Yeah, don’t everybody?

After all, “Jones” is the most common last name in Wales, the second-most common last name in Britain, and the fourth-most common last name in the United States. These facts were apparently known to Gethin Jones, Cardiff-born TV presenter, who took it upon himself to host a…Jones extravaganza.

This event, properly entitled “Jones, Jones, Jones,” was a successful attempt to beat the world record for a gathering of people with the same family name. The record had been held by the Norbergs, who brought 583 people together in Sweden in 2004, but after Friday, November 3, the Jones had doubled the number and won the record. From as far away as Australia and the United States, 1,224 Jones gathered in Cardiff, Wales. Guinness World Record officials were present and made all the Joneses prove their identity to confirm the breaking of the record.

The event was watched closely by the Norbergs, but alas, they were not to keep their place in the book of world records. But then, who knows? Perhaps they have another get-together in mind.

How often have you heard someone say, “The government needs to raise the minimum wage,” or, “We need a decent minimum wage”?

I hear it (and read it) all the time. Most recently, I read it on my local newspaper’s website, where it appeared in the “comments” section of this week’s poll. (Scroll down the page a bit, and on the right side you’ll find the poll. Click “Current results” and then click “Comments” to view the comments voters have made so far.)

A person made the following comment on the poll question:

We need a change in leadership, We need new legistors to stand up to the abuses of power and who will take what the average American has to say. We need a decent minimun wage without cutting estate taxes for the rich How can we vote for a party that deceives people by attaching the estate tax bill to the minimun wage increase.

In response, I posed the following question: what would happen if the government raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour? (The answer: the cost of the McDonald’s Big Mac—and a lot of other things—will triple; jobs will be eliminated, and businesses may be forced out of business.) By posing this question, I hope to get people to understand what a farce the minimum wage is and always has been.

There never will be a “decent” minimum wage. That’s because whenever the minimum wage is raised, companies will eventually raise their prices to make up the loss, and we’ll be right back to where we started. My younger brother saw this on a personal level—he works at a McDonald’s restaurant and saw first-hand what happened when our state of Minnesota recently raised the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.15. The minimum wage artificially drives up the cost of products. The only way to counteract this would be for the government to put price caps on products, but that is certainly one of the quickest ways to destroy an economy.

There is a glut of information about all the problems of the minimum wage—see here for one example—and yet so many still unfortunately believe in a minimum wage, and a “decent” one at that! We should do our best to correct this glaring problem.

Only a day after Issue 2.15 was published, NCPA Chairman Pete Du Pont, J.D. ran yet another editorial in The Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page, www.opinionjournal.com. It followed the same raison d’être as my article about tax cuts.

Mr. Du Pont aptly denounces the left’s dogma that tax rate cuts cannot work, and even in the face of increasing revenues hold dear to the cry of tax cuts for the rich.

Opposing tax cuts has become the mantra of the liberal left. Sen. John Kerry wants to roll back Bush’s “unaffordable tax cuts.” Senator Mark Dayton (D., Minn.) called the cuts “dangerous and destructive and dishonorable.” Bill Clinton in 2003 said the cuts were “way too big to avoid serious harm.” And various New York Times editorials called them “economically unsound,” claimed that “they will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars” and said they were unlikely “to stimulate the wallowing economy.” Earlier this month House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised that the election of a Democratic House in November would result in a “rollback of the tax cuts.”

He goes on to point out that incomes for families are up, and the portion of income held by the top 10% of Americans is going down.

As I said before, let’s take all the celebration with a grain of salt. GOP Leaders on Capital Hill and in the White House need some spine when it comes to reiging in spending. Suggestions left over from the Contract with America and maintained by the Republican Study Committee in the House, such as earmark reform and balanced budget amendment, still need to be instated. And we need to continue to work toward replacing income tax altogether with the Fair Tax, or even a Flat Tax. However, since government is, as Ronald Reagan said, “an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other,” progress is welcomed when it comes.

Did you know the United States Treasury has an Office of Financial Education? The mission of this office is to teach Americans how to “make wiser choices in all areas of personal financial management.”

We’ll pause to let the irony of this situation—a federal office advicing Americans on how to manage their finances—sink in for a bit.

