Monday digest

- Separated at birth: Democratic political operative Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos fame (top) and socialist/gay rights activist/failed Ottawa mayoral candidate Alex Munter (bottom).

- You may not have heard about it, but there is some contention concerning 1998's claim to the mantle of "hottest year on record", giving it up for 1934 from the decade where, as Mark Steyn reminds us, we were all driving around in SUVs with the A/C on full blast.

On that note, an interview with Bjorn Lormborg, here.

- Quiz time: On May 29 of this year, who said "(t)here is no greater force for economic growth than free markets"?

A. Steve Forbes
B. Canada's Minister of Industry, Maxime Bernier
C. Nikolas Sarkozy
D. Hillary Rodham Clinton

Answer here.

- A Toronto tourist has died after being beat up by four panhandlers in their early 20's.

It must somehow be society's fault.

- I have to give him props for recognizing that incentives matter, but does anyone other than Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty seriously think that dropping the provincial sales tax on smoking cessation aids is really going to prompt those who pay $10 a day for a pack of cancer sticks to consider quitting?

- African-Americans comprise 13% of the US population, yet make up half of the murder victims, and BIC factories worth of ink are spilled on some 70-year-old loudmouth flapping his gums about "nappy headed hos" on AM radio rather than far more serious issues like this and this.

- Speaking of disproportion, I really think J.C. Watts has a point here.

- What happened to this guy between 1994 and 2003?

- This past weekend, I engaged in some woodworking around my place with my father-in-law. A considerable amount of my time was spent with a power sander in hand, and I stopped and marveled at how much more difficult our project would have been without that handy little tool, both in terms of workmanship and time spent.

And what do I have to thank for that and countless other labour-saving inventions which we so easily take for granted?

Capitalism.

God bless it.

- Today on the Michael Coren Show (a rerun from Friday night), Canadian Union of Public Employees boss Sid Ryan said that this unfortunate (yet isolated) incident in a British Columbia McDonald's restaurant demonstrated why unions are needed in the fast food industry. Ryan also said that working full-time at a minimum wage job like those at the Golden Arches, and which this woman did, happily I might add, for 23 years, is inconceivable in today's day and age.

I usually don't like to draw on anecdotes to make an argument, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

Well over 15 years ago, my sister and I started working at McDonald's in our teens after we got too old to deliver newspapers, handing that responsibility down to our brothers. (My starting wage was $3.90 per hour.) From there, we both went on to bigger and better things after putting in a couple of years, and not long after that when we moved to a neighbouring town and my brothers were forced to give up the paper route, they too worked for Ron's Diner albeit at a different restaurant, but doing the same kind of work - flipping burgers, pouring drinks and gaining valuable skills.

For a moment, then, let's imagine that the franchisee for whom I worked was forced to pay a wage of $5 or $6 to every pimply-faced 14-year old Def Leppard fan he had working for him because of a collectively-bargained contract. I don't think he would have been able to afford to hire my sister because it would have been prohibitive to pay that much for the epitome of unskilled labour, given the mistakes, errors and wrong judgments that someone in their first real gig would make - the costs incurred which come directly out of the entrepreneur's pocket, I might add?

Moreover, as Ryan's sparring partner Clare Hoy said on the show, what customer would have wanted to pay not just $3.99 for a combo but $3.99 for a medium fry in order for him to pay the wages to those under contract? Certainly not the bulk of the burger-eating citizenry of the middle-class environs in which we lived.

Now as it were, a few years went by and the franchisee was able to re-invest his profits made from his first venture and open another McDonald's in a neighbouring town, creating more opportunities and where lo and behold, two of my younger cousins were able to get jobs as teens, working for minimum wage but also gaining valuable skills and life experience along the way before moving on to bigger and better things as literally hundreds of thousands of Canadian kids before them have done as well and tens of thousands are doing today.

Let me then ask you this: if the industry was unionized, would it create jobs for adolescents looking for ways to develop themselves by taking that crucial first step into the labour market as plentifully and with as little difficulty as it does now?

I think you know the answer.

Sid Ryan should, too.

- Has anyone out there thought about how they're going to vote in this fall's referendum concerning electoral reform in Ontario? The Libra in me - fair and balanced, to borrow a phrase - likes the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, but the ideas guy in me likes first-past-the-post because under MMP, I fear that lowest-common-denominator, brokerage politics rather than clear legislative mandates will be the order of the day. I also have some misgivings about how candidates would be chosen under MMP, and I would hope that political parties would install a grassroots process, giving power to their memberships in an amount at least equal to what they would grant to the hacks in the back rooms.