Mr. President . . .

 As a man of years, I’m embarrassed for you, Mr. President. I know what it’s like when you feel scattered; your sentences find themselves in search of a paragraph. Those who put you in this position for their political purposes are to be admonished not only for the disservice to you, a supposed revered compatriot but also to our country. Nothing seems to be beyond these seditious Democrat enablers. Not even the decency to avoid their mentally challenged candidate, now President, from ridicule in displaying overt incompetency in our country's service. It's painful for me, even as an ardent Conservative proponent, to watch our President crumble before our national eyes and those of the world.

Drunk With Power

It makes you stop and think: why are they surrounding themselves with fences, razor wire, and the National Guard?  What are they hatching that they fear will kindle the fires of revolt?  They are talking in alarming fascist terms: suppression of opposition speech, the jailing of not just a handful of insurgents, but thousands of conservatives; they are pushing for gun control, seeking to not only consolidate power but to assure one-party rule in perpetuity.  Emboldened by their success in bending the rules to install an impaired president and hammer through pork-laden legislation, they may feel that nothing stands in their way. They are drunk with power, as all their progressive dreams are there for the taking. 

No Free Lunch

If it were not for a violation of parliamentary procedure that voided its inclusion, we would be adding a new dimension to that old axiom, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Hidden within the $1.9 Trillion Covid Relief Bill passed by the House resided yet another preposterous Democrat proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.  Interesting in that a body of elected officials, the majority of whom have never worked in the private sector let alone ever run a business, are essentially telling business owners how to run their businesses.  Absurd. You should know if this indecent proposal was acted upon what the ramification would have been, who would be most adversely affected? The service industry, particularly restaurants that are currently reeling under the yoke of pandemic related shutdowns.  It would be,Welcome America, to the era of the 50-dollar sandwich.

 The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and has been the standard since 2009.  In the restaurant industry tipped workers, such as waitstaff and bartenders, may be paid a sub-minimum wage as low as $2.13 an hour.  

Appalling, shrieked the liberals! But little known is that if the employee fails to reach minimum wage with tip subsidy, the employer is required by law to make up the difference.  Granted, this can create a roller coaster of income troughs and valleys but servers fare well under this system. 

Mr. Swift’s college age nieces are known to bring home $800 a night on busy weekend shifts at more upscale establishments, and gentleman waiters at his white tablecloth haunts in the city have retired well to their lavish homes in seaside communities. And how much of this cash reward is actually reported on income tax returns or is subject to creative accounting?  Who wouldn’t enjoy a tax-free revenue stream? Not a bad deal.

The restaurant industry is not for the faint of heart, and proprietors operate on a slim profit margin.  Rent, insurance, licensing, equipment, food spoilage, and staff salaries all take a huge bite out of the bottom line. Throw in horrific hours of operation, dealing with a fickle public, and managing a staff of mostly twenty-something malcontents, and the risk often outweighs the benefit.  Once a restaurant gets past it’s first year in business, the failure rate tends to drop, but still, according to Cornell University, 26.15% will close their doors before their first anniversary.  The median lifespan of a restaurant startup with fewer than 5 employees based on US Bureau of Labor Statistics is 3.75 years.  According to Forbes, the larger the restaurant, the greater the chance of success, yet the failure rate overall in a CNBC study “seemed to settle at around 60%.”  Yet, here we are in the midst of a pandemic where 1 in 5 restaurants have closed their doors, many forever, average revenue for those that remain open is down as much as 20%, and our government is seeking to increase their overhead.  Genius. 

As the owner of Joe’s Diner in Phoenix observed in a Wall Street Journal article: “Dang if they don’t kick us when we are down.”

The WSJ reports that the wage increase would have the effect of increasing direct labor costs by $5 to $10 an hour. 

Consequences of such an increase in operating costs would result in more restaurant closures, or at the minimum, cost cutting measures that strike at the largest operating cost, and terminate workers.  Again, in that same WSJ article, the CBO reports that raising the federal minimum wage could deliver raises for up to 27 million workers, lifting 900,000 of them above the poverty threshold but at the cost of 1.4 million jobs. And what about other effects downstream?  Will restaurant patrons respond to higher prices on the menu by lowering the traditional tip scale? And armed with the knowledge that the full time waitstaff is being paid at a rate that equals $30000 a year, will diners feel less inclined to fork over an additional 18% in gratuity, especially after being gouged for that 8 ounce sirloin? So add it up: increased cost of items on the menu, and a tip inflated by that increased tab will result in a reduced tip or, here’s a novel idea: let’s stay in.  Reduced traffic, reduced revenue, closed business. And what about the quality of service? With a guaranteed income, and potentially facing a public less likely to reward you for merely doing your job, will the quality of service decline proportionately now that the server isn’t required to grovel for tips? And how about the other long term workers on your payroll that have been loyal and worked their way up to a higher salary? How is it fair that a new worker will start at $15 an hour when the old battle-axe, who has been toiling in the trenches for years working her way up to $10 an hour, will receive the same $15 an hour as the new recruits? She’s going to want more and she has a valid argument in her favor.  Ka-ching!  Did you hear that?  That’s the sound of your profit margin getting squeezed.

