According to this report:

For teenagers, the summer job market has not been so bleak in generations. During what should be the start of the bustling summer job season, the unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds who want work is 24%–the worst since 1965.

One of the explanations given:

But Lopez Eastlick says there is another major factor: rising minimum wage requirements. Minimum wage increases raise the bar for entry-level employment. From 1997 until 2007, the minimum wage stood at $5.15. Congress raised it to $5.85 in 2007, to $6.55 last year, and in July it is scheduled to increase again to $7.25.

In June 2006, 7 million teens were working. Since the wage hikes and recession kicked in, 1.4 million of those jobs have disappeared. For African-American teens, the job market is even worse–their unemployment rate is 38%.

The irony of course being that a large justification for increasing minimum wage was to help minorities, and now we find that such policy is in part driving up unemployment for African American teens. Those who could do basic math knew this was the inevitable outcome to raising the minimum wage, but those on the left incapable of math were oblivious to this outcome and supported a policy that hurts those they are trying to help.

For one of these babies:

Is that it never works when you need it.

When you look at the financial mess we are working through, it is clear to most people that we needed more regulation.

Our banks and financial institutions were totally over-leveraged, and at some point a federal regulator should have stepped in and stopped them before they reached the breaking point.

The accepted story is that companies like AIG and Countrywide fell into a regulatory gap in our system, that no one was overseeing them, and thus they were free to run wild.

But this is not the case.

As it turns out, there was no gap. AIG, Countrywide, IndyMac, and Washington Mutual, some of the largest failures of this crisis, were all under the purview of one regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision.

The OTS had the job of watching these companies and reining them in before they could do any catastrophic damage. The OTS failed miserably at this job.

The problem with regulation is that once we believe the government is watching the problem, we stop paying attention. We act less responsibly.

June 30, 2009 marks the day US forces have finally pulled out of Iraqi cities, turning security over to the Iraqis.

The day was marked by joyous celebrations and parades, but the party was cut short in Kirkuk by a car bomb that killed 20 and wounded 40.

General Odierno, the current Commanding General in Iraq, believes the continuing violence in Iraq to be directed and funded by Iran.

US Ambassador Christopher Hill had this to say:

“The Iraqi government is also very concerned about this and I think the Iraqi government is taking a very tough minded view of some of these insurgent groups that the Iranians have clearly been supporting over the last year or so,” he added.

Tehran denies any connection to the violence in Iraq.

It appears that Bush’s strategy, though sloppily executed, may not have been as bad as I once thought. The Iraqis are taking hold of their country. Across the border Iranians are seeing a real democracy in action, and clearly wanting it as well. Public opinion is turning strongly against the Iranian establishment. The middle east is changing for the better.

However, looking over what is happening, another war between Iraq and Iran is possible. The current Iranian attacks in Iraq could be considered acts of war.

Luckily Iraq has the strongest ally in the world. But we must take care to approach this problem delicately. A misstep could push the Iranians to nationalism under the current regime and further the blood feud between Iraq and Iran.

On the other hand, we could soon see true democracy in Iran. The citizens are clearly hungry for it, and the more Ayatollah Khamenei tightens his grip, the more slips through his fingers.

It’s beginning to smell a lot like revolution in Iran.

I think Obama taking the right course in staying out of it. The Iranians look poised to take their country back, without our help.

Sadly, bloodshed is inevitable, but as Iraq continues to improve, she will be a beacon to her neighbors to the east, showing them that it is possible.

state imposed regulation are unnecessary. Companies will regulate themselves:

Beginning next year, everything from the iPhone and the BlackBerry to phones made by Nokia and Sony Ericsson will be made to work with a single charger that will work across many different brands of phone.

Ten companies, including Apple, Motorola and Samsung, have pledged to start making phones that can be charged using a single charger in 2010. For phones sold in Europe, the manufacturers will adopt the micro USB connector across all their devices, already the standard on handsets such as the BlackBerry.

The U.S. House passed a massive 1300 page energy bill today, in much the same way one would pass a kidney stone, 219-211.

The bill establishes a carbon credit system, renewable energy requirements for electrical utilities, performance standards for coal fire plants, energy efficiency requirements for new and retrofit buildings, conservation standards for appliances, financial support for the manufacture of plug-in vehicles, , a large scale vehicle electrification program,  research into: carbon sequestration, a smart power grid…

In other words, more red tape than you can shake a stick at. I’ll be lucky if I can fart without having to apply for a permit, not to mention the tremendous bureacracy that will be needed to oversee all of this.

Of course we can take solace in the fact that there’s no way Obama can enforce half of this.

Regardless, this bill pushes the governments tendrils into a giant portion of American life and business, limiting freedoms left and right. Liberals will say that it is necessary for the government to control how we create and consume power in order to save us from global warming. But at what cost to our and liberty? And our wallets?

The silver lining could be that we get off foreign oil. But that could be accomplished with a tax or tariff on oil. And if we were really serious about reducing carbon, we should raise the tax significantly on all fossil fuels. There. Those two sentences would do more than the 1300 page abortion Congress gave us today, and it would do it in the most efficient, free market way possible.

What happened to smarter government?

The recent anti smoking legislation prohibited the use of color in smoking advertisements.

Today President Obama signed new legislation that will heavily restrict the nicotine content and marketing of cigarettes, including the requirement that colorful ads and displays be replaced with black-and-white-only text.

The federal government is now telling a private industry that it can’t use colors when advertising it’s product. Good grief.

because she will not be fired from her job if she is.

A high school secretary illegally changed grades in a school computer system to improve her daughter’s class standing, according to criminal charges filed Thursday.

Caroline Maria McNeal of Huntingdon is accused of using the passwords of three co-workers without their knowledge to tamper with dozens of grades and test scores between May 2006 and July 2007 at Huntingdon Area High School in central Pennsylvania, the state attorney general’s office said.

McNeal, 39, is alleged to have improved her daughter Brittany’s grades and reduced those of two classmates to enhance Brittany’s standing in the 2008 graduating class.

Its unclear why there needs to be universal health care when those that choose not to have insurance for health care report high satisfaction with their current health care.

While 93 percent of the insured say that they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their own health care, fully 70 percent of the uninsured who indicated their level of satisfaction said the same thing.

Americans dissatisfaction with health care seems to be based on the perception that fellow Americans without insurance receive no health care.

Yet only 44 percent were satisfied with the overall quality of the American medical system. The reason is that most Americans seem to believe that lack of insurance for others means that those others receive no access to health care.

However it seems the term ‘uninsured’ is being used deceptively:

The explanation for Americans’ overwhelming level of satisfaction with health coverage - even among the uninsured - is that the term “uninsured” is misleading. Having no insurance doesn’t mean someone goes without health care. The government Medicaid program effectively covers at least some of the uninsured who are dissatisfied. Since Medicaid does not exclude people based on pre-existing conditions, many of those effectively covered by Medicaid do not register until they become ill - they are effectively insured at all times even though they haven’t joined the program. Many of the others who are uninsured are illegal aliens.

Honestly, is there any good reasons to universalize health care?