musing minds

First Oprah, h/t Instapundit we find out that Oprah tells the BBC that Americans disrespect Obama because he’s black.

There’s a level of disrespect for the office that occurs. And that occurs in some cases and maybe even many cases because he’s African American. There’s no question about that and it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says, but everybody’s thinking it.

Actually, no. The race card has been pulled out time and time again in response to any criticism of the current President of the United States. Of course, being the first black president, the race card had never before been pulled for a President. But that doesn’t make pulling the race card legitimate. Barack Obama was elected, and re-elected, President of the United States. The people knew he was black when they voted for him. The race card is overdrawn, and it’s been canceled.

Oprah attributes to me, and others very like me, thoughts that do not, in fact, exist in our minds. I don’t ever think about him as a black president. I don’t think of him with the more accurate description of half-black and half-white. My first thoughts about anyone don’t have anything to do with their ethnic heritage or the level of melanin in their skin. People who have a problem with President Obama have a problem with him because of his policies. People have a problem with him because of his attitude, his lies, his blame shifting, and more. Just as people had problems with President Bush that had absolutely no association with the color of his skin.

Update: Here’s a good rebuttal to Oprah from Kevin Jackson.

Now to what this has to do with Raising Hope.  (episode spoilers follow) The new season started Friday, November 15th with two episodes. The first was “Déjà vu Man”. Virginia comes home and tells Burt that she’s seen Déjà Vu Man again. He appears out of the blue, takes her picture, and disappears just as quickly. She’s seen him ever since she was a little girl. Burt thinks Déjà Vu Man is Virginia’s invisible friend. Burt talks about Cookie Man who has shown up since Jimmy was little when Burt had taken Jimmy to the park. Virginia thinks Cookie Man is Burt’s invisible friend.

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I started this blog on September 28th, 2004. Nine years ago. Wow.

I’ve had some thoughts on these strikers. There have been protesters with signs demanding a living wage and saying that the minimum wage is equal to poverty. But generally people don’t remain on minimum wage for long. They get raises and promotions,

The unions want the minimum doubled because most, if not all, of their contracts are based on some multiple of the minimum wage.

There is no hope of actually unionizing these workers, there are far too many “management units”. McDonald’s has corporate stores, but it also has far more franchised stores. These franchisees can own one or more stores. Some own quite a few, but most probably own under 10. It would cost far too much to bargain with each of those “management units”, more than the union could possibly collect in dues. Multiply that by all the different fast food outlets and their franchisees and the unions would probably actually go out of business.

The workers that the unions are goading into trying for a doubling of the minimum wage (and hopes of unionization) really don’t realize what that means. It means giving up part of your paycheck for dues and perhaps giving up your entire paycheck because smaller franchisees can’t keep as many employees at the higher wage, or if they do, won’t keep a lot of their customer base due to higher prices. The workers could lose their jobs due to the franchisee going out of business. But unions sound so good, we all hear about the grand union paychecks, and super good benefits…

I think that the sheer number of “management units” is why we haven’t seen food service or retail workers unions before. I’ve heard talk about unionizing the stores in the mall, but it’s always been only talk. And I’ve heard this for decades. There was talk about it when I used to work in stores at malls when I was in high school and just out of high school. Back when minimum wage was $3.25 per hour.

So, I think the main goal of the unions at this time is to get the minimum wage increased because of the ripple effect it will have on their actual members (not these non-member fast food workers).