Well, Los Angeles has done it:  $15/yr, phased in by 2020, as reported, for instance, at the New York Times, and passed by a 14 – 1 margin, too.  That article also links to an editorial claiming that, by means of a “Wage Board,” the state of New York can raise wages for any particular occupation without needing legislation, so long as the board determines that “pay is judged to be too low to support the health or ‘adequate maintenance’... Read more

This is getting ridiculous — between the declared and the you-know-its-going-to-happen undeclared GOP candidates, I can’t keep track any longer, and yet I’m not finding one I like.  Jindal lost me with his prayer rally.  Rubio with the Gang of 8 bill.  Cruz — well, I don’t recall what any longer.  Walker might be the best of the bunch, but he’s getting to smarmy.  I try to tell myself that that’s just the way it is — that candidates who... Read more

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, after hastily writing up my summary of Heretic before returning the book to the library. In the first place, it seems a bit silly to say that Ali is persuasive, since I was predisposed to believe what she wrote and it was in line with my own thinking anyway, having, back in January (pre-patheos) been on a bit of a kick of writing about Islam, from wildly speculating about how a “moderate... Read more

Or maybe I should say, “history doesn’t give a rat’s a**”, except that it’s a bit wordier.  But every now and again I feel the need to gripe about this.  (Here’s my post from last year — and I thought I wrote something similar more recently but I can’t find anything.) But you know you’ve heard this — not just from Obama, that Russia or ISIS is on the “wrong side of history,” for example, but with respect to any... Read more

I was thinking about these concepts in connection with a couple things that came in view over the last couple days. “Harm reduction” refers to the concept that we should allow various sorts of risky behavior, and behavior traditionally considered immoral by public consensus, on the belief that it’s less risky than the alternative.  So far as I am familiar with the term, it had its origins in needle-swapping and similar programs for drug addicts, intended to protect them from... Read more

Remember when Jeb Bush suggested that the cure for what ails Detroit is to import a whole slew of immigrants?  This was back in February, at least, that was his most recent mention of this idea, and I bristled at the idea that immigrants were somehow a superior people, more hardworking, educated, and/or entrepreneurial than actual Detroiters themselves, especially since his proposal is not to send in particularly skilled immigrants, but seems to be borne of an idea that any... Read more

(I’m going to write this in two parts:  for today, a summary of the book; tomorrow I’ll tell you more of what I thought of it.) From the subtitle alone, “Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now,” I was predisposed to agree with this book.  (For new readers, here’s my post from January, “Islam needs a ‘Jewish Enlightenment‘”, in which I argued that the model for the development Islam is in need of is the Jewish Enlightenment, the movement that brought about Reform... Read more