Tag Archives: Economy

Economy, Florida, Media, Organized Labor, Pensacola, Politics

ECAT Drivers Are Driving

Carlton Proctor at the Pensacola News Journal spoke to Michael Lowery, president of Local 1395 about the ECAT union bus drivers going on strike. Lowery also spoke to PNJ reporter  Thyrie Bland.

He told Proctor

“This is all about fair treatment on the job, it’s not about wages. It’s about fair treatment.”

He told Bland

“The employees have gone over 1,000 days without a raise, and working conditions are the worst I’ve seen in 16 years.”

Which Mr. Lowery are we to believe? And does it matter? The evolving version of why they went on strike looks a bit unorganized. Certainly not characteristic of organized labor. Keyword ‘organized.’

Economy, Florida, Organized Labor, Pensacola, Politics, Uncategorized

ECAT Working Conditions, Worst In 16 Years

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The raised fist (also known as the clenched fist) is a salute and logo most often used by left-wing activists, such as: Marxists, anarchists, socialists, communists, pacifists, trade unionists, the SEIU, and black nationalists.

Escambia County Area Transit (ECAT) bus drivers are on strike. Thyrie Bland at the Pensacola News Journal writes ECAT drivers on strike, Wage issue halts public transit for thousands.

The human aspect of the bus drivers going on strike is inescapable. Their riders are their customers. They are people who don’t have personal transportation and that includes the working poor. They also include physically handicapped folk like Mr. Freeman. Regardless, these are folks that need to get to their jobs so they can put food on the table and pay their bills, get to the store or the doctor.

Being responsible for creating a hardship on those with no alternative transportation is unconscionable. But is also standard fare for organized labor negotiating tactics. A lesson about labor unions and liberals in general is that they are liberals first, they are union first, and you are not on their list.

I bet these riders vote. And I also bet that they will remember who it was that caused them to miss work. It was a government labor union member who has a full-time job making from $12-16 an hour.

According to Michael Lowery, president of Local 1395 . . .

The employees have gone over 1,000 days without a raise, and working conditions are the worst I’ve seen in 16 years.

No raise in a couple of years huh? How does it feel (government labor union member) to be more like your neighbors? The ones that still have a job. Surprise! It happens in the private sector too! That’s life in the big city. The article brings to question a dispute of one half on one percent. If there’s a half of a percent in dispute in the current contract, then ‘work’ it out.

Working conditions? What working conditions? With all due respect to the drivers, you drive a bus.

Worst working conditions in 16 years? Which begs the question, when the head of my local labor union says that my working conditions are the worst that they’ve been in 16 years, just what am I paying my dues for?

Here’s an idea . . .

 

 

2012 Election, Economy, Media, Organized Labor, Politics

‘American Jobs Act’ Is Just That, An Act

Pass this bill right away. Now! Without delay! That’s what our President has been saying ever since he held up and waved his 155 199 page stimulus bill for the cameras. A stimulus bill that he calls the American Jobs Act.

From all the admonishing of Republicans (btw, some Democrats don’t like it either) he is doing to pass this bill quickly, one would think that he actually gave it to the House to be recorded so that it could be worked on. Fact is, no Democrat in the House of Representatives has presented the bill for consideration. So in fact, as of today, there is no American Jobs Act as proposed by President Obama.  Not to be confused with H.R.2911 American Jobs Act, which was introduced Sept. 14, 2011.

All we have is the President going on tour like a snake oil salesman asking the American people to ask their representatives to pass the bill. Will someone please inform the President that until it is delivered and recorded in the House, there is no bill? Forget the media. They haven’t noticed either.

Last month when he was on vacation, the President announced that when he got back to ‘work’ he would present his plan to create jobs. It was his top priority. Now we see that it is so low on anyones list of priorities (or so bad) that no one wants to deliver it. Everyone now knows that there is nothing new in what he has proposed. Just more of the same; mostly pumping your money into public sector labor union-type jobs and pensions.

