Why do Blue States lead in Education and Standard of Living?

[del]

By walking away from the ABM and Kyoto accords, George W. Bush taught Americans that we really do have the power to simply ignore or disavow international treaties we've already committed to. It's time to apply that experience to GATT/WTO/NAFTA and return to our Founders' ideal of a nation where the rules of trade and business are, as Jefferson said, "very much guided" by the interests of We the People, rather than a handful of multinational corporations.

ThomHartmann.com - Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"

"On 25 July 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[65][66] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". On 12 November 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[67] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification."
Kyoto Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

if you make $35/hr, you're overpaid by about $32.

thank god for unions, huh?

pissant

 

[glockmail]

.....

thank god for unions, huh?

pissant

 

[LOki]

I think you are overpaid.

You have no idea--you're a retard.

Your company surely would like to replace you with someone who makes $5 hr. less.

They would, but they can't--this has nothing to do with unions, and everything to do with the fact that my work is worth no less than what they pay me.

They might do that too as soon as you start getting a little old. OUT WITH YOU!

This might be true, if my job can be done better and cheaper by someone younger than me.

Which I'm sure you are fine with,...

I am.

...until it happens to YOU.

I am still fine with it. I am not so proud that I wouldn't take a pay cut, if the value of my work could no longer support my compensation.

And I'm not so foolish to place myself in a postion where I'm useless in every proffession except the one I'm practicing now.

Sorry about your fucked-up, and short-sighted stupidity.

Or when you go to retire and the GOP tank the stock market and all of the sudden what you saved gets cut in half, I'll tell you that you were a stupid sorry sonofabitch who thought he was entitled to die with some dignity.

I hope your retarded alternative is not Social Security. Really.

No, I will not be so sorry as you dumb-fucks who insist others taking care of you--my savings will only be cut in half if I let retards like yourself, with over-developed senses of entitlement, steal it from me. If I do, I'll have earned every bit of misery I receive.

Now I don't mind reading your rediculous positions because I know you are an extremist and no one is going to buy into the idea that us worker bees make too much and are not worth what we are making now.

No one buys this? No even those who are sending your job off to some guy in Singapore who appreciates it?

Because they can always get an asian, african, indian or mexican to do it for less.

They can always get an asian, african, indian or mexican to do it for what it's worth.

You are a sorry excuse for an American.

Nonsense.

You won't be happy until most Americans live like Mexicans.

Even more nonsense.

And you think you'll fall on the winning side of that line? Hell no!

There is no winning on your side. It is literally impossible to satisfy humanity's unlimited capacity to consume value with a few individual's limited capacity to produce value.

I'm torn. Either you are a white collar prick or a grease monkey. Which is it?

I am a human being who refuses to make my needs and desires an entitlement to the life product of another human being--who demands that another's needs or desires are not an entitlement to my life product. Does that make me a white collar prick or a grease monkey?

 

[sealybobo]

None of your business, really. But for what it's worth, I protect human lives.

I can't imagine how this is at all relevent.

Now you're just being a bitter retard.

So you have a socialist job. Your job is paid for by tax payers. Exactly.

 

[LOki]

So you have a socialist job.

Really? Demonstrate this.

Your job is paid for by tax payers.

It is? I defy you to prove this.

Exactly.

Exactly what, retard?

 

[sealybobo]

house slave?
how enlightened.
give my best to Bob Byrd when you see him at the next meeting.

Del, baby, son, nephew, you came up with all the shit you spew completely on your own? You mean you don't read? Sorry I read. Apparently if you cut and paste, that's a bad thing according to Del

Maybe you should read more.

 

[editec]

The bottom line is that capital is international but laborers are not.

Hence capital, in this FREE TRADE environment that the corporate master bought and paid for in the last three decades, has the tremendous advantage of being able to move to find cheap labor, just so long as they can sell BACK INTO this nation.

Had American truly practiced free trade, as it is practiced now, it would never have become a great nation.

The USA would ever have been a colony of Britian -- if not in name then in fact.

There was no way in hell from 1776 till about 1890 that American industries could compete with Britian unless we fostered their growth by protective tariffs.

The PLAN now (that corporations we protected are rich enough) is to bankrupt American Government and to bankrupt AMERICANS, folks. (AKA: STARVE THE BEAST)

A lot of the house slaves we hear from now here on this board, are of the 10% of the workforce employed by international corportions.

And like good houseslaves have always done, they love their masters because they understand which side of the bread has the butter.

I mean we do understand what motivates them to take this goofy position, right?

CONCEIT and FEAR.


Those of you who hate bad government (like any sane person hates ours now) and thinks that every government must therefore be bad, are being played for fools by these monied interests.

Government is the ONLY hope any of us have of establishing a decent and civil society.

