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LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week of July 20, 2008
The link to this electronic newsletter is being e-mailed to 6,500+
Jefferson County Democrats
We hope you will forward the link to your own e-mail list.
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CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS
Updated on a regular basis
Bulletin Board:
- The Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 5:00 pm at Democratic Headquarters,
- 640 Barret Avenue .
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Extension of Unemployment will Benefit 30,000 Kentuckians
Yarmuth lauds enactment of crucial economic provision
Congressman John Yarmuth (KY-3) praised the enactment of an extension of unemployment for three million Americans who have last their jobs and exhausted regular unemployment benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.
“This provides badly needed
relief for more than 30,000 Kentuckians who have lost or are in jeopardy of
losing their benefits,” Congressman Yarmuth said. “With the economy
struggling, many people just need a little extra time in their job searches,
and this will prevent them from having to give up a car or home, skip meals,
or delay healthcare. The extension will also provide a necessary boost for
our entire economy as each dollar invested in unemployment benefits yields
$1.64 for the economy.”Unemployment in Kentucky has increased by 11 percent in the last year, from 113,600 in May 2007 to 127,300 in May 2008. This extension will benefit the twenty percent of unemployed individuals who struggle with joblessness for more than 26 weeks.
Relief will be provided to those who exhausted regular benefits within the last 20 months and are still looking for a job. The benefits will be funded by federal unemployment trust funds.
The provision will aid the more than 900,000 still unemployed Americans, including 8,301 Kentuckians, who have exhausted their unemployment benefits since November 2006 as well as those whose benefits will run out before March of 2009; 2.7 million Americans, 22,000 of whom live in Kentucky.
The unemployment rate surged to 5.5 percent from 5.0 percent in May -- the biggest one-month jump in more than two decades and climbing to the highest level in nearly four years. The unemployment rate is now a full percentage point higher than a year ago, and the U.S. economy has lost jobs for five consecutive months, totaling 324,000 --with the number of people looking for work climbing 861,000 to 8.5 million in May.
Louisville residents requiring assistance with unemployment benefits can contact Yarmuth’s downtown office at 582-5129 or call the Kentucky Unemployment Office directly at 502-564-4761.
Bush vetoes Medicare bill.
Today President Bush vetoed the bipartisan Medicare bill that would have prevented a 10.6 percent cut in doctor pay for Medicare fees. His statement explained he objected to roll back elements of the private pay-for-service Medicare Advantage plans. The bill passed both chambers of Congress with veto-proof majorities. Congress will attempt to override the veto “as soon as possible,” said Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for the Senate Finance Committee. “There’s no time to waste.”
GAO Blasts Labor Department Practices
The U.S. Government Accountability Office released two reports Tuesday sharply criticizing the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division for not adequately enforcing the nation’s wage and hour laws.
Presented
during a hearing before the House Education and Labor Committee, the GAO
reports say the Wage and Hour division mishandled thousands of cases over the
past decade and delayed numerous cases for a year or more. As a result, many
workers received reduced or no back pay at all.
“Although the Department of Labor has the necessary tools to fight wage theft, the GAO investigation suggests that the problem of wage theft is only getting worse because of weaker enforcement,” said Committee Chair George Miller (D-CA). “In too many cases, the Wage and Hour Division has simply dropped the ball in pursuing employers that cheat its workers out of their hard earned wages.”
The GAO also criticized the Wage and Hour Division for the noticeable drop off in enforcement actions, calculating actions initiated by the Department on wage and hour violations has dropped from roughly 47,000 in 1997 to fewer than 30,000 in 2007. They also found fines punishing repeat or egregious offenders dropped by nearly 50 percent from 2001 to 2007.
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Yesterday, while discussing his economic agenda in Fairfield, Va., Sen. Barack Obama spoke especially to the concerns of working women.
As shown in Working America’s Ask a Working Woman survey, women are especially vulnerable in the nation’s economic crisis. Working women have less earning power to deal with the high cost of energy, health care and education because they still are paid less than their male counterparts. In fact, the WAGE Project estimates the wage gap costs the average full-time U.S. woman worker between $700,000 and $2 million over the course of her work life.
