Posted by Tina
A couple of stories in the news today just about bowled me over:
Breitbart – Big Journalism announced a big change at the Washington Post since Jeff Bezos took over the paper. Apparently the big leftist, Ezra Klein, has been shown the door and the conservative legal blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, has been welcomed with full editorial control!
CNS News informs that Bill Gates appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today and when asked about the Presidents call for a rise in the minimum wage had this to say according to CNS News (emphasis mine):
“Well, jobs are a great thing,” Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “So you have to be a bit careful: If you raise the minimum wage, you’re encouraging labor substitution, and you’re going to go buy machines and automate things — or cause jobs to appear outside of that jurisdiction.
And so within certain limits, you know, it does cause job destruction. If you really start pushing it, then you’re just making a huge tradeoff.”
Gates said there also the question of which households end up benefiting from a higher minimum wage: “Is it much more the teenager in a wealthy household, or is it that household in poverty? A lot of the problem there is that those people don’t have many hours.”
“These are complex issues,” he continued. “It’s not as simple as just saying, okay, raise the wage.”
Wow…’spose folks are beginning to wake up?
Maybe Gates has been talking to David John Marotta, an “Influential Wall Street advisor” who says the unemployment rate is actually “a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.”
Guys, you have to get it … your sources do not tell you … quite … the truth. Or the slant on Klein is your own, who knows, but Politico has it somewhat differently:
“The Washington Post would do anything for Ezra Klein. Well, almost anything.
“For nearly five years, the Post has steered a bounty of financial resources to its star economics columnist and blogger. It has allowed him to have a contributor deal with MSNBC, a column with Bloomberg View, and to write long-form for The New Yorker. It has provided him with eight staffers to keep Wonkblog, his popular policy vertical, flowing with up-to-the-minute charts and analysis. The PR department has promoted him in profile upon profile.
“But when Klein proposed the creation of an independent, explanatory journalism website — with more than three dozen staffers and a multiyear budget north of $10 million — the Post said enough is enough. Indeed, Jeff Bezos, the Post’s new owner, and Katharine Weymouth, its publisher, never even offered an alternative figure, sources familiar with the negotiations said.
“Now, Klein is set to take his talents elsewhere. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog account tweeted the announcement Tuesday that he is leaving: “It’s official: Ezra is leaving the Post. Hoping for the best for him.”
“As early as this week, Klein is expected to announce a new venture — described in a memo to Post staffers as a new “news organization” — that will look to staff more than 30 people on the editorial side alone. Meanwhile, the Post, which for four years has benefited immensely from housing the Ezra Klein brand — Wonkblog averages more than four million page-views a month — will lose its star columnist and its claim to some of the most widely read policy analysis on the Internet.”
I love the Volokh Conspiracy, but I would describe them more as a libertarian blog than a conservative one. There is a lot of diversity in opinion among the writers, though I’d say the comments section leans more to the left.
I do believe the alarm clock has rung with Obama’s job approval rating hitting 41%.
The sun will be up when it hits 30% and a new day begins.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
Conservative opinion is just that …..an opinion.
Ezra is better off and the Post joined the Propaganda wagon long ago.
I have to laugh at the prospect anyone believes media without doing their own research. JFK warned us about the media and now it is a bunch of hogwash.
The very fact someone says their opinion is to be forced on all citizens and they want to force all people to be governed by their opinion is absurd.
The WW2 German regime started out in this exact way.
Freedom and liberty does not mean everyone has to follow the conservative opinion. That alone is hypocrisy.
The conservative movement is to remove democracy and dictate. Briebart is a Propaganda blog and well known as a sham.
My favorite part is watching people who survive on vets benefits and social security vote against their own checks.
Truth and facts are the enemy of the conservative movement, their desecration of the Bible and yearning for dictatorship is a disgrace to this country.
Their hate of a President starts with race.
Congress is responsible for the job numbers …..
It is very obvious fascism is the conservative value why not jut say it?
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/03/18/houston-area-tea-party-leader-had-ties-fascist-par/
http://www.alternet.org/story/148588/fascist_america:_is_this_election_the_next_turn
Americans are waking up.
Dewey nobody suggested that all Americans have to agree.
Hate is an ugly word. You use it a lot. The president is criticized because of his failed policies. He is not being treated any differently than any other man who has been president. Your accusations about hatred and race are without evidence or merit.
Please explain what conservative policies are fascist and why!
Empty accusations are tiresome Dewey. Bearing false witness is a sin. You might want to reconsider your comments.
Bill Gates comments come with a big HELLO!
Now even robots are taking those entry level burger flipping jobs. Alpha machine from “Momentum Machines” cooks up a tasty burger with all the fixings. And it does it with such quality and efficiency it’ll produce “gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices.”
With a conveyor belt-type system the burgers are freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s liking. And only when the burger’s finished cooking does Alpha slice the tomatoes and pickles and place them on the burger as fresh as can be. Finally, the machine wraps the burger up for serving.
Alpha churns out a painless 360 hamburgers per hour.
San Francisco-based (Liberal Central) Momentum Machines claim that using Alpha will save a restaurant enough money that it pays for itself in a year, and it enables the restaurant to spend about twice as much on ingredients as they normally would – so they can buy the gourmet stuff. Saving money with Alpha is pretty easy to imagine.
You don’t even need cashiers or servers. Customers could just punch in their order, pay, and wait at a dispensing window.
People will always ask more for less, and that equation isn’t just reserved for the receivers of entry level minimum wages, it part of the operating costs that important to the “wage payers” cost of staying in business.
So how do you want your burger, machine or man made, and at what price?
Harold looks like the hamburger flipper jobs will soon go by the wayside…tacos and burittos to follow. I’m not surprised this company is based in SF where the minimum wage is $10.74 an hour and has been raised every year since 2004!
Is it any wonder SF has become an expensive place to live and work!
If the machine works as well as described I’d accept the machine. I do think that its a shame the jobs can’t be preserved for young people. These jobs are mostly filled by high school and college aged kids and there aren’t too many low wage entry level jobs that would replace them.
My next bumber sticker:
“Convenience is going to kill us all.”
In Oregon it is illegal to pump your own gas.
We will follow suit, because an In-N-Out burger from Alpha is simply not how we choose to live.
Libby The story is just fine. The Post didn’t replace Klein with another lefty. Instead they chose a libertarian/conservative blog to replace him. Even the information you pasted included the fact that “the Post’s new owner, and Katharine Weymouth, its publisher, never even offered an alternative figure, sources familiar with the negotiations said.”
No matter your phony protestations, this is a win for our side.
Libby why don’t you lefties just try to outlaw the small business enterprise? It would be so much more humane than this death by a thousand taxes, regulations, and edicts game.
It is true that Jeff “Money-Is-No-Object” Bezos could have fronted the $10M if he wanted to … but he choose not to. And it wouldn’t be the first time a capitalist media mogul promoted an economic agenda that suited his interests.
But he knows we’re watching, and will continue to do so.
You know, since that Target thing, I have backed right off the whole Amazon-internet-shopping thing … and now I have another reason to keep on with it.
“No matter your phony protestations, this is a win for our side.”
This is a win for everyone. We need more intelligent conservative voices. The Volokh Conspiracy isn’t always conservative, but when it is it is at least intelligently so. I’ve read them for years and I for one am glad they are being given a larger platform.
Thank you Chris for saying so.
I’d appreciate more intelligent left commentary as well.