Newsom Paves Way for $22/Hour Fast-Food Minimum Wage
This will hit the poor. Because it is good value, fast food is heavily relied on by the poor. A McDonalds' cheeseburger, for instance. But this proposal will undoubtedly hit the poor with higher prices
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill Monday establishing a council empowered to raise the minimum wage for the state’s fast-food workers to more than $20 per hour.
The Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act (AB 257), passed by the state Legislature a week prior, orders a 10-member Fast Food Council to appropriately create wage, working conditions, and training standards for fast-food restaurant employees. The law allows the council to impose a minimum fast-food wage of up to $22 per hour in 2023.
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“Today’s action gives hardworking fast-food workers a stronger voice and seat at the table to set fair wages and critical health and safety standards across the industry,” Newsom said Monday.
California currently requires businesses with more than 25 employees to pay them at least $15 per hour, a standard scheduled to rise by 50 cents an hour in 2023.
The Fast Food Council must feature two representatives each of fast-food restaurant employees, employee advocates, franchisors, and franchisees, the new law orders. It also reserves single spots for representatives of the state Industrial Relations Department and the Governor’s Business and Economic Development Office.
Prior to the act’s signing, fast-food restaurant franchisees expressed concerned it would spur operating cost and consumer price increases, according to the The Business Journal.
“The state of California has rigorous rules and regulations regarding wage and hour, regarding franchising, regarding the relationships between franchisor and franchisee, the relationship between the employer and employee,” Eagle Management Business Consulting President and Deli Delicious Franchising Executive Vice President Ali Nekumanesh said, the outlet reported. “Therefore, we think this [AB] 257 is shortsighted and the focus on quick-service restaurants is very puzzling to the eyes of the beholder.”
A representative for Newsom referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to his Monday press release about the law’s signing.
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Could Liz Truss be the thickest ever UK prime minister?
I reproduce below a post from quora.com. It is rather crushing to the questioner
Truss got into Oxford to study PPE (from a comprehensive school), qualified as an accountant and worked for ten years as a management accountant and economics director in the energy and telecoms sectors. She has been in government for ten years in a number of positions including Chief Secretary of the Treasury.
Just to expand on her degree - PPE is one of the most applied to courses at Oxford, which is itself a globally ranked university. In 2023, minimum entry qualifications at A level are AAA, ideally including Maths and History. Roughly 1 in 8 students gain those grades or higher across all A levels. I believe the entry process would also involve an interview. Across the university, the proportion of qualified applicants who gain a place is 20%, though it might be lower for PPE. Suppose that four in five school students went on to A levels. This means that Truss was assessed as being within the top 2 % of UK school students. (0.125 * 0.2 * 0.8 = 0.02). That indicates an IQ score of above 130.
Recall that she did this from a comprehensive school, in competition with kids from private schools - with all their resources, expertise and contacts. Neither did she come from a particularly wealthy, powerful, connected family (her father was a maths professor and her mother a nurse). In my view that could well justify putting her in the top half of her group - so top 1% of her school cohort.
According to the journalist Alison Pearson, Truss initially gained her place to study mathematics. Maths is widely seen as being one of the hardest subjects. So Truss gaining a place in maths rather negates the idea that PPE students are not all that when it comes to quantitative analysis (not that I agree with it anyway).
The economist (and Undercover Economist author) Tim Harford has tweeted about sharing tutorials with Truss on the university’s fiendish Mathematical Logic course, which requires that students master Cantor’s Diagonalisation Proof and Turing machines (I have no idea what these are).
Anyway, gaining a place on that course at that university means that Truss was assessed by the selection system as being one of the students with the most potential in the UK and beyond. Having gained her place, she was then able to meet the demands of the course. I believe Oxford uses a tutorial process which involves students writing essays and defending them on a weekly basis. That builds the ability to conduct a reasoned argument - and there is no evading the sustained, intense, one to one scrutiny of the logic of that argument by a subject expert.
Truss was Deputy Director of the think tank Reform and she’s recruited people from the world of think tanks to her leadership campaign. She’s worked in a range of government departments including the Treasury. She co wrote a policy book (Britannia Unchained) and gives every sign of being able to think through policy for herself. She’s been a success at the Foreign Office (where Boris struggled). Civil servants have noted her persistence and determination. She stood up to Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She seems to have out manoeuvered Sunak and his Treasury backers in the leadership contest.
