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Although support for the TDC power plant may look like a chance to support jobs, the reality it that it is an environmental disaster.
When you support a disaster, you eventually lose….
Labor Unions will lose public support if this TDC center goes through…. Withholding the environmental dangers from the public may work short term and get approval, …
But once built, and when ash particles the size of golf-balls begin to fall on Newark, Stanton, Elsmere, Wilmington and Claymont, the public will ask,,, how on earth could this have been approved?
The truth will come out at that point, that bad people sneaked it through using bad ways…..
You will eventually lose prevailing wage if this TDC goes through…. The public will turn on you. I almost turned on you before I calmed down. Economics are a strong suit. But one’s life trumps economics. The environmental consequences of this TDC are gigantic. Everyone who gets cancer will blame you… Anything they can do to hurt you will become their dying wish, if you know what I mean….
What to do….
- Support a data center without a power plant.
- Support building a data center in a rural area close by so we get the same jobs… 20 miles into Cecil County or east of Middletown would do the trick.
- Support something else being built on the same location…. One that has no environmental impact.
Putting your loyalty and support behind the Data Center, is like putting your loyalty and support behind a candidate who unknown to you committed child abuse 25 years ago… At some future point, you lose all your investment…… and are left to fight a defensive war to keep more from being taken away by business groups…..
You did not know this would turn on you. But it has, and will get worse…. Now is the time to sneak out of the back of the crowd while no one is really looking or counting…..
Signed: Your most ardent supporter.
K
Steve Newton, one of Delaware’s ablest analysts, issued the warning early in the year… I have since been on the lookout for what he called…. I believe…. The Great Distractor”….
This is a outrage so great, it dominates all discussion, to the extent no controversy can exist beyond it… It gets covered in the News Journal. It is the sole subject for weeks on end on the talk shows… etc…
Even bloggers take up the outrage, so inflamed are they and smelling blood, all want some credit for a kill….
Meanwhile, real bills that transfer the building blocks put in place over centuries of public schooling , get pulled and shuffled over to private enterprise….
Bluntly put, the rich get richer by picking all our pockets while we focus on the bar fight taking place on the floor directly in front of us, little realizing the entertainment is completely staged for our own fleecing…..
Yesterday the same topic dominated both the morning show, and afternoon show on WDEL…. Jonathan Starkey’s piece in the News Journal had done its part…..
There was considerable buzz; legislators were being called up on air, and duly pitching their outrage to get their name out in front of the voters….
The controversy is over the unclaimed property issue… Basically everyone is upset over how the government can claim unused gift cards… Yes, if you listened… that is what the entire controversy boiled down to. , The Republicans think they have an issue. The Government is taking private property because…. they can….
So let us pop this “distractor” and get back to reality… All this controversy is about who should own unclaimed property… Two people see a dollar bill in the road… Who should get it? Why does one have more right over it than the other? Should corporations be allowed to keep money that is not theirs? If I find a wallet with $500, should I keep it and spend it on me? Or should I turn it in to the police, and if no one comes and claims it, they then get to use the proceeds in their service to all….
Obviously, the latter is the more fair. I certainly have no right to that wallet, except by some made-up rule …. finders-keepers. Who does that money belong to? It belonged to someone, one of those who are protected by the police, and who are an individual just like me… Who is more likely to get an inquiry requesting whether anyone turned in a wallet with $500? A random stranger (me)? Or the police?….
Again, it is obvious to which one society would benefit having ownership of that dollar found in the street….. And the amounts of money are paltry… dollar bills for the most part….
Oh, but the outrage!! The Outrage! The outrage…..
“Look, Buzz, an alien…… Ha, made you look…… ”
There are some rather serious crises currently nibbling the foundation of the Markell and Democratic party.. Primarily they are two fold. The economic folly of cutting taxes on the top 1% of Delawareans, who should be funding the state with their windfall capital gains earnings, and that folly’s impact on stifling job growth…. and the crises of building charter schools for “Friends of Jack Markell” by dismantling the public schools that have carried Delaware to prominence up to this point……
They almost need this distraction… In a very bad way….
