that every American business owner has a natural right to spend their private property (or cash) on employee wages as they see fit.

Los Angeles’ current minimum wage is above the Federal minimum of $7.25. Last week, the Los Angeles city council voted to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Los Angeles is a city of nearly 19 million. According to TIME, a maximum of 800,000 people—or about four percent of the city’s population—will benefit.

Besides “benefiting” up to 800,000 people, the wage hike will eventually hurt an untold number of people. Prepare to see (and smell) more wrinkly clothing and shaggy hair when Los Angelenos delay trips to the dry cleaners and barber.

Joking aside, we have recent a case study of what happens when we jack up the minimum wage. After the city of Seattle, Washington raised its minimum wage to $15, Forbes reported: “Restaurants are closing at higher than normal rates.”

Via: Townhall

Continue Reading....

Sports Taking a Hit in Tax-Heavy Baltimore?

The anti-capitalist environment in Baltimore has left city sports in an uncertain state. Thanks to Charm City's high property taxes, Pimlico race track owners, the site where the Preakness is held, are considering moving their horses elsewhere. 

Herein lies the problem:

In Maryland, regulators are like co-owners: Not only did you not build that, but you’re not free to run it, either. Of course, there are tracks elsewhere that would surely like to host a Triple Crown race and that are not subject to Maryland’s regulatory dictates.

In the past, when city governments have exercised extreme regulations over businesses, it has often had fatal results. Detroit's economy suffered under the highest property taxes on homes in the nation, in addition to the top commercial property tax, and the second-highest industrial property tax, before filing for bankruptcy in 2013.

The poor business environment in Baltimore is coupled with the attraction of other more business-friendly regions.

At the city’s current property-tax rate, for example, a $100 million investment at Pimlico — probably less than required to make the crumbling facility world-class again — would cost its owners almost $2.25 million in added annual property taxes.

Via: Townhall

Continue Reading... 

Three ways Obama and Kim Jong Un are eerily similar

I’m not really sure who’s emulating whom, or if it’s just a creepy coincidence, but have you noticed how our own Dear Leader, Barack Obama, shares some eery similarities with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un? We’ve come up with three so far.

1. Very secretive youth.

There seem to be information gaps in both Obama’s and Kim’s formative years.
Apparently no official biography on Kim has ever been released, so the only known information on his early life comes from those who have defected from North Korea or people who have claimed to have seen him abroad. He apparently studied in Switzerland in several schools where he was described as an ambitious student who liked basketball, but his grades and attendance ratings were poor.

Of course we’re well-aware of the question marks surrounding Obama’s younger years, including his druggie days as member of the Choom Gang, the nature of his travel to Pakistan, and most recently, the stinging criticism from a University of Chicago professor who said “the other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings.”

2. Passion for basketball

High school friends of Kim noted that he “worshipped NBA players” and proudly showed off pictures of himself with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock, you must be well aware of Kim’s much publicized bromance with Dennis Rodman.

Of Obama’s obsession with basketball, the Washington Post said breathlessly, “to say that President Obama loves basketball understates the role of the sport in his life. He has been devoted to the game for 40 years now, ever since the father he did not know and never saw again gave him his first ball during a brief Christmastime visit. Basketball is central to his self identity. It is global yet American-born, much like him. It is where he found a place of comfort, a family, a mode of expression, a connection from his past to his future. With foundation roots in the Kansas of his white forebears, basketball was also the city game, helping him find his way toward blackness, his introduction to an African American culture that was distant to him when he was young yet his by birthright.”

Um, really? I feel a bit queasy right now.

3. Purging the military

We’ve written here on many occasions about how Obama seems to be doing his best to dramatically reduce the might and strength of our military. Estimates of how many officers have been relieved of command since he took office range around the 200 mark with at least nine generals and 157 Air Force majors losing their posts.

Kim also seems intent on purging his top brass, except instead of just firing them, he fires AT them.

We reported recently about the official executed for falling asleep in a meeting.  Hyon Yong-Choi was apparently blasted by an anti-aircraft gun in front of a gallery of observers.

“In the latest cull, the North Korean despot is said to have ordered the death of his vice armed forces minister, So Hong-chan, and several others close to him for not following his orders.” 

So that’s our top three…for now. Please let us know if we’ve left anything on the list.
 