Obama says that in a U.S. economy that works for all, women must receive fair treatment in the workplace:
We won’t truly have an economy that puts the needs of the middle class first until we ensure that when it comes to pay and benefits at work, women are treated like the equal partners they are.
Obama’s campaign has released a report laying out what his economic agenda would mean for women and for all working families. Among his proposals:
- A tax cut for middle- and lower-income individuals and families.
- Expanding child care tax credits and the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- Providing paid sick leave to workers.
- Closing the gender gap in paychecks.
- Emphasizing early childhood education and after-school and summer learning programs for children.
Obama, who co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act and has pledged to sign it as president, said the freedom to form unions was an essential part of ensuring that the economy works for women.
I’ll work as a partner with our unions, because we know that when it comes to standing up for women’s rights in the workplace, our unions are second to none—and it’s time we starting giving them the support they deserve.
Also in yesterday’s speech, Obama referred to Sen. John McCain’s top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, who this week claimed the nation’s economic crisis is all in our heads and said that working families’ financial concerns amount to “whining.”
Let’s be clear, when people are struggling with the rising costs of everything from gas to groceries, when we’ve lost 438,000 jobs over the past six months, when typical families have seen their incomes fall nearly $1,000 since 2000, this economic downturn isn’t in our heads. It isn’t whining to ask for more than just psychological relief.
And I think it’s time we had a president who doesn’t deny our problems—or blame the American people for them—but takes responsibility and provides the leadership to solve them. That’s the kind of president I will be.
Obama has made the economy a focus of his campaign this week. On Monday, he gave an economic address in St. Louis. In a Tuesday appearance, he criticized the 2005 bankruptcy bill, a finance industry-designed creation that made it harder for families to deal with economic shocks like medial problems and the current mortgage crisis. Obama proposed new rules on bankruptcy to protect seniors and military families. His campaign also released a new ad stressing relief on energy prices and delivered a speech in Ohio today on energy.
McCain, meanwhile, has taken economic positions that starkly contrast with Obama’s proposals.
- In a town meeting today, he claimed to support equal pay for women, despite a long record of opposing laws that would ensure equal pay for equal work, like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
- Just this week, he attacked Social Security.
- He tried to distance himself from Gramm’s insulting comments that Americans are having a “mental recession”—but McCain has said repeatedly that our economic problems are “psychological.”
- His economic plans center around hundreds of billions in corporate tax cuts, not relief for working families.
McCain and his campaign team just don’t get it when it comes to the economy. Obama is proposing bottom-line solutions that would help working families weather the storm.
Comments:
Williams needs reality check,
By DAVID TRIMBLE, Georgetown News-Graphic
Dear Senator Williams: You are NOT the Republican governor of Kentucky. Period.
You
represent a single district in south-central Kentucky that inexplicably
keeps sending you to Frankfort to spearhead an effort to create
unprecedented logjams in the Ken_tucky legislature.I'm sure your pork-producing prowess is why they keep electing you to office, but in doing so they are not doing the rest of Kentucky any favors.
Sure, Gov. Steve Beshear has had his share of issues in his brief time
in office.
He missed the mark badly in seeking enhanced gambling in Kentucky.
But Sen. Williams' unbridled misuse of legislative process and powers has
had no small influence on the lack of progress in the past months since
Beshear's inauguration.
This is nowhere more clearly portrayed than in Williams' recent comments
that he "has no relationship" with Gov. Beshear, in the context of
discussing whether Beshear would support Democratic state senate
candidates in this fall's elections.
Williams apparently thinks it is acceptable for him to play any sort of
partisan political games with the legislative agenda and process, while it
is unacceptable, in his eyes, for the Democratic governor to support his
own party's candidates.
The clear threat being made by Williams is that he will continue to clog
up the legi_slature unless Beshear stays on the sidelines. In so doing,
Williams is holding a gun to the head of the people of Kentucky for the
sole purpose of political coercion and flexing his own political muscle.
