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Across our landscape there are very few pivotal landslide elections. When they happen they create a new dominant party for a long time…
I can only think of four… FDR’s first two terms and Ronald Reagan’s two terms. Both set in motion a new philosophy and new institutions to enforce the continuation of that policy long after their respective deaths…
(Clinton’s 2nd term would almost qualify but its effect was squandered on Monica Lewinsky… Doubt that? And you just told me you are not from the South, Great Plains, or the mountainous West.) ..
Here are maps of what we are talking about…..
The philosophy espoused by those of the heavily blue maps lasted from 1933 to 2001. A nice span of 68 years… The philosophy espoused by those in the heavily red maps, overlaps a little, but most would say it is the primary driver of most policy today, which give it a lifetime stretching from 1981 to today… A lifespan so far of 33 years…
Today, we are consistently divided…..
Which kind of explains our current Federal government, now doesn’t it? Actually it has never been more clear…
For your life to get better, we have to stop supporting equal government… Where both sides are balanced and nothing ever, gets down… Currently in the House, there are radical new changes that will forever change America as we know it… It can’t get passed the Senate …
Currently in the Senate, there are radical new changes that will forever change America as we know it… It can’t get passed the House….
2014 will be a pivotal year for several reasons.
A) There is no cap on how much can be spent.
B) Voter turnout is consistently low. So advertising will be the worst ever, meaning every vote that switches carries more weight. Every voter who gives up in disgust, and does not vote, gives up that much more of a percentage on deciding the total vote…
C) Wealth will outspend the poor this year. Wealth has the money; 80% of the population is unable to write a check to either political party….
D) Both parties’ policies are streamlined into clear agendas. One party (with money) is for policies that help the 1% do better and pay for them by hurting the 99%… The other party is for policies that help the 99% do better, and pays for them by hurting the top 1%….
E) Because of the politics of doing business, all those media outlets in charge of telling you the news and sometimes the truth, cannot in good conscious, tell you the truth anymore… They simply can’t risk getting pushed off the buying spree…..
You have to choose who to help: the rich or poor, and you have to vote, no matter what obstacles they throw up in your way…. you must remember that those obstacles are there for a reason, and will remain there until we get either an all blue, or all red America showing up in Wikipedia on election day.. Because those obstacles are there solely to protect the losing parties advantage in an effort to keep America from going all blue…
This raising of the cap also means, that if you are a CEO planning an ad campaign that will be kicking off from late August through a holiday December… your ads won’t register with audiences until the day after election… Save your advertising money. There is no way you can compete for airtime against someone who will pay any price to get his ad on the air… Save your money…
My personal experience is that over the past two elections, the non political people I know mentally tuned out of ads… Ads no longer work. What does work is the personal connection of talking to real people… There were almost no campaign ad buys in 1932 or 1936. And there were campaign limits on money spent in both 1980 and 1984…. Primarily both those sweeping groups of elections were decided upon word of mouth….
I used to get mad at conservative talk shows, until I realized there were only the same 5 people calling in… Out of 3 million people… Were they shills? I don’t know but their voice prints were consistent. Occasionally someone thinking the talk show was real would call in, but it was rare…
Fight apathy. This is where you come in… If you read this, you probably will look at the ads too… Your job is to interpret the ads to all you know as nothing more than billionaires blowing smoke out of their orifices like they are lavishing in a Bangkok bordello. These ads don’t correspond to real life. People don’t hate their neighbor because they have an Obama or Romney sticker on their care… 99% of us say… “Oh, whatever” .. “Who gives a shit? Hey! Can you tell me where you bought your truck?”
The point is that all those red states are not all red deep inside… There are a lot of blues there too, at least 30% in the most red, and often in populous states, up to 49%…. Human beings living in those states have a lot more clout than some clever ad that simply makes up stuff around a table and then pretends it it true, using actors, and trying to crush the airwaves with massive volume before the fact-checkers get the messages out calling it all bunk..
It is We, The People versus They The Billionaires. It is a game of Monopoly in its final rounds and we only own a monopoly on the yellow squares on the back side… Our only hope left is that we get to shuffle the stack the Chance cards every time we vote… And if you don’t want to go through this all over again in two more years, with more unlimited funding in 2016, you need to make sure that despite $4 billion being spent this mid term election, it does zero good to the Koch’s or anyone else…
If we can get a Blue House, we will have a blue Senate, and we can move forward with a blue president…. it’s almost worth dying for.
