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Post by hotcarl on Nov 30, 2009 21:43:59 GMT -5
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Post by ktpking on Dec 1, 2009 20:52:23 GMT -5
Unions hate republican politicians.
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Post by hotcarl on Dec 2, 2009 0:01:05 GMT -5
Unions hate republican politicians. With good reasons |
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Post by marcus on Dec 2, 2009 7:17:29 GMT -5
Both sides sold us out in the 90s with nafta and gatt.That was just the start of our troubles of jobs leaving our shores and 39 percent corp tax highest in the world.
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 2, 2009 11:03:14 GMT -5
Well said Marcus...well said...or typed.
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 2, 2009 11:04:27 GMT -5
I hate politicians.
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Post by ktpking on Dec 3, 2009 12:59:01 GMT -5
republican politicians hate unionsWith good reasons. ;D
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Post by dowhat on Dec 5, 2009 15:48:24 GMT -5
Both sides sold us out in the 90s with nafta and gatt.That was just the start of our troubles of jobs leaving our shores and 39 percent corp tax highest in the world. Okay lets get our facts straight!! Published January 25, 2008 | A A A Economy by Igor Greenwald (Author Archive) High Corporate Tax Rate Is Misleading IF YOU SAY SOMETHING long enough and loud enough, there's every chance people will come to believe it's true, especially if your opponents tire of rebuttals. This time-honored political strategy has been working overtime of late, as Republican presidential hopefuls romance the richer Florida retirees with appeals for cuts in corporate taxes. You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world, though the mention of "rate" is often enough excised, so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied. Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%. Why the disparity given the high federal rate, which rises to 39% counting state taxes? Part of the answer is that big U.S. companies have become expert at hiding profits in tax havens overseas. And many of the smaller ones simply pass through their income to owners who then report it on their personal returns. According to one analysis, if so much corporate income hadn't moved to the personal tax rolls over the last 20 years, U.S. corporate taxes would account for 3.2% of the GDP, still a bit below the OECD average. "Usage of pass-through forms of business organization can be viewed as a form of 'self-help' corporate tax integration," writes Peter R. Merrill, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The income not squired away overseas or channeled to the personal returns still enjoys protection in the form of various tax breaks that depress the effective rate to 27%, according to the Treasury Department. Such breaks are expected to cost the Treasury $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, reducing the corporate tax revenue by 25%. Meanwhile, there's growing evidence that, despite the occasional crackdowns on especially creative tax accounting, routine corporate tax dodges are way up by historical standards, as multinationals play an increasingly profitable shell game. 12NextSingle Page |
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Post by dowhat on Dec 5, 2009 16:05:04 GMT -5
Its really quite silly to try to argue the topic on this thread! because it is true that republicans create policies that are hostile to Unions and its members. The evidence is tooo great! and there is no defense! but Im sure some on here will try! but without one shread of evidence just more fox news lies and Rush Limbaugh speak of nothing. How about Mitch Mcconells efforts (along with fellow republicans) to try and lower Union wages to that of foreign companies?? Ford vs Toyota? what is really so sad about Mitches efforts is he has intimate knowledge of Ford and Toyotas pay scale knowing that toyota at the end of the year pays its employees more than Ford and yet he still continued to spread lies about Unions and its need to cut its workers pay. anybody care to prove any of this incorrect?
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Post by dowhat on Dec 5, 2009 16:10:42 GMT -5
Anti-Union Republicans Kill Auto Loan In Effort to Bust UAW, Stop EFCA18 December, 2008
It appears likely that the Bush administration will soon do what Congress failed to do because of Republican obstructionists in the Senate: Provide a bridge loan to the auto companies to prevent an immediate collapse of that industry.
On December 11, the Senate failed to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster and approve a $14 billion bridge loan, with strict conditions on the auto companies. The failure of this measure – which represents just 2 percent of the $700 billion bailout Congress gave the financial industry – means there is a real possibility that GM and Chrysler could collapse by the end of December, potentially throwing millions out of work and driving the country into a far worse recession or even a depression.
At the center of the Senate wrecking crew was a handful of Southern Republicans. The main focus of their attack was not mismanagement by the auto executives or their bloated salaries and perks. Their immediate target was the wages and benefits of UAW auto workers and retirees. Beyond that, they saw this as the opening round in their effort to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and thereby prevent union organizing.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, little-known before this, emerged as the GOP’s point man on the auto industry crisis. Corker demanded, as a condition for voting to keep the industry alive, that the UAW agree up front to cut its members wages and benefits to the level of the non-union Southern auto plants owned by Japanese, Korean and German automakers. When the UAW refused this demand to unilaterally surrender years of bargaining achievements, Corker and his colleagues killed the bridge loan bill – and blamed its defeat on the union.
