Climate alarmism’s failures have seriously damaged our country

July 11, 2023

News headlines in the days following the July 4th holiday said the following things:
* The planet saw its hottest day on record this week. - CNN
* Heat Records Broken Across Earth - The New York Times
* How we know the Earth is now the hottest in thousands of years - The Washington Post
* World's hottest day? Earth set another heat record Thursday - USA Today

These headlines fit comfortably with predictions of climate catastrophe that we have been treated to over a period of many years, such as these, published by The Western Journal in 2018:
* 1970: “Most species on the Earth will perish by 1995” 
* 1970s: “Global cooling is the real problem”
* 1989: “If global warming isn’t reversed by the year 2000, it will be too late to avert catastrophe”
* 2000: “Great Britain will be almost snow-less thanks to global warming”
* 2001: “Snow is going to be a thing of the past in other places, too”
* 2008: “We’ll be living in Antarctica pretty soon”
* 2008: “Prince Charles says we only have 96 months to save the world”
* 2009: “We only have 50 days to save the world from global warming”
* 2016: “Pretty much everything in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’”

And, there was one more, but the end date of this predicted catastrophe has not yet arrived: 1988: “The Earth will warm by 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2025-2050.”

These were serious predictions made by, or based upon theories promoted by, scientists and/or organizations focused on climate issues. 

The reference to “An Inconvenient Truth” addresses the documentary produced by former Vice President Al Gore, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for it.

In the 2006 global warming documentary, Gore predicted that the global sea level could rise as much as 20 feet "in the near future."

It didn’t happen.

Two years later during a speech at the Copenhagen Climate Conference he said that there was "a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

It didn’t happen.

Dire predictions like those of Gore and the preceding list that did not come true tend to create doubt about other similar predictions. Even those that someday may come true, if any of them ever will.

This is even more likely when people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former bartender and current member of the House of Representatives, warn of impending doom.

“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” she reportedly said, “and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?”

This comment found the support of two-thirds of Democrats in a Rasmussen poll, and a total of 48 percent of all those polled. Later, Ocasio-Cortez labeled her comment as “dry humor” and “sarcasm.”

One of the many great things about this country is the ability of everyone to say pretty much anything they want to say, with a few exceptions for dangerous material. This is still largely true, despite some recent efforts to control some opinions. These previous faulty predictions were allowed, and even encouraged.

We don’t really know what prompted the “predictors” to say what they said. Perhaps they truly believed what they were saying. Or, perhaps they had some nefarious purpose behind their predictions.

What we do know is that the predictions were grossly wrong, since the time for them to have occurred has passed, and Earth is still here and hardly the worse for wear.

And yet there are still those that predict climate catastrophe, and a broad range of folks who believe them.

In a video on Facebook, a guy was interviewing another guy and asked him what to do about climate change. The interviewee said, “Farming has to stop. That’s the single biggest driver of climate change.” An interesting perspective.

The interviewer then said, “Alright. Without farming you would be hungry, naked and sober.” Perhaps the interviewee had not thought beyond his initial idea.

Even some of those who reject the cataclysmic predictions agree that people and their habits are having an effect on Earth’s climate. But they understand that anything that the United States does will have minimal effect on the global atmosphere. 

Yet, the U.S. under the Biden administration’s edicts, tries to kill fossil fuels, push “green energy” on us, despite its inability to meet the demand, force electric vehicles on the populace, and do away with gas ovens and other things. All this as China, India and other nations continue to increase their reliance on coal-burning energy and other uses of fossil fuels.

We need to think smartly about this situation and not try to force on people things that will occur naturally as the clean forms of energy that they think will save the world evolve.

The situation simply does not require the U.S. and other nations inclined to fight climate change to force expensive and often painful situations on their people, while other nations happily ignore the situation, counteracting whatever smidgen of good these harsh methods accomplish with their selfish tendencies.

The future: a $15 an hour minimum wage and more 100 degree days?

The House of Representatives passed a bill recently that would increase the federal minimum wage from the current $7.25 an hour to $15 by 2025. Proponents call this a “living wage.” The House vote was 231-199 with 3 Republicans supporting it and 6 Democrats opposing it. 

It’s not breaking news that raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour is a divisive and hotly debated topic. What’s lacking is any sensible reason to do this, unless you consider vote buying as sensible.

Most minimum wage earners are younger and just entering the world of work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2018 only 2.1 percent of all hourly workers earned the minimum wage, or less. These workers tend to be under 25 years old and work in the food and hospitality industry.

The younger minimum wage workers generally do not require a “living wage,” as many still live with their parents or are college students, and few are the head of a household.

As with other work, some minimum wage workers are really good, some are okay, and some aren’t good at all. But a $15 minimum wage means that the best and worst employees in minimum wage jobs will earn the same $15 wage, which nets out at $31,200 a year for a 40-hour per week full-time job. 

As a matter of sound economics, government should not dictate minimum wages or any wages, other than for government workers. But should this become law, government will have increased the payroll expenses of virtually every business in the country.

While minimum wage workers will reap significant benefits from the increase, business owners will face mandated increases in payroll expenses. For a business to operate successfully it must have more income than expenses. This makes achieving that goal more difficult.

Every employee who was making more than the old minimum wage will get a raise to the new minimum. Those making above the minimum should also get their additional wages added to the new minimum, or they will not be happy.

Where will that money come from? Likely sources are higher product and service prices; reduced employee hours; fewer employees and perhaps more computers and robots. And, if these solutions are not sufficient to maintain profitability, businesses will close and jobs will be lost.

A July report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that up to 3.7 million Americans would lose their jobs if the minimum wage were raised to $15 per hour by 2025.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who claims to be an Independent, but is seeking the Democrat presidential nomination, claims the $7.25 minimum is “starvation wages.”

But – surprise, surprise – Bernie does not practice what he preaches. After his statements supporting a $15 minimum wage and raising the minimum above the “starvation” level, many of his campaign workers began complaining that he isn’t paying them at that level. 

It was reported that henceforth campaign workers will be paid at least $15 an hour, but some would have their hours reduced to keep wage expense down. 

Boom! Reality hit the Sanders campaign. But will Bernie learn the economics lesson, or continue to peddle the false narrative that every working person needs to make at least $15 an hour in order to stay alive?

