WHO BELONGS IN MY POLITICAL PARTY?

My politically conservative friends are convinced that I'm a masked, rock-throwing Antifa at heart. 

Why?

I believe that the gun lobby has perverted common sense when it comes to the reasonable control of firearms in the same way that the fossil fuel industry is trying to pervert our understanding of climate change. And I believe that both lobbies will eventually be understood to have the same wanton disregard for human life as we now know that the tobacco lobby had.

I believe that what goes on of a sexual nature behind closed doors is nobody's business except for the intellectually capable, of age, freely consenting adults in the room. And I believe that if you choose to participate in commerce in the public marketplace, your opinion of that sexual activity is just as irrelevant to your business as is race, religion, or ethnicity.

I believe that men in blue suits, white shirts, and red ties in state capitals do not have the right to tell a woman, her doctor, and anyone else that she chooses to consult what to say and do concerning her healthcare. And I believe that a woman's healthcare includes her reproductive healthcare.

I believe that the right to protest peacefully is a sacred American right. And I believe that carrying a flag onto a playing field for profit in a manner that is specifically forbidden by the US Flag Code is more fundamentally anti-American than taking a knee to protest racial injustice while that flag is being improperly displayed.

I do not believe that corporations are people or that money equals speech. I just don't. 

My politically progressive friends are convinced that I'm a corporatist stooge, a Reagan Republican in disguise

Why?

I believe that a flat tax can be both fair and progressive. And I believe that because I've done the math and can demonstrate that it is so.

I believe that BlackLivesMatter was doomed from the beginning to being labeled exclusive and racist. And I believe that if you have to take time from the struggle to explain to your allies why Black is inclusive of Brown, Red, and Yellow, you've obviously misnamed your movement.

I believe that MeToo has become a witch hunt that has abandoned the principles of due process and the presumption of innocence. And I believe that, although men are undeniably pigs, a witch hunt is morally repugnant regardless of the righteous intentions of the hunters.

I believe that only the privileged have the luxury to talk about privilege. And I believe that, if you took the time to ask, you would learn that White Privilege does not automatically extend to overweight, poor white women with bad teeth and a Southern accent. With props to Lenny Bruce, if Albert Einstein had a Southern accent, they would never have built The Bomb.

I don't believe that if you are White, you are by definition racist. I just don't.

Who belongs in my political party?

You belong in my political party if you believe that two plus two equal four and not some number approximating four. In other words, you belong in my political party if you believe in math and science.

You belong in my political party if you can talk to people with opposing political views without raising your voice or calling names. In other words, you belong in my political party if you have the ability to participate in civil discourse on topics that you hold dear with persons who don't believe as you believe.

You belong in my political party if you understand that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words, you belong in my political party if you know that perfection only exists in the mind of God and that you ain't God. 

Eugene Wesley Roddenberry is God.

#15 - CECIL THE LION, MINIMUM WAGE, SMOKEY ROBINSON - BLACK AND PROUD AMERICAN

CECIL THE LION
Trophy hunting is on the way out.

Disclaimer: I fall somewhere between those who believe that animals were put on this Earth to serve the needs of humans and those humans who believe that animals are human too. And I love cats. I REALLY love cats.


All but the most cynical and bloodthirsty hunters are conservationists. They know the lesson of the buffalo, that you can hunt seemingly endless herds to the point of extinction in a very short time. That's why there are more deer in the northeastern United States today than in the days of the Founders. We've hunted out or moved out the predators and we've managed the herds. And the 'we' are the responsible hunters who pay license fees and support wildlife management in numerous other ways. As a result, hunting for venison is alive and well. I know families who spend next to nothing on processed meat because venison provides everything from their breakfast sausage to their dinner roast. More power to them.

But trophy hunting is different. As humanity encroaches on the habitats of the predators and the prey that attract the trophy hunter, as their numbers dwindle, conservation and population management become of paramount importance. What difference does it make if a lion is within or outside the boundaries of a preserve? The reason that the preserve exists in the first place is because the lion population is threatened. And if such populations are threatened, the only reason to hunt them is to better manage them. Common sense dictates that such hunts, to thin the herds of threatened prey or to manage predation, must take place under the authority of professional wildlife managers and not private guides paid a princely sum to ensure a kill. So...

Trophy hunting is on the way out.

MINIMUM WAGE
The movement to make the minimum wage a living wage is gaining steam. Three comments:

1. I joined the workforce in the late 1960s when the federal minimum hourly wage was $1.60. If it had been tied to the inflation rate of the Consumer Price Index back then, today the minimum wage would be $10.90. If the object of creating a minimum wage is to ensure a reasonable baseline compensation for a person's labor, why is that person's labor worth 30% less today than if it had been tagged to the CPI in 1968? Give me a reason that makes sense.

2. I searched "effect of increasing the minimum wage" on the interweb. Up popped two articles published in Forbes, one a year old and one more recent. The older one was entitled The Facts On Increasing The Minimum Wage. The 'facts' were that there were so few workers making the minimum wage throughout the country that increasing the minimum wage would have a negligible effect on GDP and tax revenue. Not what I was looking for.

The more recent article purported to investigate the effect of an increase in the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour in Seattle. After establishing that only about 1,200 people were effected, the author goes on to admit that the unemployment rate in Seattle has dropped at about the same rate that the national rate has dropped since the new minimum was instituted. There's been no spike in unemployment. He goes on, however, to speak anecdotally about restaurant closings and lost job opportunities. No numbers. Just stories about favorite restaurants closing due to the wage increase. Stories that other, more liberal sites claim are disputed by the restaurateurs themselves.

So as far as I can see, we don't really know the end game yet.

3. Social media is replacing labor unions. Just sayin...

SMOKEY ROBINSON - BLACK AND PROUD AMERICAN
"If it's so terrible here, why are so many coming and so few leaving?" And the only time that he uses the word privilege is when he describes the need to exercise the privilege of the franchise.