So no, I don’t believe she is hard of thinking and neither did her teachers at school, professors at Oxford, employers at Shell and C&W, fellow economists at Reform, electors of her Norfolk constituency and colleagues when she worked at the Treasury. As for the reasoning abilities of the person who asked this question, the jury is still out.
Postscript: Its not just the questioner. Looking at the comment thread, the belief that ‘anyone who doesn’t agree with me must be thick’ is quite prevalent. I’ld suggest that belief is not itself an indicator of particularly high intelligence.
https://www.quora.com/Could-Liz-Truss-be-the-thickest-ever-UK-prime-minister
*************************************************My Baby and I Found Love and Care at This Pregnancy Resource Center
The Christian alternative to abortion
They gave me a truck. They gave me food. They gave me a warm bed. They helped me find a job. They loved me when I felt no one else did. And they asked for nothing in return.
One might start contemplating what wealthy relative I stumbled upon to receive such luck and gifts, or maybe what company treats their employees so generously. It was neither.
This was my experience with a local pregnancy resource center when I found myself in a crisis situation, nearly nine months pregnant.
I never expected to find myself at a pregnancy resource center. I never even had heard of one before, despite there being over 2,700 nationwide, serving nearly 2 million people in 2019 alone. But I’m so glad I did.
Coming up on nine months of pregnancy, the father of my child was sent to jail and I found myself homeless. I had no job and was without family or friends to lean on for support. I learned about So Big Mountain House in Indianapolis at a doctor’s appointment and knew I needed to visit.
Four days after the Mountain House staff welcomed me through their doors, I gave birth to my beautiful daughter, Legacy, who to this very day is the greatest joy and gift of my life.
But I quickly found myself unprepared for this new role. The small task of giving my newborn a bath seemed so simple, yet to a new mother it was equally challenging and daunting. Without hesitation, the women at Mountain House stepped in to help me and have been at my side ever since.
Having those women with me at that moment assured me that I had the support and love I needed to raise my child. I stayed at Mountain House for a little over a year, developing close friendships with the mentors there and other women in similar situations as me, and receiving encouragement beyond my wildest expectations.
They threw me a baby shower and provided me with everything from diapers to clothes to formula. Due to credit issues, I struggled to acquire a vehicle, so they gifted me with a truck. I took financial classes, through which I learned how to create a budget that I still use today. I also took parenting classes to learn how to stay afloat in these new uncharted waters.
The women of Mountain House helped me secure a job despite my felonious background, and never once treated me differently because of my past.
I now had my wonderful daughter and a tremendous support system, but I didn’t feel whole just yet. While my stomach was full of tasty food and my heart full of love, the women at Mountain House knew that I needed more to face the world.
Their kindness and generosity were nothing short of God’s own love shining through them, and with their help I started attending church. I eventually was baptized and realized that the goal of Mountain House was to care for the whole woman–her mind, her heart, her soul, and her child.
Looking back now, I can say confidently that my year at Mountain House was the best year of my life. I grew so much in my time there and would hardly recognize the nine-month pregnant woman who walked through the doors just two short years ago.
I now have a great job and my own place to live, and the women at Mountain House who were once my role models are now my friends.
It wasn’t a family member who supported me during a difficult time. It wasn’t a company that felt obligated to care for an employee. It was a group of complete strangers who took me in, supported me, and loved me.
They had nothing to gain from their generosity. There was no large check at the end of the day, no grand prize. But rather, they live knowing that their work supports women and changes their lives for good.
Although Mountain House is wonderful, it is not unique. Thousands of places like this exist all over the country to ensure that no woman ever has to be alone while pregnant, nor in the months afterward.
No matter your past or even your present, pregnancy resource centers work to ensure that not only do you and your child have a future, but that it is one full of hope, promise, success, and, most importantly, love.
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The ACLU’s latest step to becoming just another progressive scold — at civil liberties’ expense
The American Civil Liberties Union last week applauded President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student-loan debt, which it describes as “a racial-justice issue.” That puzzling position encapsulates how far the venerable organization has strayed from the mission reflected in its name.
