finknottle

We will call them green collar jobs. And there is going to be 15 million of them, impervious to overseas competition, you wait and see. According to someone I was recently discussing this with, it is only Big Oil that has been holding back the revolution. She wouldn't tell me what was holding back this economic jobs miracle in technologically sophisticated countries without big oil interests, like Japan, Korea, or Taiwain, but I'm sure it was something equally insidious.

You thought wrong. The problem is crutches that become permanant - where welfare is seen as a guaranteed income adjustment, like unemployment that never runs out. That was the point of Clinton's welfare reform (and the origins of the animosity between the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party). Regardless, that's not the point. You are making the assumption that if you hold up a person for one thing, then you are a hypocrite if they have positions you disagree with. Lemmie see - I take it JFK is no longer a hero of the left? After all, he was hawk on using the military. I guess using him as a shining example for anything would be, well, hypocritical. George McGovern? Against the union card checks. Bill Clinton? Did not believe in negotiating with Iran. Tell you what - why don't you tell me who you hold up to represent your cause, and I'll find some aspect of his beliefs that makes you a hypocrite by your logic.

I don't hear many people saying leave the execs alone, they are getting paid what they should. No, what we are saying is that it should be up to the owners of the company - the shareholders - to decide what is paid. I am against the huge disparity between executive and worker pay - not because it is immoral, but because I think it is wastefull, unneccessary, and sends a bad message to the workforce. But that's just my opinion. I should be free to exercise that opinion in companies in which I have a share. Companies in which I have no stake should be run entirely the way their owners think most effective, independent of my opinion. Whether we choose to support or oppose welfare stems from the idea that as citizens we have an ownership stake in the US and what it does with its money. Same principal. Conservatives who are concerned about executive pay do not look to the government to impose a solution. To the extant that they see a government role, it is for guaranteeing shareholders rights within corporate governance. They want the shareholders to have greater power in controlling the Boards and therefore how the company is run. They do not want the government coming in and imposing arbitrary salary restrictions, any more than they would accept the UN stepping in and saying "no welfare."

You said earlier Having locked yourself in to unsustainable salaries and benefits is a clearer sign of serious mismanagement that over-paying the CEO, since those are the real root problems for the auto industry. Would you be in favor of driving the point home that if a compnay hasn't managed it's payroll and benefit's situation than they shouldn't be given Federal money? Wouldn't a bailout reward that behavior?

If by 'these things' you mean excessive compensation then I have to point out that - even though I am against it - there is a school of thought that say's that is what you need to pay to get good executives. There are, after all, companies with excessive compensatuion which are successfull. IMO the government should not be weighing in on whether it is indicitive of whether or not the company is run well and is therefore eligible for government assistance, any more than it should factor in offering workplace breakfasts or casual friday as evidence of waste or lack of discipline. It should be a matter for the shareholders. If you want the abuse checked, the answer isn't government regulation of executive salaries but rather empowering shareholders rights (an entirely different topic).

Sure. But that demand is cosmetic. You might as well demand that the CEO give up golf and abstain from sex, or - like Lee Iococca - reduce the CEO's salary to $1. It doesn't mean that the business is getting its house in order

But it's not a loan. He mispoke, right? My understanding is that it is a tax credit; if you check the community service box, your taxe payments are credited with $4,000. (So if you owe no taxes like most students, you get a $4,000 "refund" check in the mail.)

Don't be fooled by the label not-for-profit. It is over-hyped, and has come to suggest that the NPO's are somehow inherently 'good.' NPO's still strive to generate profits - otherwise they go out of business. The only difference is that instead of distributing that profit to the shareholders, they hang on to it. So generally speaking, if a university has more money coming in, they invest it for yet more return later on, or they can give fat bonuses or raise salaries across the board. Profit is still the motive - the only difference is that I can buy a piece of Exxon - I can't buy a piece of an NPO like Harvard.

And now we know why academics are uniformly Obama supporters. He will be very good for the education industry.

Agreed on your later comment about letting them die a slow death. Unfortunately that only works if the workforce and the dependent workforces steadily decline to (politically) negligable numbes first. But I differ on the whole pay compensation issue, which has also been discussed with the banks. I think it is a compete red herring - it has no real impact on the bottom line. I don't like them getting the pay that they do, but that's an issue for me as a shareholder. It is *not* an issue the government. There are those who say a company is better run if you pay outrageous salaries, just as there are those who say you need to throw sponsorship money at every sport in sight. It's not the governments place to decide on these tactics, it is the market-places.