Corporations don't give a tinkers damned about society or nations, folks. That's not obvious to you all, by now?

Corporations have all the sense of social responsibility non-social insects

They have a single goal (to increase net worth) and they have no responsibility (nor should they have any, BTW) to give a damn about the people or the nation.

That is what GOVERNMENT is for.

So if you understand that America is a mess because the monied class WANTS IT TO BE, and you understand that government has allowed it to become this mess, understand ALSO that the corporations orchestrated this propaganda campaign that has convince so many Americans that all government is bad goverment.


No, BAD government is BAD goverment.

But without a government, those of you who imagine that the invisbile hand of the market can forge a fuctional democratic republican form of society?

You libertopians believe sheer social science fiction poppycock.

Sans a government FOR the people, the PEOPLE become SLAVES within one generation of the MARKET controlling society.

Sans an effective and powerful central government FOR THE PEOPLE, this society will devolved into a neofeudal state, and folks, very few of us will like that nation, beleive me.





.

 

[sealybobo]

Really? Demonstrate this.

It is? I defy you to prove this.

Exactly what, retard?

Who saves lives? Oh, a doctor? If that's the case, then I don't want the bar set so that only doctors and engineers have nice things and the rest of us struggle just to live, without big screens and computers and health insurance.

Sorry we want to have nice things too.

And I don't really think you are a doctor. Saves lives?

 

[Valerie]

Who saves lives? Oh, a doctor? If that's the case, then I don't want the bar set so that only doctors and engineers have nice things and the rest of us struggle just to live, without big screens and computers and health insurance.

Sorry we want to have nice things too.

And I don't really think you are a doctor. Saves lives?

Maybe he's an EMT or a fireman?

 

[sealybobo]

The bottom line is that capital is international but laborers are not.

Hence capital, in this FREE TRADE environment that the corporate master bought and paid for in the last three decades, has the tremendous advantage of being able to move to find cheap labor, just so long as they can sell BACK INTO this nation.

Had American truly practiced free trade, as it is practiced now, it would never have become a great nation.

The USA would ever have been a colony of Britian -- if not in name then in fact.

There was no way in hell from 1776 till about 1890 that American industries could compete with Britian unless we fostered their growth by protective tariffs.

The PLAN now (that corporations we protected are rich enough) is to bankrupt American Government and to bankrupt AMERICANS, folks. (AKA: STARVE THE BEAST)

A lot of the house slaves we hear from now here on this board, are of the 10% of the workforce employed by international corportions.

And like good houseslaves have always done, they love their masters because they understand which side of the bread has the butter.

I mean we do understand what motivates them to take this goofy position, right?

CONCEIT and FEAR.


Those of you who hate bad government (like any sane person hates ours now) and thinks that every government must therefore be bad, are being played for fools by these monied interests.

Government is the ONLY hope any of us have of establishing a decent and civil society.

Corporations don't give a tinkers damned about society or nations, folks. That's not obvious to you all, by now?

Corporations have all the sense of social responsibility non-social insects

They have a single goal (to increase net worth) and they have no responsibility (nor should they have any, BTW) to give a damn about the people or the nation.

That is what GOVERNMENT is for.

So if you understand that America is a mess because the monied class WANTS IT TO BE, and you understand that government has allowed it to become this mess, understand ALSO that the corporations orchestrated this propaganda campaign that has convince so many Americans that all government is bad goverment.


No, BAD government is BAD goverment.

But without a government, those of you who imagine that the invisbile hand of the market can forge a fuctional democratic republican form of society?

You libertopians believe sheer social science fiction poppycock.

Sans a government FOR the people, the PEOPLE become SLAVES within one generation of the MARKET controlling society.

Sans an effective and powerful central government FOR THE PEOPLE, this society will devolved into a neofeudal state, and folks, very few of us will like that nation, beleive me.


.

You are a very smart person.

Sorry, more cut and paste:

And when wages go down, profits go up. American wages have been going down steadily since Reagan first reintroduced conservative economics in 1980, and American corporations just reported two of their most profitable quarters in decades. In part, this is because wages are not only going down within the US, but because US-level wages are being replaced by India- and China-level wages through outsourcing and offshoring.

But the Indians and Chinese know something you won't hear on conservative "business" programs. While China and India eagerly let multinational corporations move work from America to their nations, they fiercely protect their own domestic industries primarily through the use of tariffs - taxes on imported goods - and the strict regulation of imported labor.

We should do the same. To return balance to the international game of business, America can again use tariffs to balance trade relationships. This is not a new idea, by the way - it's how America has protected its economy from the founding of this nation right up until Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT.

ThomHartmann.com - Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"

 

[sealybobo]

Maybe he's an EMT or a fireman?

If he's a fireman then he has a socialist government cheese job. If he's an EMT, he's underpaid. Those guys don't make DICK!

