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2011年11月1日星期二

Why Cain isn't able

Herman Cain is virtually tied with former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts in Iowa and South Carolina. He’s running second here in New Hampshire. Some polls have him ahead of Romney nationally. Everybody’s examining 9-9-9, Cain’s simplified tax system. He’s the talk of the political world.

And coursing beneath that talk is this question, not verbalized but not answered either: Is Cain the 21st-century version of Wendell Willkie, the man Harold L. Ickes called the barefoot boy from Wall Street, the political naif who won the Republican presidential nomination in 1940 and ran to the left of Franklin Roosevelt on some issues, or is he a latter-day version of H. Ross Perot, who flared, flamed out, flared again and flamed out again two decades ago?

All three of them — Willkie, Perot and Cain — used sales pitches that were simple, reasonable, commonsensical. The first two lost their presidential bids. The third almost certainly will do so as well.

In Willkie’s case, the draw of FDR was too strong, the New Deal coalition too durable, the times too fraught to permit a romantic fling with a political novice who had the air of being an alluring first date but probably not a strong candidate for marriage.

In Perot’s case, the fact that he was more peculiar than political did him in. Today almost no one admits to having been a Perot supporter in 1992 — but at one point the Texas billionaire was running ahead of Gov. Bill Clinton in the polls.

Cain presents a certain appeal even in an uncertain world. He’s a businessman, which matches him with Romney. He is black,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their Floor tiles . which matches him with President Barack Obama. He wants taxes low, which matches him with the tea party insurgents who dominate the Republican conversation even if they have not created wholesale Republican conversion.

He’s not primarily a politician, which can be only an advantage in an age when 11 different polls put public disapproval ratings of Congress at more than 80 percent. And he’s not Romney, which for two-thirds of Republican primary voters remains a lure all its own.

So with all that, why do the various establishments — the political establishment,If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, the Republican establishment, the press establishment and the consultancy establishment — believe with unwavering conviction that Cain will eventually become the answer to a trivia question, like Wilbur Mills (Who was the last chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to run for president?) or Endicott Peabody (Which former governor ran for vice president in a New Hampshire primary, even though there was no contest for vice president?) or maybe George Romney (Which onetime governor and presidential candidate was the father of another former governor who ran for president?).

First let’s ask whether all those establishments can be wrong, or, more to the point, whether they are so entrenched that they are out of touch. In short, is the very fact of establishment disregard a validation of the Cain candidacy?

Maybe. If Cain does prevail, that certainly will be the case. But he probably won’t and it’s probably not. The old wisdom of the old order is often wrong — in fact it almost always is wrong, which is why the Maginot Line didn’t work — but the difference here is that the old order still makes the rules and still has power.

This is not the Republican Party of Romney’s father, when wizened elders controlled the political process the way old-time hostesses set out the place cards at dinner. But it’s not a raucous country potluck either, where anyone can sit anywhere and everyone eats family-style. If it were, Romney, whose principal calling card is experience, would not be the front-runner and Rick Perry, the Cal Ripken of the Texas capitol, wouldn’t still be in the race.

Put another way: Mao Zedong said that a revolution was not a dinner party, but for all the talk of Republican revolution, the GOP is still a dinner party. Cain is invited, to be sure, but he is sitting below the salt and pizza is not on the menu.

So what accounts for the Cain surge?

An iron law of presidential politics is that somebody’s got to surge, and this fall it’s Cain. (Sen. Gary W. Hart had his surge in 1984, Bruce Babbitt had his in 1988, Paul E. Tsongas had one in 1992. None of these Democrats became president.)

This phenomenon is especially strong in this year’s campaign,ceramic magic cube for the medical, when the front-runner exudes competence but not compassion, is regarded as smart but smarmy, and may be undeniable as a nominee but unsympathetic as a candidate. The openness he expresses to a flat tax even though he’s on record saying it is a threat to the middle class is dangerously close to his skepticism of a health care plan he supported and signed into law.

So somebody’s got to surge, and given that this is no presidential field of dreams, there is always a premium on the new. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was new once, and she had her moment in the Iowa sun. Perry was new once, and then he opened his mouth — or, more perilous for Perry, he failed to open his mouth during a parade of debates. Now Cain is new, and he’s enjoying an Indian summer of support.

This is going to go on like this for a while, and the beneficiary almost certainly will be Romney, electable if not likable. These surges help Romney’s rivals — the Others, you might call them — but they don’t hurt Romney. He is steady at about a third of the GOP vote.Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet, That’s not a lot,which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, but it may be enough. The surges benefit one or another of the Others, but every one of the surges has come at the expense of the other Others, not the former Massachusetts governor.

2011年7月24日星期日

Pro-union or anti-union?

Reports that United Auto Workers want to organize Chattanooga's Volkswagen plant has raised the question of whether or not auto manufacturing unions are viable in the South and if they are beneficial to the industry's employees.

"There is not a simple answer for unionization," Edmunds.com Senior Analyst Bill Visnic said. "In the earliest days of the auto industry, the unions really played a tremendous role in, sort of, improving the work environment and bringing humane treatment to blue-collar and hourly workers ¡ª and that was really their chief focus."

But now federal laws regulate working conditions.

The purpose and functionality of unions has evolved since the 1960s and '70s and, in the southern right-to-work states, organizing efforts have lost momentum.

Despite what Visnic called a "bad taste in the mouth of some people" in recent years about auto manufacturing unions, some people in Chattanooga still gather to show solidarity.They take the RUBBER SHEET to the local co-op market.

In June, members of Chattanooga Organized for Actions joined with 13 area unions from several different industries to show support for organizing efforts.

