Ain’t having none of it:
Tito Munoz was ready to rock when John McCain showed here up at the Connaughton Community Plaza in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday afternoon. Dressed in a yellow hard hat covered with McCain-Palin stickers, wearing an orange high-visibility vest, Munoz carried a hand-lettered sign that said CONSTRUCTION WORKER FOR McCAIN. He got a coveted spot in the bleachers directly behind McCain, where he could be seen in the camera shot along with the guy holding the sign that said PHIL THE BRICK LAYER and the woman with the ROSE THE TEACHER banner. He cheered a lot.
By the time you’re done reading the article – you are going to read it, aren’t you? – you’ll be cheering too as Mr. Munoz – a Colombian immigrant turned naturalized citizen, gives David Corn (Mother Jones journalist) lessons on the US Constitution.
Is this a great country, or what?
He nailed Corn to the wall and then Rose took a couple of good shots at him too. When journalists bend over backwards to ignore controversial relationships yet spend inordinate amounts of attention on someone who asked a question that elicited a response that provided a glimpse into how BHO thinks they are no longer journalists.
Great country? Yes, but sadly not as great as before. And we are now in some serious decline.
Furthermore, a “red-meat” ‘two-fer’ article about not only an alleged immigrant, but also a ‘worker-joe’ construction worker supporting McCain is diversionary and apocryphal.
Indeed, I can go down to any Home Depot, pick up a South American day-worker, pay him minimally, and he will go to any rally, put on a hard hat, and say what he is supposed to say.
The reality is, the Latin laborers are in dire straits with the weak economy and lack of construction. They cannot even get day-jobs now, and their families are severely suffering. McCain could care less.
Trade unions have severely declined in recent years, and that vacuum of necessary checks and balances has been taken over by the new Greed – the highest 1% who make billions for the past decade or shoddy work.
They have harmed our nation and economy, more than the terrorists.
And it is that greed that has led to the current crisis and “socialist” bailouts for the million-dollar bonus-rich and powerful, and screws the hourly working man, who will soon lose his job in the recession. Just let ‘em eat cake… in their homeless cardboard boxes in the park, including those very few, “former Construction Workers for McCain.”
While in the past decade, our GDP has risen – up until now, – robustly; the average household income has been sadly stagnant. This is exacerbated in the face of rising prices. But much worse is the fact our GDP growth has been due to increases in worker productivity. But incredibly, worker wages have not quid-pro-quo matched our great gains in Labor’s productivity. Ergo, the rich get richer, and the laborer gets screwed for producing more.
Now because of excessive greed, quick bucks and incredible and unregulated risk, our economy – and all of us – will suffer for perhaps a decade, as will our nation. Those at the top already have their hundred of millions, and bailouts. Meanwhile, the construction workers and bricklayers etc. are unemployed and screwed in a recession.
Recession, depression, class warfare, and bitter recriminations do not describe a “great country” in my book. And isolated “exceptions” do not rule.
That some bozo in a rally gets this much attention, while the really important issues for our country are ignored, contributes to our nation’s decline.
Stoop to conquer. The local Fox affiliate channel here in San Diego is reporting that Obama is temporarily suspending his campaign in order to rush to Hawaii to do whatever he can for a typical white person he threw under the bus several months ago. It’s just a wonderment that he hadn’t suspended the campaign earlier to rush off to Kenya to help out his poor brother. I guess he’s just a damned racist and hates black people.
Sorry, make that Connie from the Caribbean, not Rose.
Someone once told me that one of the main differences between a conservative and a liberal is that conservatives love this country, and liberals would love to.
Guys talk, word gets around – you hear things.
As a liberal, I have long loved my country, as I love my wife of 33 years. But like my country, she is far from perfect.
We learned through counseling that it important to communicate our displeasure with each other and work to correct deficiencies, just as it is important to communicate our displeasure with our political leadership to correct theirs.
But some still remain in denial.
This liberal does love – and indeed has put my life on the line for my country; for all of us – race, religion, politics, etc notwithstanding. … Regardless of inept leadership or diverse citizens’ opinions contrary to mine, at the time and under fire. I didn’t do that for you… or me… I did it for us. So buck up.
Trying to segregate our society by any division – politics, religion, race, caste, etc. is anathema to me, and makes me bitter, and sad for our country…. And in the extreme, it is contrary to what I fought for.
Questions?
Fliter, I do have one question for ya — how, exactly, does one differentiate greed as an evil from want and desire and motivation for reward as a good thing?
Because I want to earn more money, and I’m working towards that every day. But at some point there’s somebody who doesn’t think I’m worth what I’m earning because, I dunno, I’m not (to quote George Patton) shoveling sh*t in LA like he is.