However, because of all the harm this measure will do to the economy, the Republican-controlled Senate will almost certainly vote against the legislation, saving jobs.

In other news, a recent story in a South Carolina newspaper predicted that “by the middle of this century, the number of sweltering days in the Palmetto State is forecast to increase by more than 350 percent if little or nothing is done to stop man-made climate change,” and by “the end of the century, the increase could approach 600 percent.”

Global warming advocates will readily endorse this prediction, especially after last weekend’s very warm temperatures and heat indexes of 100 degrees or more. 

This discomforting prediction comes from a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) showing that the United States is heating up rapidly due to climate changes, which these scientists attribute to human activities.

Increases in the number of days with extreme, dangerously hot weather can be expected to rise sharply in hundreds of cities across the country, the researchers say.

The UCS says it’s already too late to prevent all of the rising heat, but the country can slow down the trend with aggressive action to halt man-made global warming. The UCS did not propose that the nation adopt the wild and crazy Green New Deal, but conceivably might do so at some point.

If humans are causing this warming, can the United States really do enough to stop it? We have led the world in carbon emission reductions for years. Other nations, China and India, to name two, not only are not reducing carbon emissions, they are increasing them.

Why are Americans expected to sacrifice jobs, lifestyle and amenities to try to stop global warming? We must demand that the rest of the world, particularly China, India and the other culprits, catch up with our progress on emissions, and not punish ourselves.

When the rights of one person conflict with the rights of another

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …” So reads, in part, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The amendment forbids government from acting to promote or establish any religion, and from acting to discourage or ban religious behavior. In essence, government should have a hands-off policy where the practice of religious activities, or abstinence from them is concerned.

No constitutionally guaranteed right is absolute, however, and practitioners of a religion who commit felonies – such as assault, robbery, homicide, rape, kidnapping, etc. – or misdemeanors because of their beliefs will suffer the same consequences as other law breakers.

When religious beliefs come up against other rights, however, problems may arise. One such issue is whether a religious person can be, or should be, forced to do something that is against his or her religious beliefs when not doing so would result in the violation of the rights of another person or other persons.

The United States Supreme Court is currently dealing with just such a case. The Court has before it the case of a Colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. The Court must decide how the religious rights of the baker stack up against the couple’s right to equal treatment under the law.

But should someone have his or her rights denied because they are in conflict with someone else’s rights? It is a sticky issue.

A gay couple that has previously been a customer of Mary’s Delights bakery asks her to bake a cake for their wedding, but Mary says that homosexuality goes against the beliefs of her religion and therefore she cannot participate in this wedding by baking the cake. Mary suggests they find another baker for the cake. Perhaps Bob’s bakery? Bob has baked cakes for gay weddings before, she said.

But the couple feels their rights have been violated. Gay marriage is legal and they believe that by refusing to participate in their marriage, Mary has discriminated against them, so they take action against Mary.

However, discrimination is a common and natural part of living; people discriminate against things and people everyday. They choose to buy an SUV instead of a pickup. Or vice versa. We order seafood instead of a steak. We decide to order a cake from Mary’s Delights instead of Joe’s Bakery.

Do we not occasionally see a sign on the entrance to a commercial establishment that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service?” Isn’t that discrimination against shirtless or unshod people?

All of these are matters of discrimination, which is merely a matter of making conscious choices of one thing over other things. It is a question of degree, and even then not every act constitutes actionable discrimination.

Years ago, businesses not infrequently had signs on their doors or windows reading: “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” The right of the proprietor to control their business was unquestioned. If they wanted to serve only black people, or only white people, or only Christians or Muslims or atheists, why is that wrong? Or if they want to not serve blue-eyed blondes, or short men, why is that wrong?

As long as services are available to everyone through some provider, why is it necessary that every provider be required to serve everyone?

Carried to its illogical extreme, the owner of a French restaurant could be accused of discrimination by people whose heritage is from another country because the restaurant doesn’t serve German, Scottish, Italian or Mexican food.

America is founded on principles of freedom and guaranteed rights. We have the right to vote for whomever we choose, and to not vote for other candidates. We have the right to associate with whomever we like and to not associate with those with whom we choose not to associate.

People have the right to invest thousands of dollars in their businesses, but if they are religious, they can be forced to violate the tenets of their religion, and their right to religious freedom can be denied, in this case only because someone wants to force them to acquiesce to their wishes rather than go find another baker.

It is no accident that the First Amendment guarantees the right to religion, free speech, a free press, to peaceably assemble, and to petition for a governmental redress of grievances. It is because these were thought to be most important of those basic rights by the Founders. And, it is no accident that first among those items in the first of the amendments is religion.

The American character has been such that when things don’t go the way we want or expect, we work around the problem, whenever possible. So when one service provider is unable or unwilling to accommodate our wishes, we simply find another one who will fill the order. A baker with a religious objection to supporting a gay wedding should not be a problem for anyone. And it should not be a matter to be decided by the United States Supreme Court. Or of any U.S. court.

Camille Paglia gives an objective and very balanced interview

In today’s sharply divided political atmosphere, where a huge and widening gulf exists between the right and the left, it is both surprising and refreshing when someone identified with the left renders ideas that are objective and balanced. Such an occasion occurred earlier this month when Jonathan V. Last published an interview on weeklystandard.com he had conducted by email with left-leaning feminist, author and college professor Camille Paglia.

While characterizing herself as a libertarian she confesses that she is a registered Democrat, but not always a supporter of Democrats, noting about the 2000 presidential election she voted for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader because “I detest the arrogant, corrupt superstructure of the Democrat Party, with which I remain stubbornly registered.”

Beginning the interview with a statement of her political affiliations, Paglia noted that she voted for Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 primary and for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election. She now has her eye on newly elected Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Cal., hoping to vote for her in the next presidential primary.

The Paglia-Last interview focused on three topics: the election and early presidency of Donald Trump, Islamic/Islamist terrorism, and feminism vs. transgenderism.

Like millions of others, she did not take Trump’s candidacy seriously, but attributes his win to “the startling incompetence and mediocrity of his GOP opponents.”

She was no more kind to some Democrats, noting that, Hillary Clinton, “with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee…” And, “Despite his history of embarrassing gaffes, the affable, plain-spoken Joe Biden, in my view, could … have defeated Trump, but he was blocked from running at literally the last moment by President Barack Obama, for reasons that the major media refused to explore.”

