http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vid...tches_out.html

Good luck with that, Mr Hoffa.

 

Read that. Pathetic, and I'm union and a Tea Party supporter. Besides, that type rhetoric is only wrong on the other side of the aisle.

 

OK, to get the MSM slant on it, I searched from google, "Hoffa obama event MI"

CNN was close, the title was : "Hoffa: 'Take out' congressional Republicans"
- Not too much minimizing of the rhetoric Hoffa was passing around...
- This also was not on the front page.
- The only direct hit from CNN home page : :Hoffa: You can't deal with the tea party".

Any other in the google search list had Hoffa's quote as the headline : "Take These Son Of Bitches Out ..."

google search for "hoffa MI" lead back to 200 with the topic of looking for his dad ???

Go right to MSNBC, and search on the site for the term Hoffa, the 1st result :
"Tea party calls on Obama to rebuke union chief"
- Sure make it look like the Tea Party is strong arming Obama for nothing...
The article starts out already making the Tea Party look not the best.
- The quote was not given until half way through the article..

- nothing on the front page at MSNBC about the topic, you need to search for it.

Tell me the MSM is not a Democratic FUD machine....

 

Gotta love the thug tactics of the unions. My favorite part is that the White House has "no comment" at this time. I thought Obama was calling for an end to this type of rhetoric?

Your right SSCULLY (as usualy) the MSM coverage (or non-coverage) of this has been, yet again, a total failure. I am so tired of the MSM.

 

It's time to rally the troops for the upcoming election. Who else does Obama have? He is not going to do anything to alienate his base.

 

Finally! A liberal that admits that his base is full of thugs.

 

You are correct he is not going to alienate his base. He is also betting that he can smooth this over with the fence sitters. I think many of those who were sitting on the fence are being overwhelmed by the stupid stuff Obama has done. I think it is getting to the point that he has way too much he has to smooth over, making it an impossible task.

 

Back to check the MSM between calls this AM.

not much has changed ( MSM along with the office of the POTUS - quite ), but I did find another interesting bit from Hoffa on Sunday ( was not looking for it ).

"Union head labels American companies ‘unpatriotic’"
Companies expanding in markets where the economic environment is stronger ( i.e. China ) and would actually produce a return on the investment is considered bad.
Hoffa wants them to deploy that capitol in the US, where the product would cost too much for not only American workers to buy it ( if they had the cash to spend ), but in the markets that are actually doing well.

Good thinking, open plants all over the US to build stuff at $ 12.00 + per hour ( estimated hr wage + 30% employer over ride ), and try to sell it into a market that the average factory worker makes ( after being doubled due to wage pressures ) $ 300.00 per month.
If you figure 160 hrs / month ( 8hr /day - 5 day/week for 4 weeks ) that makes the average per hour wage $ 1.875.

If you want to be able to sell iPods to higher wage earners in China, it cannot be with labor that makes as much as they do.

How many iPods does he think Apple will sell if the labor cost on production increases 12x ?
Would you buy an 8GB 4th gen iPod for $ 894.00 ( estimated 7x cost increase for blended automated manufacturing and related monitoring along with the final assembly of it by hand ) instead of $ 149.00 ?

Have to love this part :
"incentive" ?
Sounds like a carrot or more than likely a stick to make it happen.
Either it would be JCI - MI battery plant type incentives ( that the US will be paying for decades on ) or it would be trade agreement hits for US companies that import their final product into the US ( does this include Canada for Ford trucks ? )

he we got, crank up the FUD machine, and blame the big bad companies for not running a charity.....

 

There's kind of a way we could compete with foreign manufacturing. Subsidize the manufacturing industry to bring jobs home.

We already do it with gasoline and food, why not go all out? And, I'm not hearing anyone here complaining about farm subsidies or gasoline subsidies, so they must be good!

- Jack

 

If we lowered capital gains taxes and repealed the so-called "free trade" agreements, there would literally be such a great flood of jobs coming back to America that we would not care about illegals crossing our border to better their lives.

Subsidies in agriculture have artificially inflated food prices and have even helped drive up the cost of gasoline and corn because of the ethanol subsidies.

 

Keep in mind we do not see eye to eye on a lot of things....
Using the quote below, the subsidies you are referring to I think are the tax credits.
US manufacturing companies ( GM, Ford, GE, etc ) already get 4 of the 5 that "big oil" get.

This is in the form of a tax credit, which is not paying corp taxes, vs a subsidies which generally mean paying money to the company ( I am using a common definition of the word, where maybe you were using it more generically ?? ).

So to suggest providing some sort of financial incentive ( in addition to what is already in place ) to US companies to bring jobs back is not helping the shortage of money that the govt needs to run the current programs.

Gasoline subsidies are FUD from Redd and the Senate Majority, instead of working on the budget when they were supposed to be.

Oil companies get 1 additional tax credit usage that other US manufactures get 4 of the 5 already. If I am missing some other special financial incentive other than the method that oil companies get to use for the oil field accounting, please let me know. It very well could be there, and I missed it. The accounting method on oil fields is a small number that oil companies gets ( in total for all US oil companies, it is ~ $ 1B per year in tax credits ), when compared to the other 4 of the 5 that all US companies already get.

Agriculture, farmers I think are in the last, or 1 year past the last in terms of subsidies. This is an actual check paid to 'family farms' to make them competitive with the production farms ( economy of scale ).
The money paid to them is not reflected in the cost of the product on the open market, the cost of corn or soybeans is what the market floats to.

