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Pizza being taken to John Boehner’s office as the House speaker held talks with Republicans after the collapse of a deal to raise the government debt ceiling temporarily. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Let us start here. A good leader takes his people where they want to go. A good leader does not force his people to go where they definitely don’t want to go… That is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader convinces his people why they must do something. He makes sure he puts in how it will benefit them. If it doesn’t benefit them, he is ruling. Not leading.
A good leader creates good out of evil. There is a moral equivalency to leadership. It can be defined shallowly at times. Such as calling Hitler good leader based on his strategy of conquering France. But time makes such affirmations short lived. I don’t think anyone looking over the rubble left of Germany in 1945 at that moment considered Hitler a good leader after viewing his legacy.
A good leader does not follow the rules… He decides when and where the rules apply. Some would apply the name “great leader” to one who never wavered. Well, such a leader would have ruined the life of a little boy whose grandmother sent along a knife to cut the cake, not knowing that knives in school were grounds for expulsion. A lot of misdirected people in leadership positions in that particular school district, made bad decisions based on their mistaken view of what makes a good leader. A good leader does not always follow the rules.
A good leader decides when and where the rules apply.
In Syria we have controversy. We have one argument stating that Syria must be punished. We have the other that says War must be reserved only for something Huge. That “Huge” is of course undefined and fits in with “we know it when we see it.”
As the executive of the world’s largest force, militarily, economically, and morally, our president pretty much get to decide.
Here is what a great leader would do. He would find a way to unite the two sides into one… He would find a way to punish Assad of Syria in a way that would scare any other despot thinking of using chemical weapons, and do it without going to war.
That would be great leadership.
So what would scare Assad the most? It’s hard to tell, but my guess is that his biggest fear as a man, is if his palace is overrun by Syrians, who basically tear him apart, and do his wife and children, then systematically erase any acknowledgement that he or his dad ever existed… That whole reign of terror becomes ridiculed, laughed at, for the rest of History. i would guess that is how you could get to Assad.
So, we, (not just the US but the rest of the world) have to make that threat real.. We don’t have to carry it out necessarily, but we have to make it real. How can that happen?
I think first, is that we make crossing the border out of Syria a real good move for Syrians… Send the signal, that if you leave Syria, the world community will settle you somewhere, give you a job, and a chance to begin a life of freedom and prosperity. ideally what we are doing is a Cold War. Over time we are saying: “See how great the Rest of the world lives? Oh, you poor Syrians… Escape and come join us”. Where could we relocate them? Iran could step up, Jordan,, and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States,
This is how your hurt Assad… Turn his own people against him… No ruler can rule a group of people who don’t want to be ruled. He can use brutality to a certain extent, but the numbers are completely on the side of the population wanting him gone. With our intelligence capacity, he will never be safe… Every bodyguard is a potential killer..
And that, more or less, is what we should do… It is what a great leader does… He solves problems in ways where the evil get punished and the good win out.
Going to war, rewards those doing evil, and hurts the good….
It is time our President, become the great leader. Not by digging down and reinforcing the costly methods promoted in the past.. But to devise and implement new methods which because of their success, will be utilized far into the future….
I hope you see this… I wanted to document a list of the damage the Pam Scott regime had done to New Castle County, such as destroying historical buildings, brushing aside traffic studies, mitigating necessary environmental policies, .. In general, everything they did that deteriorates the quality of life for people in New Castle County for years to come..
Then I realized it really should come from you… You have the archives in Delaware Way; you know how your archives are organized, and you with a quick email sent “To All” could rapidly receive a plethora of details your contacts had lived through and fought against…
I know it will be a labor of love, and may take some time… But I think the world should know how this erosion of resident’s rights for the accumulation of money for a few, was done. I figure it would probably take one day to go thought your archives, cutting and pasting links to all the articles on one page…
Often local struggles are rarely documented. However they touch our lives far more than state or national issues. It would be nice to have the truth out first for once… all organized in one volume.
I really feel it should come from you. 🙂
We are a tired generation… We grew up with ‘Nam. Which ever side we were on during the battle here in America over that police action, or war, looking back after it was done, …. we all knew it was wrong….
After that we thought all war was wrong, and unfortunately took some of that angst out on those who least deserved it: those coming back from the steamy jungles of hell…..
