Third Party & Independents: Archives

Jason, do you really expect critical thinkers to take your link, “Myths about jobs and outsourcing”, which is nothing more than a spin opinion piece without even logical support, let alone empirical data support, to strengthen your opinion?

One biased opinion does not add credibility to another biased opinion. In fact, it just makes the opinion appear to be looking desperately for support to hold itself up.

I mean white racists insisted that the holocaust was just a myth as well. Guess what, calling observeable evidence a myth does not make it so. Of course I will defend anyone’s right to speak untruths all day long in America, but, I will also dispel their untruths equally as long as far as I am capable. These “myths” however, don’t even warrant rebuttal as they are so absurdly false on their face to anyone who seeks the truth.

Article looks like it’s got plenty of empirical data to me. For example, “Not only is the unemployment rate low in historical terms at 5.6 percent, but the work force has been growing: There are now 2.03 million more people in the labor force than in late 2001.” Or how about, “there are 1.9 million more Americans employed since the recession ended in November 2001. There are 138.3 million workers in the U.S. economy today.” Every fact is backed up by numbers.

Just because it says opinion at the top doesn’t mean it doesn’t contain facts.

You realize that the three authors are part of the Heritage Foundation, a rabidly conservative think tank? They’re calling it an “opinion piece,” but it’s clearly a thinly veiled attack on Kerry (note the mention of “Benedict Arnold CEOs) and a little rah-rah for Bush’s economic policy (such as it is).

They’ve spun the numbers to make it all look great. Unemployment is historically low? By what measure? When Bush came into power, it was in the 4.2% range and now it stands at 5.7% (March 2004). I’m scouring the article and I can’t find any mention of that.

And if unemployment is up and the number of people employed is up, that can only mean that the number of people eligible to be employed has risen at a faster rate, percentage-wise, than the number of people who are actually employed. Am I wrong on that? Our population is growing, isn’t it?

Some of this may be true; I haven’t had time to break it all down. I just know spin when I see it and this is spin, big time.

What is most irritating to me is the statement: “American workers deserve a more informative, less partisan debate on outsourcing.” They should follow that up with “And maybe someone else will give it to you, but not us.”

Jerome, the situation is indeed worse than the Republican spin, but the sky is not falling quite so fast as you would have people believe either. The 4.2% is a freakishly low number at the height of the dot-com bubble, an artificial boom that had the entire economy writing payroll out with bad checks. Also, compared with Europe and other parts of the world, U.S. unemployment is relatively low.

I understand the desire to ad hominem the Heritage Foundation and say that simply because they were the ones quoting the figures, those figures can’t possibly be correct. But such spin on your part actually does more damage to your own argument in the process.

Now, to be fair to those who wish to be unfair to Bush: raw unemployment figures are not a fully accurate snapshot of the quality of employment available to American labor. Yes there ARE plenty of jobs out there, and the vast majority of them are skimming along at barely above minimum wage. A close friend of mine is a paralegal delivering flowers at a flower shop for about 1/6 what she previously made, and I can guarantee you the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts her as “employed”.

UNDERemployment is the problem in America. Bush slapped us all in the face when he lamented about all the low-range jobs out there that Americans were refusing to take, as justification for his immigration amnesty. Mr. President, we are trying to refuse to take those jobs because we don’t share your vision of engineers bussing tables at Denny’s. But in spite of ourselves, many of us are taking them anyway. It’s as likely as not that the guy delivering your pizza can quote you the exact chemical composition of the sauce, in molecular equations.

The light at the end of the tunnel is when India, chief recipient of the higher-paying jobs of the Dot Bomb that disappeared, gets a more inflated economy and raises their labor bid, which will backwash those jobs our way, not at a compensation level we enjoyed in the boom years, but certainly more comfortably than we’re working right now.

Manufacturing? Kiss it goodbye. China owns all of that. If it’s not high-tech it’s just not going to exist, so get trained while the training’s good. The Chinese slave labor camps will need some programmers to help them run more efficiently.

The 4.2% is a freakishly low number at the height of the dot-com bubble

I don’t understand how that’s feakish. Are you saying we can never have 4.2% unemployment again? That seems like a fairly modest goal. According to the US Dept. of Labor, there have been plenty of years when we had that kind of unemployment or lower. Usually under Democratic Presidents. :)

Lee, if you look at European unemployment, and unemployment elsewhere in the world, figures around 8% and 9% are considered prosperous, and here in America we “benefit” from the double standard of considering anything above 5% to be recession.

