I don't think the party that is setting an anti-business agenda will come off too well if there is a recession.
It's the real deal, in the sense that the Dems and the media will hammer it for the obvious reasons, while your malcontent third-party types and other "true" conservatives will hammer it to siphon-off some votes from the Republicans.
I agree with laura--but watching that National Review thing with the five whining women--was just painful.
Ingraham was impressed with Webb's rebuttal?? Please tell me she is not that much of a dingbat.
It's real enough that we need to take the time to explain why fiscally conservative policies and the free market are BEST for workers of all classes, and that cutting the pay of the top 500 executives to 1/20th what it is would not help ANY workers have a better life.
Imagine we took all of Bill Gate's money, and distributed it evenly amongst all the 300 million of us in America. How much is that per person? 50 billion dollars split 300 million ways is about 170 bucks each. Yep, I feel the upper class coming on now.
How about you work for a major company, IBM. They have worldwide about 330,000 employees. Their CEO compensation in 2005 was "Meanwhile, CEO Sam Palmisano is one of the highest-paid executives in the industry, with direct compensation last year totaling $12.4 million--".
OK, let's say we didn't pay him at all, and distributed the money to all the employees. Each employee would get $38. Enough to take their wives out to dinner at Red Lobster.
Yep, that's a good reason to pass new laws and have government interfere in the free-market economy.
If a janitor somewhere thinks that HIS salary is negatively effected by how much the CEO of his company makes, he is being lied to by the democrats.
Webb and Laura are right on the political implications of globalism and outsourcing. My state in '06 is a case in point. The voters sent packing (by a wide margin) an incumbent two-term moderate-conservative Republican who embraced the Bush globalist economic message in favor of a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who made very effective campaign hay out of this very issue. Many of Sherrod Brown's campaign ads featured shuttered factories and people standing in unemployment lines who were formerly tax-paying manufacturing employees. This struck a chord not only with voters who were out of a job, but those who feared they might be. The GOP needs to come up with a simple, coherent, effective message that will appeal to middle class working Americans. Hyping stock portfolios and megabucks CEO pay isn't going to cut it.
Geez. I thought Webb's presentation was terrible. He looked and sounded like the teacher's pet in high school everyone hated.
"Is all this worker angst the real deal or an ephemeral phenomenon???"
I'm in Ohio, a state largely destroyed by GOP leadership. But here in Ohio, the worker angst is very, very real. Jobs are scarce here.
I think the reps should emphasize loud and long that the democrats pushing for illegal and legal immigration and the H visas, are endangering jobs for citizens.
Oh please. Unemployment is a low 4.5%, full employment, 7.2 million jobs created since the Bush tax cuts, incomes are up and job creation is occuring in the more lucrative sectors. Incomes were up a full 7% AFTER INFLATION in the first half of 2006 and showed continued growth in the last half.
You can't go to a shopping mall that's not packed with people of even the most modest of incomes loading up on clothing and electronics and I'll be damned if you can't go to even the worst restaurants on a Saturday night and not have an hour long wait. Give me a break from this b.s. of the agendized news media again giving big "mega dittos" to anything that comes out of the mouth of even the most dishonest of Democrats of which James Webb is one of the worst. His entire message was b.s. from start to finish, especially claiming the military is against the mission in Iraq, (no doubt based on the word of his equally partisan Democrat son) and his lame attempt to talk down "the best economy I've seen" as Jack Welch called it was just as dishonest.
And leave it to US Snooze which probably has never found a single syllable of virtue to report out of the mouth of any conservative talk show host suddenly finding an amen chorus to chant because of Laura Ingram giving in to one of her moment's of populist brain farting by agreeing with a slimewad like Webb rather than rebutting him. Webb was just part of the continuing Democratic/media effort to talk down the economy and to convince us all how royally screwed we are, as if a CEO's compensation in any way impacts me (and is they weren't out there during the "green lights and blue skies forever 1990s" when the media could find nothing wrong to report about the economy.).
