Mr Bos,
Apologies up front everyone for my surly nature, but I'm in a foul mood
these days. To coin a term w/o casting aspersions, I do not suffer
fools gladly.
Politics is too important to be left to politicians - else we are ruled
by our lessors. What could be more "political" than GwB removing wage
standards for the poorest people blown over and flooded out? This
Grover Norquest initiated dollar-vacuum is nothing but a valentine for
the corporate bottom line... exemplified by the no-bid contracts this
administration extends to their friends {but that's not political,
r-i-g-h-t}.
Answer this: would our Dear Leader decree executives take pay cuts?
Hmmm?
On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:41 PM, Matthew and Julie Bos wrote:
On 9/30/05 10:16 AM, "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Today I wrote a letter urging my member of Congress to sign on
to legislation reinstating the wage protections enshrined in the
Davis-Bacon Act. Two hundred representatives and 30 senators
have already signed on. These numbers are encouraging, but they
are not enough. Please join me by calling on your member of
Congress to support the "Fair Wages for Hurricane Victims Act."
The people of the Gulf Coast are counting on us.
Why is it so important to keep this piece of racist depression-era
crap on
the books? Enshrined? Don't make me puke. Thanks for taking the
party
line and avoiding any rational thought on this issue.
Excuse me, but what about this Davis Bacon wage act is racist?
Just what is your definition of racism?
The American middle class didn't grow large until wage/union rules were
enacted under the New Deal. In case you haven't paid attention there
are a heck-o-lot more po' white folk in America than po' black folk
affected by this law - and all of them need to work.
H-e-l-l-o, consumer confidence at 15-yr low now and societal leadership
is rudderless.
Have you ever lived in New Orleans? How about Europe? Try comparing
and contrasting the difference in living in these two places and it
becomes all-too clear what Truman's Marshall Plan did for a broken WWII
Europe... full medical, six-week paid vacations, strong union laws,
proportional democracy rather than winner-takes-all... -vs- what the
rump Hoover Republicans {who had brought us the Great Depression} did
to hold off such protections here in America - and what Busheviks have
done these last few years to obscure these benefits further. It's only
since Reagan-era dismantling of what little protections FDR did bring
about that we've seen a steady decline in the 50's Cleaver model
one-income household ... until now two parents working is the NORM as
we try to maintain the fiction we are still The Greatest Nation and it
can't be improved: family values, really?
Did you dismiss {or even notice} that last month the US saw another 1.1
million people added to the poor house and in this same week the
minimum wage {not even a Mr Cleaver living wage} celebrated 8 years w/o
change? BTW - that's four years of poverty increases in a row for GwB
policies = 8 million people. Can your wage-cut respond to the
ever-increasing numbers of citizens here who don't have health
insurance anymore - even as America pays more than any other per
capita?
Damn right it's political - so what!?! It's how we resolve issues.
I'm a self-employed software entrepreneur {when we have a functional
economy} and I am all-too aware of what a molasses-factor Europe's
full-employment approach can do to productivity, but overall their
methods are proving a happy scared-less and satisfied populace is
actually better than the industrial feudalism Banana Republicans drive
us towards.
Here, start educating yourself:
http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/
Global+Competitiveness+Programme%5CGlobal+Competitiveness+Report
... and this begs the question, if "terrorists" hate us for our freedom
and way of life, then why aren't they attacking Finland?
How does reducing wages on the hardest hit get them rebuilding lives
faster?
After all the volunteers go home, and they will, you will still have
two to
three years of rebuilding to do. How are you going to get all the
skilled
workers down there? I'm sure IBEW workers from NYC are just jumping
at the
chance to earn 9 bucks an hour. Do you have any kind of evidence of
these
5.15 jobs? An ad in the paper to prove me wrong?
Your comparing apples and oranges as each discipline and sector of the
building process has it's own wage standards and quality regiments.
But, OK, how about those news reports of flatbeds full of mexican
workers driving by black evacuees to do cleanup work around hotels that
_somehow_ couldn't be used to house evacuees? What? Oh, sorry, those
stories don't make it to Fox News, so you might not have looked around
and seen the suffering.
Speak no Evil, See no Evil, Hear no Evil...
This isn't about wages and you know it. It's about government work and
union jobs and the nice cozy relationship enjoyed between the two.
Everybody loves to complain about Haliburton, but if they were strident
AFL-CIO you wouldn't hear one thing about them. Like the unions have
never
overcharged the US taxpayer for any government project.
Government work like no-bid contracts by BushCo buddies? Unions are at
an all-time low and you want to kick them while they are at their
lowest as some sort of feel-good therapy punching bag - get real! Can
you spell, STRAWMAN? Military contractors routinely swipe more than
unions ever "overcharged," OMFG haven't you noticed the Pentagon has
{yet again} been unable to show where trillions of dollars have gone
to... but these gangs are run by republican 'xecs and that's somehow OK
- while making us all-too vulnerable while they play musical chairs
{and beds}. I have beefs with the so-called left, but at least
Democrats seem to get the jobs done for less money. Gore scored
significant points for driving efficiency in government and Clinton
managed to keep scandal to a minimal ... look at what a wretched week
the uber-R party has just presented.
