The Decision

At toastmasters last night, one of the speakers told a speech about how he made a difficult moral decision. He's a big time democrat and he works for the City. The City is having their christmas party at the Hilton, but the democrat club (which he is a past president of) is picketing the Hilton for not paying a living wage to its workers. Many top democrats in town pledged to boycott the Hilton--Dario wouldn't go to the prayer breakfast there. Anyway, Dean, in his speech decided that he would cross the picket line and go to the party. His reasoning was that there's no other place in Glendale big enough for the party (Civic Center is too small) and democrat club was too pushy making the argument. I told him his reasoning was flawed. It shouldn't matter how the argument is made--he knows the argument and he has to decide whether he agrees with the policy, not the person making the argument. Another member made a very compelling argument against the living wage--the jobs are not supposed to be livings--they are supposed to be entry level, work here while going to school. Another member pointed out that this is why illegal immigration hurts us--there is a population of workers who will take these minimum wage, transitional jobs and treat them like full time, make a living jobs--working harder and longer hours. He said that we are going to become just like Saudi Arabia with a permanent under, servant class of workers. So I said, what is the solution--a global economy--we have the technology. Tim joined the discussion by commenting on how great it is that we're having this discussion in America and said that at one time during the continental congress, they toyed with the idea of naming the United States of America, the United States of the World. Today at Kiwanis, Carl said that he's writing an article for the paper to lament the disfunction of our California congress delegation--California only gets .79 of every dollar we pay in Federal taxes. I'll bet if we were a State in the United States of the World, we'd get even less. Politics.