Couldn’t Help But Notice (121307)

“The coalition of labor, social service, trial lawyer, and political organizations” described in the Toledo Blade really ought to name itself The Committee to Ruin Ohio As Known (CROAK).

Among other things, their “Healthy Families Act,” which may appear on the 2008 ballot if the General Assembly, as expected, doesn’t act on it this year, will “Require businesses with 25 or more employees to allow full-time workers to earn up to seven days of paid sick leave to care for themselves, children, spouses, or parents.”

How potentially destructive this could be has been discussed previously here and here.

If this is to make any sense (I don’t think it does, unless you like mediocre Western European-like economic growth), it has to be debated and done nationally. Otherwise, more employers will flee Ohio to business-friendly states, fewer will expand their operations in Ohio, and fewer will start up in Ohio.

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No way I’m ignoring this — John Kerry was against the Kyoto Protocol (in 1997, as part of the 95-0 Senate advisory vote) before he was for it while in Bali this week.

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This may be the “I paid for this microphone” moment of the 2007-2008 primaries. Actually, if you watch the vid at the link, you will see that Reagan said, “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green.”

Update: A sure sign that the Thompson “show of hands” refusal is resonating — An ABC blog entry (HT NewsBusters) is calling it a “tantrum.”

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I’m reminded by this item that all too many believe that human beings are on the whole, in tired accounting terms, liabilities and not assets. They could not be more wrong, which is why it’s useful that the world’s chief spokesperson for people as assets has spoken out against climate change (known as “globaloney” around here) “prophets of doom.”

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I was going to do more with this, but Sean Higgins at IBD Editorials brought up a subject that’s fallen completely off the political radar and appears headed for obscurity — so I’d better catch it while I can:

For years, Democrats have pushed the stem cell issue hard, making overturning the White House’s restrictions on federal funding a key part of their platform. Yet almost overnight the issue seems forgotten.

The reason is the publication last month of two scientific papers indicating that skin cells can be reprogrammed to act like embryonic cells, potentially eliminating the need for embryonic cells in the first place.

The results were splashed across major papers.

In one fell swoop the politics of the issue shifted …..

This means that, despite the protests of editorialists at the New York Times, The Toledo Blade, and a few other bitter-enders, the once supposedly urgent need for life-taking embryonic stem cell research is vanishing before our very eyes, overrun by scientific reality.

“Someone” with an abiding faith in God believed that He would provide us stem cell-related answers without forcing us to engage in carnage to get them. One can now describe President Bush’s stand early in his administration against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) in four words: “correct,” “courageous,” and “virtually vindicated.”

Yours truly predicted this in April — well (sheepish grin :–>), sort of:

Write it down: 5 years, even 10 years from now, ESCR will still be almost nothing but promise, while other SCR will at a minimum have done another 5-10 years of blocking and tackling, and may itself achieve all the breakthroughs Hail Mary black-hole ESCR promises — *someday*. That would include pluripotency, as there are beyond-early indications that ASCRs can be trained to be pluripotent. If realized, that achievement would, and should, consign life-taking ESCR to the ash heap of history.

OK, so I was 4-plus to 9-plus years off. Clearly, my faith isn’t as strong as Mr. Bush’s.