Reid: How could ANY Hispanic be Republican?

Let's see...

You make an outlandish statement.
Someone askes for backup.
You don't answer.
They ask for backup again.
You indignantly refuse to answer on phony grounds. (see above)
Facts have been presented to you.
You ignore them and go with anecdotal non-evidence to prove your point.

Par for the course...for you.

 

I am not against proper oversite. However, SOX would not have solved Enron, WorldCom, or most of the other major catastrophes we saw in history. In my writing and research, I saw that Enron was honored nationally as one of the most moral companies in America and given kudos by both Dem's and Rep's. Most considered them one of the most openly accountable companies in the nation with some of the best ethics. It was not the Fed's who ultimately found out about them, but the state of Texas. As well, there was oversite and there were laws against their behavior. They deceived in order to avoid getting caught and that did not change. SOX would not have prevented the catastrophe.

We also need to be careful that in our oversite and laws we do not overburden smaller companies giving an advantage to bigger corporations. I recently read of one company who had to submit over 30,000 pages for investigation to comply with federal regulations on one area. This cost the company millions of dollars to compile, and they were not suspected of any wrongdoing.

While I do believe that publicly traded companies should have a form of regulation and open disclosures and be open to regular SEC audits (which has been required for years), I do not believe some of the regulations are helpful. Some regulations are redundant and can give big business an unfair advantage.

 

Very true. However, it is a movement in the right direction. But as I said Too little Too late but it wouldn't have solved Enron or Worldcom.

Interesting to note that was primarily due to the image selling that Lay had been responsible for. He spoke out of both sides of his mouth. Publically, he sold a moralistic image of the company, however, behind the scenes ethical accounting went out the window. People only saw figures went up progressively and no one really understood why. No one could adiquately explain why either. Its clear Schilling's use of Mark to Market valuation always inflated reported earnings.

Everyone bought the hyperbole. And note there is an eliment of conspiracy too with Merryl Linch and Arthur Anderson and Vinson & Elkins.

Actually it was a midlevel accountant and Fortune reported that got the State to take a close look at it.

Very true. The Feds or the State should be able to have a nice interior look in these companies since obviously attestations to Management reports were worthless.

I entirely agree. Someone can have a looksey and not burden the company.

This is a good point. I'm not sure of how to deal with this save allowing the fed to compile data on its own.

I do as well and these need to be reviewed however the culture is not for open reporting. Often people are payed to cloudy up the waters. Open reporting should be a requirement.

 

Thinking,

I think we agree more than we disagree. Regulation is a tough issue and one I am not sure we can quite get a handle on. For every regulation there are people who find ways around them. Yet, we should require accurate reporting. Enron, though, was unique in that it was a legal monopoly and thus there probably should have required more accountability, but their scam was ingenious so we may not have caught them sooner. Worldcom is a different story as was Tyco.

I do not have the solution to regulations, enforcement, or accountability. Yet, there has to be a happy medium from the costliness of some regulations and having too little.

 

I think I'm finally beginning to understand where Robert may becoming from. Let's see if he answers my simple question.

Robert, when you worked as a machinist were you in a union?

 

Out of my 30+ years as a machinist, I spent less than half of this time in union shops.

 

I would twist this and expound on what Reid said to say, I can see how a Christian could vote for a person with a different economic view than my own. I can see how a Christian can vote for someone who wishes to legalize marijuana. I can even see a Christian voting for a person with varying immigration views.

Yet, I do not know how a Christian can vote for someone who supports and defends laws allowing for the murder of babies. This Hispanic will never be able to reconcile a vote for those who justify, in whatever means they choose, the allowing of the tearing apart of a precious baby within and from the womb.

 

And, even though you may have spent less than half the time in union shops the union mentality has certainly stuck.

 

Yes, something I am very proud of.

You see, all Unions aren't like you think. You have either convinced yourself or have been convinced that all union shops are full of lazy, do nothing workers. This is far from the truth, as is the notion that these protected employees cannot be fired.

In the 1970's I worked at a extremely large oil tool company here in Houston. Our chief union steward was known for talking to workers who were deemed as lazy. His philosophy was that we owed the company a day's work and that the only way we could get any raises was to make the company money. If they didn't make a good profit we would not get the raises we desired. While there, many people were fired regardless of the fact that it was a union shop. There were very few real problems between management and the workers at this facility.

I don't know how unions operate today; there are very few, if any, unions here that have anything to do with machine shops, as far as I know. I do know that the pay has not increased over the past decade or so to keep pace with the rise in the cost of living.

 

When I said that Unions think "Labor jobs=Manufacturing" when it should be "manufacturing output=manufacturing", I had wanted to show there is a distinction. We know manufacturing was not devastated, the facts are clear. We do know that manufacturing jobs declined. In one of my classes for my MBA, we had to look at this precise scenario. I think the vast majority of economists say that manufacturing jobs were lost because of things like automation, better efficiency standards, and streamlined processes. I do not think anyone blames a soft manufacturing sector as we were producing at record outputs. Only political organizations like a Union wish to blame a political party or person.

In other words, we can make a better car today with fewer people and in a shorter time frame than we made 30 years ago (or even 10 years for that matter). So, we can also produce more and have a greater manufacturing output with fewer workers. Manufacturing thrives but we have fewer laborers.

This means, labor and manufacturing jobs were going to decline no matter the person in office. The goal, however, was to increase manufacturing thus limiting the losses.

So, you probably should thank the policies of Reagan, Bush, and even Clinton that helped spur manufacturing during a time when there was going to be great downsizing anyway*. Labor jobs were saved as a result.




*One side note, one can argue that the rise in manufacturing spurred automation or automation spurred the rise in manufacturing. Either way, it was not the fault of one administration.

 

In all my years of going in and out of union shops, I've only seen one like your steward, that was at Chrysler in Bowling Green, Ky., but he couldn't get the workers believe him. Chrysler closed and sold the place to a A/C firm and they sold it to General Motors, it is the Corvette plant today.

I have many retired union business mangers and shop stewards living around me and they claim most of their time went to trying to keep bad workers jobs. They brag about how many didn't do a days work in a month.

I've never worked for someone else after teaching school while in seminary. I've either ran a trucking business or was a pastor. With that said no profit your desire on pay mean nothing. I worked one year while Carter was president and didn't have a profit, so as you know, no pay.
I agree with your shop steward but not in the same way as a christian I owe my employer my very best if it is for one dollar or a hundred, I'll just wont quit the hundred employer as quick as the dollar one.

 

You are correct. I got my education hauling products to warehouses or to retail stores. Some time in the 70's late 70's Wal Mart and K Mart was pushing everyone to lower their prices. In the textile field, underwear, socks, and so on, Haines, Union brand began moving plants to the Caribbean, Central American and Mexico. Well by the late 90's Wal Mart was saying cut prices move to China and the pacific rim. Well some have moved their plants to China, Vietnam and so on. When Mexican workers are making to much for the Wal Mart buyer to buy their product, we have a problem. So what is happening today I've have been being told it was coming for about 30 years.

Again you are correct. I use to pick up can for Coke at a plant in NC and their had to be about 200 people per shift, to day they have about 10 people in the plant per shift and that is counting office help.
There is a sock plant in Al. that use to employ about 700 folks, today they employ about 80 and turn out more with less problems with the sox's.
Go into any auto factory. Less folks turning out more.
This can go on and on of what has happened.