While criticizing the Trump Administration’s handling of the temporary ban of travelers from predominantly Muslim countries tied to terrorism on the one hand, she then defended the administration, saying, “I fail to see the ‘chaos’ in the White House that the mainstream media (as well as conservative Never Trumpers) keep harping on—or rather, I see no more chaos than was abundantly present during the first six months of both the Clinton and Obama administrations.” She also noted that Trump was “going about his business” while the media was “consumed with their preposterous Russian fantasies…”

A 1950s-60s liberal, she contrasted the exalted civil liberties, individualism, and dissident thought and speech of that time with what she termed the “grotesquely mechanistic and authoritarian” nature of liberalism today. “It is repressively Stalinist, dependent on a labyrinthine, parasitic bureaucracy to enforce its empty dictates,” she said.

Turning to how today’s liberals regard terrorism, she explained, “The contortions to which so many liberals resort to avoid connecting bombings, massacres, persecutions, and cultural vandalism to Islamic jihadism is remarkable, given their usual animosity to religion, above all Christianity.” Paglia also suggested that some liberals have a racial perspective and therefore “Islam remains beyond criticism because it is largely a religion of non-whites whose two holy cities occupy territory once oppressed by Western imperialism.”

She criticizes liberals “paternalistic condescension” toward Islam, which she said is done from a distance, without really engaging in its “intricate mixed messages, which can inspire toward good or spur acts of devastating impact…”

When Jonathan Last posited an expected showdown in the U.S. between feminism and transgenderism that has not developed, Paglia responded that this occurs more publicly in the United Kingdom than in the U.S. She cited two instances where public programs featuring opponents of transgenderism as a legitimate concept drew spirited protests from activists.

Both programs eventually went forward against the same sort of opposition that conservative speakers experience on American college campuses. In the U.S, transgenderism is one of many things that are off limits for public discussion, and such programs would likely have produced riotous behavior.

She called attention to American liberals’ interesting contradictory views of science. When it comes to their acceptance of climate change theory, science is just fine, although Paglia described it as “a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence.” Where transgenderism is concerned, however, liberals “flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender.”

“The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible,” Paglia stated. “Every single cell of the human body remains coded with one's birth gender for life. Intersex ambiguities can occur, but they are developmental anomalies that represent a tiny proportion of all human births.”

Paglia takes a common sense stand on the treatment of transgender folks, seeking to protect them from harassment and abuse that may be aimed at them just because they are “nonconformist or eccentric.” But she said that whether the rest of us must identify a transgender person as a man or a woman based solely on that person’s “subjective feeling” does not fly: “it is our choice alone,” she concluded.

Such a logical and objective approach to controversial subjects is rare from left-leaning folk, but is certainly refreshing and productive. Let us hope for an outbreak of this sort of thinking that reaches epidemic proportions.

Evangelicals face a difficult but clear choice on Nov. 8th

Of all of us are struggling with the difficult task of selecting from four candidates for President of the United States, with the two leading candidates having shown themselves to be highly flawed. But perhaps evangelical Christians have the most difficult task.

Since NBC “Today” co-host Billy Bush released the 11 year-old recording of vulgar “locker-room” banter between himself and Donald Trump, and since the recent accusations of Trump making inappropriate sexual advances to several women years ago, Christian’s face the question of how to react to the moral infractions that have been shown, and alleged.

Andy Crouch, the executive editor of Christianity Today magazine, expressed the general displeasure of evangelical leaders to these things, writing, “Indeed, there is hardly any public person in America today who has more exemplified the ‘earthly nature’ … that Paul urges the Colossians to shed: ‘sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry’ (3:5). This is an incredibly apt summary of Trump’s life to date. Idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality are intertwined in individual lives and whole societies.”

Those who have been around for more than a few years remember a similar situation involving President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady, and now presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton from the mid-1990s. In both cases religious folks had plenty to object to on moral grounds.

Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives, not for his immoral conduct, but for lying about it under oath to a federal grand jury. Despite this, Clinton was able to finish his second term as President.

While nearly everyone agrees that such conduct is wrong, not everyone agrees on how important these kinds of things are in terms of whether they should disqualify someone from becoming or remaining President of the United States. It obviously was not considered important enough to remove Bill Clinton from office.

But that was then and this is now, and today Christians and Christian activities are being criticized as never before. A faction of the public wants to ban public Christmas scenes, and to malign religious institutions in general.

Donald Trump’s political enemies think evangelicals must focus on the she-said/he-said of the recent allegations of inappropriate sexual advances on women, and believe that if these allegations are true he should be disqualified from the presidency.

However, many or most evangelical Republican leaders are sticking with Trump, saying that despite his lewd comments there is no other real option for them. They generally say they will not abandon Trump, as quite a few Republicans in Congress have already done.

“It’s not like this is new,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “That’s why I aggressively supported another candidate in the primary, Ted Cruz, who I share values with. But we only have a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump now.” And Franklin Graham conceded that while Trump’s comments on the recording are troubling, they are not sufficient to abandon him, and that the “godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended.”

Evangelicals face criticism for not walking away from Trump and his immoral behavior, but they realize that one of the two flawed candidates will win the election, and they must support the one that has the best plan for the country and the most favorable view of the place of religion in their lives. Trump may fail the first test, but he passes with flying colors on the second one.

American Values President Gary Bauer believes that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, religious schools will be forced to do things that are against their religious principles; she will appoint liberal justices to the Supreme Court; religious displays in the public square will face bans; and Clinton has expressed hostility for Second Amendment rights. Donald Trump takes the appropriate view of these things.

“A Christian who cannot see the difference between a candidate who has sinned and yet promises good policies, and a candidate who has sinned and promises bad policies,” he wrote, “has been failed along the way — either by our educational system, our political leaders or our faith leaders.”

“And, he wrote, “voters should do everything they can to make sure Crooked Hillary never steps foot in the Oval Office!”

Basically, most evangelical leaders seem to offer this rationale: We are not voting to fill a vacancy among the Seven Archangels; we are voting for the President of the United States. They realize that Trump’s views on the Supreme Court, the flawed tax system, the dangerously high National Debt and deficit spending; the severely weakened military; our weakened relations with foreign nations; the stagnant economy and lack of good jobs; the immigration problems; and liberal attacks on guaranteed rights are the most important considerations in who to vote for in this election.