Just look at his recent tactics and actions.
No doubt believing he is entitled to at least as grand an office as the
governor, Williams pushed through funding of ridiculously opulent
renovations of legislative offices, including two offices for himself, at
the cost of millions of dollars, while at the same time every other part
of state government was receiving huge budget reductions.
He pushed through an increase in the legislative budget, including pay
raises for legislators, in this same context.
In a time where a judge has had to order public defenders to defend
mentally-ill individuals in commitment proceedings, which they had stopped
for lack of funds, how can Williams justify wide-screen televisions and
cherry paneling?
Williams abused the legislative process in this recent session by delaying
sending bills to the House until the last few moments of the session, in
an attempt to force uninformed House votes just to get some bills pass_ed.
While I don't generally think too highly of Jody Richards' management of
the House, in this instance he at least grew some spine and refused to be
plowed under by Williams.
The result, however, for the people of Kentucky is that yet another
legislative session passed, costing millions of dollars, where far too
little of the people's business was accomplished.
Now Williams is embroiled in a lawsuit against the governor over the road
budget.
Where it has typically been the prerogative of the executive branch to
select and designate which projects will be done, Williams has tried this
time to usurp that function and take it for himself as the
pseudo-executive he thinks he is, by having the legislature pass a highway
budget designating specific projects.
Gov. Beshear, defending the powers of the executive branch, vetoed the
legislation.
Now he and Williams are dueling in court over whether the veto was done in
a timely fashion, no doubt funding the court action from state dollars
that should be spent on more substantive needs and services.
Bottom line, Sen. Williams needs a sound civics lesson on the American
system of government.
Even as Senate majority leader, he is still only one legislator elected
from a small portion of Kentucky.
He was not elected statewide as was the governor, and it is not his place
to act as if he were somehow an "opposition governor."
It is well past time that the partisan nonsense in Frankfort be stopped
and the business of the people be returned to its rightful place at the
head of the agenda.
Mr. Williams, if you want to have the title of "leader," then lead and set
aside your personal political agenda from the public arena.
David C. Trimble, a Georgetown resident, is an attorney. His column, The
Bottom Line, appears every Wednesday in the News-Graphic. Readers can find
more of Trimble's writing at his blog,
stillonpatrol.typepad.com,
or e-mail him at
stillonpatrol@hotmail.com.
DAILY GRILL
"To say you're going to get out [of Iraq] on a certain schedule...is the
height of absurdity." -- Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon,
7/15/08
VERSUS
"Set a date to pull out." -- O'Hanlon,
5/18/04
Quotes of the Day
McLaughlin: Obama "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside"
Summary: On The McLaughlin Group, John McLaughlin said: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"
Recent Senate Votes
FISA
Amendments Act of 2008 - Vote Passed (69-28, 3 Not Voting)
The Senate passed this bill to revise U.S. surveillance laws.
Sen. Mitch McConnell voted YES
Sen. Jim Bunning voted YES
Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 - Vote
Agreed to (69-30, 1 Not Voting)
The Senate passed this bill that stops a scheduled 10.6 percent Medicare
physician payment cut.
Sen. Mitch McConnell voted NO
Sen. Jim Bunning voted NO
Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 - Vote Agreed to (63-5, 32
Not Voting)
The Senate passed its version of a housing-recovery package.
Sen. Mitch McConnell voted YES
Sen. Jim Bunning voted Not Voting
Recent House Votes
Electronic Message Preservation Act - Vote Passed (286-137,
11 Not Voting)
The House passed a measure requiring federal agencies to begin storing
e-mail records, according to standards set by the National Archives and
Records Administration.
