There was a story published on CNN's web site on New Year's Day called New State Laws Highlight Political Hot Buttons (article appears to no longer be available). The article outlines some new state laws ranging on things from the minimum wage, to preventing bullying in school, to cutting taxes on the poor. That's all fine, I guess. It's basically just reporting what happened. But right after the part where it talks about raising the minium wage in seven states, including Massachusettes, we get this little nugget:

"We've made Massachusetts the best state to live in for struggling working families," said Carl Nilsson, an activist for poor people, citing the higher minimum wage and an earlier state law that requires health care insurance for all.

Setting aside the fact that Mr. Nilsson is obviously completely ignorant about basic economics, or a socialist idiot, or both, we have to wonder about the inclusion of the commentary in an otherwise mostly objective list of new laws. I'm sure they could have done just a little bit of digging and found someone that would point out that this law is just as likely to cost the "struggling working families" their jobs because the employers could no longer afford to pay them. Or is is because the socialists at CNN are just so blinded by their love of government telling evil businesses how to operate that they never considered there is another side of the coin? Hell, even the title ("Hot Buttons") of the article indicate there may be differing views on the laws.

While they were at it, perhaps they could have found how many "struggling families" depend on a worker working for the minimum wage. I don't know the exact number, but I've heard and read that the vast majority of people working at the minimum wage are kids flipping burgers after school to earn a little gas money.

Alabama's minimum wage is still at the default federal level of $5.15 per hour. Yeah, that's not a lot of money, but even the local Wendy's (the last time I checked) starts new workers off at $6.00 per hour. What does that show? It shows that when businesses need people to work for them, they will pay what the marketplace demands. Even the much maligned Wal-Mart starts new workers out above $5.15. There is no need for heavy-handed government bureaucrats to come in with a one-size-fits-all minimum wage.

Oh, I wonder what brand of signature shoes the little socialist-in-training is wearing in the photo at left....

Update: I heard some statistics today (1/4/2007). A full two thirds of people earning minimum wage are people working in restaurants or places where they might be expected to receive tips that will suppliment their incomes. And a full two thirds of those are earning 10% more than minum wage six month later. As Will Anderson put it on his talk show, the socialists want you to believe that America has a strict caste system. They don't believe that there is any mobility in peoples' stations in life. They don't believe that through hard work, effort, and wise choices someone can improve their life. And they certainly don't want recognize the politically incorrect notion that someone can make their life worse by making stupid choices. To the left, a person being poor is always a result of losing at "life's lottery".

Back on my original website, I posted a rant about how a man named Lonnie Lundy was sentenced to life in prison for drugs even though no drugs were found. So you'd think someone who was actually caught trying to buy 400 pounds of marijuana would probably get the death penalty by lethal meat grinder or something, right? Well, not if you're the police chief's son. In that case you only get 18 months.

Meanwhile, the government keeps us safe from the evils of pseudoephedrine. We certainly can't take the chance that some dork will take a perfectly legal and useful cold drug and turn it into crystal meth, now can we? No, we have to inconvenience the whole damn country just to make it harder for someone to make meth. If you ask me, we should let them make all the meth they want. Then the stupid people who take the crap will remove themselves from the gene pool and the rest of us can buy Pseudofed whenever we need it. I wonder if the changes have even slowed the meth producers down? Probably not....

Here is a link to a YouTube recording of a man arguing with a Verizon customer service supervisor and the customer service manager that they overcharged him the quoted rate for a data connection while travelling in Canada. They kept saying that "$0.002 per kilobyte" was ".002 cents per kilobyte", which is obviously off by two orders of magnitude. The result was he was billed some $71 rather than 71 cents.

The scary part was that none of the people he talked to ever "got" it. They (especially the "floor manager" he talked to last) seemed to think that because the number had a decimal point in it, they were supposed to say "cents" rather "dollars". Just listen to it. It's unbelievable.

Those who know me know I share Neal Boortz's and John Stossel's views of the complete failure of government education. Now I don't know for certain that these people were government educated, but I'd bet money on it.

You've been annoying lately posting comment spam links on my web site. It's annoyong, but I always delete your comments within a few hours of you posting them. So the search engines have a very small chance of finding the links and boosting your search position. So you're wasting your time and mine too. Yes, I know you're probably using a script and will never see this.

In an effort to make your vandalism even more pointless, I've now disabled links within comments, so even the small window where your comment exists won't allow the search engines to pick up your link.

In other words, get bent!

It's been a while since I posted anything. With this post, I'm finally going a different direction than my usual rants. This is the first posting for a new topic group I'm creating called "Projects". This project is to created a system that can monitor several security cameras in and around my house. Please "read more"...

I get a lot of jokes through email. Recently I've gotten several related to the riots in France. You know, the riots all over the news that describe "youths" that are setting fire to cars and buildings? The "youths" that no one ever mentions just happen to be Muslim?

I don't really wish these troubles on anyone, even the French. However, I have to believe they are reaping what they have sown. They have allowed massive numbers of African Muslims to immigrate into their country so that now they make up about 10% of the population. Rather than assimilate into European culture, they've essentially set up "little Algeria" and want Islam to rule in France, too.

But anyway, this is a humor post, not a rant (one of those will probably come later). I will mention they could easily stop this situation in just the same way they could have stopped the looting in New Orleans: shoot the bastards!

So anyway, read on for the two funny jokes I got today...