Against our will a certain president soon sent Marines into Beirut; what happened then reinforced our belief that an American war was unjustifiable and that all other means must be utilized to prevent American war from ever happening again…. Against our will, we propped up a Nicaragua dictator against some rebels. Against our will, we sold arms to Iran to use for paying for our support for that Nicaragua dictator, since a Congress elected by the American people, flatly said no to supporting him in Nicaragua… We found a way to do it anyway….
I remember Senator Rudman, (R-NH) saying at the hearing while addressing Oliver North,… “The American people have the RIGHT to be wrong.”
Oliver North had been insisting that even when Americans flatly say NO, one still must do what one deems is necessary, that whatever one deems necessary, is the highest moral truth. “Sometimes one has to go above the law!” was actually said by the defense at this hearing. Only one good thing came out of those hearings: we all were introduced to Fawn Hall.
But then… The Brits quickly regained the Faulklands. Then came Grenada, which went off without a hitch. Then Panama, which was successful and almost painless. Then came General Schwartzkopf. The 4th largest army in the world, was routed in hours, and in days, had been completely mopped up. Then came the Balkans. We were on a roll. We’d finally nailed down the successful formula of how to win in battle.
Today we say Iraq is a failure. But that was so not so just after the invasion. Inside Baghdad, the pulling down of Saddam’s statue, the victory of capturing Saddam, the ability of us to hand out billions of American dollars, initially gave this campaign the luster of looking like another success story…
Until we tried to steal their oil. The standard global rate of dividing oil revenues is that the US gets a 20% cut for the development, and Iraq would get to keep 80% because it is after all, their resource. That is how we deal with Nigeria.
But Brenner announced that we’d flip that to pay for the war, and that Iraq would be allowed to keep 20% because we liked them so much, and we’d only, by our good graces, take 80% of the revenues. 24 hours after letting that cat out of the bag, the first IED went off under a US military vehicle… Before week was out, the total was in the hundreds.
The luster was gone. We were an invading army, something we have not called ourselves since WWII. We always saw ourselves as the policeman who leaves as soon as order is restored…
Afghanistan likewise, got worse. Then Pakistan. Then Yemen. On the diplomatic front instead of doing no harm, .. we could do no good. Then Libya costs us an ambassador who was running guns through Turkey. He shouldn’t have been there; it should have been a low level staffer with security clearance.
This baby boomer generation knows that war is wrong. We know from experience. The only time it can be employed successfully, is a) when the whole world is united behind you, b) you go in and get out, and c) you have a structure that stays in place long after you are gone.
The only time it goes badly… is every other scenario.
Which brings us to Syria. Syria has no importance to anyone. (They couldn’t even defend the militarily advantageous Golan Heights in ’67!) Which is why we let the Russians have them.
People are going to die in Syria if a): Assad wins, b): the rebels win, or c): no one wins. The only thing changing upon this wars outcome, is which side will be massacred at war’s end. Hence the battle for survival over there now.
So by having the US intervene or not, we are choosing which side gets to kill the other after the hostilities die down.
The weakest argument for going in still left with standing, is that they used chemical weapons. In WWI, the British, French, and Germans all used chemical weapons. Are chemical weapons really worse than being burned alive? Or asphyxiated as a bomb blast sucks all the oxygen out of your lungs and the room? Or a milk jug sized piece of jagged metal shrapnel ripping and leaving a hole through your body? Or a mine being stepped on? I’m trying to think why chemical weapons are so much worse, except for the fact that we’ve been told” they are so much worse”?
A causality is a causality.
We understand “why” some say we should go into Syria. Because if we do not respond to chemical weapons in a big way, someone else will become confident and use theirs. There is only one way to keep the genie inside the bottle, and that is to never leave a opening for it to escape….
We also understand “why” one of our beloved School districts had a policy that suspended, and expelled those who brought weapons to school! Not just guns, but knives too. After all, the argument for punishing Syria, applies to soon-to-become high school felons too.
But, there came a time when the response generated by a policy, actually became the crime, You remember the little boy expelled who brought a cake to school, and his grandmother thoughtfully sent a knife knowing teachers usually don’t have utensils in their classrooms. The teacher actually cut the cake, served it, thinking nothing of it.. it was someone higher up, reviewing the situation, who said, “wait, that can be interpreted as a breach of regulations. Let’s make an example out of this little boy”. He was suspended and could have been expelled, except it eventually became news and public outcry was solidly on his side. The policy makers were laughed out of town.