We can see what the result would be, like all the other socialist proposals coming out of Washington: we will become Europe, where dining out is a rare event, the dominion of the wealthy, and an expensive proposition at that. The statistics will worsen, where larger restaurants will stay afloat, but the smaller mom-and-pop eateries, the places that are affordable, unique in offering what is often adventurous ethnic cuisine, the places that give a neighborhood charm, will become few and far between.  And ironically, who owns these smaller start-ups? Immigrants and people of diverse backgrounds, precisely the folks that Democrats claim to protect.  NPR interviewed an Hispanic restaurant owner in Boston yesterday, unable to make ends meet in this era of pandemic- forced shutdowns and reduced in-person dining capacity, and now expected to face a $15 minimum wage: “I can’t charge $50 for a sandwich”. We came close to that litany becoming a reality! 

The Point

So what are we to make of all this, my previous six posts: David Frum, a Republican, espousing his views on dismantling the Republic. Arguing to install mob rule as the new order, lamenting the fact that if we had only abolished those inconvenient impediments to majority rule like the Senate, the judicial branch and the Electoral College, we could have installed the right choice, America’s choice to the presidency. And that would have been Hillary. You can’t be serious. And Joe Walsh, the conservative, afflicted by all accounts with Trump derangement syndrome, reversing his course mid-career to pare his conservativism down to a “fiscal-only” status, while supporting the Democrat party line on social issues, including support for Joe Biden. How would losing those three Supreme Court appointments have satisfied the Republican base or supported conservative values moving forward? Is there any true conservative that would trade those three seats for four years of Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office, which, by all accounts, would have been Obama 3.0 much like what we are seeing now from the Biden Administration? The short answer is no.  David Frum is no more a Republican than Joe Walsh is a conservative. And by identifying as such, they are merely providing the leftist media with trained seals to roll out and perform on command as an example of what they would like all Republicans to be: progressives. So we should take this media exercise for what it is: yet another example of an attack from the left with a new tactic, a new spin.  This time it’s a trusted voice whispering in your ear, one of your own leading you basket of deplorables to the promised land and enlightenment. A brief review of Mr. Frum’s writings would lead anyone to conclude he is certainly not a Republican.  At best he’s a RINO and he barely qualifies for that. And regarding Joe Walsh, bitter over the lack of Republican Party support, enraged that over 50% of registered Republicans would support Trump as a third party candidate, is no more than an opportunist in seeing a social liberal stance as a way to advance his career in the media in a progressive market. He will certainly not endear himself to conservatives with his vehement anti-Trump rants and violent swerve to the left on social issues. We see you for what you are.  

 

 

A Message For Messrs Frum and Walsh

 Hopefully you have read my previous posts: A message to David Frum and Joe Walsh of which I spoke: Democrats vote en bloc, they stick to their talking points and they never, ever criticize other Democrats.  And when was the last time you witnessed the democrats engaging in educating rather than riling up their base while engaging in respectful debate with conservatives? Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and that cast of political savages treating their conservative colleagues with respect? By respectful, I have to assume you mean like the way Democrats respectfully treated Brett Kavanaugh? Talk about an alternate reality.  So exactly how did this go down, Fred, Joe?  Did The Atlantic and TIME magazines offer you blood money to sucker punch Rush on his deathbed while giving you an opportunity to plug your respective magazine and talk show? Sure looks like it.