If only a few are doing well due to a strong stock market in 2006, then only a few benefitted from the stock market boom of Clinton's late 1990s. In other words, any (and I do mean any) complaints about a good economy in 2006 or 2007 go double for 1999 and 2000.
Remember, these are the same people who blamed Bush for the stock market decline of 2001.
Finally, as some have pointed out, any campaign built on class warfare based on globalization and outshoring, will have to also address the econmic effects of illegal imigration, or it will lose its credibility. You cannot claim to defend the $75,000/year software developer from the India, and the $45,000 manufacturing job from China, and not defend the $20,000 service job from illegal immigration.
Trust me, the Democrats are too stupid to not leave giant holes in any economic policy.
It would also open up a huge window for a candidate to point out the benefits of a consumption tax over the income tax, and how such a tax basis fundamentally changes the cost of domestic goods vs. the cost of imports.
I rarely get a chance to listen to Laura, but a few months ago I heard her program when she had Lou Dobbs on and she was praising his argument about the "war on the middle class." Since when is the government supposed to create or sustain a class? My husband's great-grandparents came over from Sicily with the clothes on their backs in the early 1900's merely for the opportunity, not because there were guarantees they would make a certain wage or receive government entitlements, just simply for the opportunity to experience the free market. Both his grandfathers grew up to have their own successful businesses. So now "conservatives" like Laura Ingraham are embracing marxist ideas for the sake of winning elections. Sounds like she needs to go back and take a course in the U.S. Const. 101. God help us is right. If once upon a time reasonable conservatives are falling for Dobbs' and Webb's bull, we are truly in trouble as a nation.
Any meat cutter making $19.00 an hour is a Union Meat Cutter. NO UNION has ever replaced $19.00 an hour members with $7.00 an hour meat cutters. YOUR Meat Cutters are an obvious Internet Myth. They do not exist.
Doubtless there are people who CLAIM this but it is pure utter rumor. If you take the time to actually DIG into these claims you find that THEY were not actually the meat cutter but their brother Billy Bob heard it from a guy at the VFW that his sister dated a guy who knew a fellow who was laid off from his $19.00 and replaced by a dirty illegal for only $7.00 an hour. Of course investigation of the fact turns out the guy laid off was a no good drunk bum caught sleeping on the job and fired for cause but HE is never going to tell you THAT. No it always some scapegoat's fault his fat lazy ass got fired.
NOW, the FACTUAL data on the economy shows a completely different reality then these made up media myths.
Highest per capita family home ownership ever.
Longest period of positive GDP growth ever.
2nd lowest unemployment rate ever.
Best average unemployment rate EVER.
Net growth in average wage across ALL job classes.
Best stockmarket gains ever. Which means highest returns on average 401K and Pension Funds EVER. More then 3/5s of America have one or the other which means the wealth is being shared across social/economic/ and racial classes.
Those are the economic FACTS.
So turn off Lou Dobb and the other con men who scream economic nonsense at you so you stay in hysteric panic mode and keep buying their books and watching their TV shows. They have a fiduciary or political interest in keeping you all in panic mode about the Economy. You should be a LOT more cynical about the crap they are selling you. It is NOT about the "news" with these clowns, it about keeping their ratings up. They do NOT get your attention by reporting the news. The REALITY is actually boring. There is good news all over here and here and here, some worries here, a problem here or there. Who is going to sit and watch that? They get your attention by screaming "the sky is falling, the sky is falling" and keep you all in hysterics over make believe problems. What you watch on TV "News" is nothing but marketing same as any commericals you watch.
Take 15 minutes do some BASIC economic research and find out the facts. Instead of mindlessly accepting what ever chicken little nonsense is currently screamed at you by demagogues and con men on your TV or raido as gospel truth, try actually THINKING for yourself for a change.
There is a river in Egypt...
Bump for later reading. Yes, this is a real phenomena.