 

[del]

Del, baby, son, nephew, you came up with all the shit you spew completely on your own? You mean you don't read? Sorry I read. Apparently if you cut and paste, that's a bad thing according to Del

Maybe you should read more.

tissue?

 

[sealybobo]

tissue?

 

[LOki]

The bottom line is that capital is international but laborers are not.

Hence capital, in this FREE TRADE environment that the corporate master bought and paid for in the last three decades, has the tremendous advantage of being able to move to find cheap labor, just so long as they can sell BACK INTO this nation.

Had American truly practiced free trade, as it is practiced now, it would never have become a great nation.

The USA would ever have been a colony of Britian -- if not in name then in fact.

There was no way in hell from 1776 till about 1890 that American industries could compete with Britian unless we fostered their growth by protective tariffs.

The PLAN now (that corporations we protected are rich enough) is to bankrupt American Government and to bankrupt AMERICANS, folks. (AKA: STARVE THE BEAST)

A lot of the house slaves we hear from now here on this board, are of the 10% of the workforce employed by international corportions.

And like good houseslaves have always done, they love their masters because they understand which side of the bread has the butter.

I mean we do understand what motivates them to take this goofy position, right?

CONCEIT and FEAR.


Those of you who hate bad government (like any sane person hates ours now) and thinks that every government must therefore be bad, are being played for fools by these monied interests.

Government is the ONLY hope any of us have of establishing a decent and civil society.

Corporations don't give a tinkers damned about society or nations, folks. That's not obvious to you all, by now?

Corporations have all the sense of social responsibility non-social insects

They have a single goal (to increase net worth) and they have no responsibility (nor should they have any, BTW) to give a damn about the people or the nation.

That is what GOVERNMENT is for.

So if you understand that America is a mess because the monied class WANTS IT TO BE, and you understand that government has allowed it to become this mess, understand ALSO that the corporations orchestrated this propaganda campaign that has convince so many Americans that all government is bad goverment.


No, BAD government is BAD goverment.

But without a government, those of you who imagine that the invisbile hand of the market can forge a fuctional democratic republican form of society?

You libertopians believe sheer social science fiction poppycock.

Sans a government FOR the people, the PEOPLE become SLAVES within one generation of the MARKET controlling society.

Sans an effective and powerful central government FOR THE PEOPLE, this society will devolved into a neofeudal state, and folks, very few of us will like that nation, beleive me.

You thus assume that these fifty millions of people are so debased, mentally and morally, that they look upon you and your associate lawmakers as their earthly gods, holding their destinies in your hands, and anxiously studying their welfare; instead of looking upon you--as most of you certainly ought to be looked upon--as a mere cabal of ignorant, selfish, ambitious, rapacious, and unprincipled men, who know very little, and care to know very little, except how you can get fame, and power, and money, by trampling upon other men's rights, and robbing them of the fruits of their labor.

Assuming yourself to be the greatest of these gods, charged with the "welfare" of fifty millions of people, you enter upon the mighty task with all the mock solemnity, and ridiculous grandiloquence, of a man ignorant enough to imagine that he is really performing a solemn duty, and doing an immense public service, instead of simply making a fool of himself. Thus you say:

Fellow citizens: In the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen, I am about to supplement and seal, by the oath which I shall take, the manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the exercise of their power and right of self-government, they have committed to one of their fellow citizens a supreme and sacred thrust, and he here consecrates himself to their service. This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the people of the land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any resolution to engage every faculty and effort in the promotion of their welfare. [Not in "doing equal and exact justice to all men." After having once described the government as one "pledged to do equal and exact justice to all men," you drop that subject entirely, and wander off into "interests," and "welfare," and an astonishing number of other equally unmeaning things.]

Sir, you would have no occasion to take all this tremendous labor and responsibility upon yourself, if you and your lawmakers would but keep your hands off the "rights" of your "countrymen." Your "countrymen" would be perfectly competent to take care of their own "interests," and provide for their own "welfare," if their hands were not tied, and their powers crippled, by such fetters as men like you and your lawmakers have fastened upon them.

 

[del]

i'm pretty sure this is the most intelligent thing you've ever posted. unfortunately, like the rest of them, it makes no sense.
have a nice day, bigot.

 

[LOki]

Who saves lives? Oh, a doctor? If that's the case, then I don't want the bar set so that only doctors and engineers have nice things and the rest of us struggle just to live, without big screens and computers and health insurance.

Nothing I've said demands this.

Sorry we want to have nice things too.

Want does not mean deserve.

And I don't really think you are a doctor. Saves lives?

For the record, you profoundly obtuse retard, I never said I was a doctor, and I never said I save lives--although I'm willing to admit now that my work probably serves to do so.