Via: Allen B. West

Continue Reading....

Noteworthy Millennial Political Highlights from this Past Week

This week a 19 year old Republican, Yvonne Dean-Bailey, won a highly contested race in the swing state of New Hampshire. 

Dean-Bailey, a 19-year-old college student, becomes one of the youngest women elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

The race attracted a disproportionate share of attention on the eve of a presidential primary season.

Republican presidential hopefuls Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry attended events with Dean-Bailey, while Democrat Martin O’Malley helped promote Mann, who is a former state representative.

The election drew enormous interest, and support for and against each candidate, from outside of the district. In Deerfield, for example, turnout was about 26 percent. In Candia, it was 16 percent.

She won despite dirty tactics from Democrats.

The state’s Republican Party plans to file an election law complaint today with the Attorney General’s Office after a former campaign worker for Democrat state representative candidate Maureen Mann admitted to emailing a hoax news release claiming her Republican challenger, candidate Yvonne Dean-Bailey, had dropped out of the race. 

While Republicans are promoting young stars through our Rising Stars program and through local elections, the Clintons are making our schools pay exorbitant prices to hear them speak. 

The Clinton Foundation has disclosed that it received up to $26 million in payments that had not been previously disclosed, with about 20 colleges and universities on the list of organizations and institutions that paid fees for speeches by one of the Clintons —Bill, the former president; Hillary, the former U.S. senator and secretary of state; or Chelsea, their daughter.

The total amount paid by the colleges and universities is between $2.8 million and $6.7 million — a range based on the way the fees are reported. For example, the top fees were reported in a range from $250,001 to $500,000.

Here, taken from the Clinton Foundation’s website, is a list of the college and universities that paid to have one of the Clintons give a speech from the time the foundation was founded in 2001 through 2014.

As Millennials are learning more about Hillary Clinton they are liking her less as Pew found out this week. Last year 82 percent of 18-25 year old Democrats had a favorable view of her now only 65 percent do.

Not only are young Republicans succeeding, we are also taking positions of leadership.  Just this week 30 year old RNC Chief of Staff, Katie Walsh, was named one of The Washington Post’s “40 Most Interesting Women In Politics”

Via: GOP.Com

Continue Reading....

Vending Machines Must Post Calorie Counts and Other 2014 New Regulations

If we were to design a regulatory framework from scratch, for any sector of a modern economy, it would make no sense to ignore regulatory costs and benefits.

It would make even less sense to implement new rules and regulations and then worry about their impact.

But that’s pretty much what we do in the U.S., where we allow politics to trump common sense.

The 2008 financial crisis is the perfect example. For decades the industry has been as regulated as any on the planet, and some of these rules clearly contributed to the crisis.

But we still allowed politicians to blame the crisis on the free market and then institute more of the same regulations that led to the meltdown. The overall reach of federal regulators goes well beyond the financial sector, though, and nobody should be surprised that the economy is just muddling along.

How bad is the regulatory environment?

The ninth annual Red Tape Rising report gives a great overview; it tracks the volume and, to the extent possible, the cost of federal regulations.

(Two of my colleagues, James Gattuso and Diane Katz hosted a Heritage Foundation event to introduce the report. Anyone can watch online.)

Believe it or not, the federal government doesn’t officially track regulatory costs as it does with things like taxes and spending.

But executive branch agencies that promulgate “major rules”—defined as those expected to cost the economy $100 million or more annually—provide some cost estimates for the rules they issue. These agencies estimated that their major rules from 2014 will cost the economy approximately $80 billion per year.

These are the regulators’ cost figures, though, so they probably underestimate the true cost. Estimates from various independent sources put these costs from hundreds of billions of dollars to over $2 trillion annually.

Via: The Daily Signal

Continue Reading....

EXCLUSIVE — GOV. SCOTT WALKER: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ‘TOO BIG TO FAIL,’ NEXT PRESIDENT MUST SHRINK IT SO IT’S ‘SMALL ENOUGH TO SUCCEED’

by MATTHEW BOYLE25 May 2015Washington, DC51

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview over Memorial Day weekend that he’s getting much closer to a decision on whether he’ll pursue a presidential campaign in 2016, a decision he expects will come in early July.

