I’ve gotten a ton on this one. Here’s one above the fold and two others below the fold, including one from Americans for Job Security.
Fresh Political Pickins From The Peach State
I’ve gotten a ton on this one. Here’s one above the fold and two others below the fold, including one from Americans for Job Security.
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Saxby is clearly the best choice but this mail I’ve been getting is pretty sloppy. Too much info!
Is better than the unbelievably bad ads that Saxby ran in the general. but it’s like they’re throwing the kitchen sink at this thing.
Saxby mentioned everything except the current state of the economy and his help in the 7 trillion dollar, borrow from china and give to the irresponsible, socialist corporations bailout.
I get such a kick out of my brother in-law sometimes…he was complaining about jobs getting outsourced, and get this…he is voting for Saxby.
I can’t believe it. Complaining about Americans losing their jobs and he is voting for one of the very people responsible…a person who actually encourages outsourcing of American jobs.
And, of course, Saxby’s re election is going to miraculously prevent all these terrible things from happening.
Because he is The One (tm)
Right.
The One™
see if that works
I voted against Obama by voting for Saxby.
The unions and the democrats drove the blue collar jobs out of this country. Obama and the democrats, especially if they have 60 Senators, will now drive the white collar jobs out of this country. The importance of the run-off is that simple.
Saxby definitely in winning the mail race- I have gotten 6 pieces of Saxby mail warning me about the nefarious plots of them evil lib’ruls. The interesting thing is that I live in what has got to be one of the most liberal precincts in Atlanta & have given $$ to Martin.
The day with the most interesting ideological mail was 2 pieces of saxby mail & and thank you from Al Franken . . . .
I wonder where they get their mailing lists?
I think the source of those lists is Joe-Bob’s Online Mailing Lists and Live Bait
btpull,
I think the Unions are the only private interest trying to keep jobs in the U.S.
They only get membership dues if there are jobs for their members to fill. Try again.
I believe saxby will win due to the demographics of the turn out, but I don’t know if we can use the “we can’t let them get to 60″. Saxby might just side as the 60th vote from time to time.
btpull,
If you had been a good American and paying attention to the plight of your fellow man, you would have realized that it was not the unions but the U.S. Socialist Corporations’, greed which can’t avoid the temptation to exploit chinese prison camp and south american & asian sweat shop labor which caused the mass exodus of Americna jobs.
Unless you find someway to buy off an U.S. elected official, your children and grandchildren will be working for pennies a day as service the Debt that we owe China et al…
Unions cause a company to become inflexible, inefficient, and raise the cost of labor to a competitive disadvantage. We have all seen photos of parking lots full of new cars the big three cannot sell, but were forced to produce as a result of their contracts with the unions. As we are witnessing a company cannot survive under these conditions in the long run.
Today US Corporations’ growth opportunities are increasingly coming from overseas. As their revenue from overseas becomes a larger and larger component of total sales these corporations will naturally shift white collar type of jobs (Accounting, Finance, Sales, Marketing, etc.) to international locations. The democrats tendency to add burdens to businesses in terms of taxation, wages, and benefits requirements will only accelerate these trends. If Obama truly wants to increase employment, he needs to focus on setting up a business friendly environment not a environment that is hostile to employers.
Unions are not hostile to employers, btpull.
There is balance that needs to be struck because the failure of certain sectors can destroy the standard of living in the US…unions are not to blame though. Inherited wealth and the handing of corporate reins to inexperienced ivy-leaguers has been the problem for decades.
I have sat on many boards and taught in some of this country’s more prestigious colleges…and I can tell you that your fantasy has become a nightmare for this country.
How a person of privilege (like G.W. Bush or McCain) can come to hold so much power in a company or the country is beyond me. Too many of today’s (and yesterday’s) students and executives got their positions because of their parent’s success…not based on their own merit. This holds true to the two before mentioned names…who have never earned their own way.
Management makes companies inflexible…you may want to role back the clock on conditions and labor standards, but not in my country. We, Americans, are better than that. You have been told what to believe for too long and need to wake up. Especially if you are putting the profits of a few executives over the safety and well being of millions of Americans.
If you are going to complain about any union…complain about the AMA (Yes, it is a union too).
Stabilization and sustained stabilization is the key. Otherwise we will all be selling insurance to each other in 20 years (which is why the GOP’s “pro-growth” policies never work…they pick one or two industries to grow beyond their own capacity…then the bubble bursts and we go into another recession). Penalizing companies for outsourcing and maintaining outsourced positions is how to bring jobs back in a hurry. Make it too expensive for any company to do business in the US without hiring Americans to do the work.
This was rough!
Alaska Notebook: Palin’s Georgia pal
This Alaska notebook will appear in Saturday’s print edition, on the editorial page:
by Matt Zencey
Gov. Sarah Palin is putting her conservative Republican fame to work in Georgia, stumping for Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who is in a tough runoff for re-election.
