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Three Thoughts On A Friday
Jul. 25th, 2014 09:55 amArmed Response
Comes news today that a hospital shooting in Pennsylvania was stopped when a doctor pulled out his own gun and shot the attacker. This does demonstrate that, yes, Virginia, armed citizens can interrupt mass shootings. Alas, only about 3% of Americans carry a gun, so this doesn't happen very often. ETA Not advocating more Americans carry a gun, merely noting that since most Americans don't, "good guys with guns" are scarce on the ground.
Reagan Republicans
I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Bush in 1988 and 1992. Since then, I've been trending Democratic. this article very accurately traces why.
Fast Food Wages
From various sources comes news that Elizabeth Warren announced that fast food workers deserved a "living wage." I'm all in favor of people making enough to live off of, and considering the US has the lowest minimum wage of the industrialized world, we could probably bump ours and not hurt anything.
Having said that, the real problem is thanks to the deindustrialization of the US (Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound") jobs that pay decent wages for non- and semi-skilled labor are scarce on the ground. The real fix is a change to industrial policy to pull those jobs back from overseas. Relatively small tariffs would, I think, be very helpful in that regard.
Comes news today that a hospital shooting in Pennsylvania was stopped when a doctor pulled out his own gun and shot the attacker. This does demonstrate that, yes, Virginia, armed citizens can interrupt mass shootings. Alas, only about 3% of Americans carry a gun, so this doesn't happen very often. ETA Not advocating more Americans carry a gun, merely noting that since most Americans don't, "good guys with guns" are scarce on the ground.
Reagan Republicans
I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Bush in 1988 and 1992. Since then, I've been trending Democratic. this article very accurately traces why.
Fast Food Wages
From various sources comes news that Elizabeth Warren announced that fast food workers deserved a "living wage." I'm all in favor of people making enough to live off of, and considering the US has the lowest minimum wage of the industrialized world, we could probably bump ours and not hurt anything.
Having said that, the real problem is thanks to the deindustrialization of the US (Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound") jobs that pay decent wages for non- and semi-skilled labor are scarce on the ground. The real fix is a change to industrial policy to pull those jobs back from overseas. Relatively small tariffs would, I think, be very helpful in that regard.