Rep. Ron Lewis voted NO
Rep. John Yarmuth voted YES
HUMOR
"John
McCain's economic adviser, former Sen. Phil Gramm, is under fire for
calling Americans a bunch of whiners. He also said the country is in a
mental recession. Apparently we're experiencing a mental slowdown. Kind of
like
President Bush." --Jay Leno
"President Bush signed a bill giving phone companies immunity for letting
the government spy on its customers without a warrant. Isn't that
unbelievable? President Bush said 9/11 changed everything. And you know,
he's right, because violating the Constitution and breaking the law used to
mean jail time. Apparently no more." –Jay Leno
"The other day the plane that
Barack Obama was on had some mechanical difficulties and was forced to
land. Well, the National Transportation Safety Board did an inspection on
the plane, and you know what they found? The bolts on the plane were fine,
but apparently
Jesse Jackson had taken some of the nuts off." --Jay Leno
"I'm sure you know by now, Jesse Jackson was overheard saying, and I'll put
this more delicately, that he wanted to
cut Barack Obama's testicles off. And Jesse has been on several news
programs the last couple of days, explaining what he meant by those
comments. Do you need to explain that?" --Jay Leno
"Insiders claim that even though Jesse Jackson supports Barack Obama
publicly for president, privately he doesn't like him. You know, it's kind
of like Bill with Hillary." --Jay Leno
"Today Jesse tried to reach out to Obama, and Obama said, 'Keep your hands
where I can see them!'" --Jay Leno
"Today's New York Times has once again raised the issue that John McCain may not be eligible to be President because he is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Apparently, McCain was born outside of the 13 colonies." --Conan O'Brien
"Jesse Jackson says he's trying to put his remarks about cutting Barack Obama's nuts off behind him and he says that Obama has accepted his apology. In fact, if he's elected, Obama says he'll appoint Jesse Jackson Secretary of 'Nut Cutting.'" --Conan O'Brien
"This week, Barack Obama was endorsed by the U.S. Black Golfers
Association. Not only that, Obama was also endorsed by the Association of
Asian Hockey Players." --Conan O'Brien
"Last night,
Hillary Clinton appeared at a fundraiser with Barack Obama and Obama
told the crowd that Hillary rocks. Then Bill Clinton said the same thing --
but he was talking about Hillary Duff." --Conan O'Brien
"The government of China has banned restaurants from serving dog meat during
the Olympics. This is particularly bad news for the popular Chinese fast
food chain, 'McDachsunds.' --Conan O'Brien
Here are 10 real examples of how Americans
are hurting in the current economy:
HOUSING FORECLOSURES INCREASING: As a
result of the subprime lending crisis, "housing foreclosures nationwide were
up 50% in June compared with the same month in 2007." In California alone,
foreclosures have reached an average of
500 per day.
HOMELESSNESS INCREASING: The number
of homeless people in America over the age of 50 is "steadily
increasing."
HEALTHCARE COSTS RISING: According to
a report by the Government Accountability Office, "health-care
costs are growing much faster than the economy." Costs are rising so
significantly, some Americans are
delaying retirement.
GAS PRICES RISING: The national
average gas price is $4.09, up
33 percent from this time last year. Gas prices are now expected to hit
"$4.25 by the fall and then stay at more than $4 a gallon
until the end of 2009."
JOB LOSSES INCREASING: In the first
six months of this year, a total of
438,000 jobs have been lost, bringing unemployment to 5.5 percent. The
CEO of Bank of America commented, if unemployment continues to rise, "all
bets are off."
FOOD COSTS RISING: "U.S. food prices
rose 4 percent in 2007" -- the
fastest rise in 17 years -- and as a result, food stamps have
considerably less buying power.
HEATING AND ELECTRICITY COSTS RISING:
Heating oil costs across the North are expected to be "up 60 percent from
last year," and utilities across the country are "raising
power prices up to 29%."
REAL WAGES DECLINING: "Slower wage
growth and faster inflation has led to
falling real hourly and weekly earnings for most workers."
LEISURE SPENDING DECLINING: As a
result of the rising cost of living, Americans are "tightening
their belts and thinking twice about spending extra bucks on
entertainment and leisure products."
VALUE OF DOLLAR DECLINING: The dollar
"has
been declining steadily for six years against other major currencies,
undercutting its role as the leading international banking currency."