Under Biden’s new policy, borrowers earning up to $125,000 a year will be eligible for $10,000 in debt relief, or twice that amount if they qualified for Pell Grants as students. The 43 million or so beneficiaries include many affluent people who could readily afford to pay off their loans, while the cost, which is projected to be at least $300 billion, will be borne by taxpayers, including Americans of relatively modest means.
Some of the people picking up the tab never attended college, while others struggled to do so without borrowing money or have already paid off their loans. But in the ACLU’s view, that seemingly unfair redistribution of resources is what racial-justice demands.
“This debt burden falls heaviest on black Americans — especially black women,” the ACLU says. “Student-debt cancellation will help secure financial stability and mobility for people of color — particularly black Americans — who are disproportionately burdened with student debt, while providing immediate financial relief and peace of mind for millions of Americans.”
Whatever you might think of that argument, it has nothing to do with protecting civil liberties. The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, but it does not promise to eradicate racial disparities in educational or economic success.
As the ACLU sees it, however, any such disparities result from “centuries of structural inequities and racism.” The federal government therefore has a duty to ensure equal outcomes, which requires wide-ranging interventions, including welfare programs, education spending, job training, affirmative action, public housing, tax credits and state-subsidized health care.
To give you a sense of how far afield that cause takes the ACLU from the defense of constitutional rights, the organization argues that “broadband access for all” is a racial-justice issue because people without broadband access “are disproportionately black, Latinx, Indigenous, rural or low-income.”
The ACLU describes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which it urged the Supreme Court to uphold, as “a great civil rights law,” because “it is not possible to fully participate in the economic, social and civic life of our nation without stable health coverage.”
If “stable health coverage” is a prerequisite for fully participating in “the economic, social, and civic life of our nation,” so is stable housing, stable employment and a stable supply of food, clothing and transportation. Such reasoning expands the ACLU’s mission to include pretty much any domestic-policy issue.
The ACLU’s embrace of a broad progressive agenda alienates potential allies who do not necessarily agree with that agenda but support vigorous advocacy for civil liberties. It also weakens the ACLU’s commitment to the goals that once defined the organization, including the defense of First Amendment rights.
According to an internal staff memo that was leaked in 2018, ACLU attorneys who are thinking about defending a potential client’s right to express opinions they find repugnant — the sort of function that the organization has proudly served through most of its history — should consider how that might conflict with “other values” supported by the ACLU. “Speech that denigrates [marginalized] groups can inflict serious harms,” the memo warned, “and often will impede progress toward equality.”
A case the Supreme Court will hear during its next term further illustrates how the ACLU has lost its way. The organization argues that a Colorado woman who has religious objections to gay marriage should nevertheless be forced to apply her artistic talents in designing websites for same-sex weddings, notwithstanding the First Amendment’s restrictions on compelled speech.
A consistent defense of civil liberties is the ACLU’s raison d’etre. But as the organization becomes increasingly indistinguishable from myriad progressive advocacy groups, it is sacrificing the principles that made its work worthy of wide support.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/02/the-aclus-latest-step-to-becoming-just-another-progressive-scold/
*********************************************Who do the high priests of cancel culture most resemble?
We are living through a time in which unproven accusations are once again enough to see a person damned.
Charges of ‘racism’, ‘homophobia’, ‘transphobia’ and even ‘fascism’ are commonplace and no evidence is required to secure a ‘cancellation’. People have had their careers destroyed and personal relationships ruined simply for expressing unfashionable opinions.
It will be oddly familiar to anyone who has seen Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. In the 1953 dramatisation of the 17th Century Salem witch trials, our tragic hero John Proctor cries out: ‘Is the accuser always holy now?’
The trials of Salem, a Puritan community in Massachusetts, lasted a little over a year, from February 1692 to May 1693. In that time, more than 200 people were accused, 19 hanged, five others had perished in jail and one, farmer Giles Corey, had been pressed to death with boulders for refusing to enter a guilty/not-guilty plea.
