Miller giveaways at big GOP dinner made in China

As a token of her appreciation for longtime GOP support, Congresswoman Candy Miller chose a very odd gift to distribute at Monday’s Macomb County Republicans’ Lincoln Dinner.

The giveaways at each table were stress balls shaped like Abraham Lincoln. Rather than the usual round squeezy ball of foam, these were shaped like a bust Lincoln, with Miller’s name emblazoned below.

I’m not sure why any self-respecting GOP loyalist would want to melt away their stress by squeezing the head of America’s greatest Republican president. Or, for that matter, what is the significance of curing agitation or anxiety by repeatedly crushing in your palm something with the congresswoman’s name on it?

Wouldn’t a Barack Obama squeeze ball be more appropriate?

But the biggest faux pas by Miller centers on what was inscribed on the bottom of the stress toy. 

No, it did not say, “Paid for by …” which it probably should have.

But it did say “CHINA” – as in, “Made in …”

Apparently, the "Chinese Lincolns" created quite a snarky buzz among some in the crowd.

The irony is that the giveaways were part of an event attended by 650 people where Gov. Rick Snyder talked about the revival of Michigan manufacturing and successful efforts to bring new businesses to the state. When she spoke, Miller praised the rebound of the Michigan economy profusely.

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btw: Miller, apparently in all sincerity, had this to say while riling up the crowd on the immigration reform issue: “I think the ‘Gang of Eight’ in the Senate, and the White House, are targeting me.”

She was referring to a poorly attended and badly organized protest at her Shelby Township office (which I have written aboutpreviously) by pro-immigration groups based outside of her district earlier this month.

UPDATE: Doubling McDonald's workers' pay would raise Big Mac by $1

UPDATE:

Ryan Chittum of Columbia Journalism Review, one of the nation’s top critics of the news business, reports that the information given to The Huffington Post, which led to the story below that went viral, was nothing more than a paper written by a University of Kansas undergrad student.

Chittum also dissects the numbers and finds that, in fact, doubling salaries and benefits at McDonald’s would result in a 25 percent increase for menu items. So, the Big Mac would not go up in price by just 68 cents, as reported below. The $3.99 double-decker burger would rise by $1. “And the Dollar Menu would have to become the Dollar Twenty-Five menu,” Chittum adds.

The college paper also failed to distinguish between McDonald’s-owned restaurants and franchise locations. Apparently the impact for franchisees – again, assuming profits remain steady – would be 24 percent. And that’s assuming price increases wouldn’t hurt sales, which they would.

Here’s Chittum’s conclusion:

“The bottom line is: This ‘study’ and The Huffington Post are both wrong.

Unfortunately, bad information spreads pretty fast these days. The false findings got picked up far and wide.”

Chittum was especially hard on MLive.com, the network of news websites across central and western Michigan. They attributed the 68-cent figure to “comprehensive research conducted by the University of Kansas.”

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As fast-food workers across the country strike for a $15 per hour “living wage,” a researcher from the University of Kansas has exposed long-held corporate myths about the destructive impact of raising the minimum wage.

According to The Huffington Post, Arnobio Morelix found that doubling the salaries and benefits of all McDonald's employees -- from workers earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour  all the way up to CEO Donald Thompson, whose 2012 compensation totaled $8.75 million -- would cause the price of a Big Mac to increase just 68 cents, from $3.99 to $4.67.

Obviously, if the CEO and upper management salaries were excluded, the cost of doubling the salaries for only the lowest-paid workers would be substantially less than 68 cents per Big Mac.

With all employees’ compensation doubled, Morelix concluded that every item on the Dollar Menu would go up by just 17 cents. The conclusions are based on McDonald’s profits remaining steady.

Perhaps most revealing of all is the bottom line: salaries and benefits only account for only 17.1 percent of the companies expenses. Think about that the next time some corporate big-wig says that a 5 percent raise for his employees (in McDonald’s case, that would be less than a 1 percent increase in total costs) will break the bank.

The research, based on McDonald’s financial reports, comes as fast-food workers are holding strikes in seven cities over a four-day period.

It also comes just two weeks after it was revealed that Thompson and his executive crew demonstrated just how out of touch they are with their workforce. As a service to their workers, the company put out a suggested household budget for these low-paid employees to follow.

The financial guide caught flak because, for starters, it didn't account for food and gasoline, according to CNN. The second line on the sample budget leaves room for income from a second job, which many called an admission by the fast food giant that its workers can't live on its wages alone.

Macomb GOP slammed by Deadline Detroit

Jeff Wattrick of Deadline Detroit has written a stinging indictment of the Macomb County Republican Party, based on the reaction to last night’s speech by Gov. Rick Snyder in Sterling Heights.

Addressing the annual Lincoln Dinner, Snyder received hearty applause when he said the state will not bail out bankrupt Detroit, but the crowd reaction was more subdued when he said that Michigan’s comeback will not succeed without a Motown resurgence.

Here’s a taste of Wattrick’s reaction:

“Imagine for a second if Snyder told this gathering of Macomb County-ites that Michigan could not succeed without a successful Oakland County or Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids. Do you imagine the applause would be ‘noticeably less enthusiastic?’

“No, it would not.

“Or imagine if Warren was in the midst of an emergency manager/bankruptcy process and Snyder, speaking to the Oakland County GOP's Lincoln Day dinner, said it was important to fix Warren because Michigan could not be successful if the state's third-largest city was a disaster. Do you think Oakland County would sit on their hands for that line?

“No, they would not.”

You can read The Macomb Daily news story about the Snyder speech here.

ICYMI: al-Qaida jail break may mean death for U.S. allies in Iraq

The Daily Beast has a big story about last week's jail break in Iraq by 500 al-Qaida jihadists and the implications of that debacle for some of the top U.S. allies during Gen. David Petraeus successful surge during the final phase of the Iraq War.
The breakout at Abu Ghraib is now being called a counterterrorism and intelligence nightmare for the U.S., with a possible impact on the Syrian civil war.
The origins of this story go back to the Anbar Awakening, which began in 2005, nearly two years before George W. Bush sent more troops and empowered Petraeus to execute an aggressive war strategy that decimated al-Qaida in Iraq and drove the group from its safe harbor in western Iraq, The Daily Beast reports.

But the story by Eli Lake notes that “Petraeus’ campaign would not have been possible if not for tribal leaders like (Sheik Jassim Muhammad) Suwaydawi. Sheik Jassim, as he is known to his fellow tribesmen, was one of the first tribal leaders to rise up against al-Qaida in 2006, when he and his fighters in Anbar province warded off an assault known as the Battle of Sofia, despite being outmanned and outgunned.”

Here’s a bit more:
“On Sunday, Jassim said he was trying to get messages to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, but since the last American soldier left Iraq at the end of 2011, Suwaydawi says the United States has abandoned its former ally. ‘We haven’t had any contact with the U.S. government since they withdrew their forces from Iraq and left us dangling in the wind,’ he said. ‘We are threatened at any moment because of our fight with al-Qaida while the Americans were here.’
“U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity say the jailbreaks last Sunday in Abu Ghraib and Taji present a counterterrorism and intelligence nightmare. “We just lost track of everyone we didn’t kill who was in al-Qaida during the surge,’ one U.S. intelligence analyst said.”