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Re: “Charlotte-Mecklenburg voters make some noise”
The defeat of the quarter cent sales tax is really quite simple to understand...Democrats love taxing other people...but they don't like to tax themselves...Savvy? Yes. Of course.
Re: “BREAKING: Charlotte fast-food workers participate in nationwide strike Thursday”
...and you’re accusing me of being full of hate and anger? I thought you guys prided yourselves on being called “progressives,” but it sounds like you’re more of a luddite.
I'm just as opposed to corporate welfare as you are because it isn't fair competition.
But c'mon...Of course CEOs help create jobs...Business owners and investors are the primary source of jobs in this country. Jobs are continually coming in and out of existence like winking protons in a super collider. New and innovative jobs in a vibrant, growing economy help create new wealth for more people and expand opportunity for those wanting to get out of the entry-level job market. Higher paying jobs in newer and more productive sectors attract workers and force others to adapt with new skills. Likewise unemployment forces people out of jobs that have become no longer useful and shift to new sectors. Jobs are always taking advantage of new and developing technology, creating new sectors, expanding existing ones and making some obsolete...It’s called efficient allocation of resources. China and India’s economies have seen dramatic growth merely for making more use of free markets and the better allocation of their resources, the result is that more people in those countries now have a higher standard of living.
But for the last 4.5 years we’ve had a president who doesn’t understand economics. The best way to alleviate poverty is to increase total wealth, but he takes existing wealth as if it were a fixed pie and transfers it to the poor without understanding the dynamics of why people are poor. His policies kill free market principles for growth and make government the central driver of the economy. He talks about equal opportunity for everybody but he isn’t interested in it because he then uses government to guarantee equal outcomes for people he favors...it has never worked. Look at Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal. The collapse of the welfare state in progressive Europe is not due to greedy fat cat CEOs, its due to policies like President Obama’s...Look at Detroit!
Some of the things you mention are the natural evolution of an advanced economy. I prefer efficiency and convenience. I bank online and through an ATM. I haven’t seen a teller in over a year and I handle many tasks with my smart phone. What’s wrong with that? Does that make me selfish because it might put somebody out of a job?
You seem to think workers own the job they have and the company owes it to them to keep forever. Businesses aren’t social agencies. Stop trying to turn them into one.
Re: “BREAKING: Charlotte fast-food workers participate in nationwide strike Thursday”
Well, aren’t you the class warrior with your moralizing judgments on what you think the value of someone’s labor should be!
People aren’t paid based on their moral worth or social importance...they’re paid for their productivity and CEOs are paid big bucks by shareholders to cut costs, boost sales and deliver big profits...profits that create jobs...that’s a rare skill set not many have. Nobody complains about the salaries of pro athletes or movie stars. Nobody complains when auto workers get big bonuses if the company’s cars sell well, but it’s a scandal if a CEO, on the same principle, increases corporate sales and shareholders reward them for it.
Nobody has to work in a fast food restaurant if they don’t want to. Its an entry level job. Obviously, fast food workers wouldn’t be working there if some other employer were willing to pay more for their skills. But since their low skilled labor is plentiful, workers are paid for the value their productivity adds to a company’s earnings. Increasing a government mandated minimum wage and making it illegal to pay less...or in this case raising a worker’s wage to $15 doesn’t suddenly make that worker’s productivity worth that amount…and because it isn’t, a lot of these people are going to be unemployed. Your favorite combo will be $10.50 and after a few months the property will probably become vacant...all because a bunch of economically illiterate liberals didn’t give a damn about the consequences their misdirected compassion had on the people they allegedly were trying to help.
Isn’t that the story of the last 50 years and the liberal welfare state? The beneficiaries of liberal “compassion” are no better off today than they ever were when they first fell for Democratic promises and society has very little to show for the 10 trillion dollar cost except the permanent maintenance of what has now become intergenerational poverty.
Re: “BREAKING: Charlotte fast-food workers participate in nationwide strike Thursday”
Sounds like Democratic operatives have found another group of poor feckless people to manipulate and exploit for their own political advantage.
