Quote :

"Obama: We cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy—where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit."

1/8/2009 11:10:27 AM

Well we do need to have our bridges repaired

And tax cuts do stimulate economic growth.

I mean really at this point whatever he does is going to get flak.

1/8/2009 12:38:15 PM

Im really concerned about the massive increase in spending.

The one thing i was encouraged about is his willingness to cut business taxes. Now lets see if the dems in congress keep that in there.

1/8/2009 12:41:36 PM

1/8/2009 12:53:46 PM

Quote :

"only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy"

Pretty scary stuff. OMG government save me!

1/8/2009 12:58:13 PM

YEAH, FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!
I'm sure the banks, car companies, and Big Oil will save us all!

1/8/2009 1:14:00 PM

we don't need them to save us

and we don't need to save them (particularly the automakers)

1/8/2009 1:17:04 PM

Quote :

"YEAH, FUCK THE GOVERNMENT! I'm sure the banks, car companies, and Big Oil will save us all!"

"Big" Oil. You win every argument.

1/8/2009 1:23:48 PM

we've come a log way from "ask not what your country can do for you"

1/8/2009 1:59:10 PM

yeah, and a long way from "we have nothing to fear but feat itself"

1/8/2009 4:08:51 PM

Quote :

"we don't need them to save us"

kinda easy sitting on your perch. But there are tons of Americans that do need saving as well as the very economy itself that isn't just going to fix on it's own.

What's your proposed alternatives then?

1/8/2009 4:57:30 PM

An old article, but timely...

Quote :

" Big business has too much power in Washington, according to 90 percent of Americans in a December 2005 poll. Every week, headlines reveal some scandal involving politicians, lobbyists, corporate cash, and allegations of bribes. CEOs get face time with senators, cabinet secretaries, and presidents. Lawmakers and bureaucrats take laps through the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying. Whatever goes on behind closed doors between the CEOs and the senators can't be good or the doors would not be closed. Just what is big business doing with all this influence? There are many assumptions about big business's agenda in Washington. In 2003 one author asserted, "When corporations lobby governments, their usual goal is to avoid regulation." That statement reflects the conventional wisdom that government action protects ordinary people by restraining big business, which, in turn, wants to be left alone. Historian Arthur Schlesinger articulated a similar point: "Liberalism in America [the progression of the welfare state and government intervention in the economy] has been ordinarily the movement on the part of the other sections of society to restrain the power of the business community." The facts point in an entirely different direction: * Enron was a tireless advocate of strict global energy regulations supported by environmentalists. Enron also used its influence in Washington to keep laissez-faire bureaucrats off the federal commissions that regulate the energy industry. * Philip Morris has aggressively supported heightened federal regulation of tobacco and tobacco advertising. Meanwhile, the state governments that sued Big Tobacco are now working to protect those same large cigarette companies from competition and lawsuits. * A recent tax increase in Virginia passed because of the tireless support of the state's business leaders, and big business has a long history of supporting tax hikes. * General Motors provided critical support for new stricter clean air rules that boosted the company's bottom line. The Big Myth The myth is widespread and deeply rooted that big business and big government are rivals—that big business wants small government. A 1935 Chicago Daily Tribune column argued that voting against Franklin D. Roosevelt was voting for big business. "Led by the President," the columnist wrote, "New Dealers have accepted the challenge, confident the people will repudiate organized business and give the Roosevelt program a new lease on life." However, three days earlier, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and a group of other business leaders met with FDR to support expanding the New Deal. Almost 70 years later New York Times columnist Paul Krugman assailed the George W. Bush administration: "The new guys in town are knee-jerk conservatives; they view too much government as the root of all evil, believe that what's good for big business is always good for America and think that the answer to every problem is to cut taxes and allow more pollution." At the same time, "big business" just across the river in Virginia was ramping up its campaign for a tax increase, and Enron was lobbying Bush's closest advisers to support the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Months later, when Enron collapsed, writers attributed the company's corruption and obscene profits to "anarchic capitalism" and asserted that "the Enron scandal makes it clear that the unfettered free market does not work." In fact, Enron thrived in a world of complex regulations and begged for government handouts at every turn. When commentators do notice business looking for more federal regulation, they mark it up as an aberration. When a Washington Post reporter noted in 1987 that airlines were asking Congress for help, she commented, "Last month, when the airline industry found itself pursued by state regulators seeking to police airline advertising, it looked for help in an unlikely place—Washington." In truth, airline executives had been behind federal regulation of their industry for decades and had aggressively opposed deregulation. In fact, for the past century and more big business has often relied on big government for support. "

It is a long article, so I won't post the rest, but it goes on with the last section "The History of Big Business Is the History of Big Government."

http://www.cato.org/research/articles/cpr28n4-1.html

1/8/2009 7:07:20 PM

Quote :

"But there are tons of Americans that do need saving as well as the very economy itself that isn't just going to fix on it's own"

Says who? If the government does nothing, what happens to the economy? Are we going to be living in the Stone Age next year if Obama doesn't do something now? I hardly think so. What has all this stimulus done so far? Not much. Biggest sham in history right now.

