Among the issues that the Democrats are trying to run on this year, it’s a tie between the minimum wage and the war on women as to which of them is the phonier.

The first step in trying to make the case for the minimum wage a campaign issue came years ago when the liberals changed what everyone knew was supposed to be the salary paid to teenagers who were looking to pay for their own movies and tennis shoes to something called “a living wage,” which, thanks to the influx of unskilled Hispanics streaming across our border, was suddenly supposed to support entire families.

These days, when the Democrats incessantly campaign to raise it, their motives are two-fold. One, unskilled, generally illiterate, Hispanics and their relatives are expected to express their gratitude at the ballot box for the next hundred years. Two, union contracts are often tied to the minimum wage and, as a result, any rise in the rate automatically results in a higher hourly wage for union members without the inconvenience of their having to go on strike.

While I understand that the union bosses are happy to see illegal aliens flooding into this country because they will inevitably join unions before long and start paying dues, I don’t get why American union members remain so passive when it’s their jobs that will be lost to these young interlopers.

When it comes to the war on women, the Democrats accuse Republicans of two sins. The first is that we intend to reverse Roe v. Wade. Inasmuch as it’s been the law of the land for half a century, that is, unfortunately, extremely unlikely.

The other red herring is that we on the Right want to continue paying women less for doing the same work as men. The fact is that the equal pay law was passed while JFK was still in the White House. The way the liberals lie their way around that inconvenient truth is by changing the wording from “the same work” to “equivalent work,” and then pretending that being a kindergarten teacher is the equivalent of being, say, a longshoreman. The fact is that when it comes to the exact same job – be it a firefighter, a cop or a member of Congress – men and women doing the same job get the exact same pay.

Because I continue to receive mail begging for donations from those behind the Ben Carson for President Movement, I keep trying to figure out why anyone, including Dr. Carson, thinks he’s the best man for the job. After all, we already know that he is a little mushy when it comes to the Second Amendment and he’s in favor of affirmative action, but he is also, like uberliberal Bill Gates, on the Costco Board of Directors. I don’t know what these folks get paid or what they’re supposed to do for their money aside from allowing their names to be printed on the company stationery, but I do know that Costco’s CEO James Sinegal is a major contributor to Barack Obama and the DNC, and I also know that until public outrage forced them to back down, Costco pulled Dinesh D'Souza’s best-selling “America” off its book shelves.

So, having given the Carson candidacy some thought, the best I could come up with is that some conservatives want to prove that our amateur is better than their amateur, and it gives his supporters a way to show that their objection to Barack Obama has nothing to do with his pigmentation.

Responding to something I wrote about charities recently, Chuck Tatum wrote to me, asking: “Does anyone else find it weird that abused animals, starving children and wounded warriors, can all be helped for the exact same $19-a-month?”

I let him know that I hadn’t been aware of that, probably because I record everything I watch on TV so that I can fast-forward through commercials and Juan Williams’ appearances on Fox. But I expect the folks who run charities all discovered what terrific results were achieved by retailers who priced their products at $99.99 or service stations who always peg their gas prices at $3.59 or $3.69 a gallon, and never at $3.60 or $3.70.

Speaking of gasoline, although the feds add a standard 18.4 cents to a gallon, the states get to add anything they want. Here in California, the liberal riffraff in Sacramento, who long ago mastered the art of squeezing blood from a turnip, add roughly 50 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas, and then have the gall to whine about greedy oil companies.

As if that’s not bad enough, California’s state income tax rate is along the highest in the nation., whereas if you live in Washington, Nevada, Wyoming, Texas, South Dakota, Alaska or Florida, you don’t pay anything.

I suspect the California state legislators would quickly point out that roughly one out of every eight Americans live in our state, so naturally they require more tax revenue. But, I would respond, if it’s the enormous population that makes this state so unappealing to the individual taxpayer and to the company owners who keep moving their factories to such accommodating places as Texas and Nevada, why do you ignoramuses continue to make the problem worse by keeping the border as porous as a sieve and constantly urging illegal aliens to make use of our schools, our hospitals and our welfare, not to mention our jails?

Speaking of which, in California, thieves have three choices: They can either go to prison, Sacramento or Washington, D.C.

In response to an article in which I quoted the architect of ObamaCare, the Dr. Frankenstein of death panels, Ezekiel Emanuel, 57, stating that he plans to die when he’s 75 and that the rest of us should follow his example, Carlene Hobbs wrote to say: “I’d like to help him out. Trouble is I’m dyslexic, so he better update his will real soon.”