It’s all about word of mouth… And be nice… Republicans aren’t bad people anymore than Democrats, and when you talk to them realize you probably look as weird to them, a they do looking right back at you. And trust me, if you read the news and blogs you would already know that the majority of Republicans are looking for something new. They just don’t know what. And should you need a shot of hope? Cast your eye on these electoral maps which are of the elections just before the ones above when the massive tidal waves made their landfall…..
Things can change quickly when everyone individually just gets fed up that things are not going their way… At 99%, the numbers are in our favor…
But it is all about you. Now get out and start talking. Tell the truth… Be nice.
I wonder if we could get 2 million to show up for a march in DC against billionaires buying out our elections? We could, but it would take some work, but that would be a very effective message against an unmatched $4 billion being spent to prevent democracy.
Our message would be real, with real people. Their’s as fake as Mr. Ed….. (that is who David Koch looks like I think; compare the chins)…
A catfish inspection program will continue in place, despite Vietnam’s and China’s objections.
California can continue banning eggs hatched from hens in tiny battery cages…
Language aimed at curtailing a meat country-of-origin labeling (MCOOL) requirement, and one aimed at restricting activities by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) was left out. These two were opposed by foreign processors.
The bill ties Commodity subsidies to historical production but allows famers to update their “base acres” once in the life of the farm bill.
It changes restrictions on the so-called “actively engaged” provision. The criteria for management has been strengthened compared to current law, a source said, but the provision appears be scaled back from the labor requirement in the earlier versions of the bills…
The altered payment limits are now capped at $125,000 per individual or $250,000 per couple, but caps within that total for PLC, ARC or marketing loan deficiency payments have been removed.
On farm subsidies, the bill offers producers a choice between a shallow loss revenue insurance long favored by Northern crop growers and price-based supports supported by those in the South. ..
The compromise discourages milk overproduction by limiting how much milk can be insured in the future and also has a provision allowing the Agriculture Department to buy up some excess production.
The bill is expected to save $23 billion over 10 years compared to existing funding.
The House bill had initially made a $39 billion cut to the food stamp programs. The cut will now stand at $8 billion across 10 years. or $800,000,000 per year…The food stamps cuts are achieved by making it more difficult to qualify for nutrition assistance by virtue of receiving home heating aid…..
The bill contains funding for a new pilot program aimed at encouraging able-bodied recipients to find work and more than $200 million more for food banks.
The Golden Flush Award /Click Image for Past Winners
Usually this is an after thought…” Oh, wow, year’s over, let’s get a person of the year”… And then once we elect one, we go… “holy crap… we totally forgot so and so….”
So to try to stir up some old simmering coals of memory, both mine and others, and perhaps even to (heaven forbid) get some debate going in the blog sphere, I thought I’d make an initial run on Thanksgiving Week, and then add people into the nominating category as others mention various ones I should kick myself for forgetting.
It will also force me to review the year which is something I rarely do… because face it, as a human being, I am slave of the moment…. If I did this last year, come December 14th the entire world would have been turned upside down and all the old priorities of 2012, would in one day become trivial….
And so starting early gives me the chance to make the argument for each of those I decide to enroll with your kind recommendations included….
Julius Cephus: Particularly this one man organized and stopped an end run around the Port of Wilmington. The Kinder Morgan deal did not go through, and the Wilmington Port is bustling like never before… Kinder Morgan was to strip the union of power, and drop the rates of pay, further dampening the economy of Wilmington proper. It was also the first defeat of a Lavine-Markell development project, .. Fisker and Bloom had gone forward without a hitch. Julius and other’s push back resulted in a General Assembly motion that stated they, not the governor, had final approval. It was the first time we were exposed to the current Governor’s manipulations. They were to play a significant part across this year’s tapestry.