Which is why, if you are making this decision, you need to stall. Acting quickly and decisively is equivalent to acting on rumor and innuendo. So what if Syria lied and shot the gas cannisters off?
Does a military strike create enough excellent good will to neutralize this bad act?
Ironically what is best for the US in this situation, is for Assad to stay in power, to have a zealous change in heart, to work closely with the USA to get his economy working, to becoming a partner in that region with the US, and to signing a treaty with Israel, as did the Egyptians many, many years ago…
What is worse for us, is if the jihadists win, push out the moderates and take over the reform movement (they always do), then go to war with Israel, Jordan and Turkey. Making ourselves into the evil empire will only create more explosions everywhere, flare-ups which would not have occurred had we taken the Jedi way, and used the “Force” in our possession, to make events on the ground turn our way and happen in our favor….
Realistically such a rosy scenario probably can’t happen; but if it did, were this to come about, there would be no doubt: Obama would be lauded as the best president we’d ever see in our lifetimes. The cost of failure is so low that it just might be worth the try.
The second point… which all us Viet-namers will well remember, is that you may win every engagement you participate in Syria, but you won’t win the war at home, and that… will suck all your energy away from all the good you plan to do before 2016.
It broke LBJ. It broke Bush II. Don’t let it break you….
it is probably time to discuss this.
For years we have quietly known and accepted the negatives of having an NSA. Things like we need it for our protection, or it makes things safer, tended to overide our fears that they know too much already, and I can’t do anything in private anymore…
We accepted that as progress.
However, when you have an organization so secret, that members of Congress are shocked to find out what it is doing, that no one knows who is authorizing who gets spied upon and what, that when brought before the courts for overstepping the Constitution, it can’t be prosecuted because a) it operates under “secret” laws, b) with “secret operations”, c) authorized by “secret courts” …. it is time to shut the entire operation down.
Why do we have the NSA when we have the CIA and the FBI. The FBI covers domestic spying. The CIA covers international spying. So, unless we find out that there are aliens and the NSA is really running the world while we think otherwise, then it probably ought to go.
I find it interesting that those on the far right, and those on the far left are the most outraged by this disclosure. We’ve been stating that news on this blog after the story was broken back in 2007-8 and not one press person cared. I supposed the AP Story opened their eyes this time. Struggling to put a finger on why, I came up with the theory primarily by looking at Congress, that it is the libertarians on left and right who are against, and the conformist, primarily in the center who are acceptive. So this gives us a split where the bottom third and the top third of the political body are opposed to the middle third… If you look at Congress that is exactly how it splits up. Moderates are pro domestic spying, the libertarians are not.
Probably similar is the theory that those beholden to corporate interests are pro-spying, after all, that is normal in the corporate environment; interoffice spying is not limited by any judicial system because it is deemed to be private. Those aghast, tend to fight corporate intrusion from their original political perspective, either left of right.
What the NSA does, watch everything to discern what is happening to increase its chances of survival, is not new. Intelligence has been the secret success of many an empire. Knowing what someone will do before they do it, is pretty comfortable in a world where in a day, we probably pass within 10 feet of 10,000 people (that includes inside our vehicles).
That is what all governments with the capacity, do. The biggest argument against it, is that it is un-American. Sure we have the “ability” to do it, but do we have the restraint, not to…
America has always been ruled by restraint. When Washington was entreated to be the King, he restrained and said no. When the heads of Europe all bet that Washington would invent a method to stay in power, he restrained, and government turned over peacefully. When the US was left in charge of a broken Europe, it put it back together and went home. The only country to invade another and give it back willingly to its original owners.
We had a scare in Boston a while back. Did the NSA protect us then? It’s a secret, no one knows. In Newtown 26 bodies littered the floor of an elementary school. Did the NSA protect us then? When a gunman burst into Aurora firing into the audience, did the NSA protect us then? When Gabby Gifford took a bullet, where was the NSA? Did the NSA protect us then?
That is the point. We are always in danger. But our personal lives are more at risk if our private information should fall into a competitors hands, than being victim of a terrorist. In Boston just 2 people died. In Newton 26. But each and every one of us, is at risk that selective information from ones past, can be used in secret to smear each and every one of us, should it fall into the wrong hands.
