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This summer, thousands of fast food workers around the nation walked off the job, demanding to be paid $15 per hour for work that traditionally pays about half that. As Wendy's striker Kaye Smith told NY1 recently, "I have to live with my mom ... because I wouldn't be able to support myself on $7.25, you know?" We can debate whether her living arrangements are Wendy's responsibility any more than they are that of New York's landlords or grocers. Either way, Smith's is a novel concept of unskilled jobs in America. Fast food wages have never been expected to support...

President Obama’s surprise decision last summer to use executive authority to halt the deportation of some immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children won raves from advocates stung by the defeat of similar legislative proposals in Congress. Since then, the administration has granted more than 400,000 of those young immigrants temporary waivers to live and work in the United States, making Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals one of largest legalization efforts in decades.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was on Morning Joe today to discuss amnesty. The far left New York Senator told the audience there has to be amnesty: “I think we’re going to get a bill and I think Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell know it’s the right thing to do… I think the economic Republicans are for this strongly… We’ve always said, and that includes the Gang of Eight, one thing, that bottom line is there has to be some path to citizenship.” Thank you Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

How activist misinformation wastes time, money, and harms AmericansDavulcuHealth activists, nutrition nannies, medical paternalists, and just plain old quacks regularly conjure up a variety of menaces that are supposedly damaging the health of Americans. Their scares ranging from the decades-long campaign against fluoridation to worries that saccharin causes cancer to the ongoing hysteria over biotech crops to fears of lead in lipstick. The campaigners’ usual “solution” is to demand that regulators ban the offending substance or practice. Here are five especially egregious examples.5. Americans should consume no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day, in order to reduce everybody's...

With streaming television becoming more and more popular, and providers like Aereo making an end-run around cable and satellite providers, a lot of attention is being paid to the future of bundled cable. In a world of growing choices and a weak, jobless economy, how long can something last that charges customers a ton of money for dozens of channels they never watch? Bundled cable is, in my opinion, one of the greatest hustles ever perpetuated against the American people. The worst part is how it works as a kind of affirmative-action program for left-wing programming that likely wouldn’t survive...

When Sarah Palin first warned about death panels and ObamaCare, the president and his allies were quick to laugh. Sending grandma off to an icy, watery grave was the stuff of Inuit legends, never the intention of liberals fighting to pass a law that could and would have serious implications for America’s senior citizens, despite the AARP’s inexplicable endorsement. Reading Charles Blow’s column in the New York Times yesterday, however, one can appreciate the origins of Palin’s concerns. Considering progressives’ descriptions of children as burdens, not blessings, it’s understandable that they would feel similarly about another “useless” subsection of our...

The action follows concerns raised by privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, after details of the technology used in the bins emerged in the online magazine Quartz. Mr Memari told the BBC that the devices had only recorded "extremely limited, encrypted, aggregated and anonymised data" and that the current technology was just being used to monitor local footfall, in a similar way as a web page monitors traffic. He added that more capabilities could be developed in the future, but that the public would be made aware of any changes The bins, which are located in the Cheapside area of...

Twenty-six cents almost cost Sergio Branco his life. Twenty-six cents. Most of us could scrape that up from under our couch cushions or on the floor of a car. Sergio Branco has 26 cents, too. The question was whether or not he would be permitted to pay it. Branco, a 33-year-old father of three, was a truck driver for Russell Reid, a Keasbey-based waste-management company. "In his spare time, he would play with his children, liked having barbecues and people over for gatherings," his cousin Sandy Marujo said. "He is a big kid at heart." In January, Branco wasn’t himself....

August 12, 2013 (LifeIssues) - Let’s be honest. To truly be successful advocates for life, we can’t just spend our time “preaching to the choir.� We must step outside our comfort zone to reach those who are on the other side. This is no easy task when you’re faced with individuals who hurl obscenities, act combative or are willfully defiant. But if we’re to change hearts and minds, we must first try to understand the motives of those who are for abortion. Not all pro-abortion advocates are the same, but I believe there are five general traits that exist...

Willie Robertson BATON ROUGE, LA, August 12, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The star of the top-rated reality show on television, Duck Dynasty, may make Louisiana's pro-life voters happy, happy, happy. Willie Robertson is considering running for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, according to political insiders. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Rodney Alexander, a Republican who has ties to the multimillionaire duck call entrepreneurs, so he can take a post in Governor Bobby Jindal's administration. The bandana-clad Willie is known for his role as the down-to-earth one on the highest rated program in A&E's network history. Willie...

