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Open thread
- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted July 28, 2006 at 12:05 a.m.
- Filed under Uncategorized
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47 Comments
I think the WTO trade failure is what Kansas is all about. Why this state is red, stays that way and makes villans of those who disagree, no matter the economic disaster unbalanced trade causes.
Its the checks dummy! Who has always provided the money to farmers, Republicans. The government subsidies on farming hurt this planet. We’re paying more in the artifical market place. Do I trust milk from Argentina, I don’t know. The price for food could be lower with more competition and if it was quality those foreign countries might find fans in foods shipped here. They want in as bad, big beef wants access to Japan and asian markets.
The unbalanced trade is causing outsourcing. The selling of our manufacturing soul. Walmart plays their part. I remember a day when they trumpted American bought goods, but that call is silent now. Most of what Walmart sucks into this country, made in China and they are promoting more foreign manufacturing.
What has to happen is tariffs on American companies products when they come back to American store shelves. Penalty for outsourcing at the retail level when it crosses our borders.Cars made in Mexico aren’t taxed higher, so its nice profit per vehicle, less pay to those Mexico workers, and costs keep rising buying the car for us. Less jobs, more profits to the corporations.
Many want to celebrate a global corporation at the executive level, going worldwide manufacturing anywhere to keep pay low.
Its unfair to workers across the world, who knows the environmental damage being caused when companies want the cheapest manufacturing in foreign countries. What’s the health status of those workers making 30 cents an hour.
Increasingly less is made in America, this becoming a retail country where pay much lower. I’m mentioning the obvious.
Its a bad thing Walmart is biggest company in this country and high pay for most workers is $19,000 a year.
Is it our consumer fault wanting so many things at a cheap price that we don’t need, to allow Walmart keeping unbalanced trade in this country going, so they profit handsomly.
Other retail stores competing do the same thing. There is no protection for manufacturing workers in any industry.
I don’t want to hear any union basher because workers didn’t bring this on themselves.
The race is one to make profits by any means possible, to feed consumers anything they desire, no matter it harms their body or the land we live in, money only matters over substance how we create things.
I’m with the world when they complain trade is unfair. I wonder at our politicans who trumpet world dominance on trade and countries go broke around the glode. Beautiful lands that could grow food are being wasted. It becomes a desert instead of being cared for humanity’s needs. Helps keep the door closed on our market artifically and profits are made.
I don’t like Big Food, Big Oil, Big Cars ruining this planet. Its fewer jobs for Americans and prices keep rising in retail. Every one of those groups is decreasing manufucturing or using illegal migrants to create their products. Shipping jobs out, loving outsourcing. There is no penalty not to do it. Less manufacturing buildings are empty all over the country and the numbers grow.
“Cars made in Mexico aren’t taxed higher, so its nice profit per vehicle, less pay to those Mexico workers, and costs keep rising buying the car for us. Less jobs, more profits to the corporations.”Posted by: Mrage | July 28, 2006 at 01:19 AM
YES, YES, The car corporations are rolling in cash!! NOT
Hmmm . . . Mrage makes some good points; wrong turn has no clue. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But that’s okay, moron, keep posting and we’ll keep laughing. Rush loves you clueless ditto-heads.
The Death Sentence for Israel.Lebanon’s stark reality of its tragic and senseless destruction stands alone. The Israeli terror which struck Lebanon will remain unaltered by either US or Israeli propaganda. The world can see it up close.Since the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948, atrocities committed by the Jewish State have been challenged. Israel has become accustomed to lying and getting away with it.Israel not only bombed the civilian population of Lebanon without any viable reason, but destroyed all its vital city services, its very infrastructure was devastated with callous disregard for human life.The two Christian TV Stations in upscale Beirut were leveled for showing a panorama of the total destruction.The mindset which did all this has forfeited its right to exist as a country or defend itself. These horrifying events in Lebanon are the culmination of 58 years of unpunished war-crimes, nothing else, and the only justice is the death sentence for Israel. Something long overdue
If you are a voting citizen of Kansas, then next Tuesday, August 1 is a day when you have an important opportunity to stand up for good science education. You need to vote in the primary election and help to defeat the members of the State Board of Education who have inflicted embarrassing creationist nonsense on your home’s science curriculum standards……….Scientific American
Read more at Scientific American.com
I believe there is going to be a resurrgence of manufacturing in the USA in the near future.
Mind you, they cannot be big and large and union dominated or they won’t work.
I was talking to a guy last Saturday that just moved here to Wichita from Dallas. Him and four guys decided to have operations here. Manufacturing hoses for the aviation industry and other heavy industries.