Steve Newton: A blogger who has written infrequently, but effectively. His piece on SB 51 is what alerted us to the end run being performed by Dave Sokola on lowering the current standards being used for educating teachers. It is brilliant. It took an evening of reading the legislation line by line and cross referencing it with Steve’s analysis, to understand the huge negative impact this bill would cause. By the time this was done, the Bill had already passed the Senate unanimously without comment, and with an friendly amendment added that was voted upon without even being read. Some public outcry was mustered within the House, both in committee and on the floor, but under the Governor’s direction, the Speaker of the House, pushed the bill to the floor before significant outcry could be mustered. Only 4 House members were not on record for it’s passing. Our educational schools now have to water down their teaching standards to meet the new law. Steve also has brought the Highmark story to Delaware. His research in the increase of medical costs in Western PA as a result of knocking out competition by unfair practices, leads one with a cold chill of what to expect in Delaware’s future. We are already there. As an insurer, Highmark is only paying medical claims in its own affiliated clinics. As the new Blue Cross/Blue Shield owner, that is a huge percentage of Delaware’s residents. None can go to any other hospital. He has properly fingered Karen Weldham Stuart for not catching this prior to implementation. Without Steve, this would have passed unnoticed. The News Journal still has not once mentioned the takeover of Delaware’s health field under one owner.
Ernest Lopez. If Kennedy were still writing Profiles of Courage, he should include this man. Ernest Lopez is a conservative, and voted with Libertarian values to pass the gun legislation recommended by Markell and Biden. Reflecting the views of his district, instead of taking the threatening message sent to him down from the NRA, he voted for his district. A very vocal minority, who is always vocal, and always in the minority, swore they would unseat him. He disregarded their idle threat, and voted both his and his constituents conscious. A major billboard was put up to call him out. His vote caused the passage of us now requiring background checks at public gun sales. Now a certifiably insane person cannot slap cash and get a gun. It is a no-brainer, and Ernie was the only Republican with brain enough to even know what a no-brainer is….
Cathy Cloutier: her vote allowed gays to marry. Again, she is a Republican who said enough is enough… Tired of voting against her conscious just so Sussex County would not flip over to the Democrats, she finally did not toe the line and voted along the lines of her own constituents, all overwhelmingly in favor of gay marriage. In doing so, she went against the entire grain of her party, who firmly feel that gays are second class citizens, even though most Republicans in office are closeted gays.
Bethany Hall Long: on the same vote, made a viable personal decision, and also voted for the legalization of gay marriage. Unlike Cathy’s vote, this was accomplished at great personal sacrifice, for all of those in her personal life, were solidly against this policy from taking effect. In voting for what was morally right, she had to contend against those whose influence she could not escape. She went with the correct vote, over the easy one. As a result, Gay marriage is now legal in Delaware.
Paul Baumbach: gave great ammunition against the fight for SB51, and later against HB 165. Both bills which will damage Delaware’s education for years to come. He was one of the four who put up a fight on the House floor. Paul also arranged for the meetings in Newark to discuss the new Power plant that figured in this past week’s election.
John Kowalko: also was against SB51, HB 165, as well, being against the power plant. In fact, John was the first person to sound the alarm over how big the power plant would be. Without his big voice, it may have slid through unnoticed. The power plant has defined northern Delaware politics since September.
Kim Williams; responsible for HB 40 which investigates Charter School’s meddling into our educational systems. She was as an acting state representative, allegedly refused entrance into a committee hearing on education, for fear she might say something damaging to the bill being rushed through…. She brought to the public’s knowledge, that the Charter School bill was drafted illegally without public input, and the charter group constructing it, was also under FOIA, to which the private group denied. The Attorney General backed up her assertion, that the bill was formulated illegally but their decision was moot, because the bill was passed both houses anyways. Kim Williams also in the HB 40 task force, led the group to realize that charter schools unlike public schools, do indeed filter those entering charters to weed out those who might lower their test scores….
Mark Murphy, Rodel, Sweeney, Hefferman, and the Fake Educational Reform Establishment: I almost purposefully did not post this. Although the first person’s name is usually followed by explicatives whenever mentioned, it is unlike Voldermort’s, still getting mentioned. Mark Murphy was not put in his position based on his ability. He was placed there for his loyalty to the cause of corporatizing public education. Markell pulls the strings, Murphy figures how to get it done… It is hard to make a puppet the most influential person of the year… So I was going to skip him… But at the last minute, remembered that every time he or anyone of these make an op-ed, it resonates as gigantic news. The entire community rises up to counteract each op-ed, usually with the word “lies” thrown liberally about…. So, they do exert an influence. I looped all of them together, as the group of liars in a Greek play, who stand on the stair steps and taunt the protagonists. Well,… they are part of the play…….
Dan Short: Sometimes villains get noticed too. Primarily a single issue candidate, who personally supports the NRA, he actively campaigned and organized to create enough backlash so Markell’s gun laws could not get enough votes… Without him, there is a possibility that all four of Markell’s gun control pieces of legislation would have passed both houses of Delaware’s legislature. Dan Short should be given the credit for stopping them.