If creating jobs is so urgent, what the president needs to do in front of a TV camera is to admonish some Democrat for not submitting it. Presuming of course that the President isn’t still sitting on it himself, like he is doing with those trade agreements he brings up in almost every news conference on jobs and the economy.

If it were introduced as a bill today, this is what it would look like:

[scribd id=65441495 key=key-1b73r5xin0y19umx7kmx mode=list]

Economy, Europe, Media, Politics

‘Real Ford Owner’ TV Ad

Check out this new TV ad from Ford. Their version of the man on the street press conference. The premise is that the subjects are real Ford owners using their own un-rehearsed response to a question from the ‘press corps.’

‘Chris’s’ response is golden. Took the words right out of my F150-owning mouth. Obviously Ford has the marketing sense to use this in their ad campaign because first of all, it is a popular sentiment, and, it is true. True about Ford. And true about the government’s handling of their competitors, Chrysler, now owned by Fiat, and GM, aka BM (Barack Motors). More jobs for Italy? That’s change you can step in.

This ad reminds me of the ‘Joe the plumber’ moment that President Obama had when his handlers let him talk to un-screened Americans for the first time. Now, it’s ‘Chris the Real Ford Owner.’ And Obama presses on down his yellow brick road.

Kudos to Ford Motor Company. It was to Chrysler and GM’s disadvantage for not standing up to the president. For not supporting their shareholders. For not supporting freedom, liberty, and free-market capitalism. Instead, they let the government roll them.

UPDATE 9/29/2011: Since the above ad, along with all their other ads are now no longer available online, below is a transcript of what it said. Ford’s explanation is that the ads run their cycles and that’s it. Their marketing people apparently don’t want to become a political news topic.

[Kristien] Source: LYBIO.net

Hi, I’m Kristien

[Real Ford Owner] Source: LYBIO.net

Chris, hi

Kristien]

We are gonna head on into the inteview

[Reporters]

Chris, was it buying America important to you?

[Chris] Source: LYBIO.net

I wasn’t going to buy any other car, that was bailed out by our government. I was going to buy from a manufactuerer that’s standing on their own, win, lose or draw, that’s what America’s about is taking the chance to succeed and understanding when you failed that you gotta pick yourself up and go back to work. Ah, Ford, is that company for me. Ford (Drive One)

Economy, Media, Pensacola, Politics, War On Terror

Remembering 9/11

Reflecting back on the 9/11 attack is easy for me, because I’ve never forgotten it or the aftermath. The prayers and sympathy for the victims and their families goes without saying.

I remember vividly how that horrific attack galvanized America as one unit focused on helping the victims and, at the same time, finally fighting back at those who had been killing Americans for years.

 

Our enemy had a good day. Aside from killing innocent Americans, they hurt our economy so badly that it took years to recover.

Feeling eerily uncomfortable with pro-American unity in both political parties, Sen. Ted Kennedy must have felt his party was threatened to minority party status for decades unless he could do something to stop it. Sadly, I remember how America’s unity ended when Sen. Ted Kennedy made the false accusation that the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein had “planned the 9/11 attack.” I remember how quickly the political Left ate that up, buttressed by a willing media. It was the ‘lion of the senate’ who politicized what was called the ‘war on terror.’ For that strategy alone, Ted Kennedy deserves credit for being the one person most responsible for prolonging the war to a tenth anniversary, and counting. That’s what I remember.

The reason I’ll never forget it goes to survival. Because the people in charge of the war on terror now, all Ted Kennedy acolytes, want to give the enemy our constitutional protections, lowering the bar to a criminal matter. They want to scrap the ‘war on terror’ and the most effective parts of the ‘Patriot Act,’ calling it an ‘overseas contingency operation.’ And we have Ted Kennedy to thank for it.

There’s a saying, “what goes around comes around.” This applies to Sen. Ted Kennedy too. He went from the lion of the senate to a maggot in hell. A small consolation in the fight that continues to this day.

