Sort of a tepid set of LTE's this AM. Do what you can with them.
Good news
And though I largely blame the Republicans (Light bulbs? They want to argue about a light-bulb program that was created during and endorsed by the Bush administration?), I realize that the Democrats have their faults, too.
Politics doesn't need to be so harsh and competitive, not when you're supposed to be working for the good of the people, and I wish we had rules that allowed us to immediately recall anyone who went around the bend.
In the meantime, Journal, please keep reminding us that not all life is political.
JANE GIBSON
Kernersville
The end result
In recent years, so-called "old technology" jobs were encouraged to be moved to poverty-ridden nations to make room for "new technology" jobs. The end result has been widespread unemployment. Millions of Americans have gone into poverty.
Old technology includes things like telephones, automobiles, radios, TVs, furniture, clothing, tires, tools, lawn mowers, yard equipment, paints, plastics, etc. The list could go on and on. This is what most people buy.
In the meantime, the management and owners of existing American companies found that if they cut the salaries of their workers, this would result in extra income for the management and owners, who might get into Wall Street schemes and become multi-millionaires or even billionaires if Congress gave them the right tax breaks.
Meanwhile, unemployed or under-paid workers could still buy old technology products if they were willing to put them on credit cards at high rates of interest.
College graduates had better find ways to get into the management of existing companies if they want to buy yachts and second and third homes. The others must go for government handouts and settle for old-tech products.
HAROLD PARKER
Clemmons
Locked up
In reference to the July 14 article "Woman charged in dog's starvation death," in which Jennifer Towery Hunt of Lexington was charged with felony killing of an animal by starvation after authorities found a dead dog in her house, she could have at least left the four dogs outside instead of locked up inside to surely die. Maybe outside they could have wandered around, finding food and water.
CHRISSY GALLAHER
Winston-Salem
Some might criticize the Journal for featuring a front-page story about the new Harry Potter film ("The last spell," July 15). Personally, I wish there were more news like this. Everything is so grim in America right now we need a reminder that life goes on, that our children can be happy and have fun and play (and be enthused by stories that began as must-read novels).
I wish that all these political disagreements were settled, that the biggest thing Congress had to argue about was whether to order blue stationary or gray stationary. Congress seems to invent things to argue about in attempts to gain power. Its members also seem to have a double standard, thinking an idea is good until the other side adopts it, then fighting vehemently against it. Can't let the other side accomplish anything good, after all — they might get re-elected.
Politics doesn't need to be so harsh and competitive, not when you're supposed to be working for the good of the people, and I wish we had rules that allowed us to immediately recall anyone who went around the bend.
In the meantime, Journal, please keep reminding us that not all life is political.
JANE GIBSON
Kernersville
The end result
In recent years, so-called "old technology" jobs were encouraged to be moved to poverty-ridden nations to make room for "new technology" jobs. The end result has been widespread unemployment. Millions of Americans have gone into poverty.
Old technology includes things like telephones, automobiles, radios, TVs, furniture, clothing, tires, tools, lawn mowers, yard equipment, paints, plastics, etc. The list could go on and on. This is what most people buy.
In the meantime, the management and owners of existing American companies found that if they cut the salaries of their workers, this would result in extra income for the management and owners, who might get into Wall Street schemes and become multi-millionaires or even billionaires if Congress gave them the right tax breaks.
Meanwhile, unemployed or under-paid workers could still buy old technology products if they were willing to put them on credit cards at high rates of interest.
College graduates had better find ways to get into the management of existing companies if they want to buy yachts and second and third homes. The others must go for government handouts and settle for old-tech products.
HAROLD PARKER
Clemmons
Locked up
In reference to the July 14 article "Woman charged in dog's starvation death," in which Jennifer Towery Hunt of Lexington was charged with felony killing of an animal by starvation after authorities found a dead dog in her house, she could have at least left the four dogs outside instead of locked up inside to surely die. Maybe outside they could have wandered around, finding food and water.
CHRISSY GALLAHER
Winston-Salem
LTE1: I think a front page story on Harry Potter is fine. I have enjoyed Potter's universe. Also, putting a story like on the front page probably attracts children who would otherwise not look at the paper. I don't think Congress invents things about which to argue, however. Enough arises over which to argue without deliberate invention. Now, what they argue over and how they argue is a different matter, as necessity does indeed appear secondary to politics.
ReplyDeleteLTE2: TB class warfare rant.