John Sigler: Single handedly by his very brief tenure as the re-elected head of the Republican Party, he pointed out through his pigeon shooting, just how inept the Republican Party was at everything else. With his leaving, all fissures cracking the Republican bedrock, were impossible to ignore. Blogs split. The IPOD’s split. Former candidates of the same party just months earlier, now not talking to each other. The Delaware Republican Party is dead; no it is past dead. More dead than a pigeon shot inside a box by John Sigler, former head of the Delaware Republican Party.
Nancy Willing: Her blog, the Delaware Way, is the go-to site for local information. Whether about Dover, about New Castle County, about any of New Castle County’s associations, Nancy combs all sources and puts them down in aggregate form. Heavily involved in the Power Plant controversy, The Delaware City Rail Yard controversy, Barley Mill controversy, the Woodlawan controversy, the Kinder Morgan controversy, the Charter School Controversy, the Common Core Controversy, Nancy has who is saying “what”, and links to “why”. One can expend less energy by using her blog to follow all the stuff the News Journal neglects, in a few quick empty steps.
Amy Roe: a head of the Sierra Club, who emerged from nowhere to lead the fight against the power plant, and give quite a run against the establishment candidate. Becoming the face the anti- power movement could coalase behind, she gave the anti power plant movement both dignity and grace. Coming up short only 115 votes, she has awakened Newark now politically as never before… The power plant if it goes forward, now has a strong group of Newarkeans against it. Hopefully they will be monitoring it regularly and helping authorities keep in in compliance with all local law.
Tom Gorden; although much quieter than his first term in office, Tom Gorden is rapidly rolling back the privileges the previous Clark administration handed over to our state’s top developers. The Barley Mill plaza which had a green light, is now parked at a red. In a big sea change, though handled quietly, community groups are now no longer persona non grata in county government. It is no longer accepted as a matter of course that the Woodlawn Trust will be gobbled up by developers. If enough fight can be mustered, it can be stopped. Furthermore, with Tom there is closer coordination with the City of Wilmington, than we have experienced anytime in our lifetimes. In the county, local policing has been stepped up, particularly in neighborhoods prone to crime…
Dennis Williams: Came in with grand expectations, which looked deliverable for a while. The tide is turning and his relevance on this list, is because every day, the headline reality in Wilmington’s streets, brings his electioneering boasts back to haunt him, like a sizzling hot branding iron. Time, Dennis, to say “Damn the torpedoes… Their punk asses are going in jail no matter which blowhard on City Council spouts off,before mine gets tossed in jail for impersonating a mayor..”
Alan Levin: Jack Markell’s second in command, he was instrumental in defending Markell’s position on Kinder Morgan and the port, as well as the new power plant for the data center. He also had a hand in keeping Dole in Delaware, and worked to slip the power plant past a slew of unsuspecting Newark City officials.
Jack Markell: had his hand in everything. He was behind Kinder Morgan’s takeover. He was behind SB 51 and HB 165. He was behind the illegal charter group, requiring HB 40. He also was the driving force for the four rational steps to gun legislation, 2 of which were passed. He was also the driving force behind the passage of gay marriage, signing the bill in the chambers just moments after its passage. He also supported the transgender bill in its travels through the labyrinth of Legislative Hall. He as behind keeping Dole in Delaware. He was behind changing an icon in Millsboro away from pickles, over to poultry. He pushed the bill to curtail Flowers. Despite your opinion over whether these were good or bad, they still showed a ubiquitous and wide reach across the state of Delaware. Seems like nothing got done that didn’t have his fingerprints all over it.
John Young: As head of Christina board, John Young led the board in standing up to Mark Murphy and Jack Markell, by refusing the RTTT funds slated for his district. Although some hired fools, (Jea Street) tried to paint Young into a corner, it served the opposite purpose and gave Young a platform. For the fist time, Common Core was getting publicly bashed. For the first time, many were finding that aligning themselves blindly to this sham of improving standards, was probably going to hurt them politically in the next couple of years. It was the fist salvo back, so the damage estimates were not high, but it did open eyes of many who had been on the sidelines of all educational issues, making them also become vocal in fighting Common Core. His blog Transparent Christina has channelled a lot of detailed information into the Delaware market, and had made Common Core an apprehension, instead of the savior it was supposed to be….