I wonder if she knows the true measure of the man she is eagerly helping.
Chambliss was elected to the Senate in 2002 by running one of the most reprehensible campaigns of modern times. He was up against incumbent Democrat Sen. Max Cleland, a Vietnam War veteran who lost both legs and his right arm to a grenade during that conflict.
Chambliss avoided serving in Vietnam. He got four student draft deferments, and when his number finally came up, he was medically disqualified with knee troubles.
http://community.adn.com/adn/node/135064
Don’t forget to mention that Saxby’s fraternity brother, Jim Martin, did serve his country honorably in Vietnam.
Goldwater,
My personal experiences with unions are they force you to pay the dues even if you do not join. They cause the workforce to be ridged and expensive. They provide very little incentive for a person to put in an extra effort. Again this based on personal experience and not “have been told what to believe”.
I am fearful that white collar jobs will be the next “outsourcing” wave; the type of professional jobs that we want our children to go to college to get. I base this fear on the fact that the international end of many US multinationals is increasingly the growth focus. I believe more than 50% of Intel’s revenue is from overseas.
If the majority of a company’s business is from non-US sources eventually they will want to hire local accountants, finance, IT, marketing people, etc. Couple this with increased mandates on US Corporation it is not hard to imagine the erosion of white collar jobs over the next 10 to 15 years.
Your idea of “Make it too expensive for any company to do business in the US without hiring Americans to do the work.” might work in the short term, since the US economy is the driver of the world economy. In the mid-term the Chinese will have a middle class that will greatly out number the size of the US’s. At this point the incentive to pay such a high cost to enter or stay in the US market will be gone.
Back to the union thing…I was a longshoreman for years during grad school. Non-members do not pay dues and are not forced to pay them. Unions help the workforce to be well fed, educated and healthy. They also relieve healthcare costs for employers by pooling together an entire class of workers rather than one company’s employees. They give the workers bargaining power.
Yes, white collar jobs are leaving the country already. There are many US based companies that make most of their money overseas…we call them defense contractors and oil companies…among others. Fact is, America is probably over employed. We have too many people in this country and far too many of them inherit positions.
Regardless, after the first paragraph you stray from any talk about unions and go into other business. All I am saying is that the remaining union presence is the biggest contributor to the high standard of living that even our blue collar workers enjoy. If you would prefer children working in dank basements for nickels a day…fine. While things probably will not go to that extreme…the will go in that direction.
The middle class is eroding…and supply side tax incentives do nothing to help them. Labor costs drive companies out of the country…not taxes. Sit in a board room…to quote you so eloquently, in this regard, also, I “have been told what to believe”. I’ve been there for trustees and the directors to give out contracts to inefficient tech companies for the sole purpose of increasing the value of the contractor’s stock. It puts middle-classmen out of work and makes wealthy people wealthier.
Capitalism is done with the US. We need something new.
Goldwater and btpull
Illegal Immigration: A Rich American’s Game
This is one of the best articles I have ever read about explaining the core issue behind illegal immigration and trade. Congress has formed an unholy alliance with the lobbyist money changers in Washington to sell out small business and the middle class. Please read this article and tell me what you think.
By Froma Harrop
RCP-There’s a popular game in America that goes, I’ll cut your wages, but you don’t cut mine. And the outsourcing of your factory job to China is a good thing, because it makes my paycheck go further at Wal-Mart. We hear this theme a lot in the debate over illegal immigration.
Consider the recent raids on Swift meat-processing plants. Federal agents arrested 1,187 illegal immigrants at facilities in six states. Mere hours later, economists warned that depriving the industry of illegal labor could raise hamburger prices.
http://controlcongress.com/uncategorized/illegal-immigration-a-rich-americans-game
…..The U.S. Chamber of Commerce likes to wail about the “labor shortage.” It says there aren’t enough chambermaids, dishwashers, etc. to work for its members at lousy wages. Odd, but when there’s a shortage of labor — or anything else — doesn’t the price of it go up? The price of unskilled labor in the United States hasn’t gone up. It’s gone down. Because of immigration, American-born high-school dropouts experienced a 5-percent loss in wages during the ’80s and ’90s, according to a study by Harvard economist George Borjas.
For some reason, the job of keeping prices low has fallen entirely on the shoulders of the most vulnerable Americans. If we banged down CEO compensation and sliced lawyers’ pay by a third, the same thing would happen. Everyone’s prices would drop. The corporation could sell its products for less, and the cost of legal services would fall.
No vocation keeps a tighter lid on immigration than the medical profession. “If we let in 100,000 immigrant doctors,” Richard Freeman, another Harvard economist, recently told a group of journalists, “everyone in this room would benefit.” Except the American doctors.