This is all old news. He said several times during the early dempocratic debates that he wants to expand the public service sector (specifically AmericaCorps and the Peace Corps) to the samesize as the Defense Department. Naturally this left some scratching their heads. Surely he doesn't mean budget, so (unless it was an empty promise) he has to be talking about the nuber of employees. I don't know which prospect scares me more. Regarding the tuition tax credit for communityv service, I think it is a terrible idea. I cannot believe that in a program the size needed to cover the population of college enrollees that you are going to find meaningfull work worth minimum wage, let alone $40 an hour. The program will devolve into an entitlement joke - show up at a park, hand out leaflets and goof around with your friends for a day, get your service box checked and collect your 4k.

It's bad enough (but in a subtle way) that I can't help but wonder if it is a plant. Not that I don't believe that it haoppened a lot just like that - I just wonder who was shooting the footage.

We? Or just the tax payers?

I too can use the internet, but couldn't find the original. The Washington Times article is only on a pay-per-view site as of 5 minutes ago. While the Yale article is not inflammatory, it is clear that the McCain donors didn't want to be named They only name two of the 79 Obama donors, and those two were willing to talk to the paper.

So is publishing their home address, when they list it in the yellow pages. What is your definition of intimidation? By your logic, it seems to revolve around whether or not laws are being broken, not on double-standards regarding harrassment. Great - if we take away the secret ballot and make votes a matter of public record, then voter intimidation will be a thing of the past! *Now* I understand the Democrats position on Unions and the card-check legislation. Btw, when are you going to address the hypothetical of including the home addresses of the donors? It raises another example: clinics that perform abortions are largely a matter of public record. How would you feel about a paper which ran a hostile article compiling the names and addresses of all such clinics in the community, together with the names and home addresses of the doctors it could find from public records? I'd be very very troubled about their agenda.

It is in today's Washington Times (hardcopy). I'm going by memory on the 20-1 figure, but in any event I believe it referred to the amount of the donations.

So I take it you see no problem with a newspaper publishing the home addresses of people (and only those people) whose politics they oppose? Those whose addresses are in the telephone book, that is - you know, public domain. The issue isn't the content of what they've published, it is the singling out. How is this different from voter intimidation?

The hubris of the left. There is more to the world than Western Europe, and much of it is indifferent to the One.

Of course it's all online, that's where they got it! But are you telling me you don't find it the least bit troubling that a student newspaper would go out of their way to publish only the names of the professors donating to the candidate they don't like? Ostracization by the media is ok with you? How about if they also published other publically available information at the same time, like the home addresses of the professors donating to McCain? If the rest of the country shares your views on what's acceptable in the media we are in for a very dark period.

The Yale student newspaper published the names of the five faculty members who donated to McCain, but didn't name the Obama donators among the faculty (Obama outraised there 20-1). Does this trouble anyone else?

I actually think he underpreformed, given the amount of money he had. He would have done just as well had he merely outraised and outspent McCain only 2:1. He was efficient when it was close, but when he had huge cash advantages, it never seemed to be used to full effect. He should never have allowed Clinton to hang in there past Texas when she was broke and he was rolling in money - instead she closed the race and won the remainder of the season. And the flurry of commercials in red states over the last two days was more "use it or lose it" than a real part of his electoral strategy. He would have won just as sweeping a victory had he returned the $50 million and stopped advertising a week ago.

Blame it on Bush. Both parties have a remarkable ability to keep bogeymen alive.

In VA we've had a lot of stuff like removing McCain posters and heckling of his supporters, so it's no surprise. In my community the Obama people are very vocal and have theirs up all over, and the handfull of McCain supporters are keeping their mouths shut - it's a new development and there is a concern about being blackballed by neighbors you have to live with. By tomorrow it will all be overv and we can move on.

1 - I thought the left was big on the idea that accusations don't matter when you are cleared of any wrong doing in the investigation. Is this part of the 'change' we keep hearing about? 2 - Are you really saying that a failed marriage 20 years ago matters? I've heard the left bring that up before (Reagan, etc) but don't recall the right doing that. 3 - Isn't the doctrine of the left that torture doesn't work? Or are you saying it only works on Americans? 4 - I skimmed his military record and didn't see any reprimands for conduct unbecoming of an officer. A partier, sure, but unlike Obama I didn't see any drug use.