"It turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted � or even hired at all."

Front page teaser for a NYT article titled "When Family-Friendly Policies Backfire."

Note that the unintended consequences are not limited to the working women who have children. Even women who intend to forgo motherhood and put all their effort into work are still going to look like potential mothers. 

The article ends with an effort at the upbeat:

Perhaps the most successful way to devise policies that help working families but avoid unintended consequences, people who study the issue say, is to make them gender neutral. In places like Sweden and Quebec, for instance, parental leave policies encourage both men and women to take time off for a new baby.

Yeah, well, but perhaps not. Who takes this encouragement to spend more time with babies? Who passes up this benefit because they feel they must press on in their career (and because they're not as interested in babies or because they're not the ones who can breastfeed)? I don't see how gender-neutral policies are going to avoid these unintended consequences.

"The Hole in the Rooftop Solar-Panel Craze/Large-scale plants make sense, but panels for houses simply transfer wealth from average electric customers."

"Most people buy rooftop solar panels because they think it will save them money or make them green, or both. But the truth is that rooftop solar shouldn�t be saving them money (though it often does), and it almost certainly isn�t green. In fact, the rooftop-solar craze is wasting billions of dollars a year that could be spent on greener initiatives. It also is hindering the growth of much more cost-effective renewable sources of power."

Subscription needed for direct access to the WSJ, but you can Google some text and get a workable link.

"For a time in recent decades, it looked like the reform examples of New York under Messrs. Giuliani and Bloomberg and the growth of cities like Houston might lead to a broader urban revitalization."

"In some places it did. But of late the progressives have been making a comeback, led by Bill de Blasio in New York and the challenge to sometime reform Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago. This week�s nightmare in Baltimore shows where this leads. It�s time for a new urban renewal, this time built on the ideas of private economic development, personal responsibility, 'broken windows' policing, and education choice."

A Wall Street Journal editorial titled "The Blue-City Model/Baltimore shows how progressivism has failed urban America." (Pay-wall protected, but if you Google some text, you can go in.)

"By glamorizing a limited budget in a piously frugal 'look what you can do with it' sort of way, it suggests that people who aren�t eating as beautifully are doing it wrong and deserving of additional scorn."

"This isn�t an exercise in actually eating what SNAP recipients can eat, and it creates false impressions of what this lived reality actually is, making it easier for people to make false comparisons to their own situation."

A former nutritionist named Stephanie Jolly told Darlena Cunha, a home-based parent and former television producer. Cunha has an article in WaPo titled "How Gwyneth Paltrow hurt America�s poor and hungry/Her uber-privileged food stamp challenge obscures the many obstacles low income people face."

We were just talking about Paltrow's food-stamp challenge here. There are lots of good comments in there. And Dan from Madison has his own blog post, here:

I decided to go to my local grocery store to see if I could get enough food to live on for one week for $29.... Vegetables, frozen, are a great deal.... The chicken thighs were an easy choice for protein.... The mayo cost us $1.59 - but that will help stretch all of that tuna that only cost us .625 per can (there was a deal at 4 for $2.50).  I would plan on tuna fish sandwiches or that PB and J for lunches at my job, and would bring an apple or banana along.  The bread was only .89 for the loaf.  For breakfast I could imagine a fried egg atop toast with a little yogurt and/or fruit on the side.  The cans of chicken noodle soup were an astounding .49 each.  For dinners, I imagined rice (.99 for the bag - and that is a lot of rice), and chicken with vegetables.... So the total for all of this food above was $23.99...

To that, Dan added a "flask of Shellback Spiced rum... $4.19." He declares: "I think I pretty conclusively proved that one person could easily eat for $29 for a week and still have money left over for bad habits like drinking."

Does that count as the "scorn" Stephanie Jolly was talking about? And, more importantly, will Dan be "eating beautifully"?

"The government always used to say, 'We don't know the real bad effects of marijuana. We've never been able to test it.'"

"Well, I'm a walking guinea pig. I've been testing it for well over 50 years. I came in fifth on Dancing With the Stars at 76. This old stoner waltzed right by professional athletes because of the marijuana."

Said Tommy Chong. But dancing is more physical than mental. Let's check the guinea pig's mind:
Click for more �

"Many of the women who use the website have a great deal in common. They were almost all 'skeptical' of the concept at first..."

"... and, while their biggest fear is still being judged by society for what they do, every single one of them insisted that there is a very clear distinction between prostitution and being paid to date a man � even when they have sex with them."

"Honestly, I don't think it's any different than a marriage with a house wife," Rachel explains to Daily Mail Online. "If the wife is not working, she is being paid and supported by her husband, and of course they have sex. Does that make her a prostitute?"

ADDED: A husband and his stay-at-home wife are an economic unit in a single-earner household. The income-earning spouse isn't paying the home-based spouse. They've divided the contributions within a shared enterprise, and they have substantial mutual obligations if they decide to end the arrangement. Rachel doesn't mean to disrespect traditional marriage. She just does that by accident as she tries to distance herself from prostitution and makes an old-fashioned everything's-economic argument.

You'd think they'd care about public opinion... or... no, you don't need public support when you're shutting down.

"Seattle�s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurant across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that 'closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.'"

Those places all sound so sweet and trendy, and to maintain their image, if they needed to maintain their image, they would want to support nice, progressive things like a jacked up minimum wage law.

Restaurant owners, expecting to operate on thinner margins, have tried to adapt in several ways including �higher menu prices, cheaper, lower-quality ingredients, reduced opening times, and cutting work hours and firing workers,� according to The Seattle Times and Seattle Eater magazine. As the Washington Policy Center points out, when these strategies are not enough, businesses close, �workers lose their jobs and the neighborhood loses a prized amenity.�

A city dies, but � oh! � what a beautiful corpse!