February 15, 2015

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Mark Steyn updates us on the news.

I’m coming out of a week-and-a-half of sub-par health, and playing catch-up on the last few days’ news. Much of it is just new trees in the same old forest: the remorseless retreat of American power in the world – ie, “Yemen Rebels Seize U.S. Embassy Vehicles As Diplomats Flee“.

But some of it is almost too cute. In Paris, the street artist Combo has been beaten up by four “young people” who objected to his “Co-Exist” poster:

‘Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “It would only add fuel to the fire,” he told the French newspaper…

During a residency in Bayreuth, he grew his beard and started wearing the traditional Muslim dress—not because he was increasingly attracted to a more fundamentalist version of Islam, but, again, to disrupt established codes. To his friends asking him whether he was “going to jihad” in Lebanon, he answered, “I’m going to ji-art.”

“First I thought I was French, but I quickly understood that I was Arab, then beur (French slang for second and third generation North African), now I’m told I’m Muslim,” Combo continued, talking of the French des-integration.

Reclaiming the djellaba, the artist’s inclusive messages have cropped up all over Paris. One asked “did you know that Muslims finish their prayers with ‘Amen,’ like Jews and Christians?” Another read “In France, 50,000 Muslim soldiers protect our country.” ‘

But they beat the crap out of him anyway. They don’t know much about “ji-art”, but they know what they don’t like.

 

 

John Fund writes on the economic miracle that is Texas.

While the recent 50 percent drop in oil prices has taken some of the bluster out of Texas’s bragging, the state’s stats are still beyond impressive. Last month, it created 45,700 new jobs. Most of them were in parts of the diversified economy that aren’t related to energy. Texas continues to see solid job growth in trade and professional services as well as in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, between 2007 and 2014 — the period covering the recession and the slow recovery that followed — Texas created 1.4 million net new jobs. During the same period, the rest of the nation wound up losing 400,000 jobs. The falling nationwide unemployment rate is largely the function of people’s exiting the work force entirely.

Small wonder that in December, Canada’s Fraser Institute ranked Texas first of all the states in its level of economic freedom, as measured by the size of government, taxation, regulation, and the rule of law. Texas Public Policy Foundation Director of Policy Chuck DeVore says the study’s findings show that “Texas’s having America’s highest level of economic freedom is a strong confirmation that prosperity and freedom go hand-in-hand.”

Devore notes that critics of Texas often cite the fact that the jobs Texas creates often are entry-level — about 6 percent of the state’s hourly wage earners earned minimum wage in 2013. But that figure has been consistently dropping and obscures the fact that Texas is much more affordable than many states for those on the bottom of the income ladder.

“California has the third-highest cost of living, while Texas has the second-lowest,” says DeVore, a former California GOP state legislator who relocated to the LoneStarState. “A low-wage worker sees his money go a third further in Texas.”

One could even say that the high-tax, high-cost model of California and other states is a form of class warfare against their poorest residents.

 

 

Joel Kotkin adds fuel to the Texas fire. 

In the last decade, Texas emerged as America’s new land of opportunity — if you will, America’s America. Since the start of the recession, the LoneStarState has been responsible for the majority of employment growth in the country. Between November  2007 and November 2014, the United States gained  a net 2.1 million jobs, with 1.2 million alone in Texas.

Yet with the recent steep drop in oil prices, the Texas economy faces extreme headwinds that could even spark something of a downturn. A repeat of the 1980s oil bust isn’t likely, says Comerica Bank economist Robert Dye, but he expects much slower growth, particularly for formerly red-hot Houston, an easing of home prices and, likely, a slowdown of in-migration.

Some blue state commentators might view Texas’ prospective decline as good news. Some, like Paul Krugman, have spent years arguing that the state’s success has little to do with its much-touted business-friendly climate of light regulation and low taxes, but rather, simply mass in-migration by people seeking cheaper housing. Schadenfreude is palpable in the writings of progressive journalists like the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzik, who recently crowed that falling energy prices may finally “snuff out” the detested “Texas miracle.”

Such attitudes are short-sighted. It is unlikely that the American economy can sustain a healthy rate of growth without the kind of production-based strength that has powered Texas, as well as Ohio, North Dakota and Louisiana. …

 

 

Kevin Williamson posts what small business can do to fight the costs of obamacare.  

… Sometimes, you have to go full robot.

That’s basically what’s happening with San Francisco’s beloved Borderlands Books, a pilgrimage site of old-school nerdery specializing in science-fiction and fantasy literature. San Francisco is raising its minimum wage from $11.05/hour to $15/hour, and the owners of Borderlands, who already were barely able to make the shop a going concern, announced that they would have to close. The minimum-wage hike meant that the store was going to go from making a princely $3,000 a year to losing $25,000 a year. Of course, you’ll still be able to get your sci-fi and fantasy novels – from Amazon, or from another similar operation without the labor costs involved with running a conventional bookstore. Which is great if you’re Jeff Bezos, but kind of stinks if you’re the sort of sad character (ahem) who likes to lurk around in bookstores. I’m perfectly happy to see every Staples clerk replaced by something sold to Staples CEO Ronald Sargent by Jawas offering a deep corporate discount. But, damn it all, I like bookstores. (And if San Francisco continues raising its minimum wage, the robots are ready.)

In San Francisco, the people who were bemoaning the impending closure of Borderlands admitted sheepishly that they’d voted for the minimum-wage hike. “It’s not something that I thought would affect certain specific small businesses,” one customer said. “I feel sad.”

Yeah, Adam Smith feels sad, too, you dope.

Thick though they may be, you know what those economically illiterate San Francisco book-lovers aren’t? President of the United States of America. But President Obama does precisely the same thing: With Obamacare, he created powerful economic incentives for companies such as Staples to keep part-timers under 25 hours – and to hire part-timers rather than full-time employees – and now he complains when companies respond to those incentives. Naturally, he cites executive pay: “I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is,” he says, but affirms that he is confident that they can afford to run their business the way he wants them to run it.

Let’s apply some English-major math to that question. Ronald Sargent made just under $11 million a year at last report. Staples has about 83,000 employees. That means that if it cut its CEO’s pay to $0.00/annum, Staples would be able to fund about $2.61/week in additional wages or health-care benefits for each of its employees, or schedule them for an additional 22 minutes of work at the federal minimum wage. Which is to say, CEO pay represents a trivial sum — but the expenses imposed by Obamacare are not trivial. …

 

 

Michael Barone writes about the front page treatment given by the Washington Post to Scott Walker’s college years. Barone also notes the Post had no curiosity about obama’s college career.

Conservative and other commentators are having fun ridiculing the Washington Post for running a story about how Scott Walker dropped out of Marquette University (“questions linger”!) and so never graduated from college — something that has been widely known for many years and which Walker has never sought to conceal. The Post story did add some modestly interesting details, about how Walker was not endorsed by the student paper when he ran for student office, how he was habitually late and unprepared for French class — which, as Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle points out, tell us something about Walker at age 20 or far less than what we can easily learn about his career in public life today. (Confession: I was not a faithful attender of French classes in college, which I currently regret.)

Democrats like Howard Dean are suggesting that Walker’s non-graduate status raises questions as to whether he’s fit for the presidency. …

… In any case, I guess it’s useful for voters to have access to information about how presidential candidates were educated and what they did at school in their younger years. Which leads to a question for the Washington Post, which has told us a bit about how Scott Walker behaved at college before he dropped out: Why weren’t you — why aren’t you — curious about how Obama behaved in college?