I thought I’d have some fun with the DNC Rabid Attack Ad:
Amazing that the DNC believes their ad to be a winning strategy: Let’s characterize and flippantly dismiss concerned Americans on both sides of the political aisle as nothing more than torches-and-pitchforks-style rabble-rousers. Brilliant.
Thanks to skye for use of her photos and apologizes to Dana Loesch for pillaging her photos like the uncouth, ill-mannered mobster, that I am.
It was just yesterday I posted on the liberal economic policies coming to a head in Montana. Democrats have historically been big on lavishing heavy regulations and taxes on the mining and steel industries, rendering them ineffective as competitors in the world market place. Dems have also enjoyed unmitigated union support, who also played a more than sufficient role in bankrupting two of the big three US auto manufacturers.
Now, with the unrealistic financial demands on industries, combined with risking the taxpayers’ cash on the future of GM, the Dems find themselves between a “palladium” and a hard place with their economic policies.
They can opt to protect the US taxpayers investment in GM (aka Government Motors) by continuing to refuse to honor a GM contract with Stillwater to purchase their metals for catalytic converters at (oft times) higher than market prices.
Or they can shop on the free market, purchasing their metals cheaper from Russia or South Africa, and let the US PGM’s mining business cascade into the financial hole, and leave thousands of American workers jobless.
Democrat Governor Brian Schweitzer has picked which liberal economic approach he’s on… the side of his Montana miners. It is a vote for subsidies…. none of which would have to exist if the government didn’t create an environment for the lopsided playing field with their legislation.
The Montana citizens themselves get screwed either way. If they lose their mining jobs, the repercussions echo not only thru the Big Sky State, but potentially rumble all the way to NJ and CA where the metals are refined. But even if their jobs are saved, they… along with the nation’s taxpayers… lose because the new government owned GM cannot purchase the metals from foreign nations… not burdened with the US regulations, taxes and union contracts… at a better price.
What was that about chickens and roosting again?
As I pointed out, Gov. Schweitzer was demanding intervention from the O’admin. Schweitzer is looking for a bud in the WH for his miners, and today he’s just been handed a huge gift….Steve Rattner has resigned as the Obama top dog of auto czars, and passed the blow torch to Ron Bloom. And Bloom is fresh off his last gig of 13 years as the assistant to the President of the United Steelworkers union…. coincidently the same union who represents the Stillwater Mining Company’s workers.
As part of the GM (Government Motors) bankruptcy fallout, Democrats and Obama admin are now on a collision course between conflicting ideals. One would be their devotion to unions, combined with their love of regulation for US industries, driving many to the point of non-competitive status. The second is their now, first hand reality check that “outsourcing” and the ensuing US job loss may be an ugly necessity for business survival.
Unlike community organizing, there’s nothing like owning a car manufacturer that drives home basic business common sense, eh?
One of the darlings of the Dems, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, is calling upon Obama to force his new, majority government owned GM, to honor it’s contract with Stillwater Mining for PGMs- i.e. platinum, palladium and other metals – that are used in catalytic converters to control car pollution.
With platinum and palladium mined in just two other countries, Russia and South Africa, Schweitzer said GM’s cancellation would put the U.S. at a strategic risk and hurt the mining industry.
A White House spokesman declined comment.
While countries struggle, muddling their way through stimulus packages and bailouts, China is being touted as everything from, “the best current place to invest,” to being, “the engine that will pull the globe out of its recession.” These entreaties and prognostications are sprinkled with reminders of the power it wields over America, given the huge dollar reserves that it holds. If I may quote Tony Soprano, “forget about it.”
China has asked rather politely, that the U.S. maintain its creditworthiness. No kidding? That plea was less a wish that the U.S. not skip town on its debt (devalue the dollar dramatically), than it was a declaration of a deep desire for a return to excessive U.S. borrowing. When the U.S. borrowed, it bought. When it bought, China prospered. This is rather basic, however, what is not so evident, or obvious to many pundits and experts, it seems, is the fact that China became inebriated through the glory days of consumerism. China now suffers the consequences of its acquiescence to a surety that the intoxicating euphoria enjoyed around the globe for a generation, would never end.