1/8/2009 8:43:35 PM

Quote :

"we've come a log way from "ask not what your country can do for you" "

seriously.

1/8/2009 8:47:32 PM

Quote :

"we don't need them to save us and we don't need to save them (particularly the automakers)"

whens the last time you cashed a check our taxes didn't pay for?

1/8/2009 8:57:35 PM

that gets dnls "who the fuck cares?" seal of approval

1/8/2009 9:01:44 PM

Some of Christina Romer's (Obama's candidate for chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers) research suggests fiscal stimulus isn't what it is cracked up to be...

http://www.forbes.com/home/2009/01/07/romer-obama-stimulus-oped-cx_dh_0107henderson.html

1/8/2009 9:19:04 PM

i think we can all agree that giving it to consumers by not taking as much from their paycheck is a MUCH better way than just giving them a 500 dollar buck blank check and saying "go spend this somewhere"

1/8/2009 9:21:05 PM

really?

we can all agree on that?

1/8/2009 9:49:54 PM

i would think so?? getting it all at once is better?

1/8/2009 9:52:04 PM

sure

if i told you i would give your $41 dollarbucks a month, would that really impact your finances enough so that you could feel the impact of that?

i know you're a college student and all

but if $41 wound up on my next paycheck, i'd be like - ehhh what?

but if $500 was on it, i'd be like - ehhhh bye $500 worth of credit card debt

so i guess in the end, i may have just proved your point AND my point invalid

1/8/2009 10:12:09 PM

tax cuts don't really help if you don't have a job

1/8/2009 10:14:50 PM

oh and then theres that

1/8/2009 10:27:25 PM

Quote :

"I mean really at this point whatever he does is going to get flak."

As he should.

Pres. Obama is surrounding himself with a bunch of big gov't advisors. So we shouldn't be suprised that most of their ideas involve spending more and making gov't bigger. Does Obama have any champions of capitalism as an advisor? Anyone who see's gov't as the problem and not the solution?

This is why he's gonna get flak. He sees the business world as nothing but filled with greedy, cheating fat-cats. To him, Free Enterprise cannot be trusted- it is an evil unfair system that must be tightly controlled and regulated...even owned by the gov't if necessary. We must break from the past-from Individual economic liberty...more gov't is the answer to your problems.

He wants to repeat the whole stimulus schtick from last fall. We need to spend billions of dollars and FAST! No time to wait, don't read the bill, hurry up and vote YES. We did this already- and things have gotten worse. And now If we don't do what he says, the country will surely tumble into the abyss!

We've made it through two recent recessions in '91 and '01 without Obama and without this much gov't interference.

1/8/2009 11:01:27 PM

Quote :

"Anyone who see's gov't as the problem and not the solution?"

that's what the Bush white house is filled with, and what that got us was a whole bunch of agencies filled with people who thought their jobs were meaningless, which inevitably led to lots of people doing piss-poor jobs of their given duties (like overseeing bank audits).

Quote :

"We've made it through two recent recessions in '91 and '01 without Obama and without this much gov't interference."

there's a difference between business cycle recessions (2000) and financial system meltdowns (1930) that require restructuring and rethinking of regulations.

Quote :

"He wants to repeat the whole stimulus schtick from last fall. We need to spend billions of dollars and FAST! No time to wait, don't read the bill, hurry up and vote YES."

I agree with the premise that Congress should not be rushed or held at gunpoint, ever, to hurry through a bill. However, to be fair, Obama has been talking about wanting a bill ready at his desk since, what... November 5th?

1/8/2009 11:09:00 PM

Quote :

"there's a difference between business cycle recessions (2000) and financial system meltdowns (1930) that require restructuring and rethinking of regulations."

Bullshit. The last financial system meltdown occured in 1987 (the DJIA collapsed 22% in one day), not 1930. More banks failed in one month in 1988 than in the past two years.

