Ray,
At 13:49 29/03/2012, you wrote:
(REH) I agree with your second statement. The
kiss up to whomever is elected at the
moment. Did the European governments default
after WWII? Would they have been able to
succeed over the past seventy years had they
been required to pay for the kinds of military
they supported prior to the World
Wars? What would Europe look like today if
America had not paid the bill to defend them during the Cold War?
(KH) Never mind the Cold War. Never mind Marshall
Aid. What about WWII itself? If the Japanese
hadn't bombed Pearl Harbour then public opinion
in America would have remained strongly against
helping the UK to try and regain the rest of
Western Europe from the Germans. Without this
support, Roosevelt couldn't lift a finger to help
until Pearl Harbour came along. The UK would
certainly have been invaded, too, together with a
few of our colonies. Once Germany had got access
to the Baltic oilfields then Russia would also
have been finished soon afterwards. With the
science, technology and work ethic of the
Germans, America would have faced a Europe that
was a much more formidable foe than communist Russia.
Keith
Even today we pay more to support World
governing than all of the rest of the world
combined. If we paid the same amount for our
military as you do we wouldn't be bankrupt at all.
REH
From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:08 AM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Ray Harrell
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Could it be that the
Democrats are better at and for business?
At 06:55 29/03/2012, Ray wrote:
Could it be that business will go the way of the
Classical Arts in the hands of the Republicans. A 98% decline?
No. Business will remain healthily in the hands
of the 20-class, as will the Classical Arts. As
to Republicans, I don't think the 20-class
attach a great deal of importance to them, or
the Democrats. Whether both parties, or the
present form of Western government, will
actually survive on the other side of the
present national bankruptcies is a moot point.
Keith
REH
March 28, 2012 NYTimes
Business Bets on the G.O.P. May Be Backfiring
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/jonathan_weisman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>JONATHAN
WEISMAN
WASHINGTON Big business groups like the
Chamber of Commerce spent millions of dollars in
2010 to elect Republican candidates running for
the House. The return on investment has not always met expectations.
Even though money for major road and bridge
projects is set to run out this weekend, House
Republican leaders have struggled all week to
round up the votes from recalcitrant
conservatives simply to extend it for 90 or even
60 days. A longer-term
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/transportation/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>transportation
bill that contractors and the chamber say is
vital to the recovery of the construction
industry appears hopelessly stalled over costs.
At the same time, House conservatives are
pressing to allow the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/export-import-bank-of-the-us/index.html?inline=nyt-org>U.S.
Export-Import Bank, which has financed exports
since the Depression, to run out of lending
authority within weeks. The bank faces the
possibility of shutting its doors completely by
the end of May, when its legal authorization expires.
And a host of routine business tax breaks from
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/wind_power/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>wind
energy subsidies to research and development tax
credits cannot be passed because of Republican
insistence that they be paid for with spending cuts.
Business groups that worked hard to install a
Republican majority in the House equated
Republican control with a business-friendly
environment. But the majority is first and
foremost a conservative political force, and on
key issues, its ideology is not always aligned
with commercial interests that helped finance election victories.
Free market is not always the same as
pro-business, said Barney Keller, spokesman for
the conservative political action committee Club for Growth.
There could be real-world consequences to the
conservative rebellion. The 90-day extension of
the highway trust fund that House Republican
leaders say they will pass this week in lieu of
a broad highway bill would keep existing
projects moving for now. But business groups say
few new government-funded infrastructure
projects can get under way without longer-range
certainty about federal backing.
The majority of the work is supposed to go out
in spring and get done by the fall, said Jeff
Shoaf, senior executive director of government
affairs at the Associated General Contractors, a
group that donated $1 million to candidates in
2010, 80 percent of that to Republicans.
Instead of spending 60 or 70 percent of their
budgets, theyre going to cut back to 50 or 40
percent to make sure they have some cash in the fall.
