An Inconvenient Truth The Corporate Agenda Would Like To Keep Hidden

Their protests notwithstanding, the truth is that raising the minimum wage is good for business. And it isn't just the behemoths depicted above who benefit.

The CEO of a popular fast food chain said this week that he was “stunned” to see profits soar each time California passed minimum wage increases.

In an interview with KQED on Tuesday, Wetzel’s Pretzels CEO Bill Phelps admitted that his investors were worried about how a 2014 wage hike would impact the business.

“Like most business people I was concerned about it,” Phelps said.

For years, opponents of minimum wage increases have argued that wage hikes mean fewer jobs because businesses have to raise prices and cut hours to cover the additional expenses. But Phelps said that his sales skyrocketed after a California law forced businesses to raise wages in 2014.

While business reflexively condemns any wage increases as devastating job-killers, Phelps came to understand a basic economic truth: when people, especially those in the lower echelons of society, have more money in their pocket, they tend to spend it.

Mike Jacobs, owner of a Wetzel’s Pretzels franchise in Concord’s Sunvalley Shopping Center, told KQED that the increased business can be attributed to the fact that his customers are making more money.

“My overall sales were something like 15 percent ahead after the first minimum wage bump, and now they’re about 12 percent ahead this year,” Jacobs explained. “It isn’t because I’m such a great manager or smart guy, but the buying public has more money in their pocket.”

Expect this information to fork no lightning with the neoliberal set, who hew to scare stories that support their greed. And in that pursuit, they have a strong ally in Andrew F. Puzder, Trump's pick for secretary of labour and a staunch opponent of minimum wage increases, who says,

I’m opposed to raising it to the point where lower-skilled workers, working-class Americans, young people, minorities, are losing the jobs they need to get on the ladder of success.”

Try telling that to the employees at places like Wetzel’s Pretzels and In-N-Out Burger, which I wrote about last March after our visit to Southern California.

But of course, I forget myself. We are about to enter, with the Trump presidency, an era where truth and facts mean little.

Just The Beginning

I think we all know that this story, and many others like it, will not end well.

A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away.

Larsen C is the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica.

Says researcher Prof Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University,

"We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse - but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable; not that it will immediately collapse or anything like that."

As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels. But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean. This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels.

According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm[emphasis added].

The Next Four Years Should Be Interesting Indeed

It doesn't seem to matter to America's rabid right wing that they got what they wanted: a man in the White House who they believe will magically solve all the problems bedeviling their crumbling empire. No, for them that is only the beginning. Until all bow before them in abject and utter obeisance, victory is not total and nor really all that sweet.

Such would appear to be the current bee in the mad bonnet of one of their chief spokesmen, television demagogue Bill O'Reilly, who is now taking extreme exception to those performers (and there are apparently plenty of them) who are refusing the invitation to perform at the Orange One's inauguration.

Watch below as the "No Spin" meister fulminates, characterizing as Un-American those who are now exercising their extant but perhaps endangered democratic right not to respond positively to Donald Trump's invitation. It gets really entertaining when conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer doesn't play along with O'Reilly:

UPDATE: Outsourcing Has Its Costs

The Toronto Star used to have its own production facilities, but as a cost-cutting measure, last year it outsourced that responsibility. Since then there have been numerous problems with the paper, including sections left out, sections appearing in the midst of other sections, and, one day recently, no paper at all. The worst example of the failure of this new plan was evident in the print edition of January 3 where the following appeared on E1:



So far, I have read no acknowledgement of the offending subheading, either in the Corrections page or anywhere else.

I wonder if the paper is aware of the notion of a 'false economy.'

UPDATE: I brought my concerns to The Star's Public Editor, Kathy English, and this is what she wrote:

Dear Mr. Warwick:

Thank you for your email pointing out this unfortunate production error. It sure hit a chord with our readers and I have spent much of this week communicating with many of them. As well, my Saturday column addresses how this occurred. As you will see if you read it, this matter was not connected to the outsourcing of print production.

It was a somewhat inexplicable human error made by a Star copy editor.

.
Best Regards,
Kathy English

The Lifeblood Of Democracy - A Guest Post By Pamela MacNeil

In response to my post yesterday on rebellion, Pamela MacNeil had this commentary, which I am featuring as a guest post:

Rebels Lorne, especially intellectual rebels, are the life blood of democracy.

From the time we are born or at the very least from the time we start school, we eventually learn that conformity is much more valued than independence, particularly independent thinking.

In almost every area of our society, education, work, relationships, sexual identity, etc. we are pressured to conform, to be like everyone else. It's like there is an underlying code everyone absorbs that, when translated, means keep your mouth shut and your mind closed.