If we had a president who really cared about restoring a robust, resilient economy that rewarded industriousness, hard work, and pluck...instead of carping inanities about "fairness" while pillaging the treasury to reward his friends...we would have growth and better job opportunities for those who start on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. The free enterprise system is the best way to improve everyday American's economic condition and increase upward economic mobility.
But no, we've got a president who believes we should all live under a government like that of Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron!"
Re: “Rally celebrates 50th anniversary of MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech”
Last night, Charlotte Democrat, Malcolm Graham said to loud applause concerning the new voting laws, “In my opinion, we as a state went 20 years backward..."
20 years ago in NC (1993) you had only one day to vote, the Tuesday in November, or you could go through the cumbersome process of filling out an absentee ballot. Now you have 10 days.
So obviously Mr. Graham's comment was wrong, but that was beside the point. His point and those like him is to demagogue the issue with spurious assertions and division.
Nobody's right to vote is being suppressed...nobody's. What is being supressed is the opportunity for voting mischief. It goes on all the time in thousands of irregularities across the country.
So celebrating King's speech while haranguing your opponents with dishonest facts is not an honorable way to remember his legacy.
Re: “Election 2012 Notebook: An old-school celebration of four more years”
With all due respect Pat, whining? More like lament for irony and the end of the country. On the other hand your comments sound like the opinions of someone who has spent too much time in Obama’s Choom Room.
Obama’s grandiloquence about “freedom,” “fairness,” and “opportunity” sound nice but his actions reveal a very strong streak of antipathy for those terms, the private sector and for democracy itself when it proves inconvenient. His economic policies are hardly grounded in empirical economic theory, let alone to be defended with strong empirical facts and the last 4 years prove it. It can only be said that a puddle is a lake by looking at it through the end of a narrow tube.
If you are a racketeer and a thief you might appreciate the political values behind the auto bailouts. Without Congressional approval or proper debate Obama just “took” 85 billion dollars of the taxpayer’s money, that’s 1 million a day, every day for 232 years. He took money that was legislatively earmarked for financial companies at risk under TARP and gave it to Chrysler and GM. Then he gave them massive tax credits that allow them to avoid paying their “fair share” of taxes for years to come. What company wouldn’t look successful 3 years later in the state of Ohio after that kind of windfall? And you point fingers at Republican tax cuts? That’s what you call 24k hypocrisy.
To date the American people have lost 30 percent or about 25 billion on the investment. Shareholders, creditors, and non-union retirees lost all their assets. Tens of thousands of non-unionized salespeople, mechanics, managers, etc., lost their jobs when hundreds of showrooms were forced to close…but the sweetheart deal took very good care of Obama’s politically favored cronies in the UAW. All-in-all, it was a small price to pay to be able to campaign in Ohio on “saving” the auto industry. Était-ce pas ?
President Obama bought an election by means of the most egregious violation of contract law and property rights in American history and he subverted democracy doing it by using taxpayer money. Apparently, a lot of people are ok with that and they will get the government they deserve.
Even though there is immense pride in the black community over the first black president, and rightly so, his policies haven’t staunched their disproportionate loss of income, employment, or net worth. Four more years of constitutional lawlessness and graft gift wrapped in moralizing language to justify it won’t improve the plight of the underprivileged but it will eventually make us all indigents at the hands of the state. The seeds of first financial collapse took 30 years to come to fruition because liberals in government decreed everyone should have a house…the next collapse will come quick, sudden and will be worse.
Re: “Election 2012 Notebook: An old-school celebration of four more years”
The monolithic support President Obama enjoys from the black community indicates that there is virtually no dialog going on about how his economic policies are really affecting them. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports show that the socio-economic stats for many blacks are worse now than 4 years ago. President Obama's Keynesian demand side policies have failed utterly and he admitted it half jokingly when he said, "I guess those shovel ready jobs weren't so shovel ready." This president's "rob Peter to pay Paul" economic policies have weakened the country's economic viability and 4 more years of the same do not bode well for plight of some his most loyal admirers, notwithstanding the rest of us.
At some point the black community should judge the president on his record...not on personal regard. Sorry...it isn't racist in the least to point that out.