- Meanwhile they they insist on pushing forward the TDC, to the detriment of all those 30,000 Newarkians who will soon be breathing cancerous particles 24/7….
- Meanwhile they insist on pushing a Charter School agenda forward when next year’s charter schools can only muster 40% capacity.
- Meanwhile they insist on pushing Common Core, by now a completely debunked curriculum, that was so obviously created to summarily give one educational-material corporation an advantage over all others….
- Meanwhile, Delaware’s budget shortfall grows as the economy suffers under too low taxes and way too few government jobs.
- Meanwhile, Delaware is seeing global warming increase all costs statewide, while those wealthy who were to blame for it, get to keep a majority of their earnings off of it, tax free…
- Meanwhile, Delaware is giving far to much of our precious few resources to corporations who repeatedly, had always failed to deliver any return for our investment….
- Meanwhile, Delaware is destroying the 39th best teaching school in America, the educational department of the University of Delaware, to water it down to the abysmal Common Core standards…..
What this administrations sorely needs….
Is ” A Great Distractor”……. “Look, Buzz, an alien!”
Instead we should be watching out for……..
- House Bill # 334
- HB #333
- SB #210
- Looking forward to the necessary modifications to SB 51 and HB 165.
- And the fact that during these 8 years… Delaware’s children in poverty…. DOUBLED!
- Meanwhile, our cronyism allows our top income earners, to pay little or nothing in taxes……
That last one…… is the real outrage.…. one future generations will hold us accountable for decades to come………
Meanwhile
Whereas Charter Schools are an excessive luxury to society and not a necessity;
Whereas only 17% of Charter Schools perform better than public schools and 37% perform worse;
Whereas the current Charter funding system causes Charter schools to steal public school funding away from public schools.
Whereas the current Charter funding system takes taxpayers money out of district from where raised and sends to others;
Whereas the influx of Charter Schools have always lowered the quality of education across an overall district,
Whereas Charter Schools draw more resources per student than do public schools,
Whereas most Charter Schools fail in the first 3 years of operation.
Whereas there have been 29 applications for Charter Schools since initiation, yet only 14 remain today.
Whereas almost all Charter Schools perform worse than public schools when income levels are factored in.
Whereas Charter Schools cause deprivation in public schools, many of which would rebound if funding were to return
Whereas Charter Schools have caused the destruction of 5 major urban educational systems.
Whereas Charter Schools only benefit the Realtors of property and its investors, while hurting students,
Whereas Students in Charter Schools are less prepared for college than are students in public schools,
Whereas Charter Schools have been operating for over 20 years, and we still can’t get them to work right,
Whereas the failure of any Charter School damages the educational potential of all its students across their lifetime
Whereas all evidence points to the use of Charter Schools as a vehicle for promoting segregation and dividing the student populations along racial lines
Whereas the belief that Charter Schools can help our educational system become better can only be supported by the, shielding of the true results from public view.
Whereas people living next to a public school have the right under our founding principles of taxation, for their school taxes to go to that school’s district to upkeep that school in their neighborhood for which they are paying these taxes, instead of private pockets:
Be it hereby resolved, that all funding for charter schools be hereby shifted as is with VoTech Schools in the state of Delaware, and from henceforth, all state funding for Charter School’s support shall now become a line item on the state’s yearly budget, and no longer rob local school districts of their per pupil endowment which is wholly supported by the property taxpayers paying primarily for the upkeep of their local schools.
Courtesy of cookinfood.com
From the CBO, we have it outlined like this… If we raise minimum wage to 10.10, we lose 500,000 jobs. If we raise it to $9.00 we lose 100,000 jobs…
Is it better to work and receive more money, or is it better to have more people working for less, but at least they are working….
Great question. There were 3.3 million people making minimum wage in 2013…. The wage will jump from $7.25 to $10.10 or jump from $7.25 to $9.00. The first is an increase of $2.85; the second is an increase of $1.75… The impact of that increase on 3.3 million people are as follows.
3.3 million X $2.85 = $9.405 million/hour increased purchasing power
3.3 million x $1.75 = $5.775 million/hour increased purchasing power
3.3 million X $0 (no change) = $0.00 No change; same as it every was.