There are so many micro industries here that feed into Wichita and that’s what makes it successful. The recent annoucement of a Company starting operations here and going to employee 300 in the coming years.
Instead of one gaint, union dominated business, there is going to be many small ones feeding a particular size market.
Time, logisitics, and transportation cost are the main factors now. Especially since China and India wages are rising dramatically. Why do you think Japanese Automobile companies built plants in the USA?
Coke and Pepsi already work this way. Instead of having a large plant that makes and delivers their surup to market, they rely on local bottling plants that are mostly locally owned to do that for them under franchise agreements.
Same thing will happen in manufacturing. While the labor might be cheap overseas, machines can replace them very quickly. So instead of building a plant in China and hiring hundreds of cheap labor, you can do the same thing in a small manufacturing operation here locally with just a few employees and machines producing the products.
China knows that what it’s doing won’t last. They are too far and will be too expensive to ship and take too long to bring to market.
Tracy: In regard to our Kansas State Board of Education, I believe our representative here in Wichita is Carol Rupe and she is not currently up for election, at least in the primary election on Tuesday.
That post was meant for ALL Kansans. Thanks for the info.
Does voting via mail also cover the primary elections? I sent the form in and haven’t heard anything, so I imagine it is for the General election only. ???
gster – it is supposed to. With the information in today’s paper about voting place problems I wonder …
“An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701908.html
But if they didn’t do anything wrong, why are they worried?
Regarding early voting, I went to the downtown “historic” courthouse, across Main Street from the official courthouse, about a week ago and voted in the primary. It only took about two minutes and visited briefly with Election Commissioner Bill Gale during that time. There were no hangups!
I see that Bush is giving a press conference with Tony Blair and he is explaining that we are in the Middle East to end dictatorship and create democracy. But he didn’t explain why creating democracy there requires establishing a dictatorship here to get the job done over there.
After reading the article in the Eagle, I was pretty disappointed in the positions of secretary of state candidate, Bob Beattie. The two positions of Beattie’s that stood out were:1) adopting a paper ballot for all votes (what would be wrong with paper back-up for electonic voting – reverting to only paper seems pretty Luddite to me)2) using a jury-duty type model of drafting citizens against their will to serve as poll place workers on election day.
I was hoping to support a Wichitan for this important post, but I am having second thoughts.
I think we need to have something like number codes or passwords for all electronic voters. Then we voters need to be able to check online to determine: A. is our number/password on the final ballot-tabulation list, and B. does it correspond to our actual votes? If we find discrepencies in either A or B, we then need a reporting mechanism. Then lawsuits and criminal prosecutions would be in order to stop election fraud, if it is occurring.
XXX in case you did not see it in another thread I posted:
When Gonzales was the white house council he sent a memo to President Bush warning him of the possibility that he and some of his staff could face war crimes charges for his policy on torture.
He advised the President that to openly change the name referred to detainees from soldiers to unlawful combatants might give him some deniability in a trial on the charges of war crimes and crimes against the peace.
There’s no end to Bush and Rice.
UN body warns US to shut down ’secret jails’Mail Guardian South Africa Richard Waddington | Geneva, Switzerland
A United Nations human rights body told Washington on Friday that any “secret detention” centres for terrorism suspects it operates abroad violates international law and should be shut immediately. Saying it has “credible and uncontested” reports of such jails, the UN Human Rights Committee said the United States appears to have been detaining people “secretly and in secret places for months and years”. “The state party should immediately abolish all secret detention,” it said, echoing a similar demand in May by the UN Committee against Torture. In its findings on US observance of the UN’s main… Click here to read more ยป
http://article.wn.com/view/2006/07/28/UN_body_warns_US_to_shut_down_secret_jails/
The good news is that Bush, Blair, & Rice are trying to do something constructive with the Israeli/Lebanon situation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060728/pl_nm/bush_blair_dc_2
DD
That is all for show. They started this thing and plan on widening the war, rather than stopping it.
Those are two lying batards and one lying bitch……period.
BTW, The US is paying for everything, plus lining the pockets of the Zionist fat-cats.
I agree Ed – it’s all for show and to give Israel cover to continue their bombardment of civilian targets. The hope is to ignite a civil war in Lebanon like we did before.
I’d like to see Siniora (sp?) come out and say that a state of war exists between Israel and the Lebanese people and that a state of hostility exists between the US and the Lebanese people.
He should then appeal for help from ANYONE willing to provide it – in ANY form.
I think that the Arab world knows they have a common enemy and the big question is whether they’re going to solve this problem once and for all. Russia has a big navy and a big everything else.
I read that Hezbollah has been using laser-guided anti-tank weapons, and that’s why the Israelis ran home to momma.