Link: Schneider: Tell us what you remember, why you will never forget  | Media Research Center video

Update 9/11/2011: This is a repost from August 14, 2011. Didn’t make the cut for today’s edition of the Pensacola News Journal. And so it is that the political aspect of the aftermath will only be found here. Just added a video “Tribute To The Media” put together by the Media Research Center.

Economy, Politics

Obama’s Jobs Plan, WPA v2.0

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If you missed the president’s address to the joint session of congress last night, here’s the short version. He wants to spend a half trillion dollars more, ostensibly believing that what didn’t work the last time, and the time before that, will work this time. To build roads, bridges, and infrastructure.

Is the country suffering from amnesia? That’s what the first $785 billion so-called stimulus bill was supposed to have been used for.  And it wasn’t. And we are just supposed to ignore the failure of his plan and the fraud that it was?

What President Obama’s problem is, well, aside from not having a clue about capitalism and free-market economics, is that he is a victim of FDR syndrome. His only plan is to spend money on temporary make-work projects (remember that shovel-ready pitch?) while waiting for the economy to rebound. Recovering from the worst economy since the Great Depression is a “slow process,” the president said. Like the WPA, the economy would improve faster if the president would just get government out of the way. It’s like the WPA version 2.0.

2012 Election, Economy, Politics, Race Relations

Obama Did Not Fail, He Succeeded

As an example of just how divisive and mean-spirited the political Left is, Democrats in Washington included, if you oppose Obama’s agenda to remake America into something like Europe is trying to get away from, then you must be a ‘racist.’

Three years later, with ample evidence that Obama is making America worse; no economic recovery, national debt so high as to equal generational theft, no job growth, ‘adjusted’ unemployment over 9 percent, real unemployment double that, and black youth unemployment over 50 percent in urban areas like Washington, D.C., and if you still support him, doesn’t that make you a ‘racist?’

Oh yeah, give me more of this.

 

2008 Election, 2012 Election, Economy, Florida, Organized Labor, Politics, Race Relations

A Time For Choosing

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Since we were never given the choice in the last presidential election, the next election will be the time to choose. The 2008 election culminated in eight years of bashing Bush, and Bush not responding once. Americans were offered only hope and change. And who is against hope, and who is against change that makes things better? ‘Better’ being the operative word.

Obama never said, elect me and I’m going to nationalize health care and interfere with free-market economics by declaring some industries and businesses as ‘too big to fail,’ and borrow and spend trillions of dollars, not to stimulate the economy, but to ‘save’ union jobs in the public sector and the auto industry. He never said elect me and I’ll make it the responsibility of government to increase labor union membership.

Did we elect a President to put America on the fast track to Socialism? Do you think he would have beat Hillary Clinton in the primaries if he ran on what he is doing to this country today?

But now there is a choice. And it is no better illustrated than in Florida’s new law to drug-test welfare recipients and certain state employees in order to enforce a drug-free workplace. Progressives argue that Gov. Scott was trying to save money on the backs of the poor.

I don’t think it’s a matter of fiscal conservatism. Whether conservative or liberal, broke is broke. Just because someone is using drugs is no justification for spending more than we have. And it’s not that Scott, or Republicans, don’t care about poor people. They care about people who are on drugs and getting public monies.

The disintegration of the family among many poor people is a good reason to make bad choices. And it is welfare programs that tend to replace the father, or mother, and create this welfare class that is evermore dependent on the government. What Gov. Scott is doing is a move in the right direction. A move in the direction of teaching people some personal responsibility. Get off the drugs and you can continue to receive help.