LTE3: Yes, this is most likely correct. Would that the unfortunate dogs have had the staying power in life that they have had in the Readers' Forum.
Re: letter #2, I've started to rethink my pro free trade position, given what's happened to local manufacturing. And especially when China's exports are kept artificially cheap due to the renminbi-dollar peg.
ReplyDeleteHi Arthur!
ReplyDeleteThat's a bit of a "tetchy" issue, considering that we owe 'em so much dough.
Yeah, but if they start dumping treasuries it could cause problems for them too.
ReplyDeleteBetween that and the intellectual property theft the Chinese government sponsors, I say it's time to take a harder line.
Arthur...you are right. In the big picture, China needs us more than we need them. What bonds they "dump" others will buy up. China is not our friend in any way.
ReplyDeleteThis is instructive. And they definitely need us as their market audience to keep their economy going.
ReplyDeleteStab...China is an export driven economy and we are their largest single market. Plus they have an ongoing conflict between the Party government and the Army. A tricky divide with the Army being the greater power.
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon folks!
ReplyDeleteLTE 1: Considering Congress is involved in setting the course and rules for the entire country, there isn't and never will be a time when stationary becomes the primary point of contention. As I've mentioned frequently, gerrymandering and the resultant TB's on both sides who get elected and see the US collapsing as preferable to deviating one iota from stated ideology is a primary cause for our troubles. A prime example is the time wasting vote on a bill by the House for increasing the debt limit that everyone knows has no shot in the Senate and the President has already said he would veto. Time is of the essence in getting this thing done, so why waste it on a bill that seems to have no purpose other than satisfying gerrymandered district TB's? I think it's time to remove state legislatures from drawing districts and instead place it in the hands of the courts.
LTE 2: The obsolesence of jobs due to emerging technologies is not a phenomenon of the 21st century. It has been going on for centuries, particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age. As always, it's a matter of discovering what skills are in demand, then going out and obtaining those skills.
LTE 3: Or they could have been picked up by someone willing to give them a good home. Why get a pet if you're not going to care for it? Hate hearing these types of stories, especially since it hasn't been too long since I lost both of my beloved birds.
A positive I've noticed of this forum over the old Journal forum (i.e. pre-FB) is that the comments post much quicker. Also, there doesn't appear to be as strict of a character count limit. I haven't had to break up any of my posts :)
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon dotnet!
ReplyDeleteSomehow, the law needs to be written so that Congressional Districts make sense for constituents, not for parties. The 12th District, either as drawn now or as proposed, is an example. There is no sense of common-interest geographic community in a District like that.
My continuing condolences on your departed friends.
Hey WW,
ReplyDeleteWhich is less malign, the PLA or the Party, as far as we are concerned?
BTW, I was acquainted with LTE writer Gallaher in times past.
dotnet, I like the chronological listing of posts here, also.
ReplyDeleteStab...I'm not sure but my sense is the PLA as they tend to be seen but not heard outside of China.
ReplyDelete"Somehow, the law needs to be written so that Congressional Districts make sense for constituents, not for parties."
ReplyDeleteAmen. But it's not just the 12th district. I spend a lot of time talking to people and have friends from Manteo to Murphy and they will tell you that only maybe 2 districts have anything at all to do with common interests. The rest are simple gerrymanders to determine political advantage.
The Democrats did it for over a century and now the Republicans are at it, which brings to mind another of my grandmother's pieces of wisdom: two wrongs do not make a right...and then she would add something about the paving materials used on the road to hell.
OT...speaking of Cherokee County, we were just up there over the weekend for a family reunion around and nearby counties too.
ReplyDeleteJust to show that things were no better when our founding fathers were still at large, the term gerrymander was invented in 1812 to describe the actions of Massachusetts Governor Gerry, who was playing fast and loose with political district boundaries.
ReplyDeleteGo here for an 1812 political cartoon lampooning Gerry's new district: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/The_Gerry-Mander_Edit.png
OT...elections are still contests for power and human nature never changes it seems.
ReplyDeleteYes, gerrymandering has been with us since Elbridge raised his gerrymander. I'm not sure that putting redistricting into the hands of the courts will help. Problem is, those judges were once simply lawyers who leaned to one party or another. We on the right hand side say that appoint a Republican to a judgeship, you get a judge; appoint a Democrat to a judgeship, you get a Democrat. I imagine that leftward types says just the opposite.
