Chick-Fil-A

Wednesday was National Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day.

Lost in the din was the reason why it existed in the first place:  Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel disagreed with the personal views of Dan Cathy, president of Chick-Fil-A.  Rather, they disagreed with the CNN's interpretation of those views.

In his interview with the Baptist Press, Mr. Cathy made the following statement:

Some have opposed the company's support of the traditional family. "Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.

  Wow, controversial stuff, huh?

Here's how CNN interpreted it on their Belief blog (Emphasis on their agenda-based bias in bold):

The fact that Chick-fil-A is a company that espouses Christian values is no secret. The fact that its 1,600 fast-food chicken restaurants across the country are closed on Sundays has long been testament to that.
But the comments of company President Dan Cathy about gay marriage to Baptist Press on Monday have ignited a social media wildfire.

"Guilty as charged,", Cathy said when asked about his company's support of the traditional family unit as opposed to gay marriage.

"We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that," Cathy is quoted as saying.

But he didn't say that!  A more thorough analysis of this is available at the following links:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2012/07/cnn-lays-an-egg/
http://www.getreligion.org/2012/07/wheres-the-beef-what-the-chick-fil-a-boss-really-said/

As Dr. Goebbels might have said, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  It's hard to not see this as journalistic malpractice, even if it did ultimately backfire:

More than 3,000 people lined up for Chick-fil-A at the food court at Jordan Creek Town Center on Wednesday, joining in a battle of words and demonstrations over same-sex relationships and the fast food restaurant’s president.

Iowans were not alone; hundreds of thousands of people around the country stood in line at Chick-fil-A locations Wednesday to show their support for the restaurant and for marriage only between one man and one woman.

I arrived at the Chick-Fil-A around 7:30 that night.  The lines were still long.

But the Des Moines Register, like most media outlets, doesn't frame the event correctly.  It wasn't about people supporting Chick-Fil-A because of Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (which, as has been pointed out, he never touched on in the interview in question).  It had to do with this:

The mayor of Boston is vowing to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the city after the company's president spoke out publicly against gay marriage.

Even though Mr. Cathy didn't even mention gay marriage in the interview, what Boston Mayor Menino vowed to do was unconstitutional.

But Menino wasn't alone:

Chick-fil-A, the national restaurant chain known for its chicken sandwiches and waffle fries, has become a litmus test for gay rights. This development erupted after its CEO Dan Cathy, known for his conservative religious views, said in a radio interview that his company backs "the biblical definition of the family unit," not same-sex marriage.

Outraged, Chicago Ald. Proco "Joe" Moreno, 1st, responded that he would not allow a Chick-fil-A to come to his gentrifying Northwest Side ward. Mayor Rahm Emanuel seemed to back him up with, "Chick-fil-A's values are not Chicago values." He soon was joined by other national politicians eager to dump Chick-fil-A into the fryer.

 Mayor Emanuel's comments about "Chicago values" have prompted many snickers across the blogosphere, as people pointed out how 11 people don't get murdered daily in Chick-Fil-A restaurants, or that Chick-Fil-A's management has some catching up to do if they want to attain the same level of corruption as Chicago's politicians.

Both Boston's and Chicago's newspapers have raked their politicians over the coals for their tone-deafness on First Amendment issues.

So when I went to Chick-Fil-A Wednesday evening, it wasn't because I agree or disagree with Mr. Cathy's stance on same-sex marriage (and it bears repeating one more time that he didn't say anything about it!).  It was a message.  To Mayor Emanuel.  To Alderman Moreno.  To Mayor Menino.  To all the bullies whom would dare try to use the power of government to interfere with someone's legitimate business.  Whom would use it to intimidate, possibly silence.  The message is this:

Knock it off!  You don't rule us. You serve us!

Every so often, we need to remind our elected representatives of their place.

A bad day

I've been having a bad day recently.  Since about March, actually.

I work in a support role at my company.  I have teammates halfway around the world who also support many of the same people I do.