 

And There Is Joe Walsh

 Yes, I know my conservative wrath of late has dwelled on Mr. Frum’s editorializing in The Atlanic-, let me switch my attention to Joe Walsh, a bird of the same feather: Republican, a former social worker, who served one term in the House of Representatives representing Illinois’ 8th congressional district in 2011-2013, Presidential candidate in 2020, and conservative talk radio host.  On the day Rush Limbaugh died, Joe had the phenomenally poor taste to pen an article for TIME magazine entitled “Rush Limbaugh Leaves Behind a Conservative Movement No Longer Interested in Truth. That Alarms Me as a Conservative”.  Who would do such a thing?  Certainly not a Republican.  But maybe a Republican with an axe to grind.  “He helped make our nation more divided and polarized than it had been in years.  This is Rush Limbaugh’s legacy”.  How sweet a tribute.  He admits to being a listener but “stopped after a couple of years” because he “got bored”.  Apparently Rush couldn’t hold the interest of this enormous intellect. He details Rush’s career “trajectory to making millions”, perhaps with a note of envy, but criticizes him for “much less focus on the conservative agenda”. “His daily three hours on the air became all about attacking and mocking the left and I grew to not believe a lot of what he was saying.  His problems with the truth were my giant red flag”.  His “show to be little more than shtick.” Joe, on the other hand, does not “view conservative talk radio as entertainment. I view it as a serious mission to change hearts and minds and compel people to action” he said.  Such a pillar of virtue, this Joe Walsh.  

A David Frum Ache

As you have no doubt gathered by now Mr Frum of The Atlantic fame had struck a nerve with me. My diatribe continues: Although he concedes that the American system of government has evolved, and by evolved he means it has been diluted to his satisfaction, Mr. Frum levels the accusation that it remains anti-majoritarian, distrusting the “unpropertied” majority. Sticking in his craw was a rant by Utah Senator Mike Lee who last year tweeted out “We’re not a democracy…Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish.  Rank democracy can thwart that”. Mr. Frum belittles Mr. Lee for reducing Madisonian theory into “so few characters”, not that Twitter allows more, but the fact that we are indeed a Constitutional Republic with safeguards to preserve us from mob rule tends to enrage the left when it becomes inconvenient.  Say, when Trump was elected after Hillary captured the popular vote. Yet the fear of mob rule, or tyranny of the masses, has been an essential tenet in American government and is not strictly an American born concern, nor the exclusive property of the framers.  Alexis de Toqueville, a French aristocrat and political scientist, studied the American experiment and concluded “a decision which bases its claim to rule upon numbers, not a rightness of excellence” is indeed an “abandonment of rationality”.  Similar arguments by Herbert Spencer in 1851 concluded that “there is evidently a limit to the power of the majority” and John Stuart Mill in 1859 who stated that there “is an inherent weakness to majority rule in which the majority of an electorate pursues exclusively its own objectives at the expense of minority factions”. Even Abraham Lincoln, recently hijacked by the left, reacted to incidents of mob mentality: “Having ever regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation”.  He went on: “when the “mobocratic spirit” takes root among good men, government may then be effectually broken down and destroyed”. Never violate the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others”.  The “Penman of the Constitution”, statesman Gouverneur Morris said “I see with fear and trembling that we may be under the worst of all possible dominions….the dominion of a riotous mob”. Black Lives matter protesters and Pennsylvania board of elections, take note. So in essence, our founders were “threading the needle between liberty and order” based on their learned observations of history in Europe where governments began as monarchies or dictatorships which, in cases where they evolved into democracies, were subject to the fluctuations and vagaries of mob rule which ultimately devolved into governments run by monarchs and dictators in an attempt to restore order.  Madison himself warned in the Federalist No. 51 of the inherent dangers of “tyranny of the majority”.  And in a quote perhaps attributed to Ben Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner”. “But it takes Mr. Frum three pages before the point of this exercise rears its ugly head: Donald Trump.  Mr. Frum is consumed by Trump.  He rails against the fact that Trump was elected with only 46.1 percent of the national vote stating he “was elected not by the preferences of the American people but by the anti-majoritarian mechanics of the Electoral College”that “installed a flimflam man in the Oval Office”.   There you have it. A Flimflam man.  Really? He goes on to use everything from the insurrection on the Capitol to the repeal of Obama’s DACA executive order and rescinding of Obama’s joining the Paris Accord, which imposed crippling green regulations on American industry, as evidence of our poorly crafted government that allows the Senate to be controlled by a minority that represents 41 million less people than the majority.  This flawed government is what he claims forced Obama to resort to the pen to save us. And “control” is perhaps a misrepresentation.  The Senate minority has the ability to block legislation but that is certainly not putting them in control. The system is in place to foster bipartisanship, compromise and to prevent the majority from ramming through blatantly one-sided legislation laden with pork.  But you know that, Mr. Frum, the Democrats do the same damned thing when they are in the minority.  It’s apparently only inconvenient when the other side does it.  And glossing over these topics you use as evidence, which are themselves fodder for a hundred posts, is insulting to your audience. Or more likely, just preaching to the choir. Where is DACA supported by a majority of Americans?