President Barack Obama is taking his economic message on the road next week with a bus tour in New York and Pennsylvania. The announcement of the bus tour was made as Obama and the first family takes an eight-day vacation on Martha's Vineyard, a resort island off the coast of Massachusetts. Specific stops for the bus tour in New York and Pennsylvania were not announced.

The United States ran a budget deficit in July, although government revenues increased from a year earlier due to tax hikes and a strengthening economy, a report from the Treasury showed on Monday. The U.S. government spent $98 billion more than it took in last month, with the deficit driven by spending on healthcare programs, pensions for the elderly and the military. One major reason is that Washington ratcheted austerity efforts by raising tax rates, which has helped tax receipts. It has also slashed the federal budget, although in July total spending rose to $298 billion from $254 billion in...

Hospitals across the nation are being swept up in the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care and drive up costs. The consolidations are being driven by a confluence of powerful forces, not least of which is President Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act. That law, many experts say, is transforming the economics of health care and pushing a growing number of hospitals into the arms of suitors. The changes are unfolding with remarkable speed. Two big for-profit hospital chains, Community...

<p>"New York to Beijing, China, in about 2 hours," said Daryl Oster, founder of ET3. "That's 8,000 miles, or 4,000 miles per hour. L.A. to New York would be in 45 minutes, with a likely speed of 2,000 mph."</p> <p>But because Musk has an established track record of developing and turning ideas that sound extreme into thriving real-world products and companies, his Hyperloop idea is not being dismissed.</p>

Following in the well-worn footsteps of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns, this week the Council on Foreign Relations released a memo urging the Obama administration to disregard the will of the American people and Congress and unilaterally enact a series of gun controls. Entitled, A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas, and written by CFR Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies, Julia F. Sweig, the memo pins the ills of Central and South America on U.S. gun owners and urges the president to curb our rights to...

I was out in the desert this weekend at our second home, where, borrowing the words from an old song "nothing is heard of a discouraging word" except if someone is discussing their round of golf. While waking my dogs for their morning ride in my golf cart I got to 'thinking of what's going on in this country and all I could think of was What Happened? And when did it happen? Let me start in the middle of this discussion to try to illustrate my point. This part of my essay should be subtitled: “me and the Presidents”...

MANY American newspapers were doomed to decline from the moment the Internet arrived on personal computers. But The Washington Post, just sold off unexpectedly to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, was never really one of them. This is something the sentimental send-offs for the Graham family and its stewardship tended to ignore. As disruptive as the Internet has been for journalism, The Post was uniquely positioned to succeed amid the chaos. And it has struggled, in part, because the paper’s leaders failed to step into an online-era role that should have been theirs for the taking. The nature of that role is...

Buried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama’s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change — namely, not at all: In an agency-wide address to employees Aug. 1, (Interior Secretary Sally) Jewell took the unusual step of suggesting that no one working for her should challenge the idea that human activity is driving recent warming. “I hope there are no climate-change deniers in the Department of Interior,” she said. The address does not appear to be posted on the department’s website, so the Washington Examiner can only go by the...

What's the real story for the overall trend in new jobless claims in the U.S.? It has been several months since we last featured an update of our statistical analysis of the trends in new jobless claims in the U.S., which is mostly by design on our part. When we last left off, the overall trend, which we identified as Trend L, was largely flat, but characterized by extreme volatility, with unusual outliers in the data popping up with an alarming frequency. Some of that was understandable. We saw the state of California mishandle its processing of new jobless claims,...

President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right.Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010.They despise this unjust law because it extends the power of the IRS into the domestic affairs of other nations. That’s an understandable source of conflict, which should be easy to understand. Wouldn’t all of us get upset, after all, if the French government or Russian government wanted to impose their laws on things that take place within our borders?But it’s not just foreign...

At Accuracy in Academia and our big sister group Accuracy in Media we endeavor to give both of those institutions constructive criticism. Ergo, it amuses us to see them turn on each other. Usually, reporters speed-dial their favorite tenured professors when they want a learned sound bite. Professors, in turn, hector their students to read the New York Times. Completing the symbiotic relationship, journalism schools train journalists. Thus, the powers-that-be at the Poynter Institute must have reacted with shock and awe when they found out how little assignment editors thought of that training: Today, 96 percent of journalism educators believe...