All economic sectors experience cyclical recessions, even the financial sector. Although not all of them result in a recession, as the 1987 financial meltdown only involved the financial sector and therefore avoided a recession. A recession only occurs when enough sectors of the economy enter a cyclical downturn to negatively impact the money supply and the resultant cash shortage impacts everyone.

However, that is what makes capitalism work: profits are great incentive, but bankruptcy does the actual work of resource reallocation. No matter what regulations you impose short of nationalizing the entire sector of the economy, the sector is still going to experience a business cycle. If you dampen it with regulation, the actors within the system will react by pushing even harder, expecting your regulations to protect them from losses while they engage in even more rediculous behavior.

Now, our first axium should be to do no harm, such as by creating FANNIE and FREDDIE, granting them the power to borrow money in the governments name, and sending them forth to speculate. That alone was guaranteed to cause a calamity eventually, that private sector investors decided to come along for the ride through idiocy at exactly the same time was unfortunate.

[Edited on January 9, 2009 at 2:14 AM. Reason : .,.]

1/9/2009 2:11:00 AM

Quote :

"a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending"

*shakes head* I don't get it.

A lack of spending? A vicious cycle? What the Hell is he talking about?

That "the economy" is based on continuous, debt-driven, consumer spending is a temporary structural condition and not some immutable fact about the way things are.

Take retail for example. Retailers are belly-aching about this year's dismal Christmas season. But it's not as if retailers have some immutable right to higher sales and profit margins, to the past results they've been seeing. If consumers are willing to spend less, if they are using less debt financing, perhaps retailers should adjust their business models to the new reality?

Layoffs or not, the reality is that we -- as a society -- are not poor. People going to the mall are not, in any real sense, buying goods they "need." There is a very limited list of goods that people "need" in the most prosaic sense -- food staples, water, the obvious stuff. The rest is discretionary spending. When people spend less, that implies they are being more discretionary with their discretionary budget.

Perhaps that means -- God forbid -- that retailers, product companies, and so on -- need to deliver more value to consumers instead of relying on a facile willingness to spend to drive business growth.

Perhaps that means that companies which treat their customers with contempt will go out of business. Macy's, for example, badgers customers about store credit cards during check-out instead of providing customer service. During a credit crisis. Have they adapted to the new realities of the marketplace, do they deserve a "short-term boost?"

Is there really a lack of consumer confidence? Wiis are still selling like crazy. Are people sacrificing bread and water for Wiis? No -- they are just getting their money's worth.

When money is more valuable, products have to be more valuable. They have to be worth paying for. Businesses have to be better. And when the value of a business meets the value of money, then profits will be made and the economy will grow. There isn't some voodoo credit mechanism necessary to trump that basic equation.

Yes, there are people out of jobs and the government and charity should, to its best ability, help them. But I am sickened by the idea that prolonging the status quo of credit-driven consumerism is the only way to move forward. Bolstering the status quo is by definition never the way forward; it's an illogical concept and Barack Obama of all people should know better.

Here's hoping this pork goes down in flames and is replaced by something more sensible.

[Edited on January 9, 2009 at 3:02 AM. Reason : foo]

1/9/2009 3:01:36 AM

Quote :

"retailers should adjust their business models to the new reality"

yeah, they'll get on that right after they get the time machine figured out so they can get a second shot at Q4
since thats when the majority of them make the money that will let them open the doors for Q1-3

Quote :

"There is a very limited list of goods that people "need" in the most prosaic sense -- food staples, water, the obvious stuff."

Thanks MASLOW
i'd ask to join your club, but i understand the first and second rules are that you're not allowed to talk about it

Quote :

"it's an illogical concept and Barack Obama of all people should know better."

do you even know what that means, cause i sure don't

1/9/2009 3:24:33 AM

Quote :

"Perhaps that means -- God forbid -- that retailers, product companies, and so on -- need to deliver more value to consumers instead of relying on a facile willingness to spend to drive business growth."

you sound like this commie

Quote :

"BILL MOYERS: Here we are, at the height of the holiday season. The malls and the shops are packed. Stuff is flying off the shelves. And like Grinch or Scrooge you stand up and say, "Capitalism's in trouble." Why? BENJAMIN BARBER: Because things are flying off the shelves that we don't want or need or even understand what they are, but we go on buying them. Because capitalism needs us to buy things way beyond the scope of our needs and wants to stay in business, Bill. That's the bottom line. Capitalism is no longer manufacturing goods to meet real needs and human wants. It's manufacturing needs to sell us all the goods it's got to produce. "

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12212007/watch.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12212007/transcript4.html

1/9/2009 9:25:33 AM

History may not repeat itself...