“My state budget is done at the end of June, and so obviously my number one responsibility over that period is to complete a state budget—and so I’ve said in state and publicly that I won’t make any declaration about my intentions until after that,” Walker said when asked where he’s at in his decision-making process. “It will be shortly thereafter, not too far after the first of July, but I owe it to the people of Wisconsin first and foremost to be focused on that and to make sure we pass and I sign a budget that continues to lower property taxes and is a reasonable and responsible budget.”

Walker is currently the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary in 2016 according to most polls—in many early state polls he’s got a double digit lead—and when asked why he thinks that’s the case, Walker said it’s because he’s someone who delivers results.

“Back in January remember when I was one of the speakers at the Citizens United-

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

79%

 jointly sponsored events in Iowa?” Walker said.

It was something some called a breakout speech. I think all it was was me just talking as I’ve done many times before on the stump the last four years when we won three elections for governor. The last two were obviously pretty intense. I think what happened was once there was all that big coverage by many in the media about this being a big deal, my personal belief and I think of many who are supporters, is there were a whole bunch of right-leaning Republican primary voters who had watched what we’ve done in Wisconsin the last four years but didn’t know if we were credible in terms of a potential campaign.

I think once word got out about that speech—at least there was attention given—then I think there was a whole wave of voters who said, ‘yeah. I like that guy. He doesn’t just talk about it.’ As one Tweet said in Iowa, ‘I like Scott Walker because he fights without caving.’ I think there’s this incredible sense, particularly amongst our base and primary voters is they don’t want someone who just talks about it. They want someone who can do it. Due to God’s grace and circumstances, we’ve been able to show time and again that we can fight and win on issues that matter to everyday conservatives.

Walker also told Breitbart News about his recent trip to Washington, D.C.—the belly of the big government beast–where he met with and dazzled more than a hundred Republican lawmakers as well as with conservative movement leaders.

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading...

Here’s how Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and more presidential hopefuls spent Memorial Day

“Memorial Day has always been a time of unity for our nation,” Marco Rubio opens a new Facebook video posted in honor of Monday’s holiday. “It’s a time when we put aside partisanship and politics and come together.”

About 20 seconds after talking about putting politics aside, the Republican presidential hopeful begins laying out a general overview of how the armed forces will be treated once he is in the Oval Office.

“As president, I will devote the necessary resources to our national defense,” he says, “I will ensure that they never are sent into a fair fight but rather are always equipped with the upper hand.”

The Florida senator wasn’t the only candidate to share Memorial Day-themed messages on Twitter and Facebook on May 25—although his were the most explicitly tied to his presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton, Carly Fiorina, and likely candidates Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Bobby Jindal posted short messages on social media asking their followers to “remember” the sacrifices America’s servicemen and women have made over the years.

Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, and Rand Paularrived at the same destination by taking a different route, imploring their followers to “never forget” those sacrifices instead.

Dr. Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who has yet to formally declare his candidacy, also shared a new Memorial Day tradition with their followers: the patriotic act of quoting oneself.

Via: Fusion

Continue Reading....

Texas Governor Declares States Of Emergency, More Severe Weather Expected…

 

Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday described the flash flooding that had killed at least three people in his state as "a relentless wall of water that mowed down huge trees like they were grass."

Abbott declared states of disaster in 24 counties and flew over the area south of Austin to assess the damage caused by tornadoes, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and flooding that forced evacuations and rooftop rescues and left thousands of residents without electrical power.

"This is the biggest flood this area of Texas has ever seen," Abbott said.

"It is absolutely massive - the relentless tsunami-type power of this wave of water," the governor said.

He described homes that were "completely wiped off the map" by the dangerous weather system that struck Texas and Oklahoma.

Widespread severe thunderstorms were forecast to continue on Monday in north-central and northeast Texas and southern Oklahoma, likely bringing destructive winds, tornadoes and hail, the National Weather Service said.

The bodies of a 14-year-old boy and his dog were found in a storm drain on Monday morning in the Dallas suburb of DeSoto, police said. Two other people killed in the storm were described as an unidentified man found dead from the flooding in San Marcos, Texas, and in Oklahoma, a firefighter who was swept into a storm drain.

A possible fourth person killed was reported by the New York Times, which said a Tulsa woman died on Saturday after her automobile hydroplaned on a highway.

Via: Reuters

Continue Reading....