Via Email, Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets quantifies various growth and investment scenarios. Pettis maintains 6% or higher growth is not plausible and that even 3-4% growth may be optimistic. What follows is from Pettis ... Consumption and Investment Growth Under Rebalancing Under specified rebalancing assumptions for China it is possible to calculate arithmetically the annual growth rate for consumption and investment under different GDP growth scenarios. This allows us to decide whether these scenarios are plausible or not. Table: GDP, consumption, and investment growth in a rebalancing China To read the table, let us start by assuming, as...

Speaking to a group of Veterans, President Barack Obama tried to make his case for ending the sequester. “We’ve got these reckless, across-the-board budget cuts called the sequester that are hitting a lot of folks hard,” Obama said. One can only assume these are the same “across the board” and “reckless” cuts that he proposed as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, and let go into place by refusing to compromise on entitlement spending early this year. The President went on to say that without the repeal of these “reckless” cuts (which were passed with bi-partisan approval, and signed...

Fannie and Freddie have been in operation for decades without problems until recently. Fannie began in 1938 as a quasi-governmental agency making affordable homes available to people by making the financing easier and funds more readily available by establishing a secondary market for mortgages. Previously banks had held onto their mortgages in a system called portfolio mortgages and were made mostly to their own account holders. With the homes as collateral, the banks then lent out that same money again to other local borrowers. If you remember the scene from It's a Wonderful Life when there is a run on...

Lovers of Big Government and apologists for debt like Paul Krugman have tried to paint Milton Friedman as a contradiction. They say that Friedman’s insight that more Fed intervention might have mitigated the Great Depression is inconsistent with his view that the Depression would have been less severe without the Fed. Krugman can typically be discounted because his partisanship diminishes his perceptiveness. It is, however, disappointing when National Review joins the fray and publishes opinion claiming that Friedman “would likely have supported a much more aggressive monetary response to our economic downturn.” Professor Ivan Pongracic of Hillsdale College explains that...

Gen. Mark Welsh, the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, has completed a secret visit to Israel, where was the guest of the Commander of the Israel Air Force, Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel. snip The officials discussed a number of topics including mutual security challenges in light of the regional security situation. Welsh and Eshel also discussed plans to further strengthen the cooperation between the U.S. Air Force and the Israel Air Force, according to the IDF. The meeting, which reportedly was kept secret at the request of the United States, comes in advance of a scheduled visit by...

What if one of the princes of Silicon Valley, having seen and sized up so many of the rulers of the Potomac has concluded that, after all, these ladies and gentlemen just aren't that talented. No FDRs or Reagans there these days, no George Marshalls, Kennans or Kissingers moving the pieces around the global chessboard in the way that tech titans routinely do, and usually successfully. Perhaps Jeff Bezos has concluded: "I can do that. I can run the country." There are only five things worth having: family, friends, grace, money and power. Most folks can have at least tone...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) - U.S. stock futures were pointing to a much lower opening Monday as indications that Japan's economic growth is slowing offer one less reason for investors to extend this year's rally, already the biggest since 1997. Japan's gross domestic product grew an annualized 2.6% in the second- quarter, according to a government report, short of 3.6% average forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey. "The weaker than expected GDP print puts more pressure on the government's decision over whether to hike sales taxes in April 2014," Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note...

It wouldn’t be summer really if America didn’t get to witness another lavish Martha’s Vineyard vacation by Barack Obama and his posse. Maybe we should just be thankful that he didn’t first ruin American credit like he did in 2011 before departing for the island off of the Massachusetts’ Horn of Plenty. Hotel rates in the summertime on the island range from $250 to $2100 per night. That’s more even than good seats at an NFL football game cost. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against a president going on vacation. But when Americans face one of the worst job...

This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (August-2013 12-16 edition)----   Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice  If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please do Post your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sitesPing list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me I might ping you to other interesting economic threads a few...

Chanting "sí se puede!" – "Yes we can!" – with their fists and hands raised high, 1,000 people packed Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on Sunday to cheer 11 pilgrims who will march 285 miles from Sacramento to Bakersfield calling for a change to immigration law.