Quote :

"IF WE DON'T SPEND BILLIONS ON INVADING IRAQ, WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN!!!! SAVE US GEORGE BUSH!!! (54% of U.S. citizens support invasion in March 2003, price tag is $600 billion and counting)."

but it rhymes.

Quote :

"IF WE DON'T SPEND BILLIONS ON THIS STIMULUS PACKAGE, WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN!!!!!! SAVE US BARACK OBAMA!!!! (56% of U.S. citizens support stimulus plan in December 2008, proposed price-tag is $700 billion and counting). "

Fear is not a good motivator for making smart decisions.

[Edited on January 9, 2009 at 11:01 AM. Reason : ``]

1/9/2009 10:58:01 AM

Here's what Obama should do...

1) Cut the payroll tax on employees and employers for at least 2 years. Reducing the payroll tax rather than the income tax will allow class warriors to claim that it isn't a "tax-cut for the rich"
The social security lockbox has already been opened and emptied.

2) Cut the corporate income tax rate and make US business competitve again. Job creation would take off.

3) Pledge that he will not raise capital gains tax. And increase the write-off for capital gains losses. This would give stock investing a jump-start.

4) Sit back, and watch the private sector save his re-election butt.

1/9/2009 11:36:30 AM

^^ how are the various stimulus packages Obama's fault?

1/9/2009 8:50:52 PM

When I first heard his speech I said this "The one thing i was encouraged about is his willingness to cut business taxes. Now lets see if the dems in congress keep that in there."


ONE FUCKING DAY LATER he is talking about changing this.

Then "The AP reports Democratic senators yesterday "were especially critical of a proposed $3,000 tax credit for companies that hire or retrain workers."

SOOOO Fucking predictable.

Earthdogg, he should put in the fairtax basically.

1/9/2009 10:38:47 PM

Quote :

"you sound like this commie"

I don't see how a failure of particular business models which depend on cheap money, and a failure to adapt to the world of expensive money, is a failure of Capitalism as a whole. Businesses _will_ adapt and the economy _will_ grow, so long as the government doesn't fuck things up by encouraging people to do otherwise.

1/9/2009 11:08:43 PM

I agree with smoker. govt usually fucks shit up long term for some short term relief and reelection.

1/9/2009 11:20:46 PM

Joe Schmoe,

Yah, Obama has never once encouraged passing a stimulus package as soon as possible to avoid economic disaster. Thank you for your contribution.

1/10/2009 2:57:04 AM

Quote :

"Earthdogg, he should put in the fairtax basically. "

Agreed. That would bring back trillions of off-shore capital back into the US to create jobs. With no federal tax component, US industries would benefit.

1/10/2009 10:32:54 AM

I agree, it makes for sustainable LONG TERM GROWTH, which isnt what these politicians want.

1/10/2009 10:53:46 AM

result of 2008 election:

dems: big ass stimulus
repubs: fair tax

[Edited on January 10, 2009 at 2:10 PM. Reason : thats how i think it woulda happened]

1/10/2009 2:10:00 PM

Quote :

"whens the last time you cashed a check our taxes didn't pay for?"

when's the last time you stuck your neck out for someone else and got shot at? shut the fuck up, asshole.

Quote :

"Well we do need to have our bridges repaired"

Maybe we should do that with the money we were supposed to have already allocated to that. Call me crazy...

1/11/2009 4:11:32 PM

Quote :

"whens the last time you cashed a check our taxes didn't pay for? "

4.5 years ago...but that's irrelevent. You don't think I'd have a job if I hadn't chosen to do the Marine gig?

Quote :

"that's what the Bush white house is filled with"

Umm, I beg to differ. Have you been asleep for the last 8 years? How many places has the Bush administration not embraced big government?

Quote :

"Bullshit. The last financial system meltdown occured in 1987 (the DJIA collapsed 22% in one day), not 1930. More banks failed in one month in 1988 than in the past two years. All economic sectors experience cyclical recessions, even the financial sector. "

Yep.

Quote :

"However, that is what makes capitalism work: profits are great incentive, but bankruptcy does the actual work of resource reallocation. No matter what regulations you impose short of nationalizing the entire sector of the economy, the sector is still going to experience a business cycle. "

Exactly. Recessions are, in my view, in the long run, beneficial. They are a culling of the herd--weeding out inefficient companies, and forcing the good ones to make themselves even better.