I still think it’s the wrong metric to gaze upon though, for measuring the prosperity or lack thereof, in the economy. You could create fifty trillion burger-flipper jobs and still have an economy that sucks rocks.

What I want to hear your Democratic partisans talking about are:

1) How exactly is our manufacturing sector going to compete with Chinese slave labor?

2) How are we going to leverage technology to outpace production overseas, such that costs here will be lower in spite of the creation of higher-paying jobs to maintain the technology?

3) Do the Democrats plan to pork their way into higher job creation statistics?

That should be a good start.

Hey Ciggy,

1) I don’t think we can, right now. How do you compete with slave labor? We could regulate offshoring, but that would make our companies even less competitive. We could lower our working wages… Hah! We could automate humans out of manufacturing jobs.

Ok, none of those are good options. I think the only alternative is a judo move. Just don’t compete with them. During the 90s, the economic climate was so forgiving that everybody jumped on the IT bandwagon. People were actually quitting their manufacturing jobs to program web pages. We need something like that to happen again.

How about a national movement to switch to a hydrogen powered transportation infrastructure? It would create high-tech jobs commercializing the technology, and manufacturing and construction jobs deploying it.

How about affordable universal private health care? If companies don’t have to foot the overhead for health benefits, they could be more competitive.

Those are two plans Kerry is proposing.

2) Good question. See 1.

3) Haha! There’s a fine line between pork and kickstarting jobs, isn’t there? FDR made it work. It’s better than just sitting around waiting for jobs to happen. I think it’s worth a shot. :)

Lee, I like your point on Universal Healthcare. Opponents seem to think it’s another attempt by the Democrats to expand government and to introduce a social program for the lazy that’s paid for by people who work for a living. I see it more as a way to get the onus of health care off the backs of our businesses. Comments?

Every government program will be more expensive and more expansive than anything you had in mind when you proposed it. It will be applied in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of.

When Medicare was initially passed in 1965, the politicians projected its cost in 1992 to be $3 billion — which is equivalent to $12 billion when adjusted for inflation to 1992 dollars. The actual cost in 1992 was $110 billion — nine times as much.

And when Medicare was enacted, Section 1801 of the original law specifically prohibited any bureaucratic interference with the practice of medicine. Today not one word of that protection still applies. The federal government owns the health-care industry lock, stock, and barrel.

The new program you support will eventually include all sorts of powers and privileges you can’t even imagine right now.

Lee, the case of how the WPA worked, producing such things as the Hoover Dam, are an example of “good public works”. The challenge is for the leadership to bird-dog the activities and make sure they aren’t wasteful of the available manpower. The temptation to not care as much about preventing waste is always stronger in government-run industry than its privately-run component, which doesn’t mean it’s impossible to pull off, but it makes it a candidate for close public scrutiny and for hard questions to be asked at every opportunity, about why certain dollars are spent in certain areas.

One could go so far as to say that the great Defense Boondoggle going on right now is a sort of back-handed WPA. We continue to gear up Cold War-era capability to keep people employed at building the “star wars” system that doesn’t work, or to maintain the C-141 which is a wing crack waiting to happen, in spite of more reliable older planes like the C-130 or more capable newer ones like the C-17. The key difference is that the Hoover Dam provided a useful purpose, while these overgrown paper-weights do not.

To what non-wasteful areas could defense-related wheel-spinning be re-employed, to greater effect on the standard of living in America? Well first off, the dollars could be kept within the general area of defense but reassigned to intelligence and special operations agencies that are more geared toward meeting the challenges of terrorism and insurgencies. They can boost the Border Patrol instead of Star Wars. They can go into the FBI so that that blasted CODIS database can get up to speed, rather than pay six-figure salaries to Halliburton “consultants”. Outside the general area of defense, some dollars could shift from NASA to renewable energy research (and ALL ideas in that regard are helpful—be they for wind, ethanol, geothermal, anything non-petroleum in nature).

The shift of these dollars from wasteful areas to non-wasteful ones would represent a zero sum in terms of jobs, but the work description OF the jobs will get more rubber meeting the road of American needs.

In a further stand-down of conventional forces (concurrent with a ramp-up of intelligence and special ops assets), we should announce to the world that we are turning in our badge and gun as the Global Police Officer. No more Iraqs. No more Somalias. If an Afghanistan needs to happen again, there again the Special Ops assets can handle it if fully supported by air firepower.