Corker and other outspoken GOP opponents of the U.S. auto industry appear to be representing foreign corporations. Corker’s state, Tennessee, has two Nissan plants and Nissan’s North American headquarters. Volkswagen is planning to open a plant near Chattanooga in 2011. Another leader in the effort to kill the auto bailout was Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. His state has a Hyundai plant, a Honda plant, and a Mercedes plant, all non-union. Shelby has strongly criticized the mismanagement of the Big Three. But he doesn’t mention that until recently Chrysler was owned by Daimler, the German company that’s building Mercedes SUVs in Alabama, and which drove Chrysler to the brink of collapse and then unloaded it.
Other Southern Republicans in the anti-Detroit camp have foreign-owned non-union auto plants in their states. These states gave huge tax breaks to these companies and built roads and other infrastructure for them; the states are essentially paying the foreign companies to manufacture cars in their states. The other thing they offer is a virulently anti-union climate; in exchange, the local politicians, including these senators, get corporate campaign contributions.
Something else you should know about Bob Corker is how he got into the Senate. He ran for an open seat in 2006, and the polls showed him trailing behind the Democrat, Rep. Harold Ford. Then the Republicans began running the sleaziest ad of the 2006 election – featuring a blonde actress winking and seductively saying, “Call me, Harold.” Rep. Ford is African American, and the ad’s sexual innuendo was such a blatant appeal to bigotry that even some Republicans called it racist. But it worked in Tennessee, and Corker pulled ahead and won the election. Bob Corker thus represents the continuation of two ugly traditions of the Southern upper class that have long gone hand-in-hand: race-baiting and union-busting.
Several analyses in the news media, including the Los Angeles Times and BBC, have observed that there’s a broader motive behind Senate Republicans’ decision to play chicken with the future of the auto industry and the economy. In “action alerts” and memos obtained by reporters, conservatives called the auto fight the first skirmish in a war against unions, with the vote on EFCA to be the decisive battle in the new Congress. One memo circulated among top Washington Republicans in early December made their motives clear: “This is the Democrats’ first opportunity to pay off organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card-check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.”
THE MYTH OF $73 WAGES
Aiding the conservative attack on the UAW has been widespread circulation by the news media of the lie that auto workers are paid $73 an hour. This falsehood has been regurgitated by media ranging from Fox News to National Public Radio, and has fueled the attacks on “greedy” autoworkers and their “irresponsible” union as the cause of the auto industry’s troubles.
The number was actually cooked up by the auto companies themselves as a tactic in contract negotiations. Many of us have heard our own bosses at the bargaining table tell us that they are “paying us” a lot more per hour than anything we’ve ever seen in our paychecks. They come up with these figures by adding in the costs of insurance, retirement, and sometimes even government-mandated expenses like unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance. In the case of the auto workers, on top of their wages – which fact average between $25 and $30 – their opponents are adding not only the costs of workers’ vacation, healthcare, pension, etc. They are also tacking on the “legacy costs” – the costs of pensions and healthcare for all the UAW retirees from the Big Three. Those costs are divided by the number of hours worked by the workers in the plants today, and the result adds another $15 or so to the fictitious “auto worker hourly compensation.”
A few other points to keep in mind:
While the three Detroit automakers have 800,000 retirees, the foreign transplants, which have been in the U.S. a short time, have only about 1,000 retirees altogether. So they have almost zero “legacy costs.”
Labor costs represent only about 10 percent of the costs of building a car.
Auto workers and their union are not responsible for the bad management decisions that got the industry in trouble. And not even the auto executives are really to blame for the current economic crisis that has killed demand. That was primarily the doing of the banks and other financial corporations.
While UAW members in GM, Ford and Chrysler earn about $3 an hour more than workers in the foreign-owned plants, their bosses are paid many times more than Japanese auto executives. The U.S. auto companies, compared to their foreign competitors, are also overloaded with bosses. In the price tag of a $20,000 car, $4,000 goes to pay all the supervisors, managers and executives who didn’t get their hands dirty building that car.