IRAN SAYS ‘OBAMA HAS NOT DONE A DAMN THING TO CONFRONT ISIS’, EVEN ACCUSING OBAMA OF BEING ‘AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE PLOT’

“Obama has not done a damn thing so far to confront ISIS; doesn’t that show that there is no will in America to confront it?”

This is what Qassem Suleimani said about U.S. President Obama, who has become the laughing-stock throughout the Muslim world, even accusing Obama as “being an accomplice in the plot”.

Suleimani is no small fry. He could only advance to his stature as result of Obama’s exit strategy in Iraq to become the head of Iran’s Quds Force as well as Iran’s appointee, to manage Iran’s external affairs (specifically in Iraq), which made him the most powerful operative in the Middle East. The U.S. has no say so in Iraq and Suleimani is flexing his muscle to tell the world that Iran is now roosting in Iraq.

In Iran, the daily newspaper Javan, which is seen as close to the Revolutionary Guard, quoted Soleimani as saying the U.S. didn’t do a “damn thing” to stop the extremists’ advance on Ramadi.

“Does it mean anything else than being an accomplice in the plot?” he reportedly asked, later saying the U.S. showed “no will” in fighting the Islamic State group.

Photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, right, greets Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei while attending a religious ceremony in a mosque at his residence in Tehran, Iran. The chief of an elite unit in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has accused the U.S. of having “no will” to stop the Islamic State group after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi, an Iranian newspaper reported Monday. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File) (Associated Press)

The agency quoted Tasnim news to Soleimani as saying on Sunday, referring to ISIS: “today in the fight against this dangerous phenomenon exists and there is no one there fighting them except Iran.”

Indeed. It is because it is Iran and not the U.S. that now has control over Iraq.

Another major figure is Shiite Iraqi Sistani and he is another one calling the shots in Iraq. He is of almost mythological stature to millions of followers in Iraq and beyond, has seized his most active role in politics in a decade.

Via: The Right Scoop

Continue Reading....

California: Redevelopment Agencies Poised for a Comeback

Redevelopment agencies would once again have the power to seize private property for big developers under a bill that passed the California State Assembly earlier this month.

Assembly Bill 2, authored by Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Salinas, would give local governments the power to create new entities that would have the same legal authority as redevelopment agencies. These new Community Revitalization Investment Authorities would have the power to issue bonds, award sweetheart deals to businesses and “acquire and transfer property subject to eminent domain,” according to the legislative analysis of the bill.

Property rights advocates warn that the bill’s language contains no restrictions on eminent domain and could resurrect the abuses made possible by the Supreme Court’s controversial Kelo decision.

“It brings back the right of governments to exercise eminent domain against some private parties in order to resell their property to other private parties,” cautioned Howard Ahmanson, Jr., a property rights advocate and founder of Fieldstead and Company. “Only new and wealthy suburbs would be potentially spared from ‘redevelopment,’ the lower middle class and poor would not.”

12 Assembly Republicans back redevelopment, unrestricted eminent domain

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. New London that government agencies have the power to seize property for economic development. The decision was widely criticized across the political spectrum and inspired states to pass tougher laws limiting governments’ eminent domain powers. Here in California, the momentum for property rights reached its zenith in 2011, when Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through a plan to end redevelopment as part of his plan to balance the state budget.

Via: California Political Review

Continue Reading.....

ECONOMIST: GOVERNMENT PREPARING TO SEIZE 401(K) PENSIONS

Supreme Court ruling sets the stage for "economic totalitarianism"

Economist Martin Armstrong warns that a Supreme Court ruling last week has set the stage for the federal government to begin seizing private pension funds.

According to Armstrong, the outcome of Tibble v. Edison, which found that employers have a duty to protect their workers’ 401(k) plans from mutual funds that perform poorly, will grease the skids for the feds to seize private funds and prosecute companies who manage mutual funds badly.

“Between the court ruling and the Obama administration’s push for stronger fiduciary rules,” the developments send a, “strong message that government can much easier seize the pension fund management industry of course to “protect the consumer,” writes Armstrong, warning that the ruling, “sets the stage to JUSTIFY government seizure of private pension funds to protect pensioners,” when the economy gets “messy”.