And just so you can keep up: None of your fucktarded responses demonstrates in any way that my job is socialist in any way, or that I'm paid with taxes.

 

[sealybobo]

i'm pretty sure this is the most intelligent thing you've ever posted. unfortunately, like the rest of them, it makes no sense.
have a nice day, bigot.

More reading for you Del:

From the Gilded Age to the Great Depression to today, the economic agenda of conservatives has been easily summarized in two words: "cheap labor." Nowhere was that more clearly on display than in the recent decision by Judge William S. Howard that "relieved" coal companies from having to pay already-earned retirement benefits to coal miners in Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, and Illinois.
None of this could have been possible without generous corporate "reforms" to bankruptcy laws pushed through Congress in the last few years by conservatives, and the lifetime appointment of conservative judges to seats on federal courts by conservative administrations. Judge Howard, for example, was appointed during the reign of George H.W. Bush, and his decisions continue to destroy union jobs and reduce labor costs for mining companies under the reign of George W. Bush.
Unions have been a bulwark of the middle class ever since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Prior to Roosevelt’s 1935 Wagner Act, which guaranteed workers' rights to unionize, America had been mostly either very rich or very poor.
Following the Wagner Act's implementation, and Roosevelt’s raising of the top marginal income tax rate on multi-millionaires to 90 percent, however, the first true American middle class came into being. By 1947, over a third (roughly 35%) of America's workers were unionized, and for every union job there was a non-union job in the private sector with nearly identical pay and benefits, because unions had set the floor for labor costs and employers had to compete for workers. This meant that about 70% of American workers were able to raise a family, put children through school, pay for health care, and plan a good retirement, all on a single wage earner's salary. During this era, CEOs earned, on average, around 30 to 35 times what their lowest paid employees did, and senior management salary ratio caps averaging 20:1 were put into place in civil service, the military, and most colleges.
But in 1947 the cheap-labor conservatives fought back. In the elections of 1946, Democrats lost control of both the U.S. House and the Senate, allowing Republican legislators to push through the Taft-Hartley bill, which essentially allowed individual states to opt out of portions of the Wagner act. It was an early domestic version of the "free trade" disaster we're seeing now with NAFTA and GATT/WTO - a race to the cheap labor bottom - that started to take root in the American south right after passage of Taft-Hartley. Although President Harry Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley assault on labor, Republicans in the House and Senate overrode his veto and it became law.
From then until the end of the Jimmy Carter presidency, unionization - and, thus, average worker wages in the United States - only gradually declined. When Ronald Reagan came into office, a quarter of the American workforce was unionized, meaning half of Americans could raise a middle-class family on a single salary.
But then Reagan declared war on the middle class, starting with the air traffic controller's union (PATCO) during his first year in office. The conservative assault on labor has been unrelenting since then: Today only about 8 percent of the private-sector American workforce is unionized, and at the same time Education Secretary Rod Paige described the teachers' union as a "terrorist organization," George W. Bush announced plans to lay off over 700,000 unionized government employees and replace them with non-union "contractors."
While gutting the American middle class, conservatives also launched a well-funded propaganda campaign - using right-wing "think tanks" and talk radio - to convince workers that their growing economic woes were the fault of minorities ("affirmative action") and the poor ("welfare queens"). At the same time, they began stacking federal benches with conservative judges, and passing thousands of federal, state, and local laws, ordinances, and regulations that further weakened the powers of organized labor and their ability to unionize.
It's just fine, they said, for capital to organize in the form of a corporation. It's great when corporations organize into trade associations, chambers of commerce, industry groups, and lobbying consortiums. But to have workers organize to level the playing field? Inconceivable.
The result has been an explosion in CEO and executive pay, a rush of wealth to the conservative elite (the top 10 percent of Americans now own 71 percent of the nation’s wealth), and this year's cut in taxes to a maximum 15 percent for those who "earn their living" by sitting around the pool waiting for their dividend checks to arrive.
ThomHartmann.com - McKinley or Roosevelt? This Election is as Much About the Past as the Future

 

[sealybobo]

Nothing I've said demands this.

Want does not mean deserve.

For the record, you profoundly obtuse retard, I never said I was a doctor, and I never said I save lives--although I'm willing to admit now that my work probably serves to do so.

And just so you can keep up: None of your fucktarded responses demonstrates in any way that my job is socialist in any way, or that I'm paid with taxes.

You said you "protect" lives. Anyways, please at least read what I cut and paste. It comes from people much smarter than you or I.

 

[del]

You said you "protect" lives. Anyways, please at least read what I cut and paste. It comes from people much smarter than you or I.

speak for yourself, dunce.

 

[sealybobo]

speak for yourself, dunce.

Then maybe you should have your own nationally syndicated radio show and I guess millions of people would listen to you?