ReplyDelete"We on the right hand side say that appoint a Republican to a judgeship, you get a judge; appoint a Democrat to a judgeship, you get a Democrat. I imagine that leftward types says just the opposite."
ReplyDeleteOh heavens yes. See Bush v. Gore or Citizens United. Bush v. Gore was especially outrageous; "states rights" judges suddenly becoming true believers in the equal protection clause! Please...
The problem with gerrymandering today is that it's so sophisticated. Computer applications can draw districts down to the household.
Right, but Bush v. Gore had its origins in the FL SC's decision, an SC with a 7-1 Dem majority, not hard to guess how they'd decide.
ReplyDeleteYou are well familiar with my take on Citizen United. When they separate members' dues from union campaign funding, I'll change my outlook. Andy Stern said the SEIU spent $60MM getting President Obama elected, reported $24MM. CU just leveled the playing field, legalized union cheating and let business in. Get 'em both both out of funding campaigns, including paying for inkind work or 3rd party pass-throughs, fine with me. Oh yeah, and bury all manner of NLRB card check chicanery and that Stalinist lawsuit against Boeing. That Disclose Act was a thinly disguised effort to restack the deck in favor of those few union bosses who control the dues of so many.
Those big bad workers and poor defenseless corporations...
ReplyDeleteI was working in one of the Reynolds facilities during a unionization push. Honestly, it was creepy. You had Susan Ivey on television monitors all over the building spouting anti-union propaganda. You knew to keep your mouth shut if you had another point of view.
That being said, there were so many loopholes in the old election laws that Citizens United was not a huge change. I'd go to all public financing myself, but that's just me.
All the Florida SC did was order a statewide recount, a fair and correct decision, which was made by a 4-3 vote of that 7-1 Democratic court. They did not decide the election.
ReplyDeleteThe republican dominated US Supreme Court wrongly overturned that decision, thus interfering in state business, with a BS reason tacked on, thus disenfranchising all Florida voters and electing W president of the US, by the vote of ONE justice.
History will see this correctly as one of the worst USSC decisions ever. We already know what a disaster Bush's administration was.
Arthur @ 6:44
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, you are shaping the argument. It's corporations v. union chieftains and their political thralls. I'm sure the anti-union campaigning seemed a bit 1984-ish, but unions have their own ways of persuasion that involve more direct intimidation, thus the push for card check, so the goon squads may recruit in time-dishonored pre-Taft-Hartley fashion.
I'm all for public financing if you will stop union in-kind support and 3rd-party advertising, and enact term limits.
O. T. 7:40
ReplyDeleteThe FL SC voted to hand the recount back to Dem election boards so they could manipulate chads out of ballots, delve into the minds of voters, or whatever nonsense they offered for changing vote counts, always trending the R vote downward. Odd that the recounts kept lowering the R vote. Same thing happened in MN to give the odious Franken a Senate seat.
If Dems had insisted that the Clintons take their scandals and leave office as they should have, Gore would have easily won as a sitting Prez in 2000.
@Stballoy 1:40pm
ReplyDeleteThis format is more like the original format in the WSJournal. I've had some problems posting too, but have gotten better at it with practice. Doesn't seem to be much posting going on at the Journal's site. We might even have advertisers here one day.
"It's corporations v. union chieftains and their political thralls."
ReplyDeleteIf we are going to use pejorative language, let's do it evenhandedly, so a slight correction: It's corporations and their political thralls (workers) v. union chieftains and their political thralls (members).
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Over the last 20 years, corporations have outspent unions 2-1 in political contributions. And each year, they outspend unions more than 10-1 on lobbying, an area in which the US Chamber of Commerce alone outspends all unions combined.
"The FL SC voted to hand the recount back to Dem election boards so they could manipulate chads out of ballots,..."
ReplyDeleteBe reminded that Republican Katherine Harris, as secretary of state, was in charge of the voting process. Post electin investigations found her behavior highly questionable, at best. As to the control of local election boards, that was about evenly divided throughout the state between Democrats and Republicans.
The problems in Florida went far beyond hanging chads...to illegally filed absentee ballots to bizarre ballot designs and the disenfranchisement of 54,000 so-called felons, most of whom turned out, too late, not to be felons after all.
As to Bill Clinton, he did a pretty good, not great, job as president, certainly far better than his questionably elected successor. I don't really care who was under the presidential desk during that time.
O.T., the union thralls to whom I refer are the political trained seals placed in office by those relatively few union chieftains. The corporations' alleged outspending doesn't seem to have helped much. Obama's NLRB is busily doing its best to unionize the country without a legitimate by-your-leave from employees.