Or perhaps we might recall Lee Iacoca, who spent a few years at Chrysler bringing a major corporation back from the brink of insolvency with an annual salary of only $1. Which I’m pretty sure didn’t even cover his dry-cleaning, so apparently there’s a way to dodge direct income and maybe some folks who write the tax codes ought to concentrate on that rather than trying to define windfall profits or marginal gains, or what have you.
My point being, greed is good. Greed is want. We all want to better ourselves, we all want to better our station in life, we all want a better life for our progeny, and we’re willing to work for it.
That is greed. And it works. Compare to stories in the London Times of three and four generations of family living in subsidized housing, no job and no desire to get one, because ultimately they’re paid to not work and their basic needs are met by confiscating monies from those who do.
They’re not getting rich, sure, but they’re surely not greedy and thus content to remain a parasite living off others. Those lives are stagnant, whereas those with ambition and greed spend little time on the dole.
See, that’s my basic problem with the very idea of greed as an epitaph. Greed as a charge is merely resentment of the success of others, jealousy that another did better. Doctors spend 7 years in school, suffer a year of internship, sure I choke on a $1000 bill for an hour’s work by one but is that greed on their part to charge such rates or merely what the market rate is?
Likewise the CEO of, say, Exxon-Mobile. The company has made billions. Shouldn’t he get a taste of that? You know, reward success and all that positive stuff? And if they make billions selling a product people want, and are paying for, why should I have a problem with it?
Honestly, I just don’t understand why people acting in their self-interest can be wrong on one hand and perfectly acceptable on the other, while people imposing upon others with no desire to stop is somehow never a counter.
– Max
Max – When the wages of Greed, deregulation, and excessive leverage shut down the the World’s Economy, don’t you think there might be a problem?
Give up the denial.
In case you haven’t noticed, some (but not enough) are going to jail for their ‘greed’.
Even worse, many thousands are going to be out of work, in debt, and bankrupt. Millions will suffer for the out of control, leveraged greed of a few, for many years.
They cannot even get day-jobs now, and their families are severely suffering. McCain could care less.
No. It’s not that he could care less. He’s just not willing to take YOUR money in order to fix THEIR problems.
Wow. The “xxxx BUT” structure even applied to a marriage.
Yeah, I gotta admit you’re not going to easily convince me of anything with that kind of “unconditional love”, Fliterman…
So, Flit, I appreciate all of the discussion about greed. Makes it so much easier to observe your complete avoidance of another equally deadly sin.
Motes, and beams, and such.
Indeed, I can go down to any Home Depot, pick up a South American day-worker, pay him minimally, and he will go to any rally, put on a hard hat, and say what he is supposed to say.
And they would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling plumber.
Oh, you weren’t talking about the brightly packaged, manufactured candidate produced by the Chicago Politician Factory?
My bad.
Fliter, it’s a nice speech chock full of angry terms and general claims but…
Didn’t answer the question.
Adam Smith’s “invisible hands” as mentioned in his tome “The Wealth of Nations” is all about greed. So far as I can tell there are two somewhat-opposing viewpoints with any credibility. One is Noam Chomsky (whom oddly enough isn’t an economist), and the other is Joe Stiglitz (Nobel prize 2001, for whatever that’s worth). Both merely argue that externalities can affect Smith’s model, though Chomsky seems to go a lot further with his solutions.
I’m thinking you’d like Chomsky.
It’s fascinating stuff, really. An insomnia cure of the first order as well.
– Max
I LOVE this story!!
Especially this:
“Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”
Yes! This is the America I know. I still remember the days …. a short 6 1/2 years ago…. when we were a family of four living five blocks from the projects on $13.00 an hour. (I stayed at home with the children.) We made a lot of sacrifices to get where we are now, but WE DID IT!!! We never have had cable or X-Box and ate Campbells’ Chicken Noodle Soup with homemade dumplings more times than I care to remember {grin}, but I am proud that we made it without any government handouts!
Now, we own our own business and it makes me so mad that what little we’ve scraped together the government might take away (more than they already are!!) in order to ’spread the wealth around’! NO! WE were the ones who worked hard and saved money — while others were buying expensive clothes, buying every game system available, and living in homes they couldn’t afford. Now, they want to give what we earned to these kind of people? {Grrr}
Thank God for Joe and Tito speaking up for people like us!
P.S. Just throwing my hat into the ring for economics books — I highly recommend Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. If I had enough money, I would buy cases and cases of it — one for each of our Senators and Representatives and then stand on a corner downtown and hand it out to everyone who passed by.
Hey filterman, my new best bud… slogging through your comments # 2,6 & 8 ( more personal information than I care/need to know) above brought to mind a bit of down home, well traveled wisdom I recall receiving from an old dog in the way back that said essentially “… there are so many more horse’s asses than there are horses” …fits you to a tee verdad ?? …lets see…last week a Poumpous Ass… this week a Horse’s Ass…you’re on a roll new Best Bud…Avanti !! Best
Scott, did you ever stop to consider the Ten Commandments, specifically commandment number 10? I think it was noted first by P. J. O’Rourke in “Eat the Rich” (by far the best economics book I’ve ever read, bar none).
