San Francisco elected official Hillary Ronen blames the city’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.” She is wrong. Here are six reasons why “progressive ideology” is the real cause of the city’s homeless problem.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
September 1, 2020
Hillary Ronen is an elected government official who gets paid $140,148 per year to work as a member of the legislative body for San Francisco.
In this video, Ronen blames San Francisco’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.” (Skip to 8:52 in the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8MACDZ3RI
Ronen is wrong.
“Republican ideology” is not the cause of San Francisco’s homeless problem.
Here six are reasons why “progressive ideology” is the real cause of San Francisco’s homeless problem.
First of all, here is a link to an article that was published by the Atlantic in 2007.
When a developer builds housing, there are three separate and distinct costs: the cost of land, the cost of construction, and the cost of getting a building permit (which the article refers to as the “right to build”).
The article includes this chart:
So in San Francisco, getting a building permit (which the article refers to as the “right to build”) adds approximately $700,000 to the cost of a new home.
And please remember, this cost for the “right to build” is completely separate from the cost of the land, and the cost of construction.
The cost for the “right to build” is determined entirely, 100% by zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Since Hillary Ronen is an elected government official who works as a member of the legislative body of San Francisco, she is one of the people who is responsible for the city’s zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Secondly, here’s another example of how hard it is to get a building permit in California:
January 23, 2015
… there were more permits for single-family homes issued last year through November in just one Texas city Houston (34,566) than in the entire state of California (34,035) over the same period.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Houston is 628 square miles.
California is 163,696 square miles.
So even though California is 260 times as big as Houston, Houston actually issued more new building permits for single family homes in 2014 than did the entire state of California.
Just think about that for a minute.
Those numbers show just how incredibly, ridiculously hard California makes it to build new housing.
Anyone who has ever bought or sold anything at eBay understands that, all else being equal, the bigger the supply of something, the lower price, and the lower the supply, the higher the price.
By making it so difficult to get a building permit in California, the government is causing housing to be far, far more expensive than it would otherwise be.
Third, here is a great article by Thomas Sowell about how the politicians in California have waged war against the construction of new housing.
Fourth, this video also explains San Francisco’s war against the construction of new housing. And please note that it is progressives, social justice warriors, and other left wing activists who are the ones that are most opposed to building this new housing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
Fifth, in the video with Ronen that I included at the beginning of this blog post, she brags about creating a new government program that gives free illegal drugs to homeless people. (Skip to 7:56 in the video.)
Being high on illegal drugs makes the problem of homelessness bigger, not smaller.
And sixth, the Washington Post published this article, which is called:
“Rand Paul is right: The most economically unequal states are Democratic”
The article includes this chart, which ranks the states by their levels of inequality based on their Gini coefficients.
You can see a bigger version of the chart at this link:
The information in the chart verifies the title of the Washington Post article. Blue states have more inequality than red states.
So that’s six different reasons why Hillary Ronen is wrong to blame San Francisco’s homeless problem on “Republican ideology.”
In each and every one of those six cases, it is actually “progressive ideology” that is causing San Francisco’s homeless problem.
San Francisco is waging a very strong, major war against the constriction of new housing.
For Hillary Ronen to blame this on “Republican ideology” is a huge lie.
On the contrary, since Ronen is one of the left wing, progressive, elected government officials responsible for San Francisco’s housing policies, it is Ronen’s own fault that San Francisco has such a big homeless problem.
Liberal YouTuber Rebecca Watson says, “… you definitely can vote for politicians who will keep their constituents healthy by easing income inequality…” Meanwhile, the Washington Post says, “The most economically unequal states are Democratic.”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
August 15, 2020
Rebecca Watson is a liberal YouTuber who lives in San Francisco.
At 7:45 in this video, she says:
“… you definitely can vote for politicians who will keep their constituents healthy by easing income inequality…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3wiCiKNFqk
Meanwhile, the Washington Post published this article, which is called:
“Rand Paul is right: The most economically unequal states are Democratic”
The article includs this chart, which ranks the states by their levels of inequality based on their Gini coefficients.
You can see a bigger version of the chart at this link:
The information in the chart verifies the title of the Washington Post article. Blue states have more inequality than red states.