Christian leaders are displeased with Trump’s actions, but recognize that as imperfect as he may be as a human being, he is a vastly better choice for President of the United States for them than Hillary Clinton, who will win the election if more people abandon Trump for morality reasons.

Signs of a culture that is collapsing: higher education in disarray

Higher education today is a mess. Many institutions are involved in an arms race, strongly competing to attract students with scholarship and student loan money they bring with them. Institutions are building facilities that are much more fancy, thus more appealing, than ever before. New dorms, sports and fitness centers, student centers, dining facilities; the list goes on.

And the “everybody needs to go to college” craze has put thousands on campuses that don’t need a traditional college degree.

Those of us who went to college many years before this arms race began endured sparsely appointed dorms and other comparatively plain-Jane facilities, but managed to come out with a solid education. That austere environment is not good enough anymore.

A 2014 survey by the University of California Los Angeles showed that there are five times more liberal professors than conservative professors on college faculties these days. The worst aspect of this is that many of them have taken on the role of proselytizers, forsaking their duty to guide learning and maturation in their subject area in favor of indoctrinating students into the poisonous world of leftist politics, which they now refer to as “progressivism,” since “liberalism” is no longer credible.

The liberalization of the college campus has led to a disintegration of the traditional college atmosphere at many institutions, where students once were exposed to and challenged by a broad range of ideas. That healthy environment has become an intellectually stultifying atmosphere where students are afraid of their own shadows, and ideas differing from their narrow range of acceptable ideas send kids running to hide under the bed in their hotel-like dorm room.

“Trigger warnings” are expected or required to protect those who desire only peace and harmony in their environment from “unsuitable” content, and “safe zones,” where students may seek refuge from the rigors of life, are routine. Student demands played a part in these developments

The recent focus on transgenderism, and the bending-over-backward efforts to accommodate it, has produced a policy at West Virginia University, where anyone failing to use the personal pronoun preferred by each and every person who claims to be transgender is breaking a federal law on sexual discrimination, and will be treated as a lawbreaker by the university, despite that transgenderism has absolutely no grounding in science whatsoever.

Two questions arise: (1) How does someone know which of WVU’s 29,000 students claims to be transgender, and (2) in the event they actually are able to discern this, how are they supposed to know which of the 30 different pronouns approved by WVU applies to which person?

“According to one study of the 2010 census,” notes breibart.com, “the population of transgender people amounts to one in every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population.” Another question: How few people are too few to propel the politically correct into action, spawning another uproar over some thought or action that has virtually no affect?

Back in the 60s and 70s a long and often-troubled struggle to desegregate schools and put black and white students in the same learning environment reached its peak. Forty years later, some want to reverse that. Everything old is new again.

Columnist and professor Walter Williams writes, “Hampshire College will offer some of its students what the school euphemistically calls ‘identity-based housing.’ That’s segregated housing for students who — because of their race, culture, gender or sexual orientation — have ‘historically experienced oppression.’” This idea extends to racially segregated classes where students will feel better when surrounded by those just like them.

In his column titled “College Campus Lunacy,” Williams supports that title by listing some course titles that if completed successfully confer college credit on students: “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Demystifying the Hipster,” “Recreational Tree Climbing,” and “Kayne vs. Everybody.” Such courses, he said, are the work of faculty, to whom college presidents and trustees have apparently surrendered the running of those institutions.

Now, however, an institution of higher education has decided that it’s time to call a halt to political correctness. University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison warned incoming students in a letter that there is no tolerance for the kind of student demands that have emerged recently. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

“Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship,” Ellison wrote. Noting the importance of civility among and between parties, he stated, “We expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times, this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

A college education should help prepare young people to cope with life, not to fear it. Political correctness is an infection threatening the nation. Getting rid of it on campuses is a big step toward producing young Americans that are educated, grown up, and prepared to experience life.

It’s critical to correctly assign responsibility and accountability

In a matter of minutes on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed 26 people – 20 of them school children – at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. This horrific act was the work of a crazed 20 year-old. Lanza killed his mother, took her gun and headed off to Sandy Hook school. After killing 26 innocent people, he killed himself.

At the time, and still today, people blame the weapon Lanza’s mother had legally purchased instead of the mentally ill shooter, or his mother who ignored years of warnings about his psychiatric anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The school system also ignored signs of mental problems, according to The New York Times, which reported on findings that resulted from a mandate for the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate to “conduct investigations of child fatalities and issue public reports with the particular focus on preventing future child deaths.”

The Times noted “the report faulted the school system for not doing a better job of monitoring Mr. Lanza’s progress, educationally and emotionally, each time he was allowed to receive his education in a ‘homebound’ environment because of difficulties he had in social settings.”

But those who had the responsibility to act to protect the public from this dangerously mentally ill person – Lanza’s now-dead mother and the school system – are not the targets of a wrongful-death lawsuit. Instead the plaintiffs have targeted the manufacturer, the distributer and the seller of the legal weapon the mentally ill Lanza used to kill and injure.

The plaintiffs whose lawsuit targets these businesses are the families of nine of the victims and one survivor of the Sandy Hook attack, who understandably are still desperately trying to cope with having their world turned upside-down. A lawsuit filed on their behalf asserts that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle Lanza used, described as “military style” in The Times story, should have never been available for purchase by civilians.

A motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the companies involved in the manufacturing, distribution and sale of the rifle was denied by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, who rejected the gun companies' position that gun businesses are protected from civil lawsuits by a 2005 federal law that protects against lawsuits for criminal acts committed with their products.

The case against the manufacturer of the rifle, Remington Arms Co., firearms distributor Camfour Inc., and the now-defunct Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor, Conn., that sold Lanza's mother the rifle two years prior to the Sandy Hook shooting, will go forward with a court session scheduled for this week.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “[a]ttorneys for the family are pursuing a claim under an exception of the federal law known as a negligent-entrustment claim. Under such a claim, a seller can be held liable for supplying a product to a person it reasonably could have known posed a risk to themselves or others.”