Suggest a U.S. labor policy that depresses professional pay as a means of keeping prices in check, and you get laughed out of the room. But say that sitting on the wages of unskilled factory workers stems inflationary pressure — a frequently made argument — and the PhDs quietly nod in agreement.
And that’s how the game is played. High pay for me. Low pay for you. The folks at the economic bottom are obviously not making the rules….
That is an excellent article.
This is the part where I begin to preach stabilization. I do this because the we have definitely reached a point in the evolution our society that company profits, in many sectors, are lowering the standard of living for their employees. Considering how many people that is now…most of the consumer base is getting screwed. They are getting paid less and goods are costing more.
Unfortunately there really is no answer. Fortune 500 companies pay great sums of money to ensure that they do not have to create economies of scale by investing their profits into their own company…they horde it all away for the officers, directors and a few of their largest shareholders. So…that “ain’t” changing anytime soon. The poor can not afford representation is D.C. Furthermore, they can not agree on anything. You can expect nothing from the middle class…they just blame their inability to climb the SES ladder on one political party or the other.
Stabilization. It is the key. I do not advocate redistributing the wealth usually, but we are at a point where the people at the top are making so much money that the people at the bottom are suffering as consequence.
I love the crying about the Fairness Doctrine on the radio waves as telling “privately owned” radio stations what to do.
As long as you are on public airwaves, you’ve got an obligation to serve the public interest. If dissemination of hate speech and misinformation is what you are intending to do, move to cable. I would be opposed to imposition of the FD on cable.
Also, I love how corporate scare-mongering on unions is a protection of free speech because people don’t have to tell what they’ve voted for after being convinced that their job is in peril with the wrong vote.
JK, I think you are dead-on. The medical profession and other higher skilled trades still have eyes that are open enough to see that everyone in the group benefits from working together. My major in undergrad was a restricted entry to the highest grades to keep from flooding the market with sub-standard engineers working for less. Trade unions also used to bargain hard to fetch a fair price for their labor and products.
I think a better way to put it is “our organization is respectable, yours is a mob.”
odinseye2k,
I usually skip over the fairness doctrine stuff on this blog, but it does need to be addressed.
Hopefully our new president will have it enforced. There are so many ring-wingers in this country so eager to sell off fundamental aspects of our liberty to private interests.
The bringing up of the “secret ballot” “issue” is also important…for education purposes. I say this, not only because you brought it up, but because Saxby has been misleading anyone who has never before been active in a labor union. There are no secret ballots in union elections because management (non-union workers) send non-qualified employees in to vote in the election for the weakest leaders, policies and even to vote down the union altogether. Not having a secret ballot allows the union membership to know if votes cast in any election were made by people that are allowed to vote. Like having a photo id requirement for poltical elections in Georgia…but it is a little more complicated when dealing with unions because management would rather pay illegal immigrants $9/hr or send the jobs overseas.
Unions, however, are not mobs. Sure, less skilled workers tend to be less civilized than higher skilled workers. That is a matter of SES and socialization. In the end, labor unions ask how they can better the situations of their members…trade associations ask how they can squeeze more money out of everybody else. Both are learning that they can not have their way 100% of the time…because it can be destructive.
I’m amazed at the cojones on Saxby- if there’s anyone I’m concerned will take away my hard-earned dollars and constitutional rights, it’s Saxby “Patriot Act” “Bailout Boy” Chambliss.
At least with Jim Martin we know what to expect. Saxby is a RINO with no small government values who is liable to do anything.
“I usually skip over the fairness doctrine stuff on this blog, but it does need to be addressed.
“Hopefully our new president will have it enforced.”
Odin, GC: Show me where the Constitution supports the “fairness” doctrine. Who will decide whether someone on public airwaves is “serv(ing) the public interest?”
Goodness. Some of you think that government needs to control everything, but you whine about the Patriot Act allowing someone to listen in to your phone calls to your girlfriend. This makes no sense.
does anyone else find saxby (and a number of his supporters) kind of CREEPY???
Actually I do not whine about the PATRIOT Act. The parts I disagreed with have all been ruled unconstitutional already.
JSM, the airwaves are public property. The Fairness Doctrine was public policy until ’87. Thoughout the late ’80s and 90′s there were no issues…but things have gotten out of control and the FCC can reinstate the Fairness Doctrine without congressional approval…afterall, the Fairness Doctrine was upheld by the Supreme court.
Many people get the Fairness Doctrine confused with the Equal Time rules during election season…there is a correlation during the election season, but that is for our policy enforcers to decide.
Who decides…the FCC. It is not difficult given the blatant public slandering by the talk-show hosts you frequently listen to.
Reinforcing this mechanism would do the public well by ensuring that you are, in fact, somewhat educated on political matters. Rush limbaugh’s home station could, and probably would, lose it’s license as soon as he starts making stuff up about democrats being terrorists or trying to redefine marxism or socialism or any of those fear mongering cues that he uses.