And since Watson lives in San Francisco, I’d like to point out this article from Vanity Fair, which is called:
“San Francisco’s Income Inequality Rivals that of Developing Nations”
This video is called:
“Inside Nancy Pelosi’s District: This Is Not What America Should Look Like”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh6saOx-Q6s
I’ve watched a lot of Watson’s videos, and I know that she hates and loathes Republican politicians.
It seems to me that Watson is voting for politicians who make income inequality bigger, not smaller.
The Maduro diet: How most Venezuelans lost an average of 43 pounds in two years
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
July 15, 2020
In May 2017, the Washington Post reported:
In a recent survey of 6,500 Venezuelan families by the country’s leading universities, three-quarters of adults said they lost weight in 2016 — an average of 19 pounds… a level of hunger almost unheard-of outside war zones or areas ravaged by hurricane, drought or plague.
In February 2018, Reuters reported:
Venezuelans reported losing on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year… according to a new university study…
That’s 43 pounds in two years.
Before I explain how this came to happen, I want to start out by explaining what did not cause this to happen.
(more…)
Global warming hypocrite and wealth inequality hypocrite Bernie Sanders just took a private jet for a 10 minute flight
Bernie Sanders claims to be against global warming.
He also claims to be against wealth inequality.
But he just made both of those problems worse by spending his campaign donations to take a private jet for a 10 minute flight.
What a hypocrite, and what a hypocrite!
Here are some other blog posts that I wrote about Bernie Sanders:
Bernie Sanders does not want you to see these photographs of the health care that regular Cubans get
Elizabeth Warren makes global warming and income inequality worse by riding on private jet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkPi-6qf0sk
Class-warrior Warren on video stepping off private plane in Des Moines
February 4, 2020
A video provided to Fox News by a source shows Elizabeth Warren, whose Democratic presidential campaign has made railing against the “rich and powerful” a central theme, stepping off a private jet in Iowa Monday night. The Massachusetts senator was returning to the state after spending Monday in Washington, D.C., for the closing arguments in the impeachment trial of President Trump.
At one point in the video, Warren seems to walk behind a staffer after apparently noticing the camera filming her in Des Moines.
Warren and her competitor for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have both used private planes to go back and forth between the nation’s capital and Iowa during the impeachment trial.
Warren, who funds her trips with campaign cash, tweeted as recently as last Thursday about Trump administration officials using private aviation on the taxpayer’s dime. She specifically referenced former Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who still owes the U.S. government over $300,000 in travel expenses, according to an Inspector General report.
Between June and September, Warren paid over $150,000 to “Advanced Aviation,” a private jet charter service, according to FEC filings. Last week the Washington Examiner reported she had spent over $700,000 total on private aviation.
Warren, Sanders and the rest of the Democratic field still don’t know who won the Iowa caucuses after issues accurately reporting the vote total from the state. The Iowa Democratic Party had said that its backup systems worked even after the app it was using to report vote tallies failed, and that it should be able to release the majority of Monday’s results by 5 p.m. ET Tuesday.
Bernie Leads 2020 Field in Private Jet Spending
https://freebeacon.com/issues/bernie-leads-2020-field-in-private-jet-spending/
Bernie Leads 2020 Field in Private Jet Spending
February 1, 2020
The Bernie Sanders campaign spent just under $1.2 million on private jet travel last quarter, outpacing the entire 2020 Democratic presidential primary field.
The most recent filing from Sanders reveals $1,199,579 in spending during the final three months of 2019 to Apollo Jets, LLC, a “luxury private jet charter service.” The campaign spent an additional $23,941 for transportation to Virginia-based Advanced Aviation Team.
The candidate who comes closest to matching Sanders in private jet spending was former vice president Joe Biden, whose campaign spent $1,040,698 to Advanced Aviation Team last quarter.
An analysis of private jet spending in filings from other top candidates found that Elizabeth Warren’s campaign spent $720,518 and Pete Buttigieg’s campaign spent $323,518. Michael Bloomberg, who pumped a whopping $200 million of his personal fortune into his campaign’s opening weeks, spent about $646,000 on private jet travel, about half of what Sanders spent.
Sanders has long leaned on private air travel on the campaign trail, despite his belief that limiting carbon emissions from the transportation sector is crucial to combating climate change. Traveling by private jet is estimated to produce roughly eight times the amount of carbon per passenger as traveling by commercial airliner.