This situation raises several questions, among which is how could the manufacturer, the distributer, or the seller know that a mentally ill relative of a potential purchaser would take it from the owner and use it to commit a criminal act?

Another question: If Lanza had used a .38 revolver or 12-guage shotgun, guns that are clearly not designed for military use, would the plaintiffs have brought the case, and if so, would the judge have denied the challenge and allowed the case to go forward?

Like a handgun or a shotgun, the AR-15 is not restricted for sale to the public by law. So it is merely the opinion of the plaintiffs that it should not be available for purchase by the public.

If instead of using a gun Lanza had driven a vehicle into a group of children waiting for a school bus, would the plaintiffs have sued the vehicle manufacturer and the car dealer? What if he had used a knife, or a bomb in a pressure cooker or a soft-drink can? Would there be any legal action?

If this lawsuit ends with one or more of the defendants being found liable, the door will be opened for dozens or hundreds of similar legal actions targeting not the perpetrator of a crime, but manufactures, distributors, or sellers being held responsible for criminal activity they had nothing to do with. If manufacturers can be held liable for deaths or injuries resulting from the criminal misuse of their legal, non-defective products, how many businesses or entrepreneurs will want to take the risk to make and sell something?

It is a nearly automatic response to have great sympathy for the families of those murdered children and the survivors of Sandy Hook. But sympathy, however great, and the circumstances of the event, however horrible, are not compelling reasons to punish legal businesses for making and selling legal products that were deliberately misused by someone with diagnosed mental health issues, and in this case someone other than the owner of the legal product.

Solving these kinds of problems requires focusing on the actual causes, not in shifting the responsibility to uninvolved third parties. Adam Lanza, his mother and the school system bear sole responsibility for this tragedy.

San Bernardino: nothing more than gun control opportunism for the left

Before the sound of gunfire in San Bernardino had faded away, the radical left wing, ever at the ready, had sprung into action. Members of the intolerant LACTOS (Liberals Against Conservative Terrorist’s Offensive Shootings) attempted to blame the GOP and right-wingers for the massacre in tweets: “Well, c'mon, GOP: Tell me how your prayers are with the victims and their families *this* time while you do nothing.‬” And, “No, I'm tired of praying. I want action. I want people to stop saying ‘MAH GUNS’ in response to death.‬”

Meanwhile, at the White House, five minutes after the shooting started, a clerk in the Rush To Judgment Department removed a sheet from a stack of pre-printed president’s statements calling for more gun control, while the folks in the WVNT (Workplace Violence, Not Terrorism) and CCCAP (Climate Change Causes All Problems) offices geared up for the coming propaganda drive.

From the BFIL (Blame First, Investigate Later) and the ITNRAS (It’s The NRA, Stupid) were these, first from Democrat presidential candidate Martin O'Malley: “@MartinOMalley‬ Horrifying news out of #SanBernardino‬. Enough is enough: it's time to stand up to the @NRA‬ and enact meaningful gun safety laws.” And: “Another day, another mass shooting in NRA's America.‬”

Those calling for more and stricter gun laws seem unable to grasp that people who want to commit the crime of killing innocents probably won’t obey gun laws, either.

Terrorism is designed to scare people into irrational actions or surrender, and the terrorists are winning against the American left, which is clearly terrified of guns. Some rationality is desperately needed.

From 2009 to 2013 the United States experienced 38 “rampage shooting incidents” (RSI) that claimed 227 lives, according to the Rampage Shooting Index. That works out to roughly one RSI every five months claiming more than 20 lives in each incident. These numbers rank the U.S. at the top of the list. In a not-so-close second place is Norway, with 77 RSI deaths, but only one RSI. Next is Germany with 25 deaths and three RSIs.

These numbers ought to scare the stuffing out of every American, not just the anti-gunners on the political left. Numbers, however, can be used to create many false images, and this is one example of that. The numbers cited previously do not include the elephant in the room: the population of those nations.

When America’s population of 315 million becomes part of the equation – the largest by far in the study – the U.S. drops all the way down to sixth place, behind Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland. Leading the way with 15 deaths per 1 million population is Norway, while Finland leads in the number of incidents with .37 per 1 million residents. The U.S. numbers are .72 deaths and .12 incidents per 1 million population, ranking sixth – not first – in both categories. Furthermore, the nations with worse numbers per 1 million people than the U.S. have “restrictive” firearm regulations, while the U.S. and Belgium (7th place) do not.

These numbers show that Norwegians are 20 times more likely to die in an RSI than Americans. Adding two years to the span of time cited above, Norway remains in first place, but the U.S. drops to eighth place, when national population is part of the equation.

And so another liberal false narrative falls flat on its face, but where guns are concerned, as with climate change, the left refuses to let inconvenient facts get in the way.

Some on the left are legitimately fearful about the supposed gun violence issue, while others are focused on gaining further control of the American people. This latter group includes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and many, if not most, of the active politicians in the Democrat Party.

Brittany M. Hughes, reporting on the Media Research Center online in September, addressed the number of guns in America, noting that in 2009, it was estimated by the National Institute of Justice that there were approximately 310 million firearms in the country. Today, that number is likely higher.

“The number of firearm-related homicides in 2013 – the CDC’s most recent data – was 11,208,” she wrote, “(so about 309,988,792 guns were just milling about that year, not killing anybody).”

She continued: “That means about 0.000036 homicides were committed per gun in the United States in 2013,” less than four homicides per 100,000 firearms.

Some clear thinking on the use of firearms to discourage crimes came from the Cato Institute: “The rationale for [gun control] legislation is to reduce accidental shootings and the criminal use of guns against people. But if harm reduction is the goal, policymakers should pause to consider how many crimes … are thwarted by ordinary persons who were fortunate enough to have access to a gun.”

Bloomberg Business in 2012 analyzed the vastly contradictory claims about defensive gun use, estimating defensive actions occur tens of thousands of times a year, adding, “100,000 is not a wild gun-nut fantasy,” while suggesting higher numbers are more likely.

Common in mass shootings in the U.S. is that they occur in “gun-free zones” where guns are prohibited. It is the American left that prefers gun-free zones, not the American right.

The Syrian refugee resettlement program: shortsighted and dangerous

Americans are sharply divided over the Syrian refugee situation. Compassionate impulses are countered by the need for due caution.