ADMINISTRATION -- ROVE EVADES CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY: Yesterday, Karl Rove was set to appear under subpoena before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the politicization of the Justice Department. Rove refused, opting instead to leave the country while his lawyer claimed he was "immune" from compelled congressional testimony. Rove was expected to face questions regarding the Bush administration's role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. Last year, Rove dodged a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee relating to similar issues but Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) declined to bring a criminal contempt charge. However, this time Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) has signaled that the House Judiciary Committee will in fact hold a contempt vote later this month. The Committee has already rejected Rove's claim of executive privilege as "not valid" by a 7-1 vote. "Mr. Rove is not above the law and Congress will assert its constitutional role to serve as a check on the power of the executive branch," Sanchez added.
In February, Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, TX
announced that the university will be home to President Bush's $200
million library. The announcement has been met with widespread protests
from faculty, administrators, staff, and even
Methodist ministers. The library will sponsor programs designed to "promote
the vision of the president" and "celebrate" Bush's presidency, while
minimizing the involvement of historians. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove
is reportedly advising the project in "an
informal capacity." On Sunday, the Times of London reported that Stephen
Payne, a major Bush-Cheney campaign fundraiser, was caught on tape offering
access to key members of the Bush administration inner circle in exchange
for "six-figure
donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush's
presidency." As the Times notes, "The revelation confirms long-held
suspicions that favours are being offered in return for donations to the
libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and
safeguard their political legacies." Asked about the report, White House
spokesman Tony Fratto simply responded, "[T]here's
no connection between any official administration actions and the
library."
CHINA ON OUR COASTS: Conservatives from Rudy Giuliani to Dick Cheney have repeatedly claimed that the United States needs to start drilling for off-shore oil because China is taking "American oil" off the coast of Cuba, just "60 miles off the coast of Florida." Cheney exhorted, "Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply." That same day, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) wrote that Castro was allowing drilling "45 miles from the Florida keys." Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) have also raised the specter of Chinese drilling just off U.S. shores. However, this modern invocation of the Red Scare the claim is completely false. As Cheney was forced to acknowledge, "no Chinese firm is drilling" off Cuba's coast. Talking Points Memo has recorded the large number of conservatives hyping the false story. The Washington Post’s Ben Pershing said the China/Cuba oil drilling claim is the "myth that keeps on giving," calling it "just too juicy not to repeat."
'NOT A DROP WAS SPILLED': Offshore drilling advocates know that the specter of oil-slicked beaches would doom their campaign, so they are desperate to wish its environmental impact away. Yesterday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) claimed "not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita." This myth has been told again and again by the likes of Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Mike Huckabee, George Will, and Bill O'Reilly. There were, in fact, major onshore and offshore spills due to the hurricanes. According to the official Minerals Management Service report, the hurricanes caused 124 offshore spills for a total of 743,700 gallons, six spilling 42,000 gallons or more. The largest of these spills dropped 152,250 gallons, well over the 100,000 gallon threshhold considered a "major spill." In addition, the hurricanes caused disastrous spills onshore throughout southeast Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast as tanks, pipelines, refineries and other industrial facilities were destroyed, for a total of 595 different oil spills. The nine million gallons reported spilled were comparable with the Exxon Valdez's 10.8 million gallons, but unlike the Exxon Valdez, they were distributed throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Gulf Coast states, many in residential areas.
ETHICS -- DHS AND HOUSE COMMITTEE OPEN INVESTIGATIONS INTO
PAYNE'S CASH-FOR-ACCESS SCANDAL: Stephen Payne, a longtime Bush
associate who was recently revealed to be
selling access to top Bush administration officials, is now under
investigation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- where Payne
serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Committee -- and the the House
Oversight Committee. A spokesman for DHS called the revelations a "horribly
unfortunate story" and said the department is currently "looking
into the facts." House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA)
wrote to Payne, "If true, this raises serious concerns about the ways in
which foreign interests might be secretly influencing large donations to the
library." Yesterday, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and
Ethics in Washington
explained the legal basis for a criminal investigation of Payne: "By
offering to serve as a conduit to deliver contributions to the Bush library
in exchange for meetings with administration officials, Mr. Payne may have
violated federal law." Though Payne has admitted that his actions could be "perceived
to be bribery," he insists they are legal. Both Payne and the Bush
administration deny that he had "top-level access" to the White House.