“Global climate change is real, it is caused mainly by emissions released from burning fossil fuels and it poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet,” he writes on his campaign website. “The transportation sector accounts for about 26 percent of carbon pollution emissions.”
Sanders further claims on his website that “climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet.”
The Sanders campaign has reportedly stepped up its use of private jet travel in recent weeks, chartering flights to get him back and forth between his duties in the U.S. Senate and the campaign trail in Iowa.
The Sanders campaign had previously spent about $380,000 on private air travel, also with Apollo Jets, LLC, according to previous campaign disclosures.
The Sanders campaign says the environmental impact of its private jet use is mitigated by the purchase of carbon offsets, which it purchases from NativeEnergy. Entering the final quarter of 2019, the Sanders campaign had purchased $9,030 worth of carbon offsets. It purchased an additional $23,200 in carbon offsets from NativeEnergy this past quarter, the most recent filing shows.
Alternatively, Amtrak offers service from D.C. to Iowa, which would cost Sanders $149 using the senior discount.
Bernie Sanders makes global warming and income inequality worse by spending his campaign donations on private jets
Bernie Sanders has repeatedly spoken out against global warming and income inequality.
However, I just came across this Politico article from last year:
In his campaign launch video last week, Bernie Sanders singled out the fossil fuel industry for criticism, listing it among the special interests he planned to take on. But in the final months of the 2016 campaign, Sanders repeatedly requested and received the use of a carbon-spewing private jet for himself and his traveling staff when he served as a surrogate campaigner for Hillary Clinton.
In the two years following the presidential election, Sanders continued his frequent private jet travel, spending at least $342,000 on the flights.
Increased scrutiny of his travel practices, which are at odds with his positions on wealth inequality and climate change, are among the challenges Sanders will face as he makes his second White House run.
Actions speak louder than words.
Sanders’ use of private jets proves that he’s lying when he says he’s against global warming and income inequality.
Here are some of my other blog posts about Bernie Sanders:
Bernie Sanders in the 1970s urged nationalization of most major industries
Bernie and Jane Sanders, under FBI investigation for bank fraud, hire lawyers
Bernie Sanders supports $15 minimum wage, but only pays his interns $12 an hour
An open question to Bernie Sanders regarding your recent comment about deodorant
U.S. Congressional representative Katie Porter (D-California) doesn’t seem to think that children need a father, and doesn’t seem to care about the density restrictions and other anti-development laws that increase the cost of housing in California
U.S. Congressional representative Katie Porter (D-California) recently talked about “Patricia,” one of her “constituents” who lives in Irvine, California.
Here’s a video of part of Porter’s statement, from the Washington Post channel at YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QKOLydDfNg
Since Porter said she looked up the salary of Patricia’s job at monster.com, I am guessing that “Patricia” is fictional. Nevertheless, I will go along with this, and offer my comments and analysis.
Patricia works as a bank teller at JPMorgan Chase, and earns $16.50 per hour, which works out to $35,070 per year. Patricia has a six-year old daughter, and the two of them live together in a one-bedroom apartment in Irvine, California. After taxes, Patricia takes home $29,100 per year, which is $2,425 per month.
Porter provided this image of Patricia’s monthly expenses:
These are Patricia’s monthly expenses:
$1,600 rent
$100 utilities
$250 on a 2008 car
$150 gas
$402 USDA “low cost” food for one adult and one child
$40 phone
$450 after school childcare
This leaves Patricia with a monthly budget deficit of $567.
Porter blames this budget deficit on JPMorgan Chase.
Now I’d like to offer my own commentary and opinion on this, in three different categories.
First of all, Porter makes no mention whatsoever of Patricia’s child’s father.
If Patricia was actually married, then her husband could work from home and take care of their child after school, and there would be no need to spend $450 per month on after school child care. Also, her husband’s income from working at home would make it easier to pay for their other expenses.
This refusal by Porter to even so much as mention Patricia’s child’s father is typical of liberals when they talk about single mothers who are struggling to raise their children. I have previously written about liberals’ refusal to mention the fathers of these children here, here, here, here, and here.
Secondly, Porter never mentions how density restrictions and other anti-development laws cause the price of housing in California to be substantially higher than it would otherwise be.