Dog,I saw your post on another thread after I’d already posted the link above. That’s what happens when you post during lunch hour, lol!
Ed, are we going to see that mushroom cloud Condi spoke of?
That bitch represents the Israelis, not the Americans, so that talk is to frighten Americans.
I’m getting to where I can’t stand to look at that traitor.
XXX – if we see a mushroom cloud it will have been launched from the only nuclear power in the region – Israel.
The Israelis are used to driving their tanks around refugee camps shooting rock-throwing children and their mothers, or shooting whole families on the beach having a picnic, so when Hezbollah kicked their asses but good, they called-up 15,000 more.
Hezbollah was going to finish them-off in 82′ but Nixon sent-in the US Air-force and saved their sorry asses. They’ve been afraid of Hezbollah ever since.
Ben, Are you forgetting Pakistan?
Pakistan is right next-door to Iran and Russia gave Iran the Missiles that will reach all the way, even to Europe.
Bush represents Israel and that’s why Iran has him in a sweat.
Ben, I don’t care where it (a mushroom cloud) comes from. My point is that we have a lot of troops in a region that’s coming apart at the seams. And last I heard, there are some tactical nukes from the old USSR that aren’t accounted for. You never know where one of those things might show up.
The fact that Russia gave Iran some long-range missiels might tell you something???
Ed – I don’t think Pakistan is considered as being in the Middle East.
Yes, XXX, BushdaBum has put a lot of our troops in the volatile region and to destabilize it further.
Ben,”Ed – I don’t think Pakistan is considered as being in the Middle East.”
That’s semantics. The fact Pakistan has nukes makes them as dangerous as Iran or North Korea. The government of Pakistan is anything but stable. Right now, a semi-pro american government is in charge, but that could change with just one car bomb.
That whole freakin area is filled with religious fruit cakes who have been fighting each other for over 2000 years. Nothings changed but the fact that we have made our unwanted presence felt in an invasion fueled by lies, damned lies and phony patriotism. We need to get out now and let the whole lot nuke each other into their version of heaven, filled with 72 virgin . . . males.
If we stop supporting Israel, the trouble will stop. Without our weapons, the Israelis have no other choice than to make peace. With our weapons, look what they’re doing.
A child with a loaded gun……
Bush is crazy. Rice is nuts.
Quote of the Day:
“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”— David Ben-Gurion, from Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar (May 1948)
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
The good news is the IMF is predicting a ’soft landing’, the bad news is that the vast majority of Americans are still waiting for the flight to take off!
You can bet that Israel if forced to the wall, would use their nukes.
Steve,
The Hindenburg had a “soft landing too. :)
V.L.R.B!!
The trend I notice is that those tiny feeder companies demand outrageous overtime, and provide limited benefits, with some exceptions. Until there is competition for labor, the worker is screwed.
Sorry no link.
On Friday, the House passed legislation to forward to the Senate. Against far right conservative opposition, moderate Republicans with an eye to the coming elections agreed to increase the minimum wage.
But wait there is more! Those Republican reps. who voted for the bill wanted more than to be able to tell their constituents that they voted for the overwhelmingly popular increase in the minimum wage. They got a rider attached that repeals the estate tax on the very wealthiest of Americans!
This is a sure “poison pill” that will get the bill killed in the Senate and rightly so.
So dear readers the thought this brings is this:
Republicans are willing to consider an increase the wages of the very poor ONLY if accomodations are made for the very greedy rich.
THAT is the state of the GOP. They will allow the poor a slightly larger crumb if and ONLY if the allyoucaneat buffet of the super greedy includes a provision that they be allowed to keep and pass on to their own what they don’t eat!
JR,
I watched only a very few minutes of this on C-Span last night, and maybe I’m confused, but I thought the original bill was for the repeal of the estate tax, and the minimum wage rider was added to it.
Can somebody check? I’m kind of under the weather tonight.
Hope ya feel better soon RD.
Cspan for me at least was “off the air” the last several days. So I did not see the debate.
MY understanding reading the Eagle is that the minimum wage increase was a Dem bill that was only agreed to be heard after the estate tax rider was attached. I could be wrong.
Do feel better “linkmaster”! We need ya!
I stand corrected R D.
YOUR take was correct.
I had it backward but the rest of my post still stands.
Knowing that an increase in the minimum wage is overwhelmingly popular in the polls, moderate Republicans with an eye on the coming election tacked a minimum wage increase rider onto an existing bill to repeal most of the estate tax. This bill passed in the house.
Just like the past cuts, the republicans will take the lions share for the wealthy and leave the scraps for the peons. And the peons will be grateful! Got to stick to principals, don’t ya know.