Noting the six-figure sums Payne solicited, CREW executive director Melanie
Sloan said, "He wouldn't get paid that way if he couldn't deliver."
Think Fast
Yesterday, the White House renewed its promise to veto legislation that would block payment cuts to doctors treating Medicare patients. This threat comes despite bipartisan support for the bill, which overwhelmingly passed the Senate on Wednesday when Ted Kennedy (D-MA) returned to cast his vote.
Fox News needs a geography lesson. On Wednesday, Fox News reported on Iran's missile tests. The graphic that Fox used to identify the Strait of Hormuz, however, "put the strait in the wrong location, and misspelled 'strait.'" (The graphic spelled it "Straites of Hormuz"). As Huffington Post notes, "For good measure, the Fox reporter also mispronounced 'Hormuz.'" Watch the video here.
Where in the world is Vice President Cheney? Evidently, he's spending time at pony camps. U.S. News caught Cheney recently at a pony camp in Maryland, where "lots of kids and parents approached him for snapshots and he stayed until everybody got their picture." (See a photo of Cheney looking sunburnt and posing with campers here.) "It's quite nice to see that he is just like us sometimes," said Jeanne Coley, a mom of the campers.
The Bush administration's misguided drive to extract Colorado's oil shale "carries none of the Western wisdom acquired over the past century," warns Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), in a Washington Post op-ed today. Oil shale development would require massive amounts of scare Colorado water, and "energy companies are still years away" from knowing whether it can cost-effectively produce oil on a commercial scale.
INTERESTING
New Beshear Chief of Staff
Adam
Edelen, a 33-year-old longtime political junky and former restaurant
executive, has taken over one of the most difficult posts in Kentucky
politics: governor's chief of staff.
He replaced Jim Cauley, 42, who returns to his natural habitat of campaigns and elections after serving as Gov. Steve Beshear's top aide for the first six months of Beshear's term.
Edelen started in politics as a teenager working for Patton — even writing a key political speech for him in 1993 — has worked as an executive for Thomas & King, Inc., and has focused on education through various civic groups.
Edelen, with less than a week on the job under his belt, sat down with the Herald-Leader last week to talk about his vision for the position, the administration and Kentucky. Rest of Story by Ryan Alessi, ralessi@herald-leader.com
Buy American Mention of the Week
Memo to McCain: You’re Wrong, By Roger Simmermaker
Sen. John McCain had it all wrong when he claimed while campaigning in Michigan that the American jobs lost overseas never were coming back. The examples of American jobs returning home are growing. A privately-held company that makes heaters to keep football players warm while on the sidelines recently moved production from China back to Kentucky. A family-owned foundry in Bremen, Ind., is being reactivated once again to manufacture pumps after moving work to China just two years ago. And Crown Battery Mfg. is shuttering a plant in Mexico and adding work to its Ohio factory
But if you're John
McCain, you need some sort of sound byte that attempts to justify your
ongoing, mindless support of a trade policy that has resulted in the massive
slaughter of American manufacturing jobs in this country.
States like the ones mentioned above have been absolutely hammered by globalization and free trade policies. Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have collectively lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs in just the last two years. It doesn’t sound to me like John McCain's claim that "free trade is the best thing that can happen to our nation" (Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2008) possibly could be true.
First we decided to unilaterally make blue-collar workers sacrificial lambs to the new global economy and replace them with workers in China and elsewhere who don't pay a dime's worth of taxes to America. Then the formerly-employed American workers who aren't paying taxes anymore draw taxpayer-funded unemployment benefits while they look for another job. No wonder we have endless budget deficits.