Granted, the advice the department offers is quite sensible: don’t spend everything you make, save, etc. The only problem is that our federal government itself doesn’t follow this advice—if it did, we probably wouldn’t have an “Office of Financial Education” in the first place. (The office, which was created in May 2002, undoubtedly cost a few million dollars to start up and a few million more each year to keep running.)

Writes the New Ulm Journal editorial page:

This agency . . . is emblematic of myriad nice ideas upon which the GOP-controlled Congress and the Bush administration evidently felt compelled to spend our money. With no sense of limitations on what government ought or ought not to do, seemingly every nice idea becomes a tentacle of ever bigger government.

This leads me to another excellent thought, this one from Bryce at Blog of Bryce. In a post titled “It Flies Away,” Bryce writes:

Please don’t tell me that Bush cut taxes. I really don’t care. In fact, if one more person reminds me of his tax cuts, I may just scream. You think I should be delighted because tax cuts are lifting the burden from me while concurrently deferring a greater weight of debt to my children and grandchildren?

Exactly. What good are tax cuts if the government continues to spend money at rates not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson and The Greaty Society? Do conservatives think money grows on trees, and 20 or 50 years down the road we can pluck $100,000 dollar bills off the branches to pay for our government’s annual spending deficits and mounting debt? No; unless a future president and Congress drastically reduces spending—which seems highly unlikely—the taxpayers will once again foot the bill and be burdened with higher taxes than before.

It’s unfortunate that the federal government can’t take its own advice when it comes to spending. Perhaps the Office of Financial Education should be directing its message toward the federal government and not the American people.

I’m not a huge fan of Wal-Mart, but I’m even less a fan of big government. And the state of Maryland has just taken another step down the slippery slope of socialism with its decision to require that Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart alone spend more money on employee health care.

As Michelle Malkin writes: “It’s on in Maryland, and the socialists are winning.”

You can read all about the state’s decision here. The Democrat-controlled House and Senate in Maryland were apparently able to muster enough support to override Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of the bill.

The situation essentially boils down to this: a privately owned company is being punished by a state government for being too successful. Where does the Maryland legislature get the authority to impose these requirements on a privately owned and privately run company? Last time I checked, people aren’t forced into working at a place like Wal-Mart. If they do happen to work at Wal-Mart and don’t like the conditions, benefits, wages, or bosses, they have the option of quitting and getting a different job. That doesn’t seem so hard to understand, but apparently the folks up in Maryland have decided Wal-Mart’s evil, despicable actions require government intervention. If the government is able to dictate how much Wal-Mart—a privately owned company—has to spend on employee health care, what prevents the government from ordering the same thing of every private company or business?

This sounds like something we’d see in communist Russia, not in the good old U.S. of A.

Soccer Dad has some excellent coverage of the issue that is definitely worth checking out.

World Magazine blog is reporting that a new study published in the medical journal Acta Paediatrica found that women who have had an abortion are 2.4 times more likely to physically abuse their children than those who have had a miscarriage or stillbirth.

The next time you drive around your neighborhood looking at Christmas lights displays, keep Carson Williams of Mason, Ohio in mind.

For three years, Carson has hooked up roughly 25,000 Christmas lights around his home and programed them to . . . well, dance.

To Christmas music.

Playing on FM radio.

Not only has Mr. Williams attracted hundreds if not thousands of people who drive by to view the amazing display, he has also attracted the attention of national media, including NBC’s Today Show and the Associated Press:

This is the third year Williams has assembled the display, which grows every year. He said he merely built on a suggestion from his wife, Sherry.

“She wanted some lights on the house, and I work with computers, so I said, ‘There’s got to be a way to control it with computers,’” Williams said.

He explored the Web and found examples of other synchronized displays. It takes him about an hour to program each minute of the display, which flashes to music by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

That doesn’t mean neighbors have to listen to the sound track repeat itself all night.

“The sound, we actually broadcast on a low FM transmitter, so there’s actually no sound in the neighborhood,” said Williams, an electrical engineer with Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions.

A sign tells passers-by where to tune to listen, and Williams often stays outside for hours at a time chatting with visitors and directing traffic.

Williams hasn’t had any problems with neighbors so far, and he has said that if anyone complains about the display he will shut it down. You can read the entire article about him and his house here.