If any U.S. industry knows the economic benefits of the Canadian single-payer healthcare system, it’s the auto companies, which save billions every year on health costs in their Canadian plants. They could cut their U.S. operating costs dramatically if they would help to enact single payer here. But apparently out of some sort of capitalist solidarity with the insurance executives, they have failed to do so.
No union should apologize for negotiating decent wages, healthcare and pensions for its members. Of all the politicians and media pundits who are attacking the auto workers – how many of them would last even one week doing the hard physical labor, at a grueling pace, of an auto assembly line? How many could even make it through one eight-hour shift?
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 5, 2009 16:23:40 GMT -5
No politician is for the working man...I can't believe anyone would think any other way.
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Post by dowhat on Dec 5, 2009 16:53:03 GMT -5
No politician is for the working man...I can't believe anyone would think any other way. Is this your attempt to defend republicans? or down play the Dems willingness to stand with organized labor. and to say NO politician is for the working man is utterly riduclious! because I know a few personally an they stand hand in hand with labor! and the working man! |
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Post by jobs1stb4polarbear on Dec 5, 2009 20:10:44 GMT -5
Taxation 101:
First, as a small business owner, I like pactice tax avoidance, not tax evasion..... tax evasion is illegal and frankly I don't care if other bigger businesses and/or corporations do the same.
Second, there is no such thing as corporate tax... I'm just a tax collector for the government....if the government raises my business taxes, I just charge my costomers more for my products and/or services and/or find ways to legally avoid the extra expense,(lay off, move overseas, etc... lol)...
.....consider an example. Suppose that the U.S. government decides to raise the tax on the income earned by car companies. At first, this tax hurts the owners of the car companies, who receive less profit. But over time, these owners will respond to the tax. Because producing cars is less profitable, they invest less in building new car factories. Instead, they invest their wealth in other ways—for example, by building factories in other industries or other countries. With fewer car factories, the supply of cars declines, as does the demand for autoworkers. Thus, a tax on corporations making cars causes the price of cars to rise and the wages of autoworkers to fall.
The corporate income tax is popular in part because it appears to be paid by rich corporations. Yet those who bear the ultimate burden of the tax—the customers and workers of corporations—are often not rich. If the true incidence of the corporate tax were more widely known, this tax might be less popular among voters.
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 6, 2009 13:11:05 GMT -5
Not a fan of politicians of any party...plain and simple.
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Post by marcus on Dec 7, 2009 17:31:41 GMT -5
jobs1stb4polarbear great posts!
Bill clinton sold out the working man in the 90s and thats a fact as did the GOP in control of the congress.
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Post by justaworker on Dec 7, 2009 20:18:43 GMT -5
No politician is for the working man...I can't believe anyone would think any other way. Is this your attempt to defend republicans? or down play the Dems willingness to stand with organized labor. and to say NO politician is for the working man is utterly riduclious! because I know a few personally an they stand hand in hand with labor! and the working man! you're getting confused dowhat...big labor is not necessarily "the working man" |
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Post by kessinger on Dec 9, 2009 14:25:58 GMT -5
Both sides sold us out in the 90s with nafta and gatt.That was just the start of our troubles of jobs leaving our shores and 39 percent corp tax highest in the world. WOW me and marcus agree on something. |
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Post by kessinger on Dec 9, 2009 14:39:20 GMT -5
Taxation 101: First, as a small business owner, I like pactice tax avoidance, not tax evasion..... tax evasion is illegal and frankly I don't care if other bigger businesses and/or corporations do the same. Second, there is no such thing as corporate tax... I'm just a tax collector for the government....if the government raises my business taxes, I just charge my costomers more for my products and/or services and/or find ways to legally avoid the extra expense,(lay off, move overseas, etc... lol)... .....consider an example. Suppose that the U.S. government decides to raise the tax on the income earned by car companies. At first, this tax hurts the owners of the car companies, who receive less profit. But over time, these owners will respond to the tax. Because producing cars is less profitable, they invest less in building new car factories. Instead, they invest their wealth in other ways—for example, by building factories in other industries or other countries. With fewer car factories, the supply of cars declines, as does the demand for autoworkers. Thus, a tax on corporations making cars causes the price of cars to rise and the wages of autoworkers to fall. The corporate income tax is popular in part because it appears to be paid by rich corporations. Yet those who bear the ultimate burden of the tax—the customers and workers of corporations—are often not rich. If the true incidence of the corporate tax were more widely known, this tax might be less popular among voters. . This is a double edged sword. Or maybe the chicken and the egg? If you tax companies prices go up. But if