The White House, which thinks any of the Syrian refugees ought to be welcomed with open arms, reported the following last week:

·         -- The United Nations High Commission on Refugees has referred 23,092 refugees to the U.S. Refugees Admission Program.

·         -- The Department of Homeland Security has interviewed 7,014 of them since FY 2011.

·         -- Of that number 2,034 Syrian refugees have been admitted since FY 2011.

·        --  So far, none of the 2,034 Syrian refugees have been arrested or removed on terrorism charges.

This information is intended to show the American people that the vetting process for these refugees works flawlessly, but even some government officials do not hold that view.

The pro-Syrian refugee crowd regards as anti-refugee those who cite reasons for being cautious about bringing refugees to the U.S. They say proponents of caution are engaged in religious stereotyping and scapegoating, and are afraid of women and orphans. Such rhetoric itself is a signal that caution is what the pro-refugee crowd fears most.  

But fallacies abound. While the U.S. is the most compassionate nation on Earth and helps people in trouble all over the world, it has no obligation to take in Syrian refugees. The U.S. didn’t cause the problems from which Syrians want to escape, and therefore it has no guilt to assuage by bringing them here.

Just because a lot of people somewhere experience a major crisis, that is no reason to invite them to come to America. It is a reason to start investigating all of the circumstances about the crisis and the people affected by it. After that, perhaps there will be good reasons to bring some of them here, or perhaps not. What follows are some very good reasons for exercising caution.

** Honduran authorities arrested five Syrians last week with stolen or doctored Greek passports that they said were headed for the U.S. Later, authorities said the five Syrian men were actually college students fleeing the war in their homeland. Note to the “bring refugees to America” crowd: Why would college students use fake passports to enter the U.S., and if they thought of using stolen or doctored passports, might not it be possible for terrorists to do the same?

** No less an authority than FBI Director James Comey has said that our government has no real way to conduct background checks on refugees. “We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them,” he explained. This is why common sense needs to be applied to this situation.

** A recent U.S. Transportation Security Administration report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that 73 aviation workers, employed by airlines and vendors, had alleged links to terrorism. How did they get past the vetting system and get hired?

** The brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three and injuring nearly 300 others, were not refugees, as their family sought political asylum in the U.S in 2002. Through the years the Muslim brothers became more and more hostile to the U.S., and Russia’s FSB warned the FBI about them in 2011, but the FBI found no connections to radical Islam. Yet two years later they set bombs at the Marathon in "retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq" as one of the brothers wrote in a note. Radicals can hide here, and people who come here as peaceful immigrants can evolve into radicals after they come here.

So, after considering these factors the question then becomes, “what amount of risk to the safety of Americans do the refugee advocates think is acceptable?”

It is certainly appropriate for us to try to help the actual refugees, but we must not expose even one American to a terrorist hiding among the refugees. ISIS has pledged to come here, and it is foolish to believe that terrorists will not use the refugee situation to infiltrate the US, as those students did. We must not ignore the weaknesses in the vetting process for Syrian refugees that some US officials are specifically concerned about.

Most of the refugees don’t speak our language, most or all do not understand our ways, and many things we do in the U.S. are at odds with the tenets of Islam. With such vastly different ideas about life and living, will they really be comfortable in America? And how can we guard against radicalization among some refugees after they come here, as occurred with the Chechen brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon?

There just is simply no good reason to bring them here when we can assist them to settle somewhere that is closer to their homeland, both geographically and culturally. They will be happier, and America will be more secure.

Higher education under attack from within, by disaffected students

College campuses – once the bastion of diverse opinion, a garden where ideas thrived, where contrary viewpoints were freely expressed – are fast becoming cesspools of narrow-mindedness that stifle free speech, where political correctness rules over common sense, where free thinking is discouraged, and they are occupied more and more by students offended because someone expressed a different opinion, didn’t pay proper deference, or wore the “wrong” costume on Halloween.

Student protests are returning to 1960s/70s levels, and arise because some students think that there aren’t enough minority professors on campus while others decry a lack of “social justice,” and some have called for hunger strikes over what they perceive as a lack of support for students of color.

If students don’t like a professor’s point of view, or they detect “microaggressions” in the classroom, they feel led to demand the professor resign or be fired. You are a Hispanic kid and someone wears a sombrero and a poncho on Halloween, it’s time for a protest.

And did you know that the First Amendment makes some college kids feel unsafe? Would you ever have imagined that such an idea could take hold on an American college campus?

The vice president of the Missouri Students Association, Brenda Smith-Lezama, told MSNBC last week, "I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here." Poor little thing must be terrified listening to rap or watching television or movie drama. And she suffers under the delusion that her comfort is more important than someone else’s.

While these kids have yet to accomplish much, they believe the world must work to calm their fears, perceptions that may be adequate to drive protests and hunger strikes, but their perceptions do not necessarily reflect reality. The concerns expressed by these students are precisely the types of things the liberal attitudes that prevail on campuses today work to eliminate.

Many of the complaints have a racial element, but they really center on hypersensitive feelings about things that have always been normal aspects of life. Suddenly, these normal campus happenings that students – white students, black students, Asian and Hispanic students, female students – have dealt with successfully for decades and with little or no difficulty, are now scary and threatening.

College once was a place where kids learned to think. Today, many of them seem to know only how to feel; emotion rules rationality. Listening to different ideas used to be enlightening, mind-expanding. Now, it makes the kiddies cry for their mommies.

Missing from these children-in-adult-bodies is even the suspicion that not everything revolves around them, that they are not the be-all and end-all of the known universe.

And they also want someone to pay their college loans off for them, because … well, just because.

The process of gaining entry to an institution of higher learning is long established and has worked well for decades. Colleges and universities are places where the qualified my go to advance their education, and most of the onus is on the student to fund their education through parental help, scholarship assistance, student loans, the GI Bill, or good old hard work. And then it is the student’s responsibility to perform as expected academically to complete their degree requirements, and then go out and get a job and become a productive member of society.

That is called “life,” and life is not a smooth ride, most times. But tens of millions of Americans have successfully navigated the sometimes-troubled waters successfully without being coddled and nursed along the way. Conquering challenges and facing adversity head-on build character.

The whining behavior demonstrated on several campuses recently shows a fundamental failure of thousands of young people to have learned the basic rules of life, and have their minds grow up at the same rate as their bodies.