But I will mention it.
Here is a link to an article that was published by the Atlantic in 2007.
When a developer builds housing, there are three separate and distinct costs: the cost of land, the cost of construction, and the cost of getting a building permit (which the article refers to as the “right to build”).
Irvine is in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. According to the Atlantic article, using data from 1999, getting permission for the “right to build” added $303,000 to the cost of a house in Los Angeles in 1999.
Here’s part of the relevant text from the article:
In a 2003 article, Glaeser and Gyourko calculated the two different land values for 26 cities (using data from 1999). They found wide disparities. In Los Angeles, an extra quarter acre cost about $28,000 – the pure price of land. But the cost of empty land isn’t the whole story, or even most of it. A quarter- acre lot minus the cost of the house came out to about $331,000—nearly 12 times as much as the extra quarter acre. The difference between the first and second prices, around $303,000, was what L.A. home buyers paid for local land-use controls in bureaucratic delays, density restrictions, fees, political contributions. That’s the cost of the right to build.
And that right costs much less in Dallas. There, adding an extra quarter acre ran about $2,300—raw land really is much cheaper—and a quarter acre minus the cost of construction was about $59,000. The right to build was nearly a quarter million dollars less than in L.A. Hence the huge difference in housing prices. Land is indeed more expensive in superstar cities. But getting permission to build is way, way more expensive. These cities, says Gyourko, “just control the heck out of land use.”
The same article also includes this chart:
And please remember, this cost for the “right to build” is completely separate from the cost of the land, and the cost of construction.
The cost for the “right to build” is determined entirely, 100% by zoning laws, density restrictions, and other local government policies.
Here’s another example of how hard it is to get a building permit in California:
January 23, 2015
… there were more permits for single-family homes issued last year through November in just one Texas city Houston (34,566) than in the entire state of California (34,035) over the same period.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Houston is 628 square miles.
California is 163,696 square miles.
So even though California is 260 times as big as Houston, Houston actually issued more new building permits for single family homes in 2014 than did the entire state of California.
Just think about that for a minute.
Those numbers show just how incredibly, ridiculously hard California makes it to build new housing.
Anyone who has ever bought or sold anything at eBay understands that, all else being equal, the bigger the supply of something, the lower price, and the lower the supply, the higher the price.
By making it so difficult to get a building permit in California, the government is causing housing to be far, far more expensive than it would otherwise be.
Here is a great article by Thomas Sowell about how the politicians in California have waged war against the construction of new housing.
This video also explains California’s war against the construction of new housing. And please note that it is progressives, social justice warriors, and other left wing activists who are the ones that are most opposed to building this new housing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExgxwKnH8y4
California is waging a very strong, major war against the constriction of new housing.
But Porter never mentions any of this.
Third, being a bank teller is an entry level job. It doesn’t require any education beyond high school.
If Patricia wanted to earn more money, she could have gone to college or trade school before having a child.
But Porter never mentions this, either.
Hypocrite Bernie Sanders changes his tune on “millionaires and billionaires” after the media reports that he is one of them
I want to start out by saying that I think it’s absolutely wonderful that Bernie Sanders became a millionaire by selling books to customers who wanted to buy them.
I have no problem with the fact that Sanders is a millionaire.
What I do have a problem with is his hypocrisy.
On many, many occasions, Sanders has criticized “millionaires and billionaires.”
This is a link to a video on C-SPAN’s website, which shows Sanders making such a statement. Here are his exact words: (skip to 0:33)
“There is something profoundly wrong, when in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires, at the same time as millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, and we have shamefully the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country.”
However, now that the media has reported that Sanders himself is a millionaire, he is saying something very different. The New York Times just quoted Sanders as saying:
“I wrote a best-selling book… If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
I agree 100% with Sanders’ statement.
If I can just add three more zeros to my own book sales figures, I, too, will become a millionaire.
Sanders’ association of the existence of “millionaires and billionaires” to the fact that there are children living in poverty is not accurate. According to the book The Millionaire Next Door, 80% of U.S. millionaires are first generation rich. They earned that money legally and honestly, by providing labor, goods, and services that people were willing to pay for. That makes everyone better off. It does not cause anyone to live in poverty.