Here, observe the ghoulish nature of this, well, crime syndicate as
executives feed on the dead...
http://wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=3851853
Another no-bid deal for Bush supporters that explains why corpses were
left to rot so long in New Orleans: haggling over a spendy contract
that volunteers would have started in on for free and out of true
respect for the dead.
Do I detect the acrid hot-air of Rush Limbaugh & Co filling your sails?
You ask for rational discussion... how about factual & logical?
As Heinlein {via Lazarus Long} said, "Man is not a rational animal, he
is a rationalizing one."
RELATED ASIDE: Meanwhile, no-bid private armies {like Blackwater}
disarm citizens in their own homes and are accountable to no-one {so
like in that other lawless neoCon dystopia, Iraq} and are heavier armed
than any National Guard walking the French Quarter ... where's the NRA
on this?
> insert deafening silence <
Oh, hmmm, I guess they were just a gun lobby astro-turf front after all.
I won't be supporting the "Rebuild New Orleans With Union Labor or
Else Act"
or whatever it really is called. You could also explain to me how
your
motives are not political in nature and only in the best interest of
the
people affected by these storms.
Realize that any person in the skilled trades down there has more than
enough work to keep them busy for years to come. They can turn down
any work
that won't pay them what they think they are worth. So can the
unskilled.
They are people, not victims. Get your hands off them.
LoL - As though you separate yourself from politics here, or have you
elevated it to theology yet? Kinda hard to tell from here.
Hey, tax-cuts kill. When administrations starve needed infrastructure
with excuses {demonstrable lies} about INVASION & OCCUPATION
masquerading as a War on Terror fuel no-bid contracts even as 1st
responders with amphibious gear get shipped to a desert war, while
"privateering" the extremely effective 90's era FEMA into catatonia &
cutting yet more no-bid {and top-shelf priced} deals ... I think
there's plenty of argument for Death By Bureaucracy here. Shall we
spar?
My Spidey sixth-sense is tingling: I see debt people.
Your desire to push income down is like a hand shoving a working mother
below the water just in time for the new & cruel bankruptcy laws to
come into effect. You know, the ones that this Republican congress set
up so credit card companies get 1st dibs on assets and income BEFORE
CHILD SUPPORT payments can proceed through. I repeat my smirk: family
values, puh-lease!
Again, how does depressing wages help communities rebuild?
On 10/1/05 2:52 PM, "Julia Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Without the "prevailing wage" stuff in place for LA (or TX
construction,
in the wake of Rita) there will probably be MORE people illegally
working on the construction, because it'll be easier to haul them in
and
pay them less. (Not that that's not going to happen anyway.)
There still isn't enough electricians in all of LA, MS, and AL to
cover all
the damage done by Katrina. How are you going to get other
tradespeople to
go down there if the prevailing wage is lower than their home market?
I am asking that very question, of you.
It is illogic on the face of it, your argument makes mine easier... if
the demand is there, wages will rise - except when outside Fed
influences artificially undercut working people in this way.
Depressing wages won't bring people in, except where wages are ALREADY
lower than this New & Improved model BushCo pushes.
This zero-sum Devil-Take-The-Hindmost approach also ignores the call of
good-hearted people who often put up with lower wages, or awful
conditions when it's towards a good cause. I myself may go down there
to help friends rebuild their lives, for instance.
I think that between Rob and myself, we probably know a little more
about construction in Texas than you do, at least in terms of who
works
in it and how much they're paid. And our reactions to the LA
construction are colored by *our* knowledge, which is somewhat
different
from what someone in Michigan knows.
I agree. It doesn't make me wrong or that I don't know what I am
talking
about. On the whole, the Act sounds more politically moviated than
anything
else.
Matthew
You came on strong all full of opinion, so I don't mind rolling up my
sleeves here and entering this swinging. I call a spade a spade when I
see it, and sorry, you are wrong on a number of fronts. You appear
ready to drag America back to some Dickens' world of Have Nots -v- Have
Lots, as though the work of the Greatest Generation should be
dismantled as the oldest of them watch. There's a way to show honor to
those who "saved the world" from Nazi's, heh?
Have Republicans no shame?
I have never let this so-called conservative noise-making go unanswered
when I'm out and about and I see no reason to let such sociopathic
philosophy spread further unchecked. Please reconsider your stance and
evaluate the RESULTANTS of what you see around you instead of the
slogans people SAY - we may have more common ground than first
appearance.
I used to be an electron-slinger, but now I'm an atom-smasher.
Before you tilt at windmills ... how many construction jobs {hammer &
tongs in hand, not mgr/owner checklist clipboard or painful
check-signing} have you been involved in these last few years of this
so-called "Free Market"? Under this absurd administration I've watched
Enron gangs goose the 5th largest economy into dragging America into
recession as it tanks my high tech sector into utter collapse. Those
rare development efforts have been shipped over to IndiaCo under an
explicit agenda set by blue-blood Republican executives. I've lost my
house, profession, insurance etc, and only rediscovering my old high
school era handyman skills doing home renovation has kept my head high.
Let me guess: you're one of those
'pull-yerselves-up-by-the-bootstraps' crowd that inherited most of your
money: yes-or-no?
My favorite tool is a Stilleto Ruger Titanium 14oz hammer when I'm not
mudding sheetrock or laying clear-water method ceramic tile. I'd
shovel shite to keep my family going ... what's your cred?
Flame "Off"
- Jonathan Gibson -
www.formandfunction.com/word
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