Recently, however, one of those teams we support has been in fire-fighting mode.  They're placing demands on my time as well as my colleagues off-site.

My off-site colleagues best know the system supporting this customer team.  I have an incomplete working understanding.

The system is located where I am.  So's the customer team.  So when then nighttime and network problems hamper my colleagues' efforts to keep the customer team happy, guess who gets stuck with the problem?

The thing is, I'm supposed to be working something that's also high-priority, but on another project.  So whom do I tell to kiss off?  Politely, of course.

Yes, I know, this sounds like a first-world problem to me too.

Despicable

That's a word I rarely use, but it definitely applies to KayInMaine of White Noise Insanity.

In the wake of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, she posted this crap:

A wingnut kills 14 in a Colorado movie theater…

…and you know what that means! It means Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh are to blame. Yes, that’s right: THEY’RE TO BLAME. Both of those assholes with a national microphone are causing the reich wing armed militias in America to go off the deep end. When will these two be arrested for terrorizing the nation!!!

and then she went on to blame one of the Left's favorite bogeymen:  Michelle Bachmann.

Others on Twitter are not letting an absence of facts get in the way of a narrative:

Hannity beck limbaugh paraphernalia Found at aurora shooters home

Really, jakecovo?  That's interesting.  How would you know, since the police at this time have yet to effect entry into the shooter's home, since it appears he wasn't bluffing about his apartment being booby-trapped with explosives.  Did the police somehow, enter the apartment, find the materials, notice the apartment was booby-trapped, and then leave and have the bomb squad send a robot in?  That's a good trick!

Now I hear news about ABC finding a connection between the shooter, James Holmes, and the Colorado Tea Party.

One problem:  ABC got the wrong James Holmes. 

Jeez, rank amateurism at work.  Laura Ingraham described them best:  Dinosaur Media.

In the meantime, the Left will continue its hate-filled, fact-challenged rants.

It seems to be their M.O.:  React to such news reflexively and emotionally.  Blame people whom you feel are "evil".  When facts come out that dispute your beliefs, change the topic.  Never admit you were wrong, because that would be an indicator of growth.  If you grew and matured, you might learn, like the rest of us, to be patient for the facts to emerge, to "look before you leap", as it were.

But when facts in these situations come out, they rarely if ever support the left-wing arguments.  That's why I think they jump the gun:  Whip people's emotions into a frenzy and get them believing lies before the truth, as Mark Twain put it, has gotten its shoes on.

It's fortunate that I don't know any of these people personally.  I'd have to exercise great restraint to keep from slapping some sense into them.

Minimum wage laws don't work

Minimum wage laws don't work.  Anybody with a calculator and an understanding of economics and logic can comprehend that.  So why do politicians keep pushing it?

Because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Reading Perkins’ essay today reminds us of the potential that minimum wage laws hold for shaping a fair and productive economy.

Which do you want a fair economy or a productive economy?  And by the way, a mandatory minimum wage guarantees neither.

At the time of her writing, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression. Perkins feared the destructive potential of the growing number of “fly-by-night” sweatshop operators attempting to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors by selling cheaper products made possible by rock-bottom labor costs.
These low-wage sweatshop operators were, in other words, cheaters. They offered cheaper products by taking advantage of workers who, in a period of record unemployment, had no choice but to accept whatever job they could get — in some cases, earning only 3.5 cents per hour.

I'm sorry, what made the advantage "unfair"?  And guess what?  If the market allowed employers to get labor for so cheap, it was because people were willing to work for so cheap.  What was/is a fair wage?  Something arbitrarily set by the government?

The purpose of a minimum wage law was not only to protect workers from abuse by their employers, but to also ensure fair competition by requiring that all businesses play by the same rules

the minimum wage peaked in 1968 and has since trailed behind the rising cost of living. In fact, the minimum wage would be well over $10 today if it had simply kept pace with inflation. Instead, it’s only $7.25 an hour — or just over $15,000 a year.