Every great advancement and change in humankind has been instigated by a rebel. Men and woman who question the established concepts can mean speaking out against racism, as did Martin Luther King. Speaking out against the accepted norms of women's very identity: Betty Friedan. The earth does revolve around the sun: Galileo. The origin of the human species is evolutionary: Charles Darwin. Hiding Jews from German Nazis: anyone with courage and integrity, even at the risk of losing their own lives.

Conformity breeds obedience. Once a person has abandoned critical thinking, all they have left is obedience. Conformity also creates a power dynamic.This dynamic consists of those who want to rule and those who want to be ruled.The independent person wants neither to rule nor be ruled. Ultimately they just want to live their life in freedom. They do not recognize anyone having authority over their life.

Men and woman like Chris Hedges speak out against power and are an inspiration to all of those, especially the young, who are starting to question the accepted ideas of their day.

The anti-intellectualism that so permeates American culture today has been evolving for over 50 years. The U.S. is in the final stages of that evolution, so much so that one no longer need ask why Johnny can't read, but rather more fundamentally why Johnny can't think.

The intellectually bankrupt wasteland called American culture has reached its pinnacle. The battle for ideas, such as freedom and democracy, will be left for the rebels to fight, because with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, there will be no right to peaceful protest, no freedom of speech, and there will be no due process. Trump will double down on dissent, permitting his military and police forces as much violence as needed to stop the American people from saying NO.

Every dictator rules by force. Donald Trump is no different.

UPDATED: Donald Trump Delivers His Punchline

But outside the wealthy minority whose interests he serves, few of the masses who supported his candidacy will find much to laugh about. Go to about the 1:25 minute mark of the following video to find out why:



His pronouncements about lowering corporate taxes and eliminating regulations, as you can see, brought hearty but predictable responses from the audience, but the fact that they cheered most lustily over his announcement that he will repeal Obamacare, for which they have no skin in the game, is the clearest indictment of both their ideological and moral bankruptcy.

It reminds me of this old Internet meme:

I envy them not a whit.

UPDATE: Thanks to Anon pointing it out, we now now that the follicly-challenged fellow looking so pleased as he stands beside Trump is Joseph "Joey No Socks" Cinque — a convicted felon with ties to notorious Gambino crime family boss John Gotti.

Beyond a 1989 felony conviction for possessing nearly $100,000 worth of stolen artwork, Cinque "used to be friends with John Gotti," according to a New York Magazine profile from 1995.

Cinque was also "shot three times and left for dead" in a 1980 incident that authorities described as "a hit," according to the profile.

Hmmm, seems I remember Mom telling me that one is judged by the company they keep. By that measure alone, given his appearance onstage with the president-elect, Joey No Socks must be condemned.

The Virtue Of Rebellion

"Perhaps in our lifetime we will not succeed. Perhaps things will only get worse. But this does not invalidate our efforts. Rebellion - which is different from revolution because it is perpetual alienation from power rather than the replacement of one power system with another - should be our natural state."

-Chris Hedges

There is something brave, honest and bracing about those words, and although I cannot call myself a rebel in any meaningful way, I envy and am attracted to the kind of intractable commitment that Chris Hedges has to fighting the shackles of corrupt economic, social and political systems that hold us all captive in one form or another. As the next part of this century unfolds, there will likely need to be much more of such spirit.

Although it may not exactly constitute rebellion, the students and faculty of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York seem prepared for the worst from the incoming Trump administration and are making a commitment that may have no legal force, but whose moral dimensions are clear:

At Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., more than 2,000 students and professors signed a petition asking the university to join other institutions and declare itself a sanctuary, or safe haven, for undocumented students.

“I am frightened,” said one literature student, who asked not to be identified for fear she could be deported. “But I am also encouraged to see people mobilizing and organizing and preparing for Trump to carry out his threat to deport millions of illegals.”

Four years ago, Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which provided temporary amnesty for over three-quarters of a million children and teenagers whose parents had entered the U.S. illegally.

Now these “DREAMers” — named after an earlier version of the act which was not passed — fear they, or their parents, will be targeted if they come out of the shadows.

“My parents brought me from Mexico to Los Angeles when I was 8. They worked hard and paid taxes and put me and my two siblings through college,” said the Cornell student, who attended a recent campus rally. “I registered in DACA, and gave authorities my fingerprints. The threat is serious now that I could be deported. It is stressful not knowing when this could happen.”

Their fears would seem justified:

Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has said that during his first 100 days he plans to “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.” The president-elect has not listed the specific actions he plans to cancel to back up his hyperbole, but his campaign website singled out the amnesty law, which was passed by executive action in 2012.

So is Cornell's moral and ethical choice an isolated phenomenon, or is it a signal that none of us should yet abandon all hope?