What would happen if we shut the entire agency known as the NSA down? A big nothing. They overstepped. It is not knee-jerking anger to respond “Shut them down right now!” It it calm, cool reasoning tipping the balance, that points out simply that is the right way to go.
On Saturday March 2nd, Thomas Shellenberger wrote a piece that the News Journal despite it’s better judgment, allowed to be published…. The headline was the boring and is so common lately, it is usually panned: Disarming the law abiding is not sound gun control.… Why is this inane?
Because it is not even part of the equation. To put it into proper perspective, it was as if the proper answer to preventing Newtown’s shooting, was that we needed machines emitting secret rays that make guns jam up as soon as they are brought on premises; it is that far out there…. This opinion piece is simply aimed at pandering fear over having imaginary entities football-tackle gun owners and steal their guns; and nothing else. And by now three months after Dec. 14th, no one believes it anymore.
I can remember when people believed aliens were dissected at Roswell. (And for all I know they very well could be). But,…. whether they were or not, it has not impacted my life one way or another… Likewise, the giant controversy that swept up Mike Castle in its eddy (whether Obama was born in Kenya), was nothing but a giant distraction designed to gin up ignorant people to hold out the unrealistic hope that such could be true and a non-black would then become President… Again, it had nothing to to with any practical purpose and only had one effect: to make every one its believers appears as the stupidest, most ridiculous, idiotic, imbecilic, deranged, dumb-ass, and incompetent human beings ever to exist on this planet. Shellenberger seems to be pushing the same kind of argument. Here is why.
- No one cares about law abiding citizens; get this: they are not even a part of the equation.
- The criminal justice system of Delaware had nothing to do with the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
- No law abiding citizen will be disarmed by the anticipated plans soon to be put in place by Biden and Markell.
- Having a No-gun rule around young children is extremely good common sense.
- If the police want new sales of assault weapons banned, who are you to want otherwise, .. a criminal?
- Evidence supports the ’94 assault weapons ban could possibly have had a positive effect on decreasing mass killings.
Those tired arguments put to rest, here is exactly why we do need more regulations upon guns.
- There is not enough regulation at the moment.
- It is too easy for the wrong people to get their hands on a gun.
- The NRA has purposefully made tracking guns as difficult as possible to enable criminals to shoot people with impunity.
- There is now less level of responsibility involved with owning a gun, than having a 16 year old driving a car.
Then there is this very tired old line…. yawn….
“until we fix the criminal justice system so the laws already on the books are enforced and provide a meaningful deterrent, passage of any new laws only interfere with law abiding citizens….”
oh, oh… I must have dozed off there a second…
That is exactly the problem. There are not enough laws… Granted, there are enough laws in some places, but right next to those places, are spots where there are no laws against purchasing any weapons at all. Chicago has a store across its county line that sells 10% of all confiscated guns acquired by Chicago law enforcement. Everyone of those is sold legally. California has Nevada, where a very high rate of confiscated weapons come from. Mississippi has no laws. There is an Iron Pipeline it is called that funnels guns bought in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia right up 95 into New York City… EVERYONE OF THESE GUNS WAS BOUGHT LEGALLY…..
So how can you enforce laws on the books when there are no laws on the books? Duh.
Crash. (The argument of the NRA and Schellenberger just shattered on the floor….)
Here is what we do need… Simply put, and no legal person has to worry about a thing…..
- A national background check that pinpoints every known gun, to an owner who is responsible for that weapon.
- Requirement that stolen guns get reported ASAP or owner is charged with conspiracy in crime he was accomplice to.
- As requested by police, a ban on the sales of new assault rifles.
- A ban on high capacity clips.
- Liability insurance up to $1 million on every gun owned. The insurance conglomerates can figure out the price and deductions.
Obviously any sane gun owner has nothing to fear. So why are gun owners so frightened? Are all the weapons in their possession bought at shows and are formerly stolen and they don’t want anyone looking at the registration number to find out?
Yes. Of most of the gun owners I know, yes, they are very worried about this. That is exactly why they are so kooky over this common sense legislation that will both protect their 2nd Amendment rights and our right to live without fear of gun nuts on the loose….