Kilroy: Kilroy has always been haranguing over education. In fact he was doing such a good job I left that issue alone for years, because other issues for me, like the economy and elimination of guns from the hands of the mentally ill, were more important. But as the issue has shifted back into the limelight, Kilroy’s hard hitting is making its mark… Kilroy is blunt, and right now, that is the language that needs to happen. Blunt descriptions of what takes place in the stratosphere of he academic field…. Kilroy often breaks stories before the News Journal, especially ones embarrassing to the Murphy/Markell cartel of education. If you have read Kilroy over the past couple of years, you would already know that Common Core is not the panacea we have been promised. It is a power grab for taxpayer dollars, financed by Wall Street itself…. If you think otherwise, you haven’t been reading a balanced reading list….
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That is what I have so far. In retrospect I am surprised that education has played so much, as even I have only come to that topic lately… But if one looks over the News Journal op eds, education really did dominate the discussion in the 2nd smallest state this year….
I may have forgotten some big ones. To reiterate, that is why I am posting this early, to catch those big mistakes as they get brought to my attention….
It’s time I put this in perspective.
Here are the news feeds.
A Different Romney Wins The Debate.
The Family Intervenes and Pushes Stuart Stevens Out of Inner Circle
Titians of Finance to Fight for Raising Taxes
Coupled with the opinion polls, what is happening is very obvious.
Americans support Democratic middle class values, they abhor the wing nuts of the Republican Party.
The opinion polls tell it all. While Romney was campaigning to see who could be the most conservative, he did very poorly against the Democrats when polled. Americans far preferred “the imploders” at first, people more mainstream in appearance, like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorium, .. that is until they became familiar with their values…
It is not coincidental, that the last two Republican presidential candidates were the ones with the most LIBERAL credentials. Because America accepts those credentials. What America rejects, is slash and burn Conservative policies, that require no personal freedoms to individual Americans, whether it is economic, vaginal, religious, or political. Everyone is expected to conform to a very narrow norm.
So we now have a Republican who did exactly what he said early during the primaries. He shook the Etch A Sketch and is now running as the Liberal Governor of Massachusetts.
“I will not give a tax break to the top 20%.
There will be no tax cut on the top one percent.
I will not get rid of Roe versus Wade. Abortion is here to stay.
I will not put religion into government. Government is Government. Religion is Religion.
I will not nuke Iran.
I will not cut one penny from government spending.
I will support the rapid growth of wind farms and solar energy.
I will not cut 716 million from Medicare, even if it IS in my economic plan.
I never proposed $5 Trillion in Tax cuts.
I will not cut spending. I will raise it by 2 Trillion Dollars.
Government is too small. I will grow government to make it better.
I will not stop women from getting abortions.
I will not stop the removal of God from government….
Homosexual marriage is not really that bad after all, as long as they LOVE each other and it’s not just sex.”
These were all in the debate. It was a different Romney speaking. Why? Because as a conservative he was losing. As a conservative he was out of touch with America. As a conservative HE WAS IN THE MINORITY WITH MINORITY VALUES.
As Conservatives long expected, Romney is a liberal. They know it. Really? How does anyone expect a Mormon to support Pat Robertson and the 700 Club? You do it out of expediency; not a genuine shared system of belief….
But the point of this is not about Romney. It is about Conservatism. Conservatism fails, and simply for that reason alone, it is not upheld by a majority of Americans.
Which means, to win, one has to be a Liberal Republican… Just look at the polls. As soon as the Liberal Romney comes out of the closet, the polls get real tight….
But, as we saw with Bush W. You may run as a Liberal, but when you get in, it’s the Conservatives who take over. Two wars, a pharmacy company bailout, and regular government operation, all which were financed by our grand children’s future payroll deductions. They get to make less money so today’s Republicans can take it all.
In other words, to be a Republican President, you have to “trick” yourself into that position.
So, America, I know it sounds nice now, but over and over and over you have said, no that is not what we want.
What we do want, is someone who will do what we want, when they get into running America. let’s take the last president for example. Obama got us out of a recession in record time. One that was far worse than the Great Depression to some extents. Obama saved the American Automobile Industry. To do so he had to drive hard bargains against all parties . Obama killed Osama Bin Laden. America got what it paid for when they voted Obama.
Why change horses in the middle of the stream, especially when the other horse is heading back in the other direction? The wrong direction according to almost all Americans?
