Mike O'Connell

Much has been made about Walmart’s recent decision to raise its part-time workers’ hourly wage to $10 an hour, beginning April 1^st and continuing into 2016. To some it’s as though Ebenezer Scrooge paused halfway through A Christmas Carol and said, “Okay, Cratchit, whatever you want.”

Has Walmart gone soft? Is it caving to public pressure? Is it secretly in league with the feds to put one over on the public at large? (This one’s as likely as any other.)

I’m not sure the exact reason for Walmart’s rationale, but I’m guessing it has more to do with business than with good will, good feelings, or good public relations. Ten-dollar-an-hour employees are better than seven-dollar-an-hour employees, and perhaps this will make for lesser turnover. (And I’m not discounting better PR.)

Point is, this is strictly business.

And what do our friends on the left say? Do they say, “Thanks, Walmart”?

Nope.

It’s not enough.

Have you noticed that it’s never enough with these people? Make the minimum wage $20 an hour and they want $25. Make it 100 and they’d want it to be 110. They have an ingrained sense that business is somehow out to get them, and that only by wise and benevolent government can we combat this evil.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have bad news. I have seen the enemy, and he’s the wise and benevolent.

The amount of snow outside my house right now is beyond ridiculous. This storm has now not only cost me money and time but has cut into my son’s birthday festivities and that is unacceptable. Global warming has forsaken us yet again.

At this point allow me now to posit a different scientific theory. I’m no adherent to theories of global warming, of course, but I have noticed over 32 years of life there have been changes in winter weather patterns. For example, when I was a kid it seemed to be coldest in December and January. In February it started to warm up by the end of the month and March I considered springtime. In the past 10 or 15 years I’ve considered December more and more to be just a continued version of late autumn and winter weather to have extended into March. Seriously, winter has been shifting over the past decade or more and by 2015 it’s extremely noticeable. This is the second winter in a row we’ve had a major snowstorm (actually two last year) in March. And I live in Virginia! I’m convinced that we miscalculated time somehow and are now off by several weeks on the “real” day of the year. To my estimation it’s still the middle of February and we should adjust our calendars thusly. Sound ridiculous? They did it in 1752. And they’re always adding in leap seconds and leap minutes they just don’t tell you about. Today’s February 15. Who’s with me?

And I really think I have been cooped up inside too long.

Since 2006 the date March 2nd has meant only one thing to me. This was the day my best friend for all eternity, Joe Sullivan, was killed in an automobile accident at the age of 23. Over the past nine years people have asked me whether I think about Joe every day.

Nope.

About every 15 minutes.

I’ve tried to make this date not one of sadness but one of fond remembrance. Remembering the good times and also being aware of how many friendships I do have and how lucky I’ve been. Joe’s death was an obvious reminder not to take anything for granted, and to experience every joy in life that you can while you are able to do so. Joe did, and I don’t think I’ve ever found a better life lesson than this one.

Fifty years ago this week our nation lost one of the great leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. He was felled by a hail of assassins’ bullets on February 21, 1965, by former associates from the Nation of Islam. Though not as celebrated as some other black leaders of the era, Malcolm X to me is a figured to be studied and remembered as much as any other.

Most people of my generation know Malcolm X from Spike Lee’s biopic of the man made nearly thirty years after his death. If you haven’t seen it yet, my God, watch it and watch it often. Few movies show music, crime, style, politics, and violence so well. Not exactly the black Godfather, but it’s up there.

If you have a little more time I recommend The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written by the man in collaboration with Alex “Roots” Haley and published shortly after the subject’s death in 1965. It’s amazingly (and sadly) prophetic, and is both entertaining and engrossing without trivializing its importance.

I’m hardly the first person to point out that Malcolm X’s philosophy, by today’s standards (perhaps yesterday’s standards as well), are remarkably conservative in tone. Do things for yourself and don’t expect the government to help you. Yup, that’s it in a nutshell. This is the man who said he’d rather have Goldwater as president in 1964 than Lyndon Johnson. Amen, brother. And by the end of his life he’d stopped calling white people the devil. Thanks.

One wishes today’s race hustlers and sycophants could be so honest about such matters. I suppose race relations have improved, on the whole, over the past 50 years, and the work of men like Malcolm X should not be overlooked as responsible for achieving such.

I step outside today and am reminded of exactly why I left upstate New York several years ago.

Thanks, Obama.