Bush's Bad Bets

President Bush's behavior related to the Iraq war is like a compulsive gambler who won big, lost it all, and yet stays at the table hoping to win it big again.

When Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in 2003 he had just accomplished an exciting victory in Iraq. He bet the prestige and reputation of the United States on being able to defeat Saddam Hussein and he won. The thrill of the victory and congratulatory celebrations must have been intoxicating for this former compulsive drinker.

Unfortunately, flush with the stimulation from his success, he decided to keep all of his winnings in play and wagered on winning a bigger pot: remaking an dictatorial middle-eastern country into a Western democracy. If Bush had been a real professional gambler he would never put America's fortune on a game with such astronomical odds against him.

As should have been expected, all of the goodwill and success from his inital triumph was wiped out. The humiliation of his subsequent defeat should have driven him away from this losers' game and compelled him to make the same kind of pledge as when he gave up alcohol. The thing that is preventing this is that his countrymen keep supplying him with more resources to throw away. Even though Congress may complain about the effect Bush's compulsion is having on the country, they still act as enablers by slipping him enough to keep his fantasy alive that victory will be his yet again.

The answer to this problem is an intervention by his allies in Congress. His closest friends and supporters in Congress need to decide that if they really care about the President's welfare and if they want to end the detrimental effect his behavior is having on the country, they need to tell him the war is over and they will not support his compulsion any longer. It will be up to the President to decide if he really wants to change or to stop causing so much misery in the lives of our military families, but he has to be told that his friends will no longer passively stand back and let him do it.

Dr. Robert L. Custer, a pioneer in compulsive gambling treatment, defined a compulsive gambler this way:

Compulsive gamblers have lost control over their gambling. For them, gambling is the most important thing in their lives. Compulsive gambling is a progressive addiction that harms every aspect of the gambler's life. As they continue to gamble, their families, friends and employers are negatively affected. In addition, compulsive gamblers may engage in activities ­ such as stealing, lying or embezzling ­ which go against their moral standards. Compulsive gamblers cannot stop gambling, no matter how much they want to or how hard they try.

Replace "gambling" with "policing Iraq" and it sounds a lot like 43, doesn't it?

Suburban Teens Get Minimum Wage Raise

Liberals like to say that the minimum wage is too low for a person to raise a family on. It's true and it will always be true. The increase in the minimum wage on 7/24 won't change that. The good news is that myth of millions of Americans supporting families of four with just one minimum wage-earner is a big lie. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of minimum wage-earners are single, they work only part-time and they live in households with total incomes substantially above the poverty line.

As the politicians trumpet their victory in raising the wage, you won't hear them tell you that 53% of the affected workers are teenagers and college age adults. There will be no mention that they live at home where the median family income is over $64,000 a year. You won't hear them point out that many are food servers and others who work for tips, which are usually more than the hourly wages.

The workers over age 24 aren't doing too badly either. The vast majority live in households above the poverty line and the minimum wage earner has usually chosen to work only part time. In fact, only 6.1% fit the stereotype of being a single parent working full-time.

These statistics don't show the length of time that people are working for minimum wage before they get their first earned raise or move on to a different, higher paying job. Of course, if you were to believe the Democrats, the same people have been working at the same job, for the same pay, for the 10 years since the last increase in the minimum wage law. That's just ludicrous.

Still, there are a few people who are working at low paying jobs for long periods of time. If the government were serious about helping them it would study what factors are preventing these people from having or being able to act upon their ambition. A .70¢ an hour increase isn't going to fix that kind of problem.

So after reading the news you may have felt that a lot of poor people were going to have a better life after today, Well, the real truth is that some kids in high school out in the 'burbs are going to be able to buy an extra CD next week.

See the statistics reported in more detail in this report from the Heritage Foundation.

The Governed Consent to Unjust Powers Too

The Founding Fathers almost got it right when they declared “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” What they got wrong is that it is not only in free countries where the governed give their consent. It is in every country, with any kind of government (including totalitarian), that the people allow their leaders to rule them.

The reason for this is not to be found in Political Science; it is in Mathematics. The governed simply outnumber the people running the government. That huge numeric advantage provides the governed the power to make changes to the government at any time that they desire to pursue it. If the people of a country make a demand, exercise their combined compulsory force to block the government's maintenance of the economic, legal, and social order, and refuse to back down in the face of severe retribution, they will win. There is just no way the government can imprison or kill every person (or even a substantial minority) of the country.

The stickler in this process is that not enough people realize that they have this power. Even if a person is aware of it, they know that most of their neighbors and countrymen do not. The logical conclusion of both the the enlightened and the un-enlightened is to do nothing when the possibility of change seems slim to none. The result is that they have given their collective consent to the government tacitly. Here is the core of the philosophy. Consent of the governed does not usually come from positive action; it comes from inaction. When the realization of the power does occur and each participant is aware that the knowledge is wide-spread, it leads to the action behind great revolutions (e.g. France, Philippines, Eastern Europe). The crowds gathered in Wenceslas Square in 1989 shaking their keys may have been shocked to find out their power, but to someone understanding the power of the people it was like Glynda telling Dorothy, "You've always had the power..."

The good news for Americans is that the mechanics of our representative government allow for easy, non-violent ways for the people to make changes. Nevertheless, the same kind of disbelief in the power to affect change makes the majority feel like it is not worth trying to do anything but complain. The people of America are like the person watching a television show that they hate, but the remote control is just out of reach and somehow watching the disliked show seems less unpleasant that exerting the effort to get the remote.