U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear challenges to pro-gay marriage rulings made in 14 states -- effectively legalizing gay marriage in those states. Now, this Court could just be waiting for the right case to come along and undo all the good work they've done lately on marriage equality, but for now, we've got justice, and we ought to cherish it as we preserve it.
Elaine Kamarck tries to tell us that the solution to problems like corporations reinventing themselves as "foreign" is to reduce the corporate tax rate. "Our highest-in-the-world corporate rate means that American companies, on average, pay 40 cents on each extra dollar earned," but that's utter bullshit -- the multitudinous loopholes corporations enjoy mean that American corporations, on average, pay about 12 cents, not 40 cents, on each extra dollar earned. The rate "means" nothing if hardly anyone pays it. People should spend less time "wondering" why corporations invert and more time stopping them from inverting.
Two Philadelphia restauranteurs decide to discourage tipping in their new venture and pay their waitstaff an hourly wage well above the industry median. They say they'll do more, too, like cover their waitstaff's healthcare benefits in their entirety and offer both paid vacation leave and paid sick leave. I wish them good luck -- certainly they'll be further along if the city of Philadelphia ever follows in Seattle's footsteps and enacts a $15/hour minimum wage.
Almost two dozen Congressional Republicans ask the Department of Labor to suspend the rule extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers, citing the cost to Medicaid. Yes, they're creating another hostage crisis (don't pay hard-working home health care workers fairly, or I'll blow Medicaid's brains out!), but the "76 million baby boomers" "reaching retirement" is a scare number -- 76 million babies were born between 1946 and 1964, so no, a full quarter of Americans are not retiring all at once. Our Glorious Elites are full of bad excuses for not doing the right thing, aren't they?
Finally, Erick Erickson tells a no-doubt-breathless audience at the Values Voter Summit that people who embrace evolution are just jealous of people like him who are going to Heaven. But I've never found science and faith incompatible, and Mr. Erickson's butchering of evolutionary science (oh, that was supposed to be a joke? Boys hide behind jokes, not men) doesn't convince me otherwise. And "(t)here is a last day, pick a side and the right side wins" tells me his own faith is pretty shallow -- to think of God arranging the world as you and I would arrange a football game! Loving thy neighbor demands more of your faith than that.
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