It is that simple. Stop being selfish…do what is right for the country. That being said…it is likely that Faux News would lose its license unless it cleans up its act too. They do a good job at polluting the opinion of the target audience (which, by the way, happens to be people with less than a high school education). How in the world, may I ask, is a fist bump a symbol of terrorism? I don’t know, lets ask the educators at Faux News (see link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpdlfzEN_J0).
“Odin, GC: Show me where the Constitution supports the “fairness” doctrine. Who will decide whether someone on public airwaves is “serv(ing) the public interest?””
Show me where in the Constitution that the FCC is illegal. There’s also a huge difference in placing conditions on a business transaction (“if you want exclusive control of this bandwidth, you must do X, Y, and Z”) and invading my home and papers.
First Amendment gives you the right to speak but not to a platform. I could cry all day that CBS is mean and evil for not letting me talk on the Evening News but you’d rightly declare that non-sense.
The airwaves are not a perfectly public square. Entities are given monopoly rights on some parts of them in exchange for certain promises of behavior (and licensing fees). Thus, the FCC has the “Public Interest Convenience and Necessity” requirements for licensing by all broadcast stations. ABC, NBC, Fox, and all the rest are totally free to give up their broadcast business and go to cable or satellite. And some very eager folks would happily take their place for any set of conditions.
I really don’t think the government needs to control everything. However, when it comes to entities created by the public trust, namely broadcasters and corporations, the public then has a right to extract conditions in exchange for that trust. And one of them is to require that news organizations duly inform according to standards developed by knowledgeable experts in the field.
Odin,
Jsm usually skips over the parts of the constitution he does not like.
For example, the Preamble. Not to mention he, like nearly all conservatives, have never studied the Federalist Papers, any of Jefferson, Madison, or Hamilton’s letters or journals. Nor do they have classical educations. They merely read cliff’s note and wikipedia.
Wow, GC. You make many ASSumptions about me that are untrue. Please qu0te the sections of the US Constitution that I have shown to dislike. Also, please explain how the “fairness” doctrine “establish(es) Justice, insure(s) domestic Tranquility, provide(s) for the common defense, promote(s) the general Welfare, (or) secure(s) the Blessings of Liberty” to anyone.
While the doctrine was upheld by the SCOTUS in 1969, there have also been strong arguments against it:
“In 1974′s Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (418 U.S. 241), writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, ‘government-enforced right of access inescapably ‘dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate.’ ‘
“In footnotes 11 and 12 to 1984′s FCC v. League of Women Voters of California (468 U.S. 364), which struck down a federal ban on editorializing by noncommercial stations receiving federal funding, the court’s majority decision by William J. Brennan, a celebrated liberal jurist, noted FCC concerns that the Fairness Doctrine was ‘chilling speech’ and said the Supreme Court would be ‘forced’ to revisit the constitutionality of the doctrine if it did have ‘the net effect of reducing rather than enhancing speech.’”
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA445.html
—————–
“However, when it comes to entities created by the public trust, namely broadcasters and corporations, the public then has a right to extract conditions in exchange for that trust.”
If a news organization does a poor job, then in a free market, it loses the “public trust” and business declines. Look no further than the AJC for a perfect example. We don’t need a control doctrine to micromanage the angle of the information disseminated by news agencies or radio stations.
Let’s face it. If the doctrine were truly enforced, Jon Stewart and SNL’s Weekend Update would be canned, since too many lame-brained Americans get their news from these sources.
Yeah gOLDwater CONservative. You really need to quit the senseless attacking.
Dear Jim: I hope you see this, I don’t trust you, we we’re lied to 15 years ago on tax cuts by Clinton gang, when they reneged, taxation went through the roof, the Clinton nightmare is returning again, with the following Clintonshistas with the following controversial issues: Erich Brown–Marc Rich pardon, Susan Rice UN ambassador designate Rwandan Genocide, Hillary Clinton Secretary of State to many failures to lists. Personal note lets hope shes giving same contempt before congressional committee she showed contempt to Don Rumsfield and Condoleeza Rice with code pink at all her hearings chanting jeering her for war support. You’ve sold soul to Obama Harry Reid Nancy Pelosi for your vote, money talks, I’ve seen your negative ads for weeks, with DNC help painting Chambliss as you, your bunch gave us Nafata to send all manufacturing jobs overseas. You don’t recognize non union middle class families. I do fault Sonny Perdue for two major failures. Awol on the water&gas shortage, I also fault Mayor Shirley Franklin to busy building her ego on the magazines for same issues. Should she seek higher, she can forget my vote. Mr. Martin if your defeated today I will be happy that GA has been saved from a return to Clinton Dejavu in the end when things change, things stay the same.
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