Incredible - No liberal bias, huh?

[zimmy]

Pesc. I am pretty much right in line with you on what you said. Only thing I want to add is that non-defense discretionary spending is under 500 billion. When party leaders say publicly they are going to cut 1trillion from the budget, but not cut military spending, they can't explain how to do that. Again, it is something that sounds good, but it isn't possible. they aren't going to cut 500 billion, as that is all non-defense discretionary spending and they certainly aren't going to be able to cut 1trillion from the budget. The deficit is going to grow and tax loopholes for big business are one thing that needs to be fixed. You make good points about how the taxes can affect other revenues, but from a true competitive free market standpoint, it is an uneven playing field that benefits certain companies and industries more than others. I believe the groups with true independent or libertarian leaning should want this problem fixed as much as they worry about some of the other stuff.

[JohnR]

Originally Posted by zimmy

Pesc. I am pretty much right in line with you on what you said. Only thing I want to add is that non-defense discretionary spending is under 500 billion. When party leaders say publicly they are going to cut 1trillion from the budget, but not cut military spending, they can't explain how to do that. Again, it is something that sounds good, but it isn't possible. they aren't going to cut 500 billion, as that is all non-defense discretionary spending and they certainly aren't going to be able to cut 1trillion from the budget. The deficit is going to grow and tax loopholes for big business are one thing that needs to be fixed. You make good points about how the taxes can affect other revenues, but from a true competitive free market standpoint, it is an uneven playing field that benefits certain companies and industries more than others. I believe the groups with true independent or libertarian leaning should want this problem fixed as much as they worry about some of the other stuff.

Defense spending is expected to be cut between 5-10% per year for the next 5 years. The actual cuts will be deeper as many programs that were maturing to IOC have been cut or moved to the right. Major programs.

Not to mention these programs were "jobs programs" that many congressfolk are trying to keep.

As for the free market, how is the playing field level? China plays with their currency, the EU subsidizes Airbus and other programs. I could go on.

WE, the USA, have a spending problem and we have a buying problem. We spend more than we take in, and as consumers we buy too much from overseas.

Big business fighting for the bottom line ships jobs overseas. Big workers keep their pay and benefits at very high levels. Big population is addicted to government handouts. This is not sustainable. Something has to give.

One of my clients, good people, union shop. Awful lot of foreign cars in their parking lot. I'm driving my creaky old Ford.

[striperman36]

we've had over 400 people cut from long term defense programs over the last 4 months, because of the budget not being funded.

[zimmy]

Originally Posted by JohnR

I'm driving my creaky old Ford.

Unfortunately, Ford is now the Mexican, Malaysian, Vietnamese, Argentinian, English, Brazilian American Truck company. Want an American car these days, you have to buy a Honda. People buy stuff from china because it is cheap since they can pay their workers $100 a month. I know so many Walmart fans and Walmart has been the biggest proponent of the cheap and disposable chinese goods mentality. Same people complain about jobs going over seas. It is hard though, as it is almost impossible to avoid it. Most of the good US products were union made ... with the unions, the companies had trouble competing, without the unions the workers couldn't afford to purchase stuff. The reality probably has more to due to transportation. Once trade started occuring there was no going back. People weren't going to pay more for US made and workers weren't going to work for wages similar to what people in asia would. It definitely isn't simple.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by zimmy

. Most of the good US products were union made. Once trade started occuring there was no going back. People weren't going to pay more for US made and workers weren't going to work for wages similar to what people in asia would. It definitely isn't simple.

Americans have opted for foreign made products, in many cases, that are not only less expensive but in many cases just as good and the "good US union made products"

yes, "once trade started"(?? do you have a date for this also...dont say 400 years) Americans could no longer get those quality union made products, like the American cars of the 70's and 80's ...when has it ever been suggested that American workers need to or would need to work for the same wages that Asian workers do in order to be competitive?

"without the unions the workers couldn't afford to purchase stuff" really?, how is it then, that non-union workers "purchase stuff"?

"The reality probably has more to due to transportation" OK?

Unions and their political colleagues have created their own monsters, they have built armies of lazy dependents(much like the democrat party), have chased their own jobs out of this country through demands and support of suffocating regulation and members have been told all the while by their thugocracy that they are the best...and the brightest...when neither has been true...and for those reasons, the benefits that have been leveraged through thuggish means in many cases or through political graft are somehow both deserved and earned...when neither is true...Union dependents demand "a share" when times are good but conceed little or nothing when times demand otherwise....companies leave the US(and relocate from state to state) to escape burdensome regulation and taxation, union demands, to find more productive workers who may work for far less but may be living in huts and appreciate the opportunity to earn a wage rather than scouring for food for their next meal and in the end may take more pride in their work than the average union employee...



Conrad Black wrote a great article the other day describing it this way...

"In an era when the work force and the management, lenders and shareholders all have effectively the same interest — productivity and quality of work — organized labor has been sliced back to the least efficient, least necessary, least competent sector of the entire labor market: the public-service unions. This is the withered detritus of such great men as Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and Lane Kirkland.............the teachers’ unions that have propagated ignorance where education long prevailed; and the unindustrious anthills of paper-pushers and issuers of insulting and erroneous ukases on behalf of the agencies of the immense infestation of government riveted on America’s back. In identifying itself wholly with the ethos, work habits, and intellectual effervescence of this group, the Obama Democratic party has engaged in a romantic trek to its sources."

I'll give the union workers one thing...they sure have plenty of time to show up and protest and trash state capitols and threaten those that disagree with them...in that regard, they are quite efficient and productive..and probably undercompensated. you may want to differentiate between public sector and private sector unions but I'm not sure that they do ...you might even say that the public sector unions are doing great damage to the "Union Lable" currently

[scottw]

back to Jimmy's original point, NPR and the rest of the MSM are little more than a bull horn for the left in this country..ideaology trumps intellectual honesty for the activists that populate it, I flipped through the big three yesterday morning and it was the same at every stop..."journalist" seething at the unbelieveable and illegal actions of the Wisconsin Republicans....not a word about the drooling rabble screaming around the capitol...they are, afterall, the good guys and are justified in whatever they do, the evil Republicans however, they hate people and want you to die...it would be funny if it weren't so serious....the MSM simply repeats the story and spin that the left wants propogandized each day.....it's not liberal bias to liberals because they enthusiastically believe this crap

just compare the treatment and characterization in the media of the Tea Party protesters and the union thug rent-a-mobs...this NPR guy was just perpetuating the talking points