But wait. Job losses are bound to occur. If we take the CBO’s estimate, we get the first minus 500,000; the second minus 100,000.
(3.3 million -500,000) X $2.85 = $ 7.98 million/hour economic benefit
(3.3 million -100,000) X $1.75 = $ 5.60 million/hour economic benefit
(3.3 million- 0) X $ 0 (no change) = $0.00 no change from the past
There you go… We get more economic push by going with the $10.10 number despite the possible loss of jobs. .We got an answer. Gee. What was so hard about that?
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Appendix:
Someone else brought up the idea that those people put out of work, have a negative influence upon the equation… To be honest prior to their mentioning it, at first, I really hadn’t thought about it. It never occurred to me, because mathematically they would be zeros. Interesting, huh? How the brain works? My focus was on how much positivity a minimum wage increase would generate… And because of my positivity I have trouble accepting that there is a negative influence for letting those people go. But just in case there is, let me put it down here as well since someone brought up the fact that those leaving the work force would be decreasing the total pool of potential earnings by their future estimated earnings with which had they been previously working. Which in this case, would be the minimum wage rate… applied at both the levels of 500,000 and 100,000….
((3.3 million -500,000) X $2.85) – (500,000 X $7.25) = $ 4.355 million/hour economic benefit
((3.3 million -100,000) X $1.75) – (100,000 X $7.25) = $ 4.875 million/hour economic benefit
(3.3 million- 0) X $ 0 (no change) = $0.00 no change from the past….
That changes the impact. There are several problems with this last model. One, is that its total, is a theoretical rate representing everyone working per hour. Those being laid off can’t really be a negative against this because everyone who is still working, IS making that much… This is the net increase amount which will be reported, earned, and taxed. Secondly, if you are out of work you are making zero dollars, and not an actual negative amount which challenges whether the principle is sound to deduct a cost away from the benefit when making this particular comparison. One could do so, if one was expostulating a potential benefit which would have to be benchmarked against full employment, and not against the incremental amounts. For example if we had access to the number of hours worked at minimum wage in this country over a set time period, we could actually make that comparison by plugging in these two rates..
As it stands we can already compare these totals to the status quo, and there is a definite positive bump in economic activity… Plus, if those temporarily laid-off people get other jobs, ones that actually pay more than minimum wage, then they are off the chart, and that negative is not there at all. The underlying assumption for there to be an existing negative, is that these people losing their jobs, immediately and forever stop contributing to the economy…
Therefore probably the best comparison to achieve that would be painted like this…
3.3 million X $2.85 = $9.405 million/hour increased purchasing power – (.5 million X 7.250 = $9.405 – $3.625 = $5.78)
3.3 million x $1.75 = $5.775 million/hour increased purchasing power – (.1 million X 7.250 = $5.775 – $0.725 = $5.05 )
3.3 million X $0 (no change) = $0.00 No change; same as it every was.
That probably is the best description since it contrasts against the potential possibility of earnings.
But as policy this shows Delaware’s Tom Carper to be very wrong when he was quoted as saying that the lower amount of increase would be best for this country…
..
Last nights meeting dominated the talk show circuit this morning. Even Nancy got on (lol)… Where was Liz?
Roughly there were 200 people there against the power plant, and 4 for. How do we know this? After one speaker who was a plant from the boilermaker union asked it be approved, one Tea Party type standing in the back row, shouted “YEAH” and clapped with two hands over his head. It was ridiculous, Really. His spouse clapped loudly, she was sitting in the back row, and one other person midway up the right, clapped once or twice tepidly.
it really made the Tea Party type look bad… He looked a little like Dr. Singleton formerly of the CRI, except he wore a facial hair arrangement that went out of style after the Civil War. Of course he was wearing a green shirt with a tie. K-mart deluxe. He should have just clapped and no one would have noticed how few supporters in Newark were behind the power plant. But his loud explosion drew everyone’s attention to him, and not that he minded, he probably like Ted Cruz thought playing the brave unflinching forward marching dork was one that would enhance his reputation.