...and yes, a widely held view is that government intervention may dampen the severity, but at the cost of prolonging the agony.

1/11/2009 8:08:04 PM

Quote :

"weeding out inefficient companies, and forcing the good ones to make themselves even better."

i have to agree with that. it's the reason that i was told by a top purchasing person for a tier 1 automotive supplier that for late 2010 and later platforms he was seeing BETTER pricing from north american companies than foreign which to me says things are going to shift back to the US soon. it won't be overnight..but i think it will happen relatively soon.

[Edited on January 11, 2009 at 8:54 PM. Reason : and why the gov't should let the failing banks fail.]

1/11/2009 8:41:48 PM

Quote :

""However, that is what makes capitalism work: profits are great incentive, but bankruptcy does the actual work of resource reallocation. No matter what regulations you impose short of nationalizing the entire sector of the economy, the sector is still going to experience a business cycle. " Exactly. Recessions are, in my view, in the long run, beneficial. They are a culling of the herd--weeding out inefficient companies, and forcing the good ones to make themselves even better. "

You wouldn't have such a blissful view of things if you had lost your home or one of those that lost significant portions of their retirement, or their job due to the recent issues.

Their perspective is going to be that someone should have been monitoring the corruption and stopped it, rather than saying essentially that "corporations will be corporations" and just looking the other way. Especially when proper regulations could have helped things.

This wasn't a problem of "inefficiency" though, this was systemic corruption. This touches practically everyone in the country.

[Edited on January 11, 2009 at 9:50 PM. Reason : ]

1/11/2009 9:49:56 PM

Quote :

"Umm, I beg to differ. Have you been asleep for the last 8 years? How many places has the Bush administration not embraced big government?"

i was referring to Bush filling agencies with people who believe those agencies have no business being in existance. I was not, by any means, arguing that Bush has been any kind of small government Conservative. The examples are endless - while maintaining or growing the size of the agencies, he has effectively stripped power from the SEC, EPA, FEMA, etc.

1/11/2009 10:38:25 PM

Quote :

"while maintaining or growing the size of the agencies, he has effectively stripped power from the SEC, EPA, FEMA, etc."

This statement is contradictory. You cannot shrink an agency while growing the size of that agency. That is because these agencies have police powers and therefore the only limit to their power is custom and limited manpower. As such, as Bush has increased the manpower available to these agencies he has increased their power, as they can now throw out supoenas faster, serve more warrants, crunch more numbers, and service a larger number of complaints than before. And yet, even with more power they did a terrible job, missing obvious criminal activity (Madoff) and ignoring glaring structural problems (Fannie/Freddie) without comment.

1/12/2009 12:05:21 AM

Quote :

"This statement is contradictory. You cannot shrink an agency while growing the size of that agency. That is because these agencies have police powers and therefore the only limit to their power is custom and limited manpower."

it's not contradictory because that's not what i said. There is a difference between "small government" and "limited government". Regulatory agencies can and have added more people and money ("bigger" government), but at the same time, regulations that the same agencies were supposed to enforce have been removed (--> limited government). Yes, it is true that the agency's powers are limited by its manpower, but it's also limited to 1) the regulations that are in place to enforce, and 2) the attitude of the people who's job it is to enforce those regulations (e.g. financial regulators who feel that regulatioin is inherenty not necessary, like at IndyMac).

For example, I heard an interview on Bill Moyers the other day with some Charlotte Observer reporters who did an expose on the poultry industry in NC/SC. They found that lots of OSHA regulations had changed in ~2001 regarding the reporting of injuries and the frequency of inspections. They said that frequency of inspections are now based on the number of reported injuries, thereby giving the plants an incentive to no report injuries. From 1996 to 2006, the number of inspections of poultry plants in NC went from something like 36 to 9, and in SC it went from 40 to 1, because the plants weren't reporting injuries, but the reporters found dozens of cases of workers with broken bones, chopped-off fingers, etc, that were never reported to OSHA. In this case, even if OSHA was getting more money and adding more people (getting bigger), since the inspection regulations had changed, they weren't actually providing additional regulatory oversight.

1/12/2009 9:58:26 AM

I do not disagree that what you say could be true about OSHA. But your numbers sound fishy: why does your range run from 1996 to 2006? I would think something else also happened in that span, namely the replacement of white workers with mexican workers, one of which is unwilling to file complaints against their employers for failure to report accidents to OSHA. Afterall, employers have always had a disincentive to report accidents. As such, making the incentive not to report even larger should not by itself answer why workers have stopped blowing the whistle on their employers.