Romney knows that backwards direction leads to ruin. That is why the new Romney pushed the campaign message- minder outside the inner circle, and why Romney is now currently running for women’s rights. for the secularization of government, for the complete protection of the environment, for the elimination of greenhouse gases, and for the increase of taxes on the wealthy. That is why Romney is doing better in the polls….
Conservatism is truly dead.
It means the Conservative Movement has tanked under economic pressure. The reality of the results bequeathed from years of Conservative fiscal policy, have undone the Conservative movement completely. We have hard empirical evidence to prove it.
The facts laid out.
No real strong Conservative contender stepped up to the plate.
The front runner is a moderate in social values and fiscal policy.
Santorum dropped out because it became apparent that even he as a conservative would overwhelmingly lose in his home state.
The conservatives lost out 4 years ago, when Republicans overwhelmingly went with John McCain.
Many thought Newt would win in Delaware, because just two years ago, Christine O’Donnell thumped moderate Mike Castle out of office.. Delaware’s own head of the Republican Party switched her vote from Romney to Gingrich to help his cause.
But Romney, in that very state, carried it handsomely. 56-27….Over all 28, 501 people voted… That means that out of Delaware’s total population, the amount of people WHO EVEN CARED ENOUGH TO VOTE to order maintain Conservatism as a viable political force, were roughly out of 907,135 our current population, the teeniest sliver of 3.141%… (ha, ha, the exact first four digits of pi)…
Out of this tiniest sliver, the combined amount for Newt and the ghost of Santorum, 9021 (ha, ha, the first 4 digits of Beverly Hill’s zip code)… come up in the percent department at….0.99444%….
Truly the 1%….
And just to put it into proper perspective, the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Socialist Workers Party, had a combined total of 1.2% during the last presidential election.
Conservatism is dead. It is buried, the death certificate is signed. From this point forward, when someone speaks out as a conservative, they need to be treated as we would treat a socialist workers party member…
“Umm ,… that may sound nice, but……”
The Republican primaries show the last bastion of conservative social values. since it’s high point in 2004, which just hinged on a few contested votes in Ohio, the Conservatives have lost favor.
They lost the congressionals of 2006. They lost huge in 2008, as massive amounts of voters voting for the first time, went the other way. They ran on jobs and won a few seats in 2010. But when they shut down the government in 2011 over funding planned parenthood, the country realized what they’d gotten.
It seems like the best way to eliminate conservatives from government, is to put them in power for two years. They act worse than Democrats.
Rick Santorum carries the banner of old fashioned conservatives. He is losing. So the obvious hits us in the face. If the Conservative Party is rejecting Conservatives en masse, then that movement is dead. Put another way, if the extreme faction of the extreme party, is rejecting Conservatism, it is a dead entity for the majority of America…
Rick Santorum cannot give up. If he does, the evangelicals, the family values faction, and the tax cutters, will be laughed out of the Republican Party. Republicans will turn to them and say: “you lost the election for us! Get the fuck out of our party!”
Democrats had to do that with the communists and socialists in the 40’s. Their views were a little too extreme for the mainstream, and those parties still carried their banner, and met on college campuses, but never won any clout with the majority of American voters. Democrats however, because they expelled the communists and socialists back in the 40’s, went on to dominate Congress if not the Oval Office, for 60 some years….
Bottom line, if you are a conservative, Santorum is your last battle. This is your King’s Mountain, where everything is on the line.. This is when you need to flush out the hills to gather an army. This is when you need your most outstanding leaders to devise a plan to use your own weaknesses to your advantage…. If you are at all religious, and believe God is part of government, this is your last chance. Get behind Santorum Now.
If you don’t win Pennsylvania, the cause is dead… Not only dead, but a joke. Imagine showing your face in public the day after Santorum loses to (who? are you serious) Mitt Romney in his HOME STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA?
Ha, Ha your friends, enemies and acquaintances will say to your face… Ha, ha… You’re cause and everything you believe in, IS SO WRONG, that even your leader, cannot carry his own state against ….. the weakest candidate the Republicans have ever had to choose?
If you lose Pennsylvania, it will be the requirement of every newspaper, every radio DJ, every media outlet and respectable blogger, to say: conservatism is just a splinter organization, a cult like Koresch’s, a loner movement like Timothy McVeigh. These cannot be listened to or have their message propagated by us… It must be ignored, just like those communists who wore Mao on their lapels…. In college, they couldn’t even get a date…..