The real reason there are so many children living in poverty in the U.S. has nothing to do with the fact that there are “millionaires and billionaires.” Instead, the high rate of childhood poverty can be attributed almost entirely to the irresponsible behavior of their parents.
Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
(My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Wikipedia has published the following chart, which shows the massive increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births that has taken place in the U.S. since the 1960s. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States,_1940-2014.png
According to that chart, since 1960, the percentage of babies born out-of-wedlock in the U.S. has skyrocketed from 5% to 40%.
In the 1960s, the Democrats launched their “War on Poverty,” whereby the government started paying women to have babies out-of-wedlock.
And as anyone who understands economics will tell you, whatever you subsidize, you get more of.
In this video, a happily married woman explains how a government social worker told her that she should get divorced in order to collect more benefits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6JqmdIubA
The liberals who complain about childhood poverty almost never blame it on the high out-of-wedlock birth rate.
Time and time and time and time again, the media publishes articles about childhood poverty, without even mentioning the fathers of these children.
Wealthy ‘NIMBY’ libs in Pelosi’s SF district raise $60G to fight center for city’s homeless
Wealthy ‘NIMBY’ libs in Pelosi’s SF district raise $60G to fight center for city’s homeless
March 29, 2019
Rich San Francisco residents in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district have collected more than $60,000 after starting an online crowdsourcing campaign to wage a legal challenge against a proposed center for the city’s homeless.
The campaign, called “Safe Embarcadero for All,” was launched March 20 after San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed a 200-bed homeless Navigation Center in the city’s most desirable location, the Embarcadero along the coast of San Francisco Bay, earlier this month.
“The planned location for Mayor Breed’s #megashelter is home to thousands of families, visited by millions of tourists and at the center of some of San Francisco’s most iconic events – including the San Francisco Marathon, San Francisco Giants stadium and on one of the busiest bicyclist paths in the city,” reads the site posted by the group opposing the construction.
The campaign shamelessly raised over $60,000 and is on track to reach the desired $100,000 goal, with the money used to pay attorney Andrew Zacks, who often represents property owners, to help the dissatisfied “Not In My Backyard” residents in the neighborhood.
More than 130 people have chipped in, although many did so anonymously. The biggest donation came from an unknown resident who gave $10,000 to the cause.
A Fox News review of records found that multiple individuals – bank executives, professors and authors – who donated to the GoFundMe page have also contributed to Democratic political groups, including thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee, MoveOn, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and other left-leaning organizations.
One of the donors, Jerome Dodson, who has since scrubbed his $1,000 contribution to the campaign, is reportedly a chairman of a “responsible investment fund” that seeks to make “a positive impact on society,” according to the Washington Free Beacon. The investment fund executive donated to Democratic candidates and groups over the years, including Pelosi and Hillary Clinton.
Fox News reached out to Pelosi’s office, asking whether she offered her support for the project designed to combat homeless in her own district.
A competing GoFundMe campaign was started in support of the project for the homeless in the city, attracting a $5,000 donation from GoFundMe itself. The effort so far has garnered nearly $33,000 in donations – surpassing a set goal of $30,000.
San Francisco’s mayor, meanwhile, slammed the group opposing the construction in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“People want us to address the challenges on our streets and help our unsheltered residents into housing, and I am committed to doing the hard work to make that happen,” Breed said.
“But it’s incredibly frustrating and disappointing,” she added, “that as soon as we put forward a solution to build a new shelter, people begin to threaten legal action.”
Elizabeth Warren doesn’t seem to know that France’s wealth tax caused a REDUCTION in tax revenues
This is what the Washington Post wrote about France’s wealth tax:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071501010.html
Old Money, New Money Flee France and Its Wealth Tax
July 16, 2006
Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998.
Anyone who looks at the above numbers would know that all of that capital flight means less income tax, less capital gains tax, less sales tax, less social security tax, and less of many other taxes too. Whatever tax revenue France gets from its wealth tax is more than dwarfed by the reductions in other taxes.
And Warren’s proposed wealth tax rate is actually higher than France’s, so its potential for harm is actually bigger as well.
That doesn’t sound like a good idea for anyone who wants to increase the amount of tax revenue that gets collected by the government.
On the other hand, if Warren’s real goal is to appeal to Democratic primary voters who feel envy and jealousy, and who don’t understand math or the concept of capital flight, then her proposal is a brilliant strategy. Her horrible proposal could very well get her elected President in 2020.