Like Ted Cruz, he was wrong.
The ratio was 200 to 4. If any politician is supporting the building of the power plant on the grounds it creates jobs, if that ratio corresponds, he can count on 2% of the vote.
The bottom line is this needs to be Newark’s decision. No one else’s. Newark has to live with the consequences of their decision. Do they want a power plant next to them for 75 years? Any agreement made now with these owners, will be switched as soon as the first outside buyer takes over. What is promised now, will not last, We saw with the Bain Capital revelations last year….
The noise will be constant, The pollution will be never ending, The toxic chemicals brought in, will have to go somewhere…
The accurate number of jobs that will be created will be 23. Roughly 7 on three separate shifts. Of course those out of state personnel hired to build the plant may buy a McDonald’s sandwich or two, but is this really worth all the negatives…. ?
I have my own opinion. But those who live there, need to decide. (Why should I decide for everyone? WTF am I?)….
Whatever Newark itself decides, needs to stick.
The now famous high stepping Wal*Mart video mentions that point….
Now, the meme of bashing Wal*mart and fast foods has gotten a little blaze and to be honest, when I first saw the flash mob at Walmart on the national sites, as a person with little time, I passed.
But on Delaware Liberal, I opened it in another tab, and was listening to it as background and all of a sudden….. it stopped for a half second and then…
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
The answer in my head was … “no, i didn’t…”
The second answer was… “of course I did.” which made me more intrigued by my original answer. Why on earth did I think it was bad for these people to interrupt business as usual to demonstrate for something affecting I think, one person?
As this “wow moment” started to dawn on me, I realized I’d been brainwashed’… Over time. it had really happened. My gut, had been over-ruling my head…. it’s a business. They should call the police. They should fire everyone involved… Demonstrations are really ineffective blowing off of steam…
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
How many others out there would say “no” … How many others out there really don’t know it is their right to form a union? That anyone can form a union? It is legally protected.
Oh, they can threaten to fire you if you join… And they can fire you….
But if they do… you can sue… and even better, under current law, you can sue them and win. Win big!
You can make them pay you for all back wages you lost. So finacially it is just like you were working but having the entire time off.
You can make them pay all your damages, including late fees on bills you couldn’t pay because the illegally fired you. You can make them pay interest on all loans you took out to live on, even if they came from family. If you Dad gives you a loan at 1000% interest, they have to pay that… and to your Mom, your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, and uncles… Your whole family and friends can get rich off them because they fired you for forming a union!
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
The business may respond to the legal judgment , “Screw you , we are closing”. But if they close they will still have to pay you for all the damage they cause you because they fired you for forming a union… You still win! And win BIG!
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
How is it that our newspapers don’t remind us of this. How is it that Unions are painted to be the bad guys, because they make a business lose money? Why isn’t the business painted as the bad guy, for stealing potential earnings out of each and every employee working for them…
Some may think forcing a union on a business is unfair. Racist states often use this argument. Why should White owned businesses pay more for black people’s labor? That is why ALEC (in Delaware associated with Patty Blevins) was invented: to protect White Businesses’ interests. And still unfortunately, in some states, there were enough white people still agreeing that black people as well as to those whites who associate with them, should be paid inferior wages,so much so that with ALEC’s help, enough votes were mustered to pass state anti-union laws..
But historically there were laws that once said: slavery was legal. Despite bad law, morally it was still everyone’s right to be free….
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
It is your right to form a union. Existing law is crystal clear. Why was this decided? What is the moral argument behind it?
Simple. You have to eat. Bottom line. If someone says I have to pay you $6.00 an hour because I’m not making enough money, and you can’t get money anywhere else, you work for $6.00 and hour. If he counters that he can only pay $5.00 an hour, and you can’t make money anywhere else, you will do his bidding for $5.00 an hour. Why not $4 then? Why not $3 then? Why not $2 then? Why not $1 then? Why not .25 cents then?
You have to eat.
There is no bargaining chip in your favor… Your employer if legally allowed, would pay the lowest rate possible to still have employees. When there are more employees than positions, wages could drop very low…. because you have to eat.