China understood that to become America’s principal provider of goods, it had to manufacture less expensively than anyone else. China excelled at squeezing productivity out of its labor force. It rapidly implemented a sweeping expansion of the necessary infrastructure to manufacture products faster, better (sometimes), and cheaper (always). New plants sprouted at an unprecedented rate. China’s expansion of its machine was based on an enormous assumption – the rate of growth it was enjoying through exports would continue unabated. It is now shutting down plants faster than it opened them. The capacity that was preparing for demand twenty years out, is now shutting down, and the Chinese are not about to ramp up their own consumption to energize reopening of the plants. While China has become a major manufacturer, the majority of its manufacturing is for, and on behalf of foreigners, selling established brands. China’s authoritarian “system” has made the creation and recognition of its own brands, all but impossible. Read the rest of this entry »
Is it still called debate when only one side controls the conversation? That’s the question the 62 million Americans who didn’t vote for Obama are asking themselves.
62 million Americans now have absolutely no voice in the way our country is being governed. No say in the quadrupling of our debt or in the onerous taxes being piled on top of record unemployment. They have no say in the pending trillion dollar health care ‘reform’ or the more costly ‘cap and trade’ legislation steadily making its way through Congress.
With Democrats firmly in control of the White House and the House of Representatives, and most likely the Senate, the left has found no need for bipartisanship. After all, ‘Obama won.’ Case closed.
Should any pesky Republican complain, the voice goes unheard – kinda like a tree falling in a forest. Did it really fall if no one heard it? The right is reduced to pondering questions like these as the left continues implementing radical change at breakneck speed. Changes that affect every segment of our society and every single American. Changes that are being implemented without the requisite ‘national conversation’. Why hold a conversation?
The left is in control and there is no need to consult with the people they were elected to govern. The politicians and the experts know best. And should the GOP try to halt this tsunami of ‘change’, a quick change of the filibuster rule to 51 instead of 60 is put in place. That’ll teach em. Read the rest of this entry »
I know, another day, another economic photo op and pledge of hopeychangeyness from The One, but really…this one’s gonna make ya laugh (or cry buckets)
WASHINGTON (AP) – Eager to show action on the ailing economy, President Barack Obama promised Monday to speed federal money into hundreds of public works projects this summer, vowing that 600,000 jobs will be created or saved.
Surrounded by his Cabinet, Obama emphasized what has become a dominant issue of public concern—an economy that keeps bleeding jobs—on the day after returning from a week of diplomacy and sightseeing in the Middle East and Europe.
Did you see that? Since President Obama was elected, the US has lost about 600,000 jobs EACH MONTH, and to counter this President Obama is pledging to speed things up with the fake “stimulus spending” so that over 3 months, 600,000 jobs are created. Those jobs will be created at a cost of [DRUM ROLL...] about $1500000000 EACH!!!!!!!! Forget the fact that he’s only gonna create one month’s worth of jobs to counter 9 months of losses, the jobs he DOES create will be uber spending fiascos. No way-NO WAY are the people doing the new National Mall landscaping gonna get $1.5 BILLION each, but that’s what they’ll cost. So…where’s the rest of the money go? Ask ACORN.
In the meantime, remember 2 things:
1) This is happening on Obama’s watch
2) George W Bush never had us in this much of a mess
I meant to post on this over the weekend as I read about this first on Friday… naturally (bury the big news in the weekend, eh?)
But once again – as Mike’s A pointed out with the auto makers – Obama is flexing his muscles on behalf of the unions. And in this case, Arnie, the guvernator, is finding his diminutive stature eyeball to belly button with Obama over a renegotation with the SEIU service employees union. And right now, Arnie’s not got the wind at his back because Obama’s holding the stimulus funds hostage.