“This fits perfectly just in time for the Obama administration’s next assault as they prepare a landmark change of its own by issuing rules requiring that financial advisers put the interest of customers ahead of their own,” writes Armstrong. “This creates a very gray area wide enough to justify public seizure of pension funds under management.”

Following the 2008 financial collapse, reports emerged that the federal government was planning to seize the private 401(k) pensions of millions of Americans while enforcing an additional 5 per cent payroll tax as part of a new bailout program that would empower the Social Security Administration to redistribute pension funds “fairly” amongst citizens.

Armstrong warns that the development is part of a wider move towards “economic totalitarianism,” which is also characterized by efforts to eliminate physical cash altogether in the name of giving central banks more power.

Numerous prominent individuals have called for hard currency to be banned in recent months, including former Bank of England economist Jim Leaviss, who wrote a piece for the Telegraph which argued that, “Forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank would give the authorities far better tools to deal with recessions and economic booms.”

Earlier this month, German Council Of Economic expert Peter Bofinger also said that imposing a cashless society would make it easier for central banks to enforce their economic policy.

As we have covered at length, commercial banks are beginning to impose more draconian controls on the withdrawal and depositing of cash, with the practice being treated as a suspicious activity even for relatively modest sums.

Armstrong, who correctly predicted the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, also warned last year that a coming financial collapse will cause widespread riots to erupt in America by 2016.

Via: Inforwars.com

Continue Reading....

Ferguson Protesters Now Protesting Over Not Getting Paid

At least some of the protesters who looted, rioted, burned buildings and overturned police cars in Ferguson, Missouri, last year were promised payment of up to $5,000 per month to join the protests.

However, when the Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), the successor group to the now-bankrupt St. Louis branch of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), stiffed the protesters, they launched a sit-in protest at the headquarters of MORE and created a Twitter page to demand their money, the Washington Times reports.

Presidential candidate and former Rep. Allen B. West, R-Fl., noted on his website, "Instead of being thankful for getting off the unemployment line for a few weeks and having a little fun protesting, the paid rioters who tore up Ferguson, MO, are protesting again.

"First of all, can you even imagine getting paid $5,000.00 a month for running around holding a sign and burning down an occasional building? That's around $1,250.00 per week. Try making that at McDonalds or Starbucks."

The Kansas City Star estimates that the Ferguson riots, characterized as a spontaneous eruption of anger over the shooting of unarmed black criminal Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, cost the county $4.2 million.

Millennial Activists United (MAU) posted a letter on their website stating, "On May 14, 2015 many individuals and organizations of the protest movement that began in Ferguson, Missouri, organized a sit-in in the office of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE). The demand was simple: Cut the checks.

"Questions have been raised as to how the movement is to sustain when white non-profits are hoarding monies collected of off (sic) black bodies? When we will (sic) hold the industry of black suffering accountable? The people of the community are fed up and the accountability begins here and now," the 
letter continues.

Via: Newsmax

Continue Reading...

Obamacare Hasn't Cured People's Anxiety About Medical Costs

Americans still are worried about whether they can afford their medical bills.

May 21, 2015 Millions of Americans have enrolled in private health coverage through the Affordable Care Act in its first two years, but a lot of them still are worried about big medical bills.

Nearly 4 in 10 Americans who enrolled in an ACA-compliant individual health insurance plan in 2015—both on and off of Obamacare's marketplaces—said they still felt vulnerable to high medical costs, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Marketplace enrollees were generally positive about their insurance–74 percent rated their plan excellent or good—but cost remains a concern for a significant minority of them. For example: 36 percent said they were dissatisfied with their annual deductible. And 56 percent of people with Obamacare-compliant plans said they were very or somewhat worried about their ability to pay the health care services they need.

A big problem: Plans that tend to have the lowest monthly premiums also have the highest deductibles. Almost 90 percent of 2015 Obamacare enrollees signed up for either a bronze-level or silver-level plan, the cheapest coverage but which can have deductibles of thousands of dollars. That means people can still be on the hook for a good chunk of change if they actually rack up medical bills.

About 40 percent of those in the overall individual market were enrolled in high-deductible plans—which Kaiser defined as above $1,500 for an individual or $3,000 for a family—versus 43 percent in low-deductible plans. (The rest weren't sure). Just 35 percent of those in the high-deductible plans were happy with their deductible; 79 percent of low-deductible enrollees were.

Via: National Journal

Continue Reading....