Attention Adriana Alvarez! It’s not McDonald’s fault that you chose to have a baby out of wedlock.
The woman in this video chose to have a baby out of wedlock.
She has also, apparently, made no attempt to acquire education or job skills beyond the high school level.
She says the $12.50 an hour she gets paid to work at McDonald’s is “poverty” level.
The narrator cites government statistics to show that she is actually above the poverty level.
The narrator asks “Where is the father?”
I had actually asked myself those exact same words before the narrator did.
This woman has been working at McDonald’s for eight years. Instead of acquiring better education and job skills, she thinks the way to earn more money is to protest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kk5yVsdW0
I am thankful for being a middle class person today instead of the richest person in the world 200 years ago
I am thankful for being a middle class person today instead of the richest person in the world 200 years ago.
I can have a real time conversation with someone who is 1,000 miles away.
I have light bulbs.
I can get from New York to California in hours instead of weeks.
Antibiotics will save my life if I step on a rock and cut my foot.
I don’t have to worry about getting smallpox, measles, or polio.
I can eat ice cream in July, without having to hire an expedition to climb a mountain to bring back ice.
I could buy an air conditioner if I wanted one (although I don’t actually have or want one. I live in Pittsburgh, and don’t think it’s necessary). But think about being a rich person living in Atlanta in July before air conditioning was invented – that would have sucked.
I can listen to just about any music, watch just about any movie, or watch just about any episode of just about any TV show, whenever I want.
My access to information online is bigger than any library that the richest person owned in the past.
I have a flush toilet.
I can take a hot shower whenever I want.
I don’t have to worry about my drinking water being infected with deadly bacteria or parasites.
My clothing is more comfortable than any that existed in the past.
I have zero problem with the fact that there are some people today who have thousands of times as much money as me.
I am grateful for what I do have. I am not resentful for the fact that other people have way more money than me.
Media bias: once again, a news article about a financially struggling single mother trying to raise her children makes absolutely no mention of their father
The Guardian recently published this article about a single mother who is having financial troubles as she tries to raise her two children on the salary that she gets from working at a fast food restaurant.
As is always the case with articles like this, the article makes absolutely no mention of the children’s father. (I have written about this media irresponsibility before – see here and here.)
In this particular case, the article refers to the woman as “a single mother of two.”
It doesn’t say that she is “divorced,” or that she is “widowed.”
The article makes absolutely zero mention of the children’s father.
The article does quote the woman as saying:
“At the top of America, when it comes to Trump and them, their goal is to keep us down. Between these billion-dollar companies and Trump, it’s a power trip.”
So now it’s Trump’s fault that this woman is a single mother of two.
I’d like to see the results of the DNA test for that.
If Trump is in fact the father of her children, then yes, it is Trump’s fault that she is having so much financial trouble.
Otherwise, Trump has no fault whatsoever in her situation.
The article also talks about how the woman is part of the movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
But in the real world, even liberals themselves do not want to pay fast food workers $15 an hour.
In December 2013, I made this blog post, which is titled “I dare liberals to buy a McDonald’s franchise, and pay the workers $15 an hour.”
More than three years later, I followed it up with this blog post, which is titled, “Hypocrite liberals have rejected my challenge for them to buy a McDonald’s franchise and pay the workers $15 an hour.”
I also made this other blog post, which is titled, “In the real world, no liberal has ever bought a McDonald’s franchise and paid the workers $15 an hour.”
So even liberals themselves are not willing to pay McDonald’s workers $15 an hour.
Here is some information that liberals never talk about:
Let’s consider two groups of people in the U.S. The first group has a poverty rate of 2%. The second group has a poverty rate of 76%.
The first group consists of people who followed all three of these steps:
1) Finish high school.
2) Get a full-time job.
3) Wait until age 21 and get married before having children.
The second group consists of people who followed zero of those three steps.
Among people who follow all three of these steps, the poverty rate is 2%.
Among people who follow zero of these steps, the poverty rate is 76%.
(My source for that information is this article, which refers to this PDF, and the relevant data is on page 15 of the PDF. The study uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau.)