However, bowing to the whims of students is letting the inmates run the asylum. College is a place for learning, or once was. Professors led the learning process, administrators ran the school, and the students worked hard and did what they had to do to master the material at a satisfactory level. If students weren’t happy in a particular environment, or couldn’t hack it, they were free to leave. Or they could simply adapt. If that dynamic isn’t restored very soon, we may as well shut down colleges, because they will no longer provide a benefit.

As bad as this is for higher education, it is much worse for America. A generation or two with millions of young people among them who can’t cope with the simplistic problems of going to college surely won’t be able to be good citizens, to hold down jobs in a productive economy, or staff a strong, able military capable of defending the country, or even make sensible decisions about for whom they will vote. They can hardly be expected to weigh complex arguments rationally, when anything that doesn’t agree with their narrow ideas makes them hide under their beds.

This is what liberalism hath wrought, and it will most likely get worse.

Cleanse the language and culture so that we offend no one

Aliens can be “aliens” no longer. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) wants to refer to them in federal matters as “foreign nationals.” And if they are in the country illegally, we cannot refer to them as “illegal aliens,” they now must be transformed into “undocumented foreign nationals.”

Never mind that the proposed new designation is longer and more cumbersome, a larger problem is that the old designation is more accurate.

An “alien” is defined as: A resident born in or belonging to another country who has not acquired citizenship by naturalization, a foreigner. “Illegal” is defined as: By law or statute, contrary to or forbidden by official rules, regulations, etc.

Ergo, someone from another country who is not a citizen, who is in the country without having gone through appropriate legal processes to be here, is an “illegal alien.”

This proposed change in our use of language is being insisted upon because Castro thinks the label “illegal alien” is demeaning and hurtful. This idea ought to have linguists concerned. If words with specific meaning can no longer be applied to people or situations that precisely fit that meaning, then we have a problem that we may not be able to survive.

Frankly, if you are in this country illegally, you do not deserve any special consideration in how we describe you. If you are offended by the designation you have earned for yourself by being in the country illegally, well then, go back home, and then if you want to return, do it the right way.

The solution to removing the hurtfulness of the term “illegal alien” is to be a legal alien or a legal immigrant by following immigration and/or visitation laws, not by changing a term used in federal documents since 1790 that accurately describes the person and the circumstance.

America once was about individual freedom. You could think what you wanted, pretty much say what you wanted, and within fairly limited legal bounds do what you wanted, and you didn’t have to spend an inordinate amount of time worried about whether what you thought, said or did might offend someone, somewhere.

America did not become the country so many of us grew up in and loved by worrying about offending someone by observing long-standing traditions, or doing normal, everyday things. It also did not become the great nation it once was by accommodating people whose life consists primarily of searching out things that offend them.

One right that is not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights or by the U.S. Constitution is the right to not ever be offended. And thank goodness it isn’t. Part of being an adult is being able to cope with less-than-ideal circumstances, and each of us has an obligation to the rest of us to “just deal with it” sometimes.

Instead, many people believe that when they are offended by something, others must change to suit their preferences.

A good example of over-reaction in the name of being non-offensive is that at least two school districts banned Halloween activities, one of them because 20 percent of the students could not or would not participate.

Milford, Conn. parents and other residents were angered when the school district decided to ban the popular Halloween parades at the city’s elementary schools, due to fear of excluding children who can’t or won’t participate in the tradition.

An official of the school district told the local newspaper, the Connecticut Post, “Milford Public Schools do have many children from diverse beliefs, cultures and religions. The goal is for all children to feel comfortable and definitely not alienated when they come to school.”

A petition opposing the decision read, in part: “These are our American customs and traditions and we should not have to give them up because others find them offensive!” And a school parent added, “I’m so tired of my kids missing out on some of the things we all got to do as children and are some of the greatest childhood memories I have due to others saying they find it offensive.”

The school district reversed the decision, however, some obvious questions arise: What about the vast majority who could and probably would participate? Is 20 percent the red line beyond which traditions that some don’t like can no longer exist?

Where does it stop? How few people who are offended by some activity should be able to end to it? We Americans love and treasure our traditions, and some of them have been around since before the birth of the nation.

And, finally: Is it even possible to assure, as the Milford school district intends, that all children, or adults, will always feel comfortable and never feel alienated?

President Barack Obama was likely not involved in the actions of these school districts, but these actions fit comfortably within the idea of his pledge “to fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

Fortunately, there are tens of millions of Americans who want none of it, and will fiercely resist efforts to erase treasured traditions from our lives, and further are disinclined to go crazy trying to avoid offending the terminally offended.

The U.S. in the 21st Century: Compassion takes a back seat to politics

The ink was barely dry on newspapers reporting the murder of nine people attending a Bible study Wednesday night at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, when it started.

Amid the understandable outrage and feelings of grief and compassion, there arose the clatter of political demagoguery, as the vehicles were gassed up and engines were started to rush and join the forming parade.

Since the participants of this parade formed it not to provide aid and comfort to those in need, but to avail themselves of a convenient opportunity – as former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised, “Never let a good crisis go to waste” – reason and honesty were banned from the event.

Thursday morning Faheem Younus, who identifies himself as “Muslimerican,” and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland, posted on Twitter: “This terrorist #CharlestonShooting is predictably White, called a ‘gunman’ by the media and has no mention of his faith.” It was most important to him to imply that had the murderer been a Muslim, that point would have been made abundantly clear.

And no leftist demagogic rant would be complete without taking a shot at Fox News. “The ideology of racism promoted by the @FoxNewsandCo. breeds the terrorists who commit #CharlestonShooting,” he tweeted.

At least in the midst of his mis-focused, cheap-shot tweets, the learned professor did brush up against the main truth: This attack was a racist act.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton used the shooting to advantage in her self-promotion. First, she suggested that “inflammatory things about Mexicans,” uttered by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, may have “triggered” the incident, and then turned to liberalism’s favorite boogeyman, gun control.

But at least President Barack Obama started out on the right path: “We knew their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight others gathered in prayer and fellowship, was murdered last night,” he said. “And to say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn't say enough to convey the heartache and the sadness and the anger that we feel.”

But then: “We do know that once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” he continued, finally getting to his main point.