America went through the Great Depression primarily because of this… Even business leaders realized from that experience that by making their employees so poor, no one was buying the products they were making…
And so they agreed: “If we make our employers have disposable income, they can buy our products and we can again make money”. So the legal basis was almost unanimously approved by both businesses and labor, to make the right to strike just that. a basic human right protected by the full force of the law… Simply because paying workers higher wages is good for increasing overall demand. and that is what drives economies forward.
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
Basically, a union is the answer to this counter argument: “why should you, the investors, get all the money off our labor, and we get none?” Admittedly both of us should get something decent from our arrangement….
And there you go. America did do very well… that is, until our media became influenced by investors (who now own them btw) and started painting unions as a scourage… Missing from all press coverage, was the simple fact that one has to act scouragingly when bargaining with fellow scourages… Sort of like not realizing that your hero prize fighter has to hurt people. It’s necessary to stay in the ring…
So I encourage all reading this to now begin talking up unions in your workplace… Because if you get fired for any reason afterwards, you can blame it on the legal right to form a union…. it is like a wonderful vacation in which you still will get paid, probably even more than if you’d put up with the bosses crap the whole damn time….!
Now… you know! It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
Yeah.
It really is your “right.” and it is protected by law. Now, go get them tigers!
Amber Waves Of Grain; Purple Mountains Majesty
Photo Courtesy of Barb&Kathleen@ ThriftTalkDiva
Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, the Associated Press reported this weekend. I know a lot of adults breathed a sigh of relief going: “whew… at least I’m not the only one.”
One can shrug their shoulders and say that’s the way it is supposed to be, I guess. Not much one can do about it.
But to do so, one has to forget their lives growing up. Where their parents made do, often having something extra to pass down to us, their children, when they moved on.
Whether it was a house, a small savings, they lived well enough, They died with dignity knowing they started with nothing, and actually “made it.” Today, comparatively, the baby boomers started out wealthy and now have nothing to give their children, except their debt.
How did this happen?
The year was 2001. Bush was elected and Republicans had a majority in the House, and were one shy in the Senate. Time to implement the election winner’s policy. The campaign was run on tax cuts, and tax cuts we were going to have….
On the floor of Congress, the debate took place like this: “Look” the Democrats said, “we have a stable economy with the national debt hitting 0 in 7 years. Why do you want to mess around with that?”
Republicans replied: … “Tax Cut. Tax Cut.. Get your tax cuts here.” and America began its swirl down the toilet.
The Democrats countered: “if you cut taxes now, in 15 years the rich will have all the money, and the middle class will become poor. A society can’t be all about “making a profit”. As with a business, there has to be continuous reinvestment back into the economy; otherwise sooner or later the supporting structure runs out of juice, gets tired of holding everything up, and it all crashes down….”
Republicans replied: … “Tax Cut. Tax Cut.. Get your tax cuts here, ” and it was done.
With a party supporting their every wish, the wealthy started dismantling the single biggest drawback keeping them from earning top dollar: the middle class.
The argument became: we aren’t making enough profit. Everything had to go that got in the way making a profit. Making a profit became how we identified ourselves. Of course that only applied to the corporate world. The US Government was gutted to assist in the making of profit. The Middle Class was gutted to assist with the making of a profit.
How was this done? The word “no” was used to respond to all increased payroll requests. And our expenses that benefited major corporations, kept edging higher. Medical coverage, a necessity, now took a bigger bite out of the no-go-higher paycheck. Utility costs, a necessity, now took a bigger bite out of the same no-go-higher paycheck. Insurance of all kinds, now took a bigger bite out of the same no-go-higher paycheck.
Government itself was cut back, whittled down, eradicating the purchasing power of a lot of those no-go-higher paychecks completely. Soon there were too many people looking for work. Some were desperate to work at all, no matter what the wage. Really? That made those who run companies to ask themselves this question: why should we continue paying Mr. X this high amount, when we can get Ms. Y to work for this with the same productivity? Mr. X joined the lines of the unemployed.
