Ron Paul Falling, Herman Cain Rising

As a long-time fan of Congressman Paul, I am very disappointed that he recently said he would not have approved the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Here’s an excerpt from The Hill.

Likely GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul said this week he would not have authorized the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, raising concerns about international law. …The likely candidate indicated that to capture bin Laden, he would have worked with Pakistan on a mission like the one that nabbed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was captured by Pakistani intelligence forces and transferred into U.S. custody. …Paul said that international law was an overriding concern.

I’m particularly mystified that he cited “international law” as a reason for his position. I’m not trying to take a cheap shot. Heck, I voted for Ron Paul way back in 1988 when he was the Libertarian candidate for President and I voted for him again in the GOP presidential primary in 2008. But Surely he doesn’t want to cede American sovereignty to the klepto-crats at the United Nations or some other international bureaucracy filled with statists and appeasers?

Herman Cain, on the other hand, has enjoyed a bit of a boost since the debate in South Carolina. I’ve known Cain since the 1990s when he was a member of the Kemp Tax Reform Commission and I was a staffer. On tax matters, Cain has embraced the national sales tax, which may come back to haunt him if he manages to become a first-tier candidate. But he also has proposed a five-part package of incremental reforms, and I was recently interviewed about that set of proposals. With one exception, I was very favorable. Here’s the opening part of the article in the International Business Times.

Herman Cain’s 5-step plan would boost the US economy and create jobs, according to Daniel Mitchell, an economist and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Mitchell said in the 21st century, globalization has made it easy for businesses to shift their money (investments) and operations (jobs) internationally. Therefore, it’s of the utmost importance for the US to have the right policies and economics in order to win those operations and monies. Mitchell said the Obama administration’s policies do the opposite. Cain’s proposed policies, however, would work to achieve those goals.

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Policies that Disproportionately Hurt Blacks Are Bad, even if They Are Unintentionally Racist

Professor Walter Williams comments on new research showing how the minimum wage is hurting African-American employment.

Last week, two labor economists, Professors William Even (Miami University of Ohio) and David Macpherson (Trinity University), released a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Employment Policies Institute titled “Unequal Harm: Racial Disparities in the Employment Consequences of Minimum Wage Increases.” During the peak of what has been dubbed the Great Recession, the unemployment rate for young adults (16 to 24 years of age) as a whole rose to above 27 percent. The unemployment rate for black young adults was almost 50 percent, but for young black males, it was 55 percent. Even and Macpherson say that it would be easy to say this tragedy is an unfortunate byproduct of the recession, but if you said so, you’d be wrong. Their study demonstrates that increases in the minimum wage at both the state and federal level are partially to blame for the crisis in employment for minority young adults. …Among the white males, the authors find that “each 10 percent increase in a state or federal minimum wage has decreased employment by 2.5 percent; for Hispanic males, the figure is 1.2 percent. “But among black males in this group, each 10 percent increase in the minimum wage decreased employment by 6.5 percent.” The authors go on to say, “The effect is similar for hours worked: each 10 percent increase reduces hours worked by 3 percent among white males, 1.7 percent for Hispanic males, and 6.6 percent for black males.”

I don’t think that supporters of the minimum wage are racist, but there’s no doubt that they support a policy that has a disproportionately negative impact on blacks. Indeed, the same is true for the school choice issue. African-Americans are especially victimized by crummy government-run schools. Yet the same leftists who generally support higher minimum wages that lead to black unemployment are almost always against school choice, thus condemning minorities to worse life outcomes.

At some point, they should be held morally accountable for the impact of their policies. On both minimum wage laws and school choice, they’re on the wrong side because of the power of union bosses (and all the campaign cash the unions disburse). They’re not motivated by racism, but the result is racist policies.

For more information about the minimum wage, here’s some of what Orphe Divougny had to say in his Center for Freedom and Prosperity video from last year.

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