It is not too late. Santorum needs to think outside the box. Rick needs to bring on Newt as his Vice President. That act should jar conservatives to wake up, and realize the end of conservatism is near. That act, coupled with both working together to keep conservatism, a dream forged in the night of wishful thinking, from losing its warm, glowing feeling in the bright sun of the real world……
If Pennsylvania does not go for Santorum, Conservatism is A JOKE!!!
Rick Santorum may now take the place of “Chairman Mao” on college campuses…….
I wish WordPress’s format would allow the privilege of posting two articles side by side. That way the effect could be as eye opening to you, as it was to me…
But alas, I will have to run it through in the old fashioned way, and trust my powers of argument are descriptive enough for the task…
Here are the two articles… I would recommend reading them in their entirety before going further.
How The US Lost Out on iPhone Work
In China, Human Costs Are Built Into An iPad
If you read both of those back to back, I probably do not have to say much. The vision they invoke in you, is probably the same as mine….
They do show us the way out…….
Often in our lives we live in confusion. We muddle through by making small decisions because the big ones ruling our lives are just too impossible and too gigantic to handle. Unexpectedly (it’s a rarity of course), someone, or something puts the pieces in place, and a road map out, one that is simple, plausible and doable, materializes and we can take action, and resolve our gigantic problem causing all our little ones….
Did you see it too?
Allow me the liberty of elaboration. One shows why our jobs moved to China and other countries. They are better than we… The one telling line I believe, is ” Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.” The focus of the article, was that was accomplished in 24 hours in China…..
Its the equivalent to a boss telling a subordinate… I want this done, and done it is…..
The second article shows the flaws. It focuses on the explosion at the Foxcomm plant that made assembled the ipods… Two people died. That human cost of an ipod is factored in. It also covers the deplorable living condition that those living at the Foxcomm plant must endure. And it ends with the line, … that if you want to pay for cheap phones, this is what has to be done to make them cheap enough for you to buy….”
Clearly, the US is trending to matching the working conditions of the Chinese in order to compete for jobs.
I don’t think we want to live like that, just to make a living….
We’ve been through this before. Those who once lived along the Merrimack River flowing past Lowell, Massachusetts, well know the dangers described now taking place in China. Those row houses in Appalachia, built by mining companies years ago, share the same horror stories these Chinese are now experiencing.
When you have cheap labor, you have situations where all the power rests in the hands of the one handing out the paychecks… “You want better conditions, they say? You’re fired. Now you have better conditions.” The others bite their tongue so their fate will not be the same.
We learned during the late 19th Century, that the only way out, was to have EVERY worker stop production until, a contract was reached and they allowed themselves to continue forward.
As the right to strike became eroded here in the United States, so has the quality of life for those in the manufacturing sector. Long hours, dangerous conditions, low pay, no benefits, are the lot of those employed by manufacturers. Their bosses insist, those are the conditions then can barely afford, since if they didn’t,… even those jobs would soon leave overseas.
We are in the downward spiral….
Reading the two articles, it became apparent that we are in competition with Chinese and other workers for the bottom… Who can work the hardest with the least amount of trouble for their corporate sponsors and the least amount of money… Whoever it is, will be declared the winners….
Well, if that is the life of a winner, I want no part of it… There has to be a better way….
The answer should have hit you already if you truly did read both articles. The answer is not to compete for the bottom, but the top…. It means we judge success by a whole new set of rules. It means we alter our buying habits and compensation to make living conditions far more bearable around the world, than they are today. And we exercise our power as people, so the money has to work within our framework, sort of along the same framework of just what the Labor Movement accomplished when they took on the big powers that be during the Thirties.
Here is the rough outline.
A) We elect no Republicans in 2012.
B) They pass labor laws determining a true-value wage. Two thirds of that person’s annual wage needs to be able to provide for living quarters, food, utilities, and medical insurance. After all required expenses have been met, 1/3 of each employees income should be left as discretionary income… This is pretty much what most US families had during the nineties. It is affordable because businesses prospered then too.
C) Ugh. The math… (Skip this if math bores you) .. Which means that if a single person can barely make ends meet on $20,000, the standard should be $30,000 here in the US.. Likewise for families, if $40,000 is required, then $60,000 should be the average.. Of course New York and California would be higher paid than say North Dakota or Alaska.. That is the basic gist of it… This cost then becomes a cost of the manufactured product….