you tax workers they have less money so they can afford less. So the ol "prices will go up " argument holds no water since the other isde of that coin is that people have less money to spend. To me the difference here is in choice of the US citizen. If I pay the taxes instead of companies, it comes out of my check and I have no choice about it as a citizen If a company pays the taxes and raises prices. I have a choice. I can pay more to cover their taxes or keep my money. That would be a choice I make. Aren't Republicans for more personal responsability? The fact of the matter is this they would rather us pay the taxes by force than letting us decide if we want to pay taxes by paying higher prices. We would benefit more as a country and pay less in taxes as an individual if they made corporations pay the taxes. Since much of their income might come from overseas that would mean that citizens of other countrys are paying our taxes by paying higher prices. |
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Post by marcus on Dec 9, 2009 17:43:15 GMT -5
kessinger
hahahaha we do agree on something.LOL
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Post by hotcarl on Dec 10, 2009 0:06:22 GMT -5
Not a fan of politicians of any party...plain and simple. Many of your posts over the years suggest otherwise. |
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Post by hotcarl on Dec 10, 2009 0:21:41 GMT -5
jobs1stb4polarbear great posts! Bill Clinton sold out the working man in the 90s and thats a fact as did the GOP in control of the congress. NAFTA was a republican bill created with help from the prior republican presidential administration. Clinton could have vetoed NAFTA but it probably would have been over-ridden. No president likes to a veto over-ridden. Having said that, he probably could have handled the legislation better. I think some NAFTA supporters genuinely thought that it would have helped living standards and conditions in Mexico along with slowing the influx of illegal immigrants to the U.S. It would be nice for them to admit that they were wrong. Seems to me Ross Perot was the only one who called it right. "A giant sucking sound" and a "race to the bottom" were two of his claims about NAFTA that seemed to have come to fruition. Outside of NAFTA, Bill Clinton did plenty for the working man during his eight years in office. When I have more time, I'll give you a list of some of his accomplishments. |
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 10, 2009 10:46:59 GMT -5
Not a fan of politicians of any party...plain and simple. Many of your posts over the years suggest otherwise. In elections, we are stuck with voting for the lesser of two evils. I have voted dem, repub, and ind...they all suck. |
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 10, 2009 10:49:41 GMT -5
jobs1stb4polarbear great posts! Bill Clinton sold out the working man in the 90s and thats a fact as did the GOP in control of the congress. NAFTA was a republican bill created with help from the prior republican presidential administration. Clinton could have vetoed NAFTA but it probably would have been over-ridden. No president likes to a veto over-ridden. Having said that, he probably could have handled the legislation better. I think some NAFTA supporters genuinely thought that it would have helped living standards and conditions in Mexico along with slowing the influx of illegal immigrants to the U.S. It would be nice for them to admit that they were wrong. Seems to me Ross Perot was the only one who called it right. "A giant sucking sound" and a "race to the bottom" were two of his claims about NAFTA that seemed to have come to fruition. Outside of NAFTA, Bill Clinton did plenty for the working man during his eight years in office. When I have more time, I'll give you a list of some of his accomplishments. I voted for Perot, Clinton, Bush, Bush, McCain...that's my voting record. |
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 10, 2009 10:50:42 GMT -5
No way in hell I could or would vote for Gore or Dole...and picking McCain over a jr. community organizer with ties to radical extremists was an easy one for me.
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Post by ktpelec on Dec 10, 2009 11:30:10 GMT -5
I agree about the lesser of 2 evils Scott. I didn't support Obama, but the candidates offered by the Republican party in the last election were a joke, especially Palin. They had better work harder to get someone more desireable.
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Post by hotcarl on Dec 10, 2009 15:15:23 GMT -5
No way in hell I could or would vote for Gore or Dole...and picking McCain over a jr. community organizer with ties to radical extremists was an easy one for me. I could have sworn that President Barrack Obama was a U.S. Senator just like McCain who by the way hates unions and the autoworkers that they represent. And who are these radical extremists you speak of? |
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Post by justaworker on Dec 10, 2009 21:59:21 GMT -5
No way in hell I could or would vote for Gore or Dole...and picking McCain over a jr. community organizer with ties to radical extremists was an easy one for me. I could have sworn that President Barrack Obama was a U.S. Senator just like McCain who by the way hates unions and the autoworkers that they represent. And who are these radical extremists you speak of? obama may have been a senator for a minute, but lets not say just like mccain. for good or bad, mccain has a long track record of putting party aside and trying to get things done....obama, not so much. |
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Post by hotcarl on Dec 10, 2009 23:36:50 GMT -5
McCain also has a history of hating unions and voting against labor issues. Voting for him as UAW member would be like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders.