The short story? Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers approved cuts in the state’s contribution to SEIU unionized home healthcare workers in February as part of the budget. The Obama admin says “no way…”. Reinstate their wages, or no stimulus money…. Why? It violates provisions in Obama’s simulus program, ARRA.
Ya know…you’d think professional, career lawyer/lawmakers would know how to right a contract or at least an invoice that says, “If you take our money, you keep the jobs here.” Nope. Now those same Democrats in Congress who pushed so hard to bailout GM-to keep it from going bankrupt, are wondering why GM plans to move manufacturing out of the U.S. after it gets out of bankruptcy. Did anyone REALLY think that throwing money at a problem without putting conditions on getting paid back was a good idea? Apparently the Democrat-controlled Congress did, and President Obama’s “Auto Task Force” seems to be putting a rubber stamp on the idea of moving American jobs overseas (something he specifically campaigned against before and after becoming President).
According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.
The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
Say it with me boys and girls,
“It happened on Obama’s watch”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy shrank at a worse-than-expected 6.1 percent pace at the start of this year as sharp cutbacks by businesses and the biggest drop in U.S. exports in 40 years overwhelmed a rebound in consumer spending.
The Commerce Department’s report, released Wednesday, dashed hopes that the recession’s grip on the country loosened in the first quarter. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a 5 percent annualized decline.
The Labor Department on Wednesday said that all 372 metropolitan areas tracked saw their jobless rates rise in March from a year earlier. The rate in Indiana’s Elkhart-Goshen region soared to 18.8 percent, a 13 percentage-point increase that was the most in the country.
The national jobless rate is now at a quarter-century high of 8.5 percent and is expected to hit 10 percent by the end of this year. It will probably rise a bit higher in early 2010 before starting to slowly drift downward. Still, the Fed predicts unemployment will stay elevated into 2011, and economists don’t think it will return to normal — around a 5 percent jobless rate — until 2013.
Help me out here….
6-7million Americans out of work
Obama and Democrats’ pseudo-”stimulus” plan is sold as a way to “save or create” 2-3 million jobs.
Now, my math might not be as good as theirs, but that seems to leave juuuuust a little shortfall. No?
Also, how does killing the F-22 program (thereby killing another 100000 Lockheed jobs) and allowing GM & Chrysler to sink HELP the economy?
NY Times is demanding $20 million in concessions from Boston unions or will close the Boston Globe!
By now, everyone knows the Old Gray Lady is in deep financial trouble and may not survive much longer as the Democrat Party’s chief media ally. Boo hoo! Mark Bowden, writing at Vanity Fair has a thorough, historical review of the paper if you are interested.
But the real story here is the squeeze the NY Times is putting on workers at it’s Boston newspaper: The Boston Globe. Threatening to close the paper in 30 days if the unions which represent workers at the facility do not agree to draconian cuts in wages, health benefits and 401k retirement accounts. Hundreds of jobs are at stake.
Interesting that in the three recent editorials the NY Times published regarding the auto manufacturers bailout (1,2,3) the emphasis was almost entirely focused on management, with the Times Editorial Board in full support of forcing General Motor’s CEO Rick Wagoner to resign. Boston workers have wondered when NYTimes executives will face similar accountability?
NY Times Hypocrisy on the Benefits of Organized Labor
Let’s not forget that the Times has been a huge backer of Card Check legislation which would make it much easier for union organizers to intimidate workers and eliminate the secret ballot to decide whether workplaces should be unionized.
In the December 2008 editorial the Times praised unions for protecting wages and benefits and decreasing the “unjustifiable disparities between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.” They went on to warn that “In the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped labor concerns. If Mr. Obama’s campaign promises are to be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again.”
That was then, this is now. And don’t hold your breathe waiting for New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. to resign. Like everything else in liberal land, what’s good for others like the CEO at GM will never be applied to an icon of the left.
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