The Shame of the ‘Living Wage’ Scam

Corrupt labor unions figured out how to scam the Ciy Council decades ago. Throw a few ill-spoken wretches, preferably with distinctive speech patterns, in front of the City Council to soften up the last resistors. On cue, the Council will melt. It is a cinch the Council will contort itself into any bizarre shape you demand. (See the 2 photos in this morning’s Los Angeles Times and the one on Page B-10 in the Sunday Times. This is show business, dear reader. This is about stagecraft.) The cheers of the sob sisters will follow you, the elected official, all the way out of the building. Recalling this emotional scene will give you goose bumps for years.

Precedents Are Falling

One of the faux justifications that city councils employ — if you will forgive the irony of the verb — in imposing a “living wage” has been to apply it only to companies that do business with the city. Feeling unusually frisky yesterday, the Los Angeles City Council made it applicable for the first time to enterprises that are not doing business with the city. They did it for the same reason that other city councils have, because they are liberals who think with their hearts instead of reasoning with their minds. Bill Rosendahl, the City Councilman for our neighborhood, is having his worst month yet. Listen: “Don’t be afraid of a ‘living wage,’” he told business leaders last week in the presence of his Council colleagues. And then he socked the business men and women with his deadliest sucker punch. “I understand your feeling about meddling in your affairs,” he said before winding up to throw his most dishonest pitch. “We, as a city, have a responsibility to see that this is fairly done.” No, “we, as a city,” don’t have any more of a responsibility to these workers in dead-end jobs than my late grandmothers or my saintly former wives. Mr. Rosendahl, who is smart, knew he was blowing smoke. But he was aching so badly to help the pathetic looking people that he lost control of himself. The Hahn family lightweight, Councilwoman Janice, is living up to her reputation for ditziness. “We can send a message,” she said, “that in Los Angeles it is the voice of the workers that counts.” Ms. Hahn probably should return to straightening out paper clips.

Postscript

After next week’s second reading, the “living wage” will become official when Mayor Sob Sister, Mayor Villaraigosa, affixes his signature. Now Los Angeles elected officials have stepped into a moral gutter where they lock brotherly arms with the meddling, ill-informed, unreflective do-gooders in Santa Monica and Berkeley. What an embarrassing legacy.