Tag Archives: Politics

Florida, Pensacola, Politics, Race Relations

Lunch With Otis

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My annual trek down to the seafood festival yesterday turned out to be something else. I met Otis.

Otis was walking away from the festival and I was walking to it. From a distance, I could see that this guy has something going on. I mean, aside from the bright red hat and umbrella. Curiosity getting the best of me, I had to stop and talk to him.

He let me take his picture then we talked. Knowing that I wanted to use his picture in my blog, I wanted to get his name right. And having nothing to write on or with, I pulled out my wizbang iPhone and recorded his name in the voice recorder. What followed was not what I expected.

Turns out he was just looking around. Asked if he had any of the seafood there he said no, he didn’t have any money. Upon which I instituted my own stimulus program. He accepted my offer to buy him lunch. He had calamari for the first time, some crawfish pie, and an adult beverage in a can. I ate the same, except for the beer. I’m not a big beer drinker.

I didn’t talk about politics with him, on purpose. We seemed to enjoy each others company and I didn’t want to do something that might have spoiled that chance encounter. I mean, it just didn’t seem the time or place to discuss liberal v conservative politics, or to point out that people like President Obama think that I hate black people and poor people because I consider myself allied with the tea party movement.

Lunch with Otis audio

Transcript:

  • Ross: Otis Womak, works at the Coffee Cup restaurant. Are you a cook?
  • Otis: A dish washer.
  • Ross: A dish washer, oh, outstanding.
  • Otis: I was dishes. I {unintelligible) work there for six and a half years. I came over to see my momma and daddy in the nursing home. So I ran down here to some, ya know ….
  • Ross: Get a little seafood?
  • Otis: Yeah. No I didn’t get no seafood I had no money.
  • Ross: Oh man.
  • Otis: I’m broke, today. So I go over there (unintelligible)
  • Ross: Ya wanna go eat some seafood?
  • Otis: Huh!
  • Ross: Come on with me.

It all worked out just fine. I’m satisfied in knowing that we both had a good meal and some fellowship from complete strangers. I gave him a ride home and called it a day.

China, Economy, Energy, Europe, Organized Labor, Politics

Stimulus Spending, For What? For Who?

With the economy still in recession, and the President still touting his American Jobs Act, Americans are becoming more skeptical about what all the stimulus spending has done for them. And the news about questionable stimulus spending and special deals is beginning to bubble up to the surface. Some new, some old.

Old news that is coming around again is the Fisker Automotive  (now Tesla Motors) luxury electric sports car that Vice President Al Gore invested in. That company got a half billion dollars for so-called green jobs. It is an electric car. It is a luxury car with a 50 mile range in total electric mode. Big investment for no market. But it did create jobs, in Britain and Finland.

The Fisker Karma sedan is priced at $87,400, with buyers eligible for a $7,500 credit on their Federal income tax returns.

Want one? Call them up and put down your $25,000 deposit. They’ll let you know when it is ready. Sell price? $87,400 to over $109,000.

So we subsidize a car company whose target market is “millionaires and billionaires,” then we give them $7,500 more of our tax dollars to incentivize them to buy it. All that from the guy that calls himself a ‘warrior for the middle class.’

Then there is the Solyndra scandal (Solar-Gate?) that wasted another half billion taxpayer dollars. That solar panel company declared bankruptcy not long after receiving your half billion dollars. Another big investment in an industry where there is no market. Officers of that company are big-time campaign fundraising bundlers for President Obama. Now those green jobs went directly to China. And Solyndra’s execs are pleading the 5th in Congressional hearings about it.

Are you seeing a pattern here of connected democrats and Big Labor being on the receiving end of millions and billions of your (and your grandkid’s) tax dollars? All in the name of stimulus and green jobs.

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.

 

Organized Labor, Politics

Labor To Obama, Where’s Mine?

Labor Union chiefs are not happy with President Obama. They bought and paid for his election with “grand visions of pushing through a sweeping agenda that would help boost sagging membership and help revive union strength.”

Now labor unions are talking about ending the symbiosis between them and the Democratic party. They will stand by him for re-election, using their SEIU goons where necessary. What’s different is that they have come to the realization that, like any other business, they have to grow their business (membership) on their own. Sink or swim. Thankfully, they simply can’t count on the government making laws to do it for them.

The AFL-CIO’s president, Richard Trumka, says it’s part of a new strategy for labor to build an independent voice separate from the Democratic Party.

Big Labor is facing a new reality alright. They are beginning to see that it is not the job of the federal government to boost union rolls or union jobs. Or at the very least, that President Obama can’t deliver what they paid for. They shouldn’t feel singled out though. President Obama hasn’t a clue how to create permanent jobs for anyone, union or otherwise.

Link: Labor unions adjust to new reality under Obama  |  It’s Not A Story About Wisconsin