And their tormentors? A group of children who had stumbled upon the means to become the most powerful members of the community. Their histrionic accusations could see fellow citizens executed on the basis of ‘spectral evidence’ alone – what we might today refer to as ‘lived experience’, the phrase used by the likes of Meghan and Harry.
And today, just like in Salem, those who attempt to apply reason and logic, who dare to stand up for the accused, make themselves vulnerable by doing so.
As Miller’s anti-hero says, ‘the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom’ safe in the knowledge that those who cross them are the next to be condemned.
For those of us who have found ourselves caught in the culture wars of the present – and I have often been vilified for having created a satirical character, Titania McGrath, the ‘radical intersectionalist poet and Twitter activist’ – the parallels are obvious.
Such patterns recur wherever reason is abandoned and fear prevails, be that during the 1950s McCarthyism that inspired Miller, or the ideological capture of today’s institutions and the trickle-down orthodoxies that followed.
THE new religion of ‘wokeness’ now dominates all of our major cultural, educational, political and corporate bodies.
Its high priests make grand claims of moral purity and brook no dissent, a mindset which has led to the development of today’s ‘cancel culture’.
They seek to control public discourse by deeming certain terms ‘problematic’ or supporting legislation against ‘hate speech’. They require no concrete evidence of sin in order to detect and denounce the sinners in our midst.
Phrases such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘equity’ mislead people into believing that those who utter them are on the right side of history. What we are witnessing is the march of online zealots destroying people’s livelihoods and reputations, all the while proclaiming their own virtue, using hashtags such as #BeKind.
Like the Salem Trials, they inflict their punishments while claiming to be on the side of the angels.
Although today’s ‘heretics’ are unlikely to be burned at the stake, their inquisitors are convinced they must convert for their own good. It is the legitimisation of bullying on a grand scale.
Significantly, many are troubled by the rise of the movement – a recent import from the US – that would see us deny the biological reality of sex differences, confess to ‘white privilege’, or to perpetuating ‘systemic oppression’.
They are rightly concerned about the relentless attacks on free speech and how anyone who dares question the new orthodoxy is mercilessly subdued.
These culture war revolutionaries, whose existence is often denied by its chief antagonists, must be challenged. For they are determined to dismantle Western ideals, to return us to a pre-Enlightenment state of ignorance.
Theirs is a world in which private feelings are allowed to trump evidence and reason. A world in which right and wrong are reduced to a battle of wills. This is a battle that, ultimately, the mob will win unless we stand up and resist it.
The impact is felt in all walks of life. For instance, after the seismic events of the summer of 2020 following the killing by a white policeman of George Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis, an actor friend of mine was contacted by her agency because she had not posted anything on social media in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. She was told she must do so immediately if she wanted casting directors to consider her for roles.
I have heard many such anecdotes, but invariably they are communicated privately. There is a strong general feeling that to publicly object to the prevailing dogma is to jeopardise one’s career and social standing.
I have lost count of the number of emails from academics, artists and media figures who have contacted me to express solidarity for my criticism of this new ideology, but admit they could never endorse my sentiments in public for fear of being targeted. It is a circular problem that can only be resolved if sufficient numbers speak out.
This is the sad reality of most present-day working environments, where to utter a forbidden opinion, to misspeak, or even to fail to show due fealty to received wisdom can be an impediment to future prospects.
As a former teacher, I am still in contact with ex-colleagues who are troubled by the sudden revisions made to curriculums and pastoral policies. Many are being forced to undergo ‘unconscious bias’ training, even though there is overwhelming evidence such schemes are unreliable and ineffective.
To raise a complaint is taken as proof of the kind of prejudice that the tests seek to expose. After all, surely only a witch would deny the existence of witchcraft...
Sometimes the obsessions of these cultural revolutionaries are extreme. Last year, the body in charge of elementary and secondary schools in Ontario authorised the ritualistic burning of books for ‘educational purposes’.
In what they described as a ‘flame purification’ ceremony, almost 5,000 books were destroyed or recycled if they were judged to contain outdated racial stereotypes. In this new religion, some words are deemed harmful, even if written many years ago.
This is why the estate of Dr Seuss will no longer publish six of the author’s books that they now consider ‘hurtful and wrong’.
It’s why Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was republished with all the racial epithets removed, even though the book is explicitly critical of the slave trade.