Courtesy of Misconceptions
The right is rejoicing because within the policies of Obama-care lies wording which they say, precludes Obama from using his executive order to ban weaponry or ammunition. They are rather ecstatic right now… Harry Reid inserted such language protecting guns and ammo within the gigantic health-care bill, and only now has it been uncovered. The original intent was to get the NRA to back off trying to kill the bill. The NRA did, and the bill passed… and this past summer was validated by Justice Robert’s decision.
The amendment is being touted on Right Wing blogs as Senate amendment 3276, Sec 2716, part c “Protection of Second Amendment Rights” They then admit they were intimidated by the gigantic size of the bill to look at the text directly. They do have a point. Turns out it is hard to find.
For those wishing to see it in person, it is here on page 2037 beginning on line 23.
The first provision is related to the Wellness and Prevention program. Since America leads the world in gun deaths, there was conservative concern that to stem the cost of national insurance, the Wellness and Prevention program would price out a person as a result on whether he had guns or not. This language simply removes that concern from the table. They may ask how many sexual partners you go through in a month, but not how many guns exist in your arsenal.
Basically this limited provision applies to medical personal. Just as under HIPAA they cannot disclose personal matters without a release form, that now applies to lawful weaponry. including guns and ammunition….
This language expressly states that under all auspices of those organizations directly under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Health, none can report on the possession of legal firearms to anyone.
‘‘(3) LIMITATION ON DATABASES OR DATA
21 BANKS.—None of the authorities provided to the Sec-
22 retary under the Patient Protection and Affordable
23 Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall
24 be construed to authorize or may be used to maintain
25 HR 3590 EAS/PP records of individual ownership or possession of a
1 firearm or ammunition.
(It does not mean the Justice Department is forbidden from creating a file. Or the FBI. Or the NSA. Those files are still legal under this law. It means that Doctors, Nurses, and other medical officers are not to divulge a patient’s ownership of a legal weapon.)
This law was inserted to combat fears like this: if a legal firearm owner were to show up with powder burns on his skin, the knowledge that he had a firearm, could without this specific clause, be divulged to authorities. It can no longer be so.
A pretty nice nod to the gun community and the NRA.
But, in the Right’s initial exuberance coming no doubt from not investigating the actual text itself, the idea that this protection prevents Biden and Obama from using Executive Orders to ban certain types of guns, is overstated.
This is a medical bill, and the language specifically links this protection to the medical community.
Furthermore, the protection extends by specific wording to “legal” firearms and “legal” ammunition. Once the Executive order is put into effect banning certain types of firearms, those firearms are no longer “legal”, and can, if it is the right thing to do, be reported to “legal” authorities.
The rest of the writing pertains to the prevention of halting a person’s Affordable insurance, simply because they have a legal firearm.
–A premium rate may not be increased, health
5 insurance coverage may not be denied, and a dis-
6 count, rebate, or reward offered for participation in
7 a wellness program may not be reduced or withheld
8 under any health benefit plan issued pursuant to or
9 in accordance with the Patient Protection and Afford-
10 able Care Act or an amendment made by that Act on
11 the basis of, or on reliance upon—
12 ‘‘(A) the lawful ownership or possession of
13 a firearm or ammunition; or
14 ‘‘(B) the lawful use or storage of a firearm
15 or ammunition.
Note again this only applies to “lawful” guns and ammunition. Unlawful ones can and should be impounded.
So although I was semi-deflated when I first heard the news that a law preventing the national registration of any type of assault rifle or mega-clip ammunition clip had been sneaked into the Affordable Care Act, now after seeing the text itself, I am relieved it can still be done. Just not done by any department under the authority of the Secretary who is placed in charge of the Affordable Care’s enactment…..
So yes, the President can still ban guns by an Executive Order, thereby navigating around the irrational objections of 67 out of the 535 people voting in both houses of Congress.
We all have a lot to do.
But, seriously, how can anyone prepare for tomorrows lesson, when they have this to do? No wonder our schools are failing”
From the Mind of Mike Matthews….
Donald Trump doesn’t even have this much to do. He has assistants. Administrators don’t have this much to do. They have assistants. Politicians don’t have this much to do. They have assistants. Not even Santa has this much work to do. He has assistants. But we are being told by all these that teachers don’t do their jobs….
Well, duh.
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.
kavips 