Exports have been one of the bright spots of the
fragile recovery, but without Export-Import Bank
financing, companies could struggle to complete
contracts with overseas buyers. Those buyers
will most likely turn to foreign competitors
whose governments have more robust versions of the bank, businesspeople say.
Theres not a bank in the United States thats
going to loan money to that customer of mine in
Argentina to buy my airplane, said David
Ickert, vice president of finance at Air
Tractor, which makes crop-dusting and
firefighting airplanes in Olney, Tex. There is
not a free-market system that operates like
that. It does not exist. We need the Ex-Im Bank, period.
Like so much else in Congress these days, it is not that simple.
With its charter set to expire in May, the bank
is the target of conservative groups. They are
making the case to Republicans that the bank,
created in 1934 to finance sales to the Soviet
Union, has no place in a free-market system.
Club for Growth is holding it up as the next
Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, crowding out private
lending and offering dangerous loans that
ultimately could be left in the laps of the taxpayer.
Those groups are just wrong, period, said Jay
Timmons, president of the National Association
of Manufacturers and a generous personal contributor to Republican candidates.
The bank is financed with a small percentage of
each loan it makes to foreign buyers of American
exports, producing $3.4 billion in profits for
the federal government over the last five years.
Drew Greenblatt, president and owner of Marlin
Steel Wire Products, in Baltimore, said he
recently got a rush order for wire baskets from
a firm in Singapore, assuming he could finance
the sale. He went to the Export-Import Bank and
paid a one-half-percent fee on the loan. The
bank guaranteed 95 percent of the loan. He kept
the plant working through the weekend and completed the sale.
Think about all the winners in this
transaction, he said. Ex-Im got half a point.
Baltimore City steelworkers got extra hours. I
got extra profits to meet payroll, and hopefully
I got a client who will reorder from me.
If anything, the anger over the stalled
transportation bill is even more acute, business
lobbyists say. The Senate, in a bipartisan vote,
has passed a surface transportation bill that
would keep money flowing for two years. The House, however, appears stuck.
Republican leaders first tried a five-year bill
that would be financed in part by opening land
to
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/energy-environment/oil-petroleum-and-gasoline/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>oil
drilling. But division over the drilling
provisions and its scant funding for mass
transit brought opposition from moderate
Republicans, while conservatives objected to the
amount of federal largess in the bill. Business
lobbyists, contractors and local government
officials from both parties have pressed the
House to move forward, so far to no avail.
John Engler, president of the Business
Roundtable, which represents the chief
executives of major American corporations, said
in an era of scarcity, anything that cost money
was receiving a high level of scrutiny. And the
highway bill is more contentious than those in
the past. Previous bills have been financed
mainly by the federal
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/gasoline_tax_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>gasoline
tax, but rising
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/fuel_efficiency/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>fuel
efficiency is depleting gas tax receipts as infrastructure needs increase.
Difficulty is no excuse, said Mr. Engler, a
former Republican governor of Michigan. Were
letting people say its hard and so we wont go
forward, he said. That is what the business community cannot understand.
To conservative groups, fresh eyes on issues
have produced fresh, small-government thinking.
The Export-Import Bank, for instance, wanted a
new, long-term authorization with an expanded
loan limit and broader authority. Instead,
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia is
drafting a 13-month reauthorization that would
demand the Obama administration begin
international talks to phase out export-lending
subsidies globally, force the bank to be more
transparent in its lending practices and rein in its loan portfolio.
Some Republicans are growing worried about the
ramifications of these fights. Senator Lindsey
Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has
pressed to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank,
but at the insistence of Senator Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky, the Republican leader, he joined
his party in opposing Democratic efforts to add
reauthorization to a small-business finance
bill. Now Mr. Graham says his party has to find
a way to move a stand-alone bill, and fast.
Come June, if this program dies, it will be the
end of job creation for thousands of businesses
for no good reason, he said. And itll happen
on our watch, with our fingerprints on it.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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