My god, do these economic illiterates look at what happens whenever the mandatory minimum wage is increased?  Like with most economic meddling by the government, it precipitates inflation.  Everyone's purchasing power is reduced because of an arbitrary floor to labor costs.  Businesses operating on thin profit margins either reduce their workforce, raise their prices, or both.  Since savvy business owners don't employ more people than they need, an increase in per-head labor costs often gets them looking at ways they can reduce the number of heads of labor to restore the product of the labor calculation to some form of equilibrium that allows them to stay in business.  Some businesses will fail because they can't break even, let alone turn a profit. Say a company has 50 employees making $7/hr.  The government bumps the minimum wage up.  Now everybody has to be paid $8/hr.  The company's labor costs have gone from $350/employee-hour, or $14,000 per 40-hour work week, to $400/employee-hour, or $16,000 per 40-hour work week. 

To be sure, the employees are happy.  Briefly.

A second, larger company, with say, 500 employees, has gone from paying $140,000 to $160,000.  Company A saw their labor costs jump $2,000 in one week, but Company B saw their labor costs jump $20,000 in the same week.  Company B decides to internationally out-source the bulk of its labor force to stay competitive.  They lay off 400 employees and find they can hire twice as many foreigners at their new overseas operation which cost them $50,000 to set up.  A week later, Company A is still paying an extra $2,000 per week for the same productivity.  Company B now is paying $20,000 a week, but saw their productivity increase about 55%.  Increases in productivity give company B flexibility in tempering the inevitable spike in its product's price to consumer.

Granted, these are simplistic numbers, but think about Company A.  Maybe it can't compete with Company B at the new labor rates.  Company B can essentially outlast Company A.  So, six months down the road, perhaps all 50 of the employees from Company A join the 400 from Company B in the unemployment line, where they aren't earning taxable income.  And as prices rise, the extra money the surviving employees of both companies receive is worth less.  Does that make sense?

Low-wage industries are now among the economy’s fastest-growing sectors, and some of the lowest paid occupations are expected to create the largest numbers of new jobs over the next several years. For many employers low wages are part and parcel of a robust growth strategy. As of last year, no fewer than 35 of the nation’s 50 largest low-wage businesses had posted profits that exceeded their pre-recession levels.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of businesses in the United States have yet to recover from the recession, particularly small businesses. A Gallup poll earlier this year revealed that fully 85 percent of small businesses still have no intention of hiring or expanding their business because demand remains so weak.

 I refer you to the above paragraphs as to why this is essentially the government's fault.  The labor unions in this country have learned that the old game of "chicken" only works against employers so long before the employers simply move their labor to a more friendly climate.  The unions priced themselves right out of business in many cases.  An in a textbook definition of insanity, the government thinks it can repeat the exercise with minimum-wage employees and then act surprised when the same result occurs.

The American people have noticed. According to a recent poll, more than two-thirds of Americans support raising the minimum wage to over $10 per hour. This support is behind a proposal by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., that would raise the minimum wage to $9.80 an hour, significantly raise the minimum wage for tipped workers (currently at $2.13 an hour), and provide for annual cost of living adjustments for both.

Not to disparage my fellow Americans, but the two-thirds of respondents to the poll need to see the world through a macro-economic lens.  Like with low-income people on welfare, you can count on them to vote for a continued supply of funds.  It's clear the author doesn't comprehend the economic impact of annual cost of living adjustments.  An apt analogy would be the dog chasing his tail:  It keeps him busy, but he doesn't achieve his goals.

Thank you, Government.

Only a lawyer could view a mandate as a tax. A tax on living.

ObamaCare upheld. Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts, for your idiotic decision. If a law is constitutional & not @ the same time, how can it be upheld?

A dilemma

How do I tell a well-meaning but ill-informed teenage Facebook friend of mine that she and the Washington Post seem to be unaware of the difference between outsourcing and off-shoring?