Four years ago, a startup car company announced with great fanfare big plans for the Mississippi Delta: Using money from foreign investors and other sources, it would build a massive auto plant to churn out a new line of energy-efficient cars and bring thousands of jobs to the area. It seemed like a win for everyone involved. … Today, the place where the plant was to be remains mostly vacant except for a temporary construction trailer. The company—GreenTech Automotive Inc.—is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the probe is reverberating well beyond Mississippi’s borders, bringing scrutiny to...

The cost of weather-related power outages is high and rising as storms grow more severe and the U.S. electric grid gets older, according to an Obama Administration report that calls for increased spending on the nation’s electric power system. Power outages cost the economy $18 billion to $33 billion per year, according to the report, a figure that has been rising steadily over the past 20 years. That can rise to $40 billion to $75 billion in years with severe storms such as 2008’s Hurricane Ike and last year’s Superstorm Sandy. …

The rise of ‘smart gun’ technology, which utilizes an RFID interface to allow for both the government and the manufacturer to remotely render the gun useless at any time, is the upcoming new tactic used by anti-Constitution control freaks in the effort to take away legal firearms from the hands of law-abiding citizens.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) And these smart guns are coming much sooner than you think. TriggerSmart, the manufacturer of the Orwellian weapons that already exist in various European regions thanks to branding that smart guns are the ‘safer’ alternative to real weapons, hopes to start selling smart guns within the United...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t just want to limit the use of cigarettes – but electronic cigarettes as well. In a newly leaked draft of three tobacco-related bills soon to be voted on by the NYC City Council, the new definition of “tobacco products” under city law would be changed to include e-cigarettes and related components, parts and accessories. If the ordinances pass, the display of e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco would be banned in retail stores. Also, while tobacco and menthol flavored e-cigarettes would still be available in retail stores, all other flavored e-cigarettes could only be sold...

Prez brings home bacon in midst of Chicago corruption probeA no-bid contract to assess a $48 million Kenyan youth program has been awarded to the University of Chicago, where President Barack Obama taught constitutional law for 12 years. This discovery coincides with the federal embezzlement indictment of Quinshaunta R. Golden, former key aide to Eric E. Whitaker, the one-time U. of C. Medical Center executive vice president and former colleague of Michelle Obama.

A drunken driver and her passenger who crashed into a power pole have the right to sue the power company, the Washington State Supreme Court decided. The case came after the drunken driver’s passenger filed a lawsuit saying the power pole was improperly placed. In summer 2005, Nathan Lowman and Jennifer Wilbur were drinking at the Country Corner Bar and Grill in Skagit County. Wilbur left along a curvy two-lane road with a 25 mph limit. The State Patrol said she was traveling at least 34 mph when her car left the roadway and hit a power pole. Court documents...

Sheilah O’Donnel tells herself that her new home, a townhouse in a development in Chevy Chase, Md., just a stone’s throw from a Safeway, isn’t really all that bad. Sure, it’s near a gas station. And the front window, with its cheerily upholstered cushions, overlooks a dreary parking lot. And yes, it’s kind of small — “an apartment,” O’Donnel, who is 44, sometimes says bitterly, when she’s reminded of her former life with her ex-husband in their custom-built, six-bedroom home. But then again, it’s perfectly maintained and impeccably furnished, and most important, it’s rented with her own money, from the...

The marginal economic strength that was described in the most recent GDP release from Washington has caused many to double down on their belief that the Federal Reserve will begin tapering Quantitative Easing sometime later this year. While I believe that is a fantasy given our economy's extreme dependence on QE, market observers should have learned long ago that the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) initial GDP estimates can't be trusted. A perusal of their subsequent GDP revisions in the last five years reveals a clear trend: They are almost twice as likely to revise initial estimates down rather than...

George E. Leake turns 93 years old today, August 11, 2013. The two contributions of George’s life that are most significant to me personally are his daughter, my wife of 35 years, and the freedoms that I share with three-hundred-million fellow Americans. George served in the United States Air Force during World War II. He worked ground operations in the Pacific theater in support of General MacArthur’s island march toward the Empire of Japan. The train ride to San Francisco from his home farm in Delaware segued to ships that transported George to bombed out airfields in the Philippines. The...