This bill brings out the differences between the political Left and Right. One endeavors to fix the problem by attempting to fix the person. In this case, to provide an incentive to kick the habit and become self-sufficient again. The other seems content to be the giver of money, with no reason or motivation to quit a bad habit, which also tends to garner a strong voting block of welfare recipients.  In this context, it is Republican policies that try to heal and raise the poor by making them independent, if not just less dependent on government. It’s the old, “Give a man a fish and he won’t starve for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he won’t starve for his entire life” thing. It is Democratic policies that tend to keep the poor right where they are, dependent on the government for their livelihood, meager as it might be. The uneducated will easily identify with the person who gives them what they want instead of the one that wants them to earn what they want on their own. It’s about trying to teach people how to get off of welfare instead of trying to find out how we can find money to subsidize destructive behavior. Healing the person or family is better, more compassionate, than keeping them where they are. The bill isn’t about hating poor people.

Let’s look at the results of a landmark Democratic program. Nearly half of the country is getting some sort of government assistance. Does it look like the war on poverty (that began 50 years ago) has worked? There are drug rehabilitation programs out there, some at no cost. Individual responsibility means taking advantage of it and choosing to use what would be their drug money toward their own rehabilitation. How else does one teach personal responsibility if they have to do nothing on their own to make a change? They can get their welfare, if they choose to get off drugs first.

Democratic programs do nothing to reduce the number of poor people. What they have done is grow government and make poor people more dependent on government, and on the Democrat party. That is the result, whether intended or not.

There will always be people at the bottom of the ladder. The bottom of the ladder for U.S. citizens is half-way up the ladder compared to other countries. Democrat’s policies tend to make that ladder horizontal, destroying the notion of the individual.

Similarly, you will hear Democrats complain about the so-called income gap. They think it is evil that some people can make and accumulate wealth while some don’t.  I wouldn’t be so concerned about a gap between the rich and poor. I’d be concerned to make sure that the poor have every chance, the same chance, to get rich on their own.

Republicans have a HUGE up-hill battle to get people to understand that their policies are geared toward people helping themselves instead of relying on the government as their caretaker. Encouraging personal responsibility is so easily demagogued as Republicans hating the poor. And Democrats never miss the opportunity to do just that.

The immoral aspect of the Democratic social vision is that they put their faith in the government instead of the individual, which conditions poor people to look to them for sustenance. The fact that it builds strong voting blocks is no coincidence.

I’d like to see no minimum wage and no capital gains taxes. Since that has never been the case in my lifetime, one can only wonder how much better off ‘the poor’ would be. Again, it highlights the difference between the competing philosophies. Big government and control of economic conditions, or less government involvement and allowing free-market economic principles to work.

You don’t have to look far to see the difference. The free-market capitalism camp made us the greatest country in the world in under 200 years. The rest of the world is in the other camp and has nothing but shared misery to show for it.

Economy, Fairness Doctrine, Media, Politics

FCC Drops ‘Fairness Doctrine’

What represents a big win for everyone’s first amendment right, the FCC once and for all struck the Fairness Doctrine from law.

“The elimination of the obsolete Fairness Doctrine regulations will remove an unnecessary distraction. As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead,” Genachowski said in a statement on the FCC website.

But that’s not all. The move to cut it was part of President Obama’s efforts to lift the burden on businesses from useless and costly government regulations.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the decision to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine was part of a larger mandate proposed by the Obama administration to ease regulatory burdens by getting rid of duplicative or outdated measures.

What’s amazing here is that candidate Obama was all about the Fairness Doctrine, albeit under the disguise of another name. He calls it media-ownership caps and network neutrality. And the Soros think tanks came up with the back-door Fairness Doctrine. A plan ‘B’ if you will. I wouldn’t expect that this decision will stop their efforts to destroy conservative talk radio. They’re not going away.

So the legal aspects of the Fairness Doctrine are wiped from the books. Which puts the focus on the President to come up with a Fairness Doctrine by fiat (like he is trying to do with amnesty for illegal aliens). The Progressives are not going to like this decision. Especially since it is being called an ‘outdated’ measure.

Link: FCC Drops Fairness Doctrine