Weekly Talk Radio Best 1/13/07

Below we have excerpts from the best of the week’s talk radio’s comments. Click the headline to go the actual story.

Lars Larson – Senator Gordon Smith on Iraq
Victoria Taft – Top Ten Dumbest Things Politicians Did in Oregon in 2006
Rob Kremer – Minimum wage is a racist policy

Lars Larson KXL
Senator Gordon Smith re: President on Iraq
1-10-07
“Senator Gordon Smith had a chance to talk to the President about his plans for Iraq. I got a chance to visit with Senator Gordon Smith yesterday. He was just one of the senators who met with President Bush this week to talk to the President about the plans that he’s going to announce tonight regarding the war in Iraq. The fact is, the President has got to make some big changes. The President is planning to send in maybe 20,000 additional troops. Allegedly, those troops will be joined by Iraqi troops that number in the 100,000’s. They’ll take control of Baghdad and finally get this thing over and done with. Where the Iraqi troops can stand on their own two feet and American troops can begin to go home. The problem is, Senator Smith doesn’t buy it, and neither do I. He thinks the President’s plan is interesting but not one that is going to work. He’d rather see those troops on the borders with Iran or Syria, stopping all the I.E.D.’s from coming in. I think he’s probably right.”

Victoria Taft KPAM
Top Ten Dumbest Things Politicians Did in Oregon in 2006 (abridged)
1-11-07
1. The Portland City Council voting to make you pay for their campaigns”¦and making you wait years before YOU can vote on it! In the first campaign using the system…
2. Allowed the professional protester portlanders to drive out a legitimate, venerable business from the city they’d operated in for 111 years. Now the Schumachers are leaving. The city has made its choice”¦when push comes to shove”¦the protesters win”¦and the legitimate businesses lose. Every. Time.
3. The Portland City Council votes to continue the city funding of the Tram”¦a project that started out with an $12-15 million dollar price tag”¦has grown to more than $60 million dollars….
4. The Portland City Council voting 5-0 to pull the troops immediately out of Iraq”¦using alllllllllll the debunked democratic talking points in so doing; including but not limited to: the president lied”¦we’re killing only innocents”¦and we have no stake in Iraq.
5. The Corvallis City Council approving a cell phone tax. Then the voters cold cocked them back to reality and the cell phone tax was no more.
6. The Multnomah County Commissioners found money for everything. Except opening the Wapato Jail…
7. The Portland City Council proposing paying poor people to stay or move to Portland…
8. After the James Chassey died in police custody, the blame the cops first Portland City Mayor Tom Potter, made plans to spend city money on a day care shelter for the homeless…
9. Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman proposes to use $750K of taxpayer money to build a nightclub for recovering drug addicts. Really.
10. Governor Kulongoski proposes four new taxes with a 20% increase in state funding.

Rob Kremer KXL
Minimum wage is a racist policy
1-8-07
“…Let’s say you are starting a business, and the minimum wage is $10 an hour. You look at all the applications from people who want jobs. Since you have to pay $20,000 a year, you have to be selective. You’ll only offer a job to those people whose skills will produce at least $20K in value to you. (Actually, because you have to pay all sorts of other payroll costs associated with each employee, the number is more like $25K.) Anybody whose skills aren’t worth $20K, you simply won’t hire. The fact of the matter is the state, by making the minimum wage $10 an hour, has made it illegal for low skilled people to sell their labor for what it is worth in the marketplace. Now, what is the best way to acquire job skills? The best job skills training is a job. But if we make it illegal for low skilled people to sell their labor for its value, they will never get on the ladder of increasing their skills, and commanding higher wages. In effect, the state cuts off the first few rungs of the economic ladder. Who gets hurt? It doesn’t hurt those whose skills are above the minimum wage value, only those below it.”¦Therefore, Oregon’s high minimum wage is profoundly anti-black. It disproportionately creates unemployment among black teenagers. It prevents them from selling their labor at its value, and keeps them off the job skill ladder that they could start climbing if the do-gooders who push for high minimum wage laws actually understood economics…”