No one argues that some people should not have guns. The argument begins with the method people like Mr. Obama prefer. The same people who use guns for violence would also use knives, TNT, poison, an automobile, hijacked air liners, or whatever tool they could find to commit violence against others, a point the anti-gun faction seems immune to understanding.

“At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries … with this kind of frequency,” Mr. Obama said. “It is in our power to do something about it.”

Mr. Obama must have found some study showing that the U.S. leads the world’s advanced countries in mass shooting casualties. The Rampage Shooting Index, in fact, shows that among 12 countries, from 2009 to 2013, the U.S. had 227 such deaths. Norway had 77, Germany had 25, the UK had 13, and Israel had 11. The US had 38 such incidents and the nations previously mentioned had only 1 to 3.

That is pretty damning evidence. But as usual in these sorts of campaigns, there is more.

The Index clearly shows that when population is taken into account, the results are far different. Per 1 million population Norway had 15.3 fatalities and .19 incidents per 1 million people; Germany - .31 fatalities, .04 incidents; the UK - .019 fatalities, .02 incidents; Israel - 1.38 fatalities, .25 incidents. The U.S. had .72 fatalities in .12 incidents, and fewer fatalities and incidents per 1 million than Norway and Israel. Furthermore, of the five countries discussed, all but the U.S. are said to have “Restrictive” gun policies.

Also, of the 12 nations in this study, when population is a factor the U.S. drops from first in mass shootings to seventh.

Mr. Obama was wrong. Again.

If you feel so strongly that a higher degree of gun control is a viable policy, why use faulty data to try to sell the idea to the people? If your cause is just, you needn’t lie or deceive to gain support.

Laying aside the distasteful efforts to politicize this issue, the real issue is not guns, it is the impulse to harm or kill innocent people, and how to protect against those impulses.

This was a racist act perpetrated by a white guy who used a gun. Dylann Roof had a drug arrest and conviction on his record, and had a recent history of racially charged comments. Reportedly, his father gave him a pistol for his 21st birthday in April.

What gun law would have prevented Dylann Roof from killing those nine people?

When you are caught using faulty data, you tell the world that you really have a goal other than the stated goal in mind.

Washington State and Seattle set the nation’s highest minimum wage

Since 1998, Washington State has led the nation in both local and statewide minimum wage levels, which attracted the attention of Labor Secretary Tom Perez who praised the state for having “the highest minimum wage in the country for the last 15 years.” But the full picture is much less rosy than Secretary Perez would have us believe.

In an article on Forbes.com the Freedom Foundation’s Maxfeld Nelson put things in perspective. “Although the state’s overall job growth has remained strong since adoption of the high minimum wage, growth in industries with a prevalence of low-wage workers has slowed,” he reports. Citing Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data he writes that while Washington State’s share of the nation’s population increased by 5.7 percent from 1998 to 2014, and its share of total U.S. jobs increased by 6.3 percent, the state’s share of U.S. hotel and restaurant jobs, which could have been expected to rise commensurately, fell by 5.7 percent. Those industries are where thousands of people the higher minimum wage was supposed to help were once employed.

In fact, while Washington’s teen unemployment rate had roughly paralleled national trends prior to the 1998 minimum wage hike, every year since then it has been substantially higher, and at one point reached 34 percent above the national rate.

Not content with the state’s $9.47 minimum wage, SeaTac, a small city that depends heavily on businesses benefitting from its airport, decided to raise its minimum to $15 an hour in a close vote in a 2013 election. “Although the narrow drafting of the ordinance and ongoing litigation have limited the law’s scope to a mere handful of businesses and employees,” Mr. Nelson writes, “it is still having consequences. A parking company has added a ‘living-wage surcharge’ to its rates. One hotel closed its restaurant and laid off 17 employees. Employees at another hotel reported losing an array of benefits, with one stating that the $15 minimum wage ‘sounds good, but it’s not good.’”

And now Seattle has hopped on board that bandwagon with a phased-in minimum wage, raising the minimum to $11 an hour April 1, and the rate hike will be fully implemented by 2025. Some businesses, however, are on a sped-up schedule, like Ritu Shah Burnham’s Z Pizza restaurant.

Even though she has only 12 employees, her business is classified as part of a “large business franchise,” putting her on the fast track to raising the minimum. “I’ve let one person go since April 1, I’ve cut hours since April 1. I’ve taken them myself because I don’t pay myself,” she told a local TV station. “I’ve also raised my prices a little bit; there’s no other way to do it.”

One of her employees was initially excited at the advertised benefits of getting a raise and having a better life. “If that’s the truth,” he told the TV outlet, “I don’t think that’s very apparent. People like me are finding themselves in a tougher situation than ever.” He will only get to enjoy the higher pay until August, when Ms. Burnham has determined she must close her business. “I have no idea where they’re going to find jobs, because if I’m cutting hours, I imagine everyone is across the board,” she said.

Jake Spear, the director of 15 Now Seattle, a wage hike advocate group, was unmoved at the plight of these 12 employees. It’s just one restaurant, after all. “Restaurants open and close all the time, for various reasons,” he said.

Back during the flower child era of the 1960s and 70s, the operative slogan was, “If it feels good, do it!” That slogan has more recently been co-opted by pandering politicians, labor union leaders, and others more interested in the immediate rewards of increased numbers of fawning, adoring voters and thankful union members than with the reality of lost jobs, higher consumer prices, and struggling businesses. They have another favorite slogan, as well: “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

The fallacy in the minimum wage debate is that so many people – liberal feel-gooders, people new to the workforce, people in the most basic jobs and/or with the lowest skill levels, along with pandering politicians and union bosses – don’t understand the significance of varying wage levels. It eludes them that wages must be earned, not merely given like a gift, and that higher wages require more training, knowledge, skill and experience from workers than lower wages do. There is more involved in earning a high wage than just getting hired and showing up for work. You have to contribute something positive to the business you are fortunate enough to work for, and the greater your contribution, the more you are able to earn.

A mandated high minimum wage contributes to the entitlement mentality, where people expect to exist without having to contribute very much to their own well-being. This is not a positive development for a society that was built by generations of Americans who were hard working and self-reliant.

Detroit and Baltimore are graphic examples of the failure of liberal policies, and now we see Washington State and Seattle heading down that same path.