In the just-released Spring 2013 issue of Harvard Health Policy Review, I have an article titled “ObamaCare: The Plot Thickens.” The article examines the IRS rule that purportedly implements ObamaCare’s tax credits, but actually violates that statute by taxing, borrowing, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars contrary to Congress’ explicit instructions. The article is a less-technical version of my Health Matrix article (coauthored with Jonathan Adler, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.”) Here’s an excerpt: In broad daylight, the Internal Revenue Service is attempting to tax, borrow, and spend [roughly] $800 billion—contrary to...

Tensions are rising in Japan over radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a breach that has defied the plant operator's effort to gain control. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday called the matter “an urgent issue” and ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up, following an admission by Tokyo Electric Power Company that water is seeping past an underground barrier it attempted to create in the soil. The head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force told Reuters the situation was an "emergency."

Mark Russell, whose nearly three years as editor of the Orlando Sentinel were marked by coverage of the Trayvon Martin case and the hazing death of a marching band member at Florida A&M University, was ousted Wednesday in a reorganization that eliminated his job. Russell was replaced by Avido Khahaifa [pdf], a corporate manager who is also African American and for whom the editor's job will be an additional role. Both men were at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week in nearby Kissimmee, Fla...........

On Friday, president Obama announced a plan to reform NSA surveillance. Don't expect much of anything to come out of it. It's a dog and pony show designed to make people feel better as opposed to any solid measures as to how much data government collects on everyone. Here are excerpts from the above article with my comments interspersed. Independent: President Obama told a packed room of journalists at the White House Friday afternoon that he will work to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act - the provision which currently allows the federal government’s intelligence agencies to collect domestic...

Republicans relish the idea of impoverished people across the nation dying slow agonizing deaths without access to healthcare. At least, that’s what our President believes. Holding a press conference right before his luxurious vacation in Martha’s Vineyard (which I hear is fantastic this time of year) the President said that “the one unifying principle the Republican Party has, is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health-care.” The comment was absurd, disingenuous, and indicative of Liberal’s inability to defend their ideas. The comment was made in regards to three conservative Republicans who are leading an effort to essentially defund...

The bids of Larry Summers and Janet Yellen to replace Ben Bernanke just took a hit. Ron Paul, the famously libertarian politician and former presidential candidate, has his own choice for the next chair of the Federal Reserve, and it isn't Summers or Yellen. Paul's pick for the next Fed head: No one. Here's what Paul had to say via a spokesperson: "Dr. Paul would prefer we get rid of central economic planning via a central bank. All mentioned candidates believe that one person or a committee has the knowledge to dictate the correct interest rate and rate of growth...

Taco Bell says it’s expanding its small test of waffle tacos, as it prepares to take its breakfast menu national sometime next year. The fast-food chain says the waffle taco, which includes scrambled eggs, sausage and a side of syrup, was the top seller during breakfast hours at the five Southern California restaurants where they were tested earlier this year. Now the company wants to see how it would fare on a bigger scale; the waffle tacos and a full breakfast menu will be expanded to about 100 restaurants in Fresno, Calif.; Omaha, Neb.; and Chattanooga, Tenn., starting Thursday.....

President Obama took his case for ending the sequester to hundreds of disabled veterans Saturday, saying he protected their benefits from the “reckless” cuts to the federal budget but suggesting next year might be different. “It’s hurting our military. I made it clear that your veteran’s benefits are exempt from this year’s sequester,” the president said to the applause of hundreds at the Disabled American Veterans' convention in Orlando, Fla. “But I want to tell you going forward the best way to protect the VA care you have earned is to get rid of this sequester altogether.” The president...

Coal industry lobbyists and politicians have been urging the Obama administration to ease up on its regulatory agenda and craft carbon dioxide emission rules that would allow the coal industry to survive. All the while, reports indicate that hundreds of coal plants are slated to be shut down in the coming years. The unveiling of President Obama’s plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants earlier this summer stoked the fears of coal supporters who have already been hit hard by stricter environmental regulations. However, the industry is not going down without a fight. Coal lobbyists met with...

The newspaper business stinks Take a look at the product People don't read, they skim, Readers trust peers, not institutions Does anyone really "read" a newspaper anymore? Did they ever? (snip) According to Gallup, 55 percent of Americans get their news from TV, 21 percent from the Internet, and 6 percent from radio. Print? 9 percent. But no one is really talking about the product. Once you take the movie times (Fandango) and the classified ads (Craigslist) out of the paper, you're pretty much left with news stories. (OK, and the comics.) (snip) And those news stories haven't changed much....