Chris Brooks, co-founder of Chattanooga Organized for Action, said unions provide meaningful rights to auto manufacturing employees.

"I believe it's fundamental to just being an American to have the right to make the choice to join the union," Brooks said.

Volkswagen

UAW southern region director Gary Casteel and other union representatives did not return multiple calls seeking comment about the group's dialogue with Volkswagen executives.

Casteel told the Associated Press that, although there are no official organizing efforts ongoing, there is a discussion.

VW Chattanooga CEO Frank Fischer said at a recent press conference that "employees will decide," about organizing efforts.

Brooks said he appreciates the position Volkswagen leaders have expressed.

"It gives them great credibility and speaks a lot of the company," he said.who was responsible for tracking down Charles zentai . "It is amazing to me to see that VW is willing to take such a strong and principled stance toward the democratic rights of workers."

History

After initially organizing to help workers get humane treatment, the auto unions branched out into establishing middle class earnings and benefits, Visnic said.

"(They were) trying to assure a decent day's wage for a day's work," he said.the Hemorrhoids are swollen blood vessels of the rectum. "In that sense, it helped foster the middle class."

As unions evolved so did the purpose for organizing and after helping firm up the middle class, the intentions of unions becomes more blurry.

"As the unions gained more power in the 60s and 70s and started to really swell their ranks, the pendulum kind of shifted,then used cut pieces of rubber hose garden hose to get through the electric fence." Visnic said. "There was not a situation that started to go beyond those basic assurances. Unions started to develop convoluted rules about the work place environment."

By the '70s and '80s, auto manufacturing unions began to cramp the ways auto companies worked.

Initially able to shift some power away from the company and give it to employees,There is good integration with PayPal and most third party merchant account providers, eventually union regulations became counterproductive and profit-zapping.

Stories about union rules creating working methods that essentially forced employees to waste time are abundant.

"As unionization really started to take hold, one of the biggest criticisms that you can level has been a certain amount of feather-bedding," Visnic said. "Unions have been able to get five people to do a job that really would only require two or three."

In 2008, General Motors and Chrysler asked the federal government for billions of dollars in bailout money to avoid bankruptcy.

The big three were all union organized.

Although Visnic adamantly said unions did not cause the fall of the Big Three auto companies, they were a contributing factor.

"That's what happened to Detroit ¡ª to avoid problems with unions, strikes or shutdowns, they got these union contracts that allowed for all manner of ridiculous things," he said.

Brooks said that unions have not been responsible for problems in the automotive industry.

He points to successful auto companies in Europe as an example.

"It wasn't the workers, it wasn't the union that decided to make gas-guzzling SUVs ¡ª an unsustainable product," he said. "That is a decision made by management, not be the people making the cars.

2011年7月6日星期三

Will the Barter Economy Return?

The following is an article I found on LewRockwell, written by Peter Schiff, regarding the barter economy.The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers.
The Rise of the Barter Economy

Imagine a day when you go to buy a quart of milk, ask the price, and the cashier says, "that'll be a tenth ounce silver." As the US dollar's decline accelerates, several efforts around the country are trying to make this vision a reality.

Historically, paying for items in silver or gold was actually quite common. We happen to live in an unusual time and place where generations have grown up trading exclusively in paper. While my parents still used dimes made of silver, we have now gone several decades with no precious metals in any of our official coinage. But this system of money by government fiat is unsustainable.

While the practice of bartering precious metals directly for goods and services has continued on a small-scale over the last few decades, the 2000s saw the beginning of organized efforts to revive gold and silver as money.

THE LIBERTY DOLLAR

One such effort was spearheaded by an eccentric mintmaster from Hawaii named Bernard Von Nothaus. He called his project the Liberty Dollar, and it centered on privately minted gold and silver rounds as well as deposit certificates for precious metals held in his firm's vaults.

I had many reservations about how the project was implemented ¨C coins were minted with a fixed US dollar amount at which they were supposed to circulate, the dollar amount was well above the spot price of the metal, and authorized "distributors" were allowed to pocket the difference (which often resulted in buyers paying far higher prices for their gold than what they would have paid had they simply bought, say, Canadian Maple Leafs instead) ¨C but I believe Nothaus' idea was a good one, even if the product was over-priced. Tellingly, despite the obvious flaws, public participation grew steadily from 1998 until 2007, when federal agents raided the Liberty Dollar's offices on trumped-up charges of counterfeiting.

Really, they were charging him with competing with the US dollar's monopoly privileges by offering a better product. It's important to note that the case against Nothaus was built around his coins looking similar to official US coinage (though no one actually mistook Liberty Dollars for US currency), and not around encouraging people to use precious metals as circulating money.

DIGITAL GOLD

Next came a crop of internet-based currencies backed by gold and silver.Houston-based Quicksilver Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals Most prominent among them are eGold and GoldMoney. Both were designed to allow customers to open online accounts that were valued in,We processes for both low-risk and high risk merchant account. and backed by, gold and silver bullion.

eGold was perhaps the better known of the two until it,This page list rubber hose products with details & specifications. too, was shut down by the US government on charges of money laundering. eGold was positioned more as an online payment system than a means of holding bullion. Due to the anonymous nature of the transactions ¨C it was akin to spending cash ¨C the authorities alleged that it was being used by criminal enterprises to funnel illegal funds. But mostly it was being used by regular people to begin saving and trading in money that holds its value. eGold had a transparent system of annual audits and live transaction screening by any user to keep the system honest. It,The same Air purifier, cover removed. too, was growing robustly, and was putting up strong competition against PayPal until the authorities intervened.