In ten rules towards an orderly society, rule 10 simply boils down to “quit being jealous of what others have and work to get your own.”
That message seems to reverberate, at least in areas outside of Washington.
– Max
Flit,
Thanks again for your magnet-like like appeal via syllogism- a subtle, specious or “crafty” argument….
You are successful and always draw a response!
b2
sigh, if only the good Union folk had been allowed to save us from greed of evil businesses and investors.
oops. Unions? Greed? Same sentence? Total non-sequitor. No possible relationship between those words.
Move along folks nothing to see here.
Oh and for the record regarding those Latin laborers: as a human being I feel for them and give to charities, churches and missions that help them. If however, as an an American if they are here illegally I don’t expect McCain to do anything but kindly and firmly send their butts packing. Preferrably on a slow boat to the Guatemala border.
Sorry, fliterman, but I’ve got to harp on a pet peeve here. Are you saying that McCain DOES care about the plight of day laborers? After all, you said “McCain could care less.” That would mean that he does, in fact, care.
Or did you mean to say, “McCain could NOT care less.” (Why does everybody drop the NOT these days? And why am I writing a diatribe that sounds like my high school English teacher?)
I like Tito’s point, that he’s better than BHO because he hasn’t associated with terrorists. I was taught a long time ago to judge people by the company thay keep. And then, if they lie about it, or try to cover it up, judge them even more.
We need more Tito the Construction workers to tell the media what the real story is. Here in Idaho, probably the most Conservative, Republican state in the Union, our local Paper, The Idaho (mis) Statesman just came out and endorsed BHO for President. Don’t they even care what there readers think? Apparently not.
Heather, thanks for the tip. Here’s the Hazlitt book on-line.
http://jim.com/econ/
So who do you think’s going to go after all these Wall Street crooks?
Will it be Barack Obama, lawyer and Harvard boy, with the same easy smile, confident handshake, and social background as these banker crooks (his grandmother was a rich banker – so rich that his mother could afford to be a whacko protester). Do you think Obama’s going to go after his own people?
You think Obama’s going to shine the light down upon his classmates and donors at Goldman Sachs? You think Obama would expose corruption in the press?
I know McCain will.
B2,
You are obviously better at understanding those kinda folks. All that comes across to me from OPie’s and Flit’s contributions to a thread is sort of like listening to the teacher in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.
v/r
geo6
#8 and #13 – MaxD –
To answer your question, it is the concept of moderation, and avoiding extreme excess my friend.
Extremism in any direction leads to trouble.
While “ambition” (desire and determination to achieve success) is a desirable trait, necessary for a healthy society, and should be lauded, ” blind ambition” easily translates into the undesirable extreme of “Greed” (intense and selfish desire for something). It is an extreme that detracts from a healthy society/economy, and often leads to criminal conduct.
I think Aristotle had it right with his Golden Mean. All things in moderation…
BT
#16 SnakeE – verdad? Perhaps. But always happy to oblige.
Geo6,
Understand? Y.G.B.S.M.
Hell, I get a headache and reach for the excedrin every time I read their entries (they probably do the same for mine).
All I can say is the patience and logic exerted by Lex and others to deconstruct..well..they are better than this Gunga Din is all.. : -)
Snake usually handles it about right, the ol’peckerwood.
b2
Among the correlaries I learned in Naval Aviation:
All things in moderation – including moderation.
Fliterman, does this agree or disagree with your thinking?
Old definition of greed:
The leech has two daughters, “Give,” “Give.”
Agur, Proverbs 30:15, circa 950BC
BillK – Thank you for that very interesting proverb reference…. which also happens to impressively cover far more than greed.
Keynes had a very interesting take on greed in 1931, at the start of the Great Depression. Knowing greed undesirable, he nevertheless recommended to “pretend” temporarily, that greed was good.
While I admire Keynes and think I know what he was trying to say, I don’t buy this quote. In addition to the normal moral and ethical problems with greed, I also believe in the following quote by Frenchman, Emile Durkheim in 1897:
… And theft quickly follows.
[SnakeE - Less than 170 words, if you're counting.]
Socrates at a fair, “how many things there are that I do not need.” These days all wants are needs and all needs are rights.
Flit, understand your position, I think, and while I’m a big fan of moderation and caution I cannot abide by sloth and laziness. You’ve not distinguished between greed and ambition or personal industry or even motivation.
Seems it’s the goals that you differentiate by, the results being immaterial?
I have a difficult time with the ends justifying the means, whenever the ends are the same. Just doesn’t seem, you know, fair.
– Max