Make sure you check out this incredible three minute video showing how the whole thing works! Remember to turn on your speakers, so you experience the whole thing with the music! (The ending is especially fantastic.)
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When I originally published material on this blog suggesting the Iraq war hurt the relief effort in New Orleans and the surrounding area, many people scoffed.

But a new AP article on CNN makes the idea a little harder to scoff at:

BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (AP)—The deployment of thousands of National Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina struck hindered those states’ initial storm response, military and civilian officials said Friday.

One of those military officials is Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, who is chief of the National Guard Bureau. According to him, “arguably” an entire day or so of response time was lost due to the absense of these National Gaurdsmen.

Democrat Rep. Gene Taylor “told reporters the absence of the deployed Mississippi Guard units made it harder for local officials to coordinate their initial response.” And before you attack Taylor as some Bush-hating filfth-spewing traitor to America, remember this: Taylor’s home was completely washed away in the hurricane.

In other news: Colin Powell has admitted that his speech to the United Nations accusing Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction was a “blot” on his record. The most interesting part the article is this:

Powell in the TV interview also disputed the Bush administration’s linking of Saddam’s regime with terrorists.

He said he had never seen a connection between Baghdad and the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. “I can’t think otherwise, because I’d never seen evidence to suggest there was one,” he said.

Bush must know something Powell doesn’t, I guess.

Speaking of which, the President’s job approval rating has slipped, for the first time, to below 40 percent.

And a new analysis by the Congressional Budget office indicates that even before you include the cost of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush will fail to keep his promise to cut the deficit in half by the time he leaves office.

The study predicts that the $331 billion budget deficit projected for the current budget year would rise to $370 billion by 2009, the year Bush has promised to cut the deficit to at least $260 billion. Bush promised to cut the deficit in half from a projection in February 2004 of a $521 billion deficit for 2009.

Instead of actually taking a little responsibility and maybe making an effort to not outspend every flippin’ president (Democrat or otherwise) since LBJ, the Bush administration has started playing the blame game:

In response, the White House asked for congressional action instead of rhetoric.

“Instead of complaining about the deficit, how about doing something about it?” said Bush spokesman Trent Duffy, noting that Spratt opposes Republican efforts to trim just $35 billion from federal entitlement programs over the next five years.

This is truly pathetic, coming from a spokesman of the President who has yet to veto a bill after nearly six years in office.

So-called conservatives [Two term Bush supporters] should hang their heads in shame. We do not have anything close to a conservative president in office; instead, we have a war president who throws money around like a Democrat.

Ron Paul’s latest column illustrates yet again why he is without a doubt the best Congressman we have today.

Paul opens his article by asking us this question: Citizens are always asked to sacrifice during crises; why are governments never expected to do the same?

Paul then explains how gas prices can easily be lowered even in this time of crises.

Congress can help immediately by suspending federal gas taxes, which alone add 18.4 cents to the cost of every gallon. The state of Texas adds another 20 cents per gallon in taxes . . . Congress should pass, and the president should immediately sign, a bill suspending the federal gas tax. This would create pressure for states to do the same. This is the simplest, fastest, and soundest way to drop gas prices and ease the financial impact of Katrina. Wouldn’t it be better to leave that money in the pockets of the American public at least temporarily, especially as we’re all being asked to provide financial help to hurricane victims?

The rest of Paul’s column deals with other reasons oil is so expensive, but I believe his above point is the most intriguing. Why are Iraqis able to buy gas for as little as five cents a gallon courtesy of American taxpayers (to the tune of $3 billion dollars in 2004), but these same taxpayers have to now shell out around three dollars a gallon for their own gas?

Certain people need to get their priorities straight.

For those of us who are Star Wars fans:

Actor Michael Sheard, who played Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back, has died of cancer at the age of 65.

Sheard also appeared in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, where he played the role of Adolph Hitler. Sheard played Hitler a total of five times in his acting career.

More on Sheard can be found here.

In Star Wars, he was memorably choked by Darth Vader – and said George Lucas told him it was “the best screen death I’ve ever seen”.

At the time, Star Wars was “just another part in a very busy actor’s career”, he said, but it has secured him a place in the hearts of Star Wars fans and an Admiral Ozzel action figure came out last year.