It’s why school libraries have removed Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), following complaints about ‘racist, homophobic or misogynistic language and themes’.
The attack on The Handmaid’s Tale is especially odd, given that it is well known as a mainstay of contemporary feminist literature.
The novel depicts a dystopian future in which women are reduced to broodmares for the ruling class. They are forced to live according to the perverted ideology of those in power, and have no freedom to speak the truth.
It is no accident that it is set in New England – Atwood described The Handmaid’s Tale as her ‘take on American Puritanism’. But not even its feminist credentials have saved The Handmaid’s Tale from the all-consuming lunacy of this new purity culture. Atwood’s interest in the era comes from a family connection. Her novel is dedicated to Mary Webster, an ancestor who was hanged for being a witch in 1683 but survived the execution.
The New Puritans of today may not be hanging people who fail to conform, but they certainly embody the ideological fervour The Handmaid’s Tale explores.
The Puritans of the 17th Century sought to refashion society in accordance with their own beliefs, but they were deep thinkers who were aware of their fallibility.
By contrast, the New Puritans seem to go about their business with a narcissistic lack of self-doubt. They have simplistically divided the world into sinners and saints, and presumed they ought to be grouped among the latter.
Then, as now, bad ideas are propped up by elites. We are living through a frenzy of conformity, in which the opinions of a minority of activists are falsely presented by parts of the media, political and corporate classes as though they reflect an established consensus. Some politicians and academics may struggle to define the word ‘woman’, but who among us does not understand the differences between males and females?
Worse still, these modern witchhunts blind us to an obvious truth: that economic inequality is the most glaring social injustice.
This used to be a priority for those claiming to be on the Left, but the movement has become infected with identity politics. ‘Social justice’ is a game played by the affluent, just the latest way to maintain their power in society.
To uphold liberal values in this climate has become a risky endeavour, but it is only the silence of the majority that makes it so.
Even after his experiences in the Soviet gulags, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was able to reflect on the possibility that, had more people spoken out, the atrocities might have been avoided. ‘Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself,’ he wrote.
This was also a key concern of Arthur Miller during the McCarthy years – that powerful people remained silent so as not to be themselves accused. When bad ideas spread unchecked, they take on an illusion of incontrovertibility, and when figures of authority are captured by dangerous ideologies, resistance becomes a feat of courage few attempt.
The first to be hanged at Salem was Bridget Bishop. As she stood in court, the girls accusing her writhed and screamed as if possessed, claiming Bishop ‘did oftentimes very grievously Pinch them, Choak them, Bite them, and Afflict them’.
One girl, Susanna Sheldon, insisted she had witnessed Bishop suckling a snake. Other villagers testified that she had urged them to sign the Devil’s book. Ridiculous claims, even to a God-fearing community like the Puritans of New England. Yet few dared to challenge them. The New Puritans are the clergy for the digital age – an elite class that claims to know what is best for unlettered plebians.
They scour social media for prey, such as the author J.K. Rowling.
And as the New Puritans gain momentum, and as their power increases, it has become apparent that to ignore them will allow their dominance. They will deny biological reality and threaten anyone who doesn’t acquiesce.
They will bully people in the name of compassion, promote division and call it progressive, and rehabilitate a new form of racism under the guise of tolerance. They will insist on fabricating realities that correspond with their own emotional states and couch their nebulous theories in obfuscation.
They will use inflammatory language to misrepresent others’ concerns, accuse them of ‘erasing’ people’s existence, or committing acts of ‘violence’ through speech.
They will claim there is no objective truth, but demand we all acknowledge the truth of their ‘lived experience’.
They will carry on feeding the far Right by elevating identity politics and claim to be opposing fascism through authoritarian methods. And if anyone suggests their demands should be subject to discussion or debate, they will not hesitate to brand them a bigot.
When this happens, it is our responsibility to restate the case for liberal values. It will be a long, uncomfortable, but necessary process, like setting a broken bone. Along the way, we should defend those targets of bullying, whether they are attacked for what they have said or what they refuse to say. We should never be intimidated.
The desire for a quiet life is understandable, but surely we have reached the point where the keys of the kingdom must be wrenched back.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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