For a great deal of my life I was clinging to the notion of private health care, but I’ve finally let go in realization that the cost-shifting in an insurance-based system provides the worst of both worlds: the fancy extras of private care at a distributed cost. Public operation of the industry could prioritize the care covered against the cost, would ELIMINATE malpractice suits (replaced by disciplinary censures of the offending doctors), and since there’s cost-shifting anyway, let it combine with that inherent in the taxation and public assistance systems, to reduce the paperwork.

While I’m on a socialization role, I think all education should be public as well. Academic restrictions should determine class populations at the post-secondary level, not considerations of whose parents are wealthier.

And while I’m still on a socialization role, abolish private attorneys.

I’m not 100% socialist, but in the sectors I mentioned I would welcome a segregation between profit motive on one hand, and education, medicine, and justice on the other. Other sectors should remain fully Capitalist. ;)

Once we fully socialize one industry, like health care, what’s to prevent the government from socializing other industries? They might say, “Those evil oil men, we’ve got to take over their industry for the good of the country. Gas prices are too high and if we take over, we can deliver gas to the consumers at a lower cost.”

Capital, Technology and Labor are needed to prosper. These resources move easily, unlike forests, mines, water, soil and weather… Mutually beneficial trade is rooted in different competitive advantages between traders. What we have today is the transfer of C-T-L offshore, leaving us no hard goods to trade (except food and airplanes). America’s technology lead has disappeared overnight because this country has given away it’s technology in exchange for cheap labor. The dollar is sinking, the trade deficit is climbing and O’Neil has been replaced with a Snow job. Historically low interest rates triggered one time refinancing and home purchases that obfuscate our real problems. Much of what counts for trade is foreign capital buying up Corporate America. The way things are going, Americans will not have the money to buy all the good deals at WalMart. By wagging the Iraqi dog Bush hopes no one will notice. Is the problem devious leaders & CEO’s or a gullible indifferent electorate?

Ciggy, I’m not convinced about 100% public schools, but I do think we should be strengthening them. I’m all for high-quality public education for everyone who wants it.

I like universal health care for anyone who wants it, too. It will end up costing consumers less and break the monopolistic hold that insurance companies have on our health care system.

The federal government owns the health-care industry lock, stock, and barrel.

Jason, you have that backwards. The AMA has even successfully lobbied the government to forbid the publishing of malpractice suit records. Right now, there is no way to know if the doctor you are seeing has been found guilty in 100 malpractice cases. You may be 101.

Ciggy, I have a problem with abolishing private attorneys. If Bush gets all the judicial postings he wants, can you imagine being represented by a government lawyer for a workplace-caused injury? I fully support judges throwing out frivolous lawsuits, but I like the idea of being able to file one if I want.

BTW, doesn’t it seem like, for all their talk of freedom of choice, conservatives consistently offer up plans that would actually limit your choices?

I like your idea about the defense industry, too. As I’ve said before, the one thing I liked about Rumsfeld was his rhetoric on remaking the Pentagon and refocusing the military.

Lars - It’s the gullible, indifferent electorate. I’m waiting for Paul Krugman’s prophesied “great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.”

Jason, it’s a slippery-slope argument and could just as easily be applied to an idiotic ban on alcohol leading to a similarly idiotic ban on drugs. Okay, bad analogy there. How about saying that if a state increases its age of consent from 16 to 18, then what’s to prevent it from eventually boosting it to 40? It’s the fallacy of saying an inch is identical to a mile, in all cases.

Lars: yes.

Lee, look at it like this. Corporate interests hold the majority of the money, AND pretty much own W. If you leave the attorney profession in the hands of private practice, the separation of powers between your bete noire Bush and the guy who’s supposed to defend you, is even more tennuous and the string-pulling of moneyed interests can be even more direct. If defense attorneys answer to the court in the way public defenders do, at LEAST there is the Constitutional separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches to provide more of a firewall. Yes, Bush appoints judges, but the Congress can and DOES nail his appointees to the wall and refuse to confirm when they see issues in their background or jurisprudential history. That is 100% more safety than offering justice up to the highest bidder like we do today.

I agree with what you said about conservatives. They talk the talk of Liberty, and walk the walk of Restriction. It’s primarily why I’m not a conservative.

I don’t think Krugman’s “Great Revulsion” is ever going to happen. One of the primary purposes of a manipulated media culture is to prevent it, and they’re just too good at it. If Progressives can see James Carville on TV beating George Bush to a pulp with his words, that lulls them back to sleep thinking the free and open exchange of ideas has things well in-hand and voters will take care of the rest. They don’t understand that a two-party system is really “Mutt and Jeff”, or “Good cop, Bad cop”. Two electrodes of the taser gun used to zap the people into submission.