Also, it is a natural state for work to get safer over time thanks to automation and better production techniques. Maybe the poultry plants have simply modernized over that decade.

As such, for your data to be more relevant to a regulation change in 2001, I would use a range from 2000 to 2002 as your data. Using a ten year span is simply absurd.

But more to the point, maybe labor regulations have changed, I cannot be sure. But from studies I trust the overall regulatory impact upon the economy by George Bush has grown substantially.

Quote :

"In 2007, according to Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, roughly 50 regulatory agencies issued 3,595 final rules, ranging from boosting fuel economy standards for light trucks to continuing a ban on bringing torch lighters into airplane cabins. Five departments (Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency) accounted for 45 percent of the new regulations. Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations' cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are "economically significant," meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That's a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses. Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001."

http://www.reason.com/news/show/130328.html

1/12/2009 12:46:26 PM

it was not my intent to turn this into a discussion about chicken plants or OSHA standards. However, if you're interested in this particular case to see the data for yourself, here it is:
The PBS Expose story
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/watch2.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06272008/transcript2.html
a clip:

Quote :

"AMES ALEXANDER: There used to be a column on injury logs where companies were supposed to record all repetitive motion injuries. Uh, and this essentially gave OSHA inspectors a very quick idea of how common repetitive motion problems like carpal tunnel, like tendonitis, were. Uh, and then, uh, under pressure, uh, from the industry, OSHA removed that column. NARRATOR: It was OSHA under the Bush administration that removed the column in 2002. The result, according to Ames Alexander? AMES ALEXANDER: OSHA essentially made it easier for companies to hide these sort of repetitive motion injuries. One plant we looked at, uh, in 2001, it had 150 repetitive motion injuries. After they removed the column, they had fewer than 10. NARRATOR: The Bush administration also repealed a collection of rules put in place at the end of the Clinton administration. The rules, which formed a national ergonomics standard, would have required employers to correct workplace conditions likely to cause repetitive-motion and other injuries. Charles Jeffress, who headed OSHA from 1997 to 2001, told the OBSERVER that the effect of repealing the ergonomic standard and removing the column was to "turn a blind eye to a lot of what happens in poultry plants." And one OSHA insider was even more blunt. Bob Whitmore - When you look at a log, it's supposed to tell us -- it is supposed to tell us what's going on in this workplace. You have to understand, it was always intended to be a surveillance tool. "

The Charlotte Observer series
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/poultry/

1/12/2009 1:38:37 PM

Quote :

"You wouldn't have such a blissful view of things if you had lost your home or one of those that lost significant portions of their retirement, or their job due to the recent issues. Their perspective is going to be that someone should have been monitoring the corruption and stopped it, rather than saying essentially that "corporations will be corporations" and just looking the other way. Especially when proper regulations could have helped things. This wasn't a problem of "inefficiency" though, this was systemic corruption. This touches practically everyone in the country."

Moron, very little of what has happened was corruption. Almost all of it was people taking honest gambles about the future and losing. Those individuals and their friends have been punished financially. But nothing they did was illegal and no regulation could have helped beyond abolishing Fannie and Freddie five years ago.

Now, the consumers you refer to will eventually find a new home (as renters), eventually find a new job, and eventually see their retirement accounts return to previous highs. This is a recession, they happen now and again; it does not help anything to get upset or indignant. There will be another recession within a decades time, are you going to blame that one on corruption too?



http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/studies/recession_perspective/index.cfm

1/12/2009 4:15:06 PM

Quote :

"Here's what Obama should do... 1) Cut the payroll tax on employees and employers for at least 2 years. Reducing the payroll tax rather than the income tax will allow class warriors to claim that it isn't a "tax-cut for the rich" The social security lockbox has already been opened and emptied. 2) Cut the corporate income tax rate and make US business competitve again. Job creation would take off. 3) Pledge that he will not raise capital gains tax. And increase the write-off for capital gains losses. This would give stock investing a jump-start. 4) Sit back, and watch the private sector save his re-election butt."

I actually agree with this, but the FairTax isn't the way to go as far as I'm concerned unless the states plan on giving up a lot more (that tax burden would still be pretty high). Maybe try the negative income tax.

What, you're suprised to hear this from me?

1/12/2009 8:16:12 PM