With more Mr. X’s in the unemployment line, those still working accepted more and more stress for the paycheck they still had, and gave more and more concessions to their employer (who mind you, was quite happy before with his more than adequate income while paying out those amounts), digging themselves further and further into the hole.
So the entire middle class is working for less, and paying it all back and more….
According to Republicans, it is all their fault; they are lazy, insolent, disagreeable louts who deserve every bit of pain they’ve received. They are the surplus population that needs to be eradicated from existence, Sorry, but that’s just the way it is..
And was, through American history until the 1930’s.
In the 1930’s Democrats said, “no, it doesn’t have to be this way.” We can tax those with money, have Social Security when we retire, build projects and invest in infrastructure that improve our lives, like electricity, like telephones. You know, we can set prices so people can make a living off what they work. we can set profits so small businesses can live off what they sell; we can make it so everyone can have a house, food on the table, and die with dignity, not being a burden to the next generation.
And that is what they did. They said profit is good. Too much profit is bad, and so we are taking everything over this ascertained level.
And to be honest, it was touch and go for a while, and gradually the meticulous detailed economic planning gave way to market economics, but only after the economic free-fall had been stopped.
And yes the rich screamed ferociously loud (and lost every national election for the next 60 years). But we got the childhood we lived through because of that action.
There was more. We said banks could not invest the money that people needed for their livelihood. That restriction has since been removed. We said, if you paid into Social Security, when you retired, you got something back. That promise is now gone from every Republican platform. Done away with. Eradicated. We said that income taxes were good, they supported the country and made us strong. That held true until we chose to let the wealthy have more, and take less ourselves. We said, of course, it is right for a employees to strike, stop working if the boss won’t pay them correctly. He can’t fire you for striking. Once that was protected, the bosses eventually caved in when he saw paying proper wages was cheaper than the alternative. Over the course of these actions, it enabled a person to go to work for a company, and retire from that company with a pension, with Social Security, with Medicare; they could pay their bills up to the end, and still pass something onto their children, us.
When we get told today by our media that we can’t afford to live like we used to, no one except the bravest of us, dare stand up to ask why? Are you so brow beaten? Are you so numb you can’t see it is you’re own actions that are the cause of your demise? Are you no better than the prodigal son, who squandered his father’s wealth, and now has nothing? You had it all once. Remember the dreams, the life plan you had for yourself when you graduated college?
And how much did it cost you to graduate from that college? As much as a house, as our graduates today now face? A tab so high Just so those who lent the money can make 10 times the amounts they made back when you and I were lent money to put ourselves through school?
So the problem is very simple. Very small. Giving more money to the wealthy, the rich, the multinational corporations, takes money that should be ours, right out of our pocket. It is that simple. That is where we went wrong. That is how we got here. Four out of five adults facing poverty.
There is no guaranteed right that one must make a profit. It’s not in the Bible. It is not in the Constitution. Everything does not have to give just so you can make more money. There are things on this planet far more important than how much “extra” money you can squeeze out of your fellow human beings.
All that we need to do to rejuvenate the middle class, is control excessive profit. Not in a heavy handed way, mind you, but through proper levels of taxation. Profit is extra. It’s superfluous money. A business can run fine without making a profit. In fact, most small businesses do. They are trying to survive like you and I, with loans, with IOU’s, with barter arrangements, with reinvestment, with building on, etc.
Remember how life used to be so good. Now four out of five adults will, if not already, face poverty before they die. Four out of five. Is that the promise we got when we were told to stand by our desks, put our hands on our hearts, and mumble to squeeze some fun out of the daily ritual…. ” I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands; one nation under God, indivisible; with liberty and justice for all.” Did we go to school, go to college, marry, raise a family, struggle to put them through school, for this? Four out of five of us living in poverty?
And it took place while we worked very hard, getting conned into giving away all the things we every had all rights to, simply because we once elected the Republican Party of the United States of America into power. Happy with yourself now?
Let’s get that dream back. Screw their profits; rebuild America back into its beautiful dream, now. Let’s give our children their dream back! At least that is something worthy. That would make it all worth while.
kavips 