A Liberal's Enlightenment....

And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose , and was baptized
~Acts 9:18

Well, there will be no baptism into conservatism for Harlem City Councilwoman Inez Diaz, but when somebody finally sees the light, there is always hope they will follow it until they are immersed within it.

From an editorial she penned in the NY Daily News:

Why I changed my mind, decided to vote against New York City's living wage bill

Councilmember Inez Dickens says law would hurt small businesses and those who work for them

Last year, I joined more than two dozen of my colleagues on the City Council in sponsoring the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, commonly known as the Living Wage Bill.

I signed on with concerns. Those concerns have not been addressed and so I have had to withdraw from the bill at this time. Here’s why.

While I have always supported organized labor — because the unions were on the forefront when there were no rights for the working family — I am concerned this legislation will have an adverse impact on small, minority- and women-owned businesses in my district and across the city as a whole.

This legislation would essentially increase the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage to $10 an hour with benefits — or $11.50 an hour without benefits — for employees of projects receiving at least $1 million in city subsidies.
In economically challenged areas of New York City, where jobs are most needed, government subsidies are necessary to spur growth and development. Investors who bring about these developments, and job-creating tenants who take space in them, would be the ones targeted by this bill.

Over time, it has become clear to me that the bill would hurt the businesses that most need government help, the most fragile of businesses in this most fragile economy. It would impose higher costs on the businesses that can least afford it, hurt job creation and create a level of bureaucracy never before seen in New York City.

In my district, small businesses are the only ones hiring. If we are going to pull ourselves out of this recession, we must nurture the creation of new small businesses and encourage them to hire people here as well. If they are forced to pay this higher wage, they most certainly will choose not to come. The unmanageable compliance obligations that the bill would create are enough to keep even the exempted businesses from moving here.

We cannot let this happen....

All in all, when examining the details of the legislation, it seems as though it would do more harm than good.

In short, this legislation will kill jobs, rather than create them. It will hurt businesses, rather than help them and it will curtail the development of new local firms at a time they are needed most.

 Her critique could have been written by Grover freakin' Norquist, by the way. But what differentiates her from ivory tower intellectuals of all ideological stripes is that she's in the trenches of the economic battle, in hand to hand combat with the recession. And she is rejecting, for sound, logical, empirical reasons, the remedies of the far left, as she searches for other answers.

Follow the light, Ms. Diaz. You're on the right path to a better way for your constituents...