What is John McCain's answer to this massive loss-of-tax-revenue mess? Along with a Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA), which uses hundreds of millions more taxpayer dollars to retrain American workers for the privilege of putting them in unemployment lines, McCain wants massive tax cuts for all corporations (not just ones in manufacturing) to help us "compete." If McCain really wants to do the sensible thing and level the playing field (it's doubtful that he does) so all market participants play be the same set of rules, which would be consistent for any other competitive activity like baseball, badminton or blackjack, the right thing to do is increase the taxes on foreign producers for access to our markets and bring them in line with what our domestic producers are paying.
All that is needed is a simple application of tariffs that McCain's mentor Teddy Roosevelt once said, "…should never be reduced below the point that will cover the difference between the labor cost here and abroad." Increasing taxes (tariffs) on foreign producers is revenue-positive. Decreasing taxes on our domestic producers is revenue-negative. I'm not saying we should raise taxes on domestic producers. I'm saying they should be left alone and we should bring taxes paid by foreign producers up to the same level. That's the best way to level the playing field and provide the U.S. Treasury with needed revenue at the same time to stem the tide of our growing national debt.
But for any jobs to be able to come back to American shores once again, capacity, supplier networks, and factories have to still be here to come back to. Christina Lampe-Onnerud of Boston-Power has a fast-charging, long-lasting notebook computer battery that she thinks just might revolutionize the industry, and she wanted to make it here in the United States. Trouble is that she couldn't find anyone in America to even make a prototype, let alone do the manufacturing in the quantities she envisioned. As Belen, New Mexico-based CEMCO’s CFO put it, "American foundries now can compete head-to-head on cost, but there aren't many foundries, welders, machinists, and quality-control engineers. What we had 10 years ago is gone." CEMCO makes rock-crushing and farm equipment.
Of course we can't expect to recapture all the production that has gone to China in years past. But the recent fall of the dollar and the rise in fuel and transportation costs might influence decisions in our favor in the future. The value of the dollar has decreased 30% since 2002 against many major currencies and wage rates in China are increasing 10% to 15% a year. The cost of shipping a 40-foot container to San Diego from Shanghai, for example, has increased 150% since 2000.
Iron castings manufacturer Donsco previously laid off hundreds of American workers as customers transferred production of oil rig parts, gear boxes, and more to Chinese competitors. Now, Donsco Chairman Art Mann Sr. says his company is flooded with orders from U.S.-based clients. "All of a sudden our customers are saying, 'Whoops, it's cheaper to buy in our backyard.'"
Another example is Tesla Motors, which transferred battery pack assembly work from Thailand back to San Carlos, Calif. The battery packs will be used in the production of Tesla's electric-powered sports car which carries a price tag of $109,000. The low cost of Thailand's factory wages weren’t enough to offset the costs of shipping heavy battery packs across the Pacific Ocean. Tesla's marketing vice-president Darryl Siry said, "It was one of those things that became obvious all of a sudden, and you said, 'Why are we doing this?'"
Hopefully soon most Americans and their legislators will wonder not only, "Why are we doing this?" but also, "Why did we ever start?" The answers to America’s economic problems are right in our own backyard. The answers are to truly level the playing field so all competitors play by the same rules and to buy American whenever possible.
I'm sure the workers of
American and foreign companies alike would find it heartening and
encouraging that all players in the world economy were playing by the same
rules. Of course it's alluring to win in a competition where you're the
underdog, swimming upstream against the tide and prevailing anyway, but
there's no sensible reason to intentionally stack the deck against ourselves
to begin with like we have with our current trade policies. Everyday working
Americans will continue to pay the price until the playing field is level an
d
patriotic consumers have the option to buy American in any industry they
choose to.
Roger Simmermaker is the author of How Americans Can Buy American: The Power of Consumer Patriotism and writes "Buy American Mention of the Week" articles for WorldNetDaily.com and his website www.howtobuyamerican.com. Roger is a member of the Machinists Union and National Writers Union, has been a frequent guest on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, and has been quoted in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and US News & World Report among many other publications.
GOOD NEWS
Not Much good news for working families this week!
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Charles Horton, Treasurer - Tim Longmeyer, Chairman