Nice imagery, Ciggy.

You’re argument for socializing lawyers is pretty good. Did you notice tha you point out the root cause of the problem? The monetary influence over the leaders of this country needs to stop.

I’m going to tentatively buy into the manipulation of the media culture analysis, only because I saw how effective it was at thwarting the McCain Feingold reforms. I still hear conservatives regurgitating that “campaign finance reform stifles free speach” BS.

Lee, monetary influence over the nation’s leadership is a power balance against populist influence.

Have you ever heard of the saying that Democracy is “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner?” Wolf-power is populist will to break apart the empires of economic oligarchs and distribute economic value to the masses. To a POINT, that can be a good thing, but if it gets to the point of looting and pillaging people simply for having resources, then there is no incentive for anyone to gain those resources by any means other than theft from the “haves”. And that is basically the L.A. riots, 24x7.

The monetary influence in political campaigning is a counterweight to the populist looting power of democracy. The masses may use vote-power to crash the big monopolies and break up what is obviously wrong in corporate oligarchies, but with big-dollar advertising you can stanch the flow of that activity beyond what is obviously good and just and right to do. Should a mob flood into Donald Trump’s mansion and raid it like Saddam’s army flooding through Kuwait? No, and money can make that point obvious. However, should the mob band together and say that Halliburton does not outrank Congress in deciding when and where we should go to war? Absolutely, and all the President’s money people will be unable to make arguments against that one fly in TV ads, anywhere.

The original, natural, formation of the two-party system was indeed to represent populist power via the Democratic Party, and money power via the Republican Party. But, the very dangerous thing that has happened lately is that the Democratic side got subsumed by some very wealthy elites, and have basically turned the balancing effect originally formed thereby, into a money pump by which the wealthy absorb the earnings of the middle class, through taxation (from the left) and expensive government contracts (from the right).

Campaign finance reform is a two-edged sword and to cut the Heritage/PNAC influence you’d also swipe George Soros out of the political game, and that might very well be a tremendously good thing. I don’t know. But I DO know that the two party system is worse than broken, it’s perverted and twisted and being used as a yoke to enslave the middle class, while the middle class doesn’t even know it’s enslaved. That, to me, is a far more pressing issue to pursue than dickering over what dollar amounts can go into what ads.

Ciggy, I don’t know where you got the populist riots from. All I’m advocating is an end to politicians soliciting campaign donations like cheap whores.

Here’s a Democrat plan to do that.

It just ignores the “soft money” Heritage/Soros players because in Democrats experience, it’s not as effective as direct financing. Besides, banning “soft money” would step on free speech, wouldn’t it? ;)

Lee, if you’re comfortable with your assurance that there can be no Republican versions of George Soros in the future, with unlimited capacity to throw money at elections and not a single restriction on what he can spend as long as the politician campaigned doesn’t chirp up “I approved this ad”, then you will deserve everything the Republicans give you.

It’s already illegal for individuals to donate more than $1000, and very soon it will probably be illegal for PACs to act as manifolds for the donation streams. That side of election financing is already fairly tightly regulated. And the soft money pretty much CAN’T be, not just because it would trample free speech, but also because just about every episode of the Daily Show would count against the DNC’s quota. You guys’d be bankrupt before John Stewart makes it to your “Moment of Zen”.

I say let the balance continue to be the balance. Poor people will vote government benefits for themselves, and rich people will seduce the masses away from such actions, and the end result will be, hopefully, some assistance where it’s warranted, but none for the lazy worthless slugs, be they defense contractors or some screaming welfare matriarch neck-rolling her way to the state capitol building to demand her welfare checks. “I am a full-time student and I am trying to BETTER myself! So you DAMN well better give me MY check” *neck-roll* *flash over to Michael Moore as he shows a sense of dread, that things are not working out as planned for this little publicity stunt*…

Ciggy, there are already Republican versions of George Soros throwing money at the elections.

Do you have some specific objection to politicians being barred from soliciting money? I see nothing but good coming from a move like that.

Soft money isn’t regulated now, and I’ve heard Democratic strategists say that direct contributions are a least four times more effective than soft money. I say lets give it a shot.

Yeah he totally sucks and so do Cheney and Rumsfeld. Lets not reelect them.

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