Ward on Words

Freshman Senator Thom Tillis, straight off of the most expensive senate race in US history, is in the news. Sadly, he's in the news as an advocate of deregulating hand-washing in restaurants . I guess we all now know, thanks to the brilliance of Tillis, that hand-washing regulations are crippling the restaurant business (and FYI, low-wage restaurant jobs are growing in NC - as are other low-wage jobs. Jobs that provide middle-class incomes are harder to find in this "right-to-work" state.) Here's the quote : “I was having a discussion with someone, and we were at a Starbucks in my district, and we were talking about certain regulations where I felt like ‘maybe you should allow businesses to opt out,’” he said, “as long as they indicate through proper disclosure, through advertising, through employment literature, or whatever else.” Tillis was, at the time, the minority whip of the North Carolina House of Representatives. “She said, ‘I can’t believe that,’” he ...

Against what (at times) seemed to be insurmountable odds, Americans have re-elected a black man presiding over a bitterly divided America still wallowing in a sludge-filled economic trough. How did this happen? A miracle? God's will? What happens when white men became minorities in America?   Perhaps.

[ Yes, there is the intentional hint of Ayn Rand in the headline, for those who are wondering. Because why not evoke John Galt when talking of Paul Ryan?]  But it's a fair question to ask - this "who is Paul Ryan" question, since he seems to have seized control of the GOP's platform of late. He's so out in front of the curve that Newt Gingrich, a man who aspires to be the GOP nominee for president, slammed Ryan's Medicare reform plan, which has been adopted by the GOP-dominated House. Referring to the Ryan plan, Gingrich said he was "against a conservative imposing radical change." [ Why do I believe that Newt's campaign is not long for this world? ] A Product of America's Dairyland What we know about Ryan: that he comes from Wisconsin - a Midwestern state with an economy that wears its cheesehead proudly. Yes, there's a mix of agricultural, industrial and dairy in its economy, but Wisconsin brands itself as "America's D...

Health care costs are careening out of control - in the last decade, employer-provided premiums have risen 119 percent - four times the rate of inflation and wages, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. The number of uninsured Americans has grown to 46.3 million, an increase attributed to the job losses seen in the last year. Providing and paying for health care in America is seriously flawed these days. Thus, there is a push for reform. The president appears before Congress to outline key goals and provide motivation to affect change in this area. And what happens? Joe Wilson (R-SC) shouts out mid-speech that the president is a liar. It was, according to the NY Times , a rare breach of protocol. If you've got children, you know this kind of screeching happens all the time on the playground. And you know that calling someone a liar is never an appropriate way to solve a problem - especially when the other person isn't lying. At this time of...