Finally, here is a seven minute video with information that liberals never talk about. In my opinion, every middle school and high school in the U.S. should show this to all of their students, repeatedly, every year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4SVUlNfMY
How sad. This guy from Milwaukee doesn’t seem familiar with the concept of earning money.
A guy who has lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin his entire life complains that rich people aren’t giving money to poor people.
I feel so sad for this guy. Apparently, it never occurred to him that a person could obtain money by obtaining education and job skills and earning the money.
Who taught him to think the way he does? Was it his parents? Was it his teachers? Whoever it was that taught him to think like this, they were wrong.
I hope for this young man’s sake that he will eventually come to realize that what these people taught him was wrong.
Attention CNN! It’s not McDonald’s fault that Safiyyah Cotton chose to have a baby out of wedlock. Plus, here’s a rare news article that actually mentions the concept of personal responsibility.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 28, 2016
In this seven minute video, CNN talks about a single mother who is struggling to raise her child on the small salary that she earns at McDonald’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SCB1t28nDU
As is always the case with news articles from the mainstream media about struggling single mothers trying to raise their children, the article says absolutely nothing about the baby’s father.
The article doesn’t say that the father has a responsibility to provide for the baby that he chose to create.
The article doesn’t say that the mother has a responsibility to choose a responsible mate to make her baby with.
The article doesn’t say that if they got married, they would only have to pay rent for one apartment instead of two, and so things would be a lot easier.
The article doesn’t say anything about the mother ever having made any attempt to acquire better education and job skills as a way to get a bigger salary.
By comparison, this news article by Inside Edition fully understands the concept of personal responsibility. The article is called “Mom Cries On Dock As Cruise Ship Leaves With Her Kids Still On Board,” and includes the following brilliant quote, the kind of quote that is completely missing in the CNN article about the McDonald’s worker:
Travel expert Mark Murphy told IE: “It is the woman’s fault for not getting back on time. It is not the cruise ship’s fault. It is not the captain’s fault. It is not the cruise line’s fault. Everybody knows the posted time to get back and that ship is on a schedule, it is going to go.”
I absolutely love that quote. I praise Mr. Murphy for saying it. And I praise Inside Edition for including it in the article.
CNN, and all the other mainstream news organizations that write about struggling single mothers without ever mentioning the children’s fathers, should learn a lesson from Inside Edition about how to write a proper news story.
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Liberal Rebecca Watson explains why it’s OK that rich kids will get to see new episodes of Sesame Street nine months before poor kids
In this video, liberal Rebecca Watson praises HBO for funding new episodes of Sesame Street, which it will let PBS air for free after nine months. The number of new episodes produced per year is also getting bigger because of this deal with HBO.
I agree with Ms. Watson that this is a good idea. She admits that rich kids will get to see the new episodes nine months earlier than poor kids, but also says that this is not a problem. I praise her for seeing this as a win-win situation instead of as a class-warfare type thing. I wish more liberals shared her way of thinking.
I myself grew up watching Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, and other educational shows on PBS, and I am definitely a better person for having done so. Perhaps this makes me a “bad” libertarian, but I can’t think of any practical reason to oppose government funded public television. In theory, libertarians such as myself are supposed to be against it. But I believe that in this particular case, real world evidence proves that the theory is wrong. The financial cost of public television, as a percentage of the federal budget, has always been trivial, and the educational benefits of public television over the decades have been enormous. I am glad that I, as well as millions of other people, watched it when we were children, and if that required the use of taxpayers’ money, then so be it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_6MS3QDnOI
Idiotic Hillary Clinton supporters are shocked to find out that she’s rich
I’m just paraphrasing, so these aren’t actual quotes from the video. But they are an overall summary:
“Which presidential candidates own these four mansions?”
“Well, they’re all really big and expensive looking, so it must be Republicans. Rubio? Carson? Trump, I think, because he’s rich.”
“Actually, all four are owned by Hillary Clinton.”
“Really? How can that be possible? Hillary isn’t rich!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L5hn5B8TYI
And that reminds me of this scene from the movie Casablanca:
Liberals fly 1,700 private jets to Switzerland so they can PRETEND to care about global warming and income inequality
Perhaps someday, these global warming conferences will be done using environmentally friendly Skype instead of the current policy of burning massive amounts of fossil fuel on 1,700 private jets.
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Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