ReplyDeleteI believe the big recounts were in heavily Dem areas, where the changes all seemed to go one way.
ReplyDeleteAs for Clinton, the scandals go beyond his womanizing (though there was a time when pols resigned over being found out). There were far too many Chinese contributions going one way and our military secrets going the other. Then there was that $5MM retroactive payoff he collected after leaving office, to go drawl and schmooze in Shanghai. We heard noting out of our watchdog press about that, but there were howls aplenty when Reagan left office and collected $2MM for speechifying in Japan, an ally.
Hi Wordly (at 8:49)!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how Blogspot regards advertisers (or how advertisers regard an audience of 11), so we'll keep it non-profit, though I'm open to plugging worthy causes like the Samaritan Ministry or the Salvation Army.
The two most contentious recounts in Florida in 2000 were in Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County.
ReplyDeleteMiami-Dade County has been and is almost exactly split between Republicans and Democrats, with independents the fastest growing segment. The county has two US congressional seats, one held by a Democrat, the other by a Republican.
Palm Beach County, where I have done many projects, has been and is almost exactly split between Democrats and Republicans. The county is split into four US Congressional seats, two of which are held by Democrats and two by Republicans.
The whole purpose of a recount is to ensure that the vote totals are correct. No matter which party controls the local election board, members of both parties participate in the recount. The fact that the vote total was changing in one direction may well indicate that there was something fishy about the voting process itself, because at the state level the Republicans were firmly in charge via the governor, brother of one of the candidates, and the secretary of state, who did everything that she could to prevent a recount, especially in Palm Beach County.
It doesn't matter now, because the USSC, under false pretenses, stopped the REQUIRED legal process and decided the issue.
Clinton had nothing to do with military secrets.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall plenty of coverage of both Clinton visits to Shanghai.. Caniac is always claiming that "the mainstream press" did not cover this or that. I have never found him to be right yet. Certainly it is not the case here.
I know that the New York Times is the work of Satan to some, but I read several newspapers and can find none with better coverage than the Times, unless it is that other Times across the pond. Certainly superior to Murdoch's WSJ, which is not in the same league that it used to play in.
In fact, the best commentary available today on the financial mess that we find ourselves in is coming from a series of op-ed pieces that appear only in the NYT by former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman. He is not concerned with political parties, right, left or center, only with seeking realistic solutions. Go to the NYT site and search for Stockman and you will see what I am talking about.
I vote for the Samaritan Ministry, which I have been an enthusiastic supporter of for many years, even when I lived elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteHad lunch there a couple of days ago, and as always, was impressed by the quality of the meals that they turn out. Also had a couple of interesting chats with with some of the regular diners.
Stockman's conservative, and he's also rational. Nice to know there's a few left.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if the link will work, but here's a series of arguments by conservative economists, including Douglas Holz-Eakin, on why not raising the debt ceiling would be a very, very bad thing.
http://modeledbehavior.com/2011/07/20/sane-conservatives-and-the-debt-ceiling/
Good evening and good night, gentlemen. Great comments to which to respond, which I'll pick up in the "Leopard's Limb," tomorrow AM. Spent the last little bit on the Bachmann piece I posted a few minutes ago.
ReplyDeleteThank you to all for the comments. Aside from firing my anti-union salvos, I read and learn, and from all quarters. I hope we can pull more folks in, as the "Readers' Forum" seems to be stalled as a forum. I really welcome the comments from all across the spectrum, and well delivered they have been. Thank you, and good night. See you tomorrow.
Thanks Arthur...excellent stuff. I found many of the comments interesting as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that much damage has already been done, because foreign investors are watching the show and wondering if the US Congress has lost the ability to govern. Or, as several of my European and South American friends have asked "Has the US gone completely crazy? Is this Ryan guy for real?"
To which I must answer "Well, he got elected. We will have to wait until next year to see if he remains so."
Hmm, Stab's Bachmann post has not shown up.
ReplyDelete"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm..."
Henry Wadsworth That Fellow
Since Sarah Palin's failure to grasp that simple story, she has lost about 8 points in the GOP 2012 candidate polls, giving 2nd place to...gasp...Michelle Bachmann.
Imagine Bachmann as the Republican candidate, off on her own midnight ride astride her broomstick...now that's a real horror story. Doubt if Longfellow could handle it. Pun intended.