D) We hold all businesses doing business in the United States to this principal, no matter where their products get made… Of course we don’t use the same monetary figures, just the same principal… If in Egypt, one can live on $7,000, it is fair to pay them $10,000. Quite possibly, in parts of Africa, one could pay someone $5,000 a year and keep within the same principals. For companies who try to import products made by desperate people in desperate situations, we impose the old custom’s duty, to make them equally as expensive as those made elsewhere, thereby negating any economic advantage to undercut the system.
E) I know the word tariff sends up a red flag to Free Trade-ists. It means that we no longer worrying ourselves about how much a company can maximize its profit; that concern has become secondary. instead, we are concerned about the welfare of those human beings actually working in that country’s manufacturing industry.
F) And for the Free Trade-ists, we are invoking the Free Trade Principals in just a different way. As always, we have said a corporation should have the right to sell and cross borders to trade at a spot that gives them a lower cost… That is what free trade is. We are now, invoking the same rational, but instead of using “cost” as our measuring stick we are attempting to do that with something called the “quality of life”… We are stating: for free trade to occur, “quality of life” must be equal or monetary penalties will be placed raising the cost of that product so they will be…
G) This will be good for China. China needs to raise their cost on which they compete or they will implode. Historically that always happens; the peasants revolt. The best prevention is to fix the problem beforehand. Reading the article above, the one about Foxcomm, one can see that without changes, probably within ten years, China will go down in a massive internal turmoil, UNLESS those in its manufacturing sector are given better working conditions. They need a union movement of their own. Ha, ha: they could look to their own founding Communist philosophy on this one…. if they wanted to see what the future will bring if you run government at the whims of large corporations…
H) Obviously, things will not be as cheap from China, if this goes through. The increased cost of labor to the manufacturer, will be shared in half by a price increase to the final consumer, and the other half by a loss in corporate profit. But the balance of that cost to our economy is: more people will be working in this country. The loss of corporate profits to the labor movement did not create the Depression! It worked us out of it!… The higher the wages, the more money spent. The more money spent, the more things manufactured. The more things manufactured the more people employed. The more people employed the higher the wages. The higher the wages…. the more money spent… We begin the cycle pulling us out ….
So through the juxtapositioning of these two articles, the light has been shown from the end of the tunnel… The way back to prosperity is to pay American workers more. The way to do that is to negate the advantage of paying the Chinese less. The way to do that, is to pass an import tax that raises foreign manufactured items to a rate that allows foreign workers to live with the same amount of discretionary income left over after their necessary expenses, as we would wish upon ourselves. That is the silver bullet, and it surely won’t happen as long as Republicans can block it. Which is why, we need to remove enough corporate sponsored politicians from office, both Democratic and Republican, so We, The People once again, can have a free hand.
Yes, we can do this.
Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..
So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….
I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……
Almost all Americans will agree… There is one thing America does best…. Nothing….
Well, actually in this case, that might be a good thing…. For in Congress’s naturally tendency to play it both ways all the time, whenever they enacted legislation, the also set in stone a date for it to expire…. So if Congress does nothing, the automatic policies go into effect and we have a $7.1 trillion deficit busting package signed, sealed, delivered right to Americans… almost as efficiently as an order off Ebay….
Hats off to Cassandra for pulling out this nugget….. Here is the source, and here is the savings….
● $3.3 trillion from letting temporary income and estate tax cuts enacted in 2001, 2003, 2009, and 2010 expire on scheduled at the end of 2012 (presuming Congress also lets relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, as noted below);
● $0.8 trillion from allowing other temporary tax cuts (the “extenders” that Congress has regularly extended on a “temporary” basis) expire on scheduled;
● $0.3 trillion from letting cuts in Medicare physician reimbursements scheduled under current law (required under the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted in 1997, but which have been postponed since 2003) take effect;
● $0.7 trillion from letting the temporary increase in the exemption amount under the Alternative Minimum Tax expire, thereby returning the exemption to the level in effect in 2001;
● $1.2 trillion from letting the sequestration of spending required if the Joint Committee does not produce $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction take effect; and
● $0.9 trillion in lower interest payments on the debt as a result of the deficit reduction achieved from not extending these current policies.
How does a zero balanced deficit in ten years sound?
If Congress does absolutely nothing, something they’re good at, we’ll have it….
kavips 