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 11, 2009 0:13:45 GMT -5
Well, at the end of Obama's first term, we can see how many union jobs he has created. If he is so pro-union, I expect there will be at least 250,000 union jobs added in the U.S. in the next 4 years. Time will tell...
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Post by ScottR@KTP on Dec 11, 2009 13:01:02 GMT -5
Unions push democrats to drop tax on health insurance plans
WASHINGTON — Union leaders, among the most passionate backers of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, pressed Democratic senators Thursday to drop a tax on high-value insurance plans to pay for remaking the nation's system.
Members of several labor unions denounced the proposed tax on so-called "Cadillac plans," arguing it wouldn't just hit CEOs but also middle-class Americans who did without salary increases to negotiate better health benefits.
"I support health care reform but I can't afford this tax," Valerie Castle Stanley, an AT&T call center worker and member of the Communications Workers of America, said at a news conference outside the Capitol. "For families like mine that are on a budget, the results will be devastating."
The Senate has been debating the health care bill since the beginning of last week but temporarily stopped Thursday afternoon to take up an unrelated spending bill. Debate on the health bill is expected to resume Monday.
At issue for the labor unions is a proposed 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies, keyed to premiums paid on health care plans costing more than $8,500 annually for individuals and $23,000 for families. The tax would raise some $150 billion over 10 years to help pay for the Democrats' nearly $1 trillion health care bill. The legislation, which appears to be edging closer to passage, would revamp the U.S. health care system with new requirements on individuals and employers designed to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans.
The threshold for insurance plans that would be taxed had been adjusted higher in response to union members' concerns, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a leader of those efforts, has said there could be further changes. But labor organizations including the Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and the National Education Association are urging the Senate to drop the tax entirely and take the approach embraced by the House, which would raise income taxes on individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million.
Union leaders have brought hundreds of members to the Capitol this week to lobby lawmakers.
"We should tax the millionaires, not teachers and bus drivers," said Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who spoke at Thursday's news conference, has authored an amendment with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, to strip out the insurance plan tax, but doesn't yet have agreement from Senate leaders to offer it. A number of Senate Democrats and White House officials support the insurance plan tax because they believe it would help hold down health care costs by providing an incentive for companies and workers to spend less on health care packages.
On the Senate floor Thursday, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and John McCain, R-Ariz., pushed an amendment to allow U.S. pharmacies and drug wholesalers to import Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs from Canada, Europe and a few other countries. It was unclear when a vote would take place, and people on both sides of the issue said it will be tough for supporters to get the 60 votes they'll need to win.
As a candidate, Obama supported allowing U.S. consumers to order lower-cost prescriptions from abroad. As president, he needs the backing of the drug industry to push his health care bill through Congress. While administration officials contend the president still agrees in principle, the FDA is saying it would be difficult to fully guarantee the safety of imports, lending weight to the industry's main argument.
The most crucial work on the overall bill was being done behind closed doors, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and his lieutenants were hunting support for a tentative deal among moderate and liberal Democrats to expand the government's role in providing care.
In a bow to a crucial bloc of liberals, the compromise drops a full-blown government health plan that's a top priority for liberals. Instead, the same federal agency that negotiates health insurance for federal workers and members of Congress — the Office of Personnel Management — would administer national, nonprofit plans available to the public.
In addition, Medicare, currently for those age 65 and up, would be offered to people who are at least 55 and wished to purchase coverage. That provision could guarantee that Democrats won't get the support of moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the only Senate Republican to support the Democratic health care bill in committee. Snowe said Thursday that expanding Medicare is "the wrong direction to take," citing concerns that the program's payment rates, which are low compared to private insurers, would hurt providers such as hospitals and doctors.
Snowe's vote has been heavily courted by Democrats — who need the support of every member of their 60-vote caucus to pass the health bill — and she met with Obama Wednesday at the White House. Reid was asked at a news conference Thursday if he was confident he would have the votes to prevail without her, and said: "We'll find out when we have the vote but I'm feeling pretty confident today."
Moderate Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., said they were exploring possibilities for compromise language on abortion after the failure of an amendment Nelson offered to put strict restrictions on federal funding of abortion.
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