Let's assume you can get the jobs back, what it the finished product going to cost in the long run.
Can the govt offset the cost for only Apple in their production numbers, to keep the prices the same ? To give you an idea, Apple for Q1CY2011 posted ~ $25B in revenue. Can the US govt afford to offset the cost increase on this much revenue for 1 company ? Keep in mind, this is the US govt offsetting the cost for an iPod purchased in China or India ( do you really want your tax dollars going to this ? ).

This starts to look like the JCI MI battery plant deal. Pump in a few millions dollars to get 150 jobs. it cost the Govt $ 2M each right now ( in undisclosed monetary support ) and JCI had to pony up 1:1, so JCI has another $2m per job invested.
I did the calculations for the govt to recoup just the money ( sans interest ) and it would blow the anticipated cost reductions in batteries for cars, making electric cars more affordable to the US car purchasers.
So either the US is buying jobs, or the cost savings are not going to be passed to the consumer ( can't have both ).

There might be some room in the trade deal with the likes of China, but if China gets their foot stomped on, where is the money going to come from to fund these programs ( is the US Treas going to print more money to buy t-bills ??, look out QE47 here we come ).

The guestimates below are not union wages, which is what Hoffa is talking about, or what Obama refers to with living wages. Use those numbers, and that 149.00 iPod is going to easily cost $ 1K + ( not going to sell too many at that cost, and can the govt keep up with paying 800.00 per iPod sold ? ).

The money has to come from somewhere, and the Govt already has a spending problem. Providing monetary relief to companies to bring jobs back is only going to multiply the spending problem that is here today.

 

Steve, I agree absolutely that, "Providing monetary relief to companies to bring jobs back is only going to multiply the spending problem that is here today." My suggestion was not entirely serious. But, Government subsidies DO keep consumer prices artificially low. I suspect if we had to pay the true cost of gasoline at the pump, we'd probably drive smaller cars.

And I'd really like to close down the "production farms". Give the entire industry back to family farms.

But seriously, rather than taxes, I see manpower costs as the driving factor that has moved production off shore. I'm sure taxes DO play a part, but, why then did I just hear that corporations were reporting record profits last quarter (after taxes)? Somehow, I feel that if a corporation has corporate headquarters in America, you tax them on their earnings regardless of where the goods are actually produced.

Apple, since you brought it up, used to make all their products in-house. Then, someone got the bright idea of moving production to the Far East, where they could react to changing demand quicker and labor costs were cheaper. It was a big win for Apple and a loss for American workers.

But no one wants to pay more for goods. Most people won't "buy locally" for that reason. We try. A lot of our food comes from local Farmer's Markets, but we run out of options when buying other commodities pretty quickly. I know Intel still has Fab plants in the US, so I feel OK with them, but, are there any other electronics made here?

Since no one wants to pay more, it rules out import taxes that would help level the playing field for American production.

Yet, some countries seem to be making a go of it. Norway and Germany come to mind. Both have extremely socialistic forms of government. Germany's "public debt" is actually higher than ours, but more of it is internal. Norway's public debt is lower than ours. Both countries enjoy a very high standard of living.

I don't have the answer, and I fear no one does. It just seems common sense to me that to get things under control, we need to cut spending AND, increase revenue.

- Jack

 

Sorry I missed that point ( yet again ) .

True, if the oil companies did not get the tax credits, we would pay more at the pump. Then again, 4 of those 5 tax credits are also given to Ford, so it could be we would not be buying trucks if all those tax credits were pulled equally.

That is what I was getting at with the comparison of wages in China ( even after a huge wage inflation ) and the cost of a US made iPod.
notice the new ones are larger units ( part technology advancement ) and lower cost than the US made ones.

Not too sure which companies are recording record profits, companies are reporting profits higher than last year, but most are still off the mark from the top in 07/08. I saw this bit of fact back when the Senate was headline grabbing with "big oil". Oil companies were making more than the previous year, but still off the highs.

Companies are taxed on where the product is sold, not made.
Those iPods that are made in China, and sold in the US, Apple pays US taxes on.
If the iPod is made in the US and sold in China, they pay taxes in China ( we know people in China could not afford a US made iPod ).
Same as the states here, if a mellon is grown ( made ) in CA or AZ, and sold in IL, IL collects the tax on the sale of it.

True, but companies are in business to make money. Nothing more. You might have Apple stock in your IRA, if you do I am sure you were happy with that decision.

Very true, but made in the US stopped a lot of people from accumulating tons of stuff for the heck of it. I can recall what a US made craftsman socket set cost back in the late 70s ( got mine as a xmas / b-day present combo ). Today you can buy 3 sets from Sears for the same money, and this is dollar for dollar, no NPV added to the amount.


Add to this, China would be all over dumping or letting t-bill auctions go to high interest rates.

Germany also has economic growth ( that is about to get wacked with the Euro zone piling on the debt ), and unemployment at 7% ( after what they considered an unreasonable 8.4% ). Part of the debt is for social programs, UE ins is a bit different there, as well as the inclusion of underemployment payments ( where you got any job you could, and the govt paid the remainder to what you were making ).

 

Geesh, the answers to our economic woes are out there Jack. It's just our gov't seems to do the opposite, and often. Curious.

What's that old Einstein saying about insanity...