I have writer’s block or something. I haven’t felt like writing about much of anything the past couple of days. Until I get inspired again, tell me what’s on your mind these days.
24 thoughts on “Open Thread Saturday”
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I have writer’s block or something. I haven’t felt like writing about much of anything the past couple of days. Until I get inspired again, tell me what’s on your mind these days.
Comments are closed.
It’s got to be tiring writing posts that are factual, insightful, and generally well developed presentations of your view (well, except for the series on the Trail 🙂 ). Enjoy the rest and looking forward to the next post.
Anybody think it’s odd labor unions are silent on the Kennedy/Bush amnesty bill? If passed, it will drive down wages and give big Corporations an almost unlimited supply of strike breakers. Most everybody recognizes that fact. Unions are supposed to represent working people. I bet union members oppose this bill by at least a much as the rest of the country (say 80%). Have union leaders been bought off by the New World Order crowd, too?
Something to say. Well probably the thing I have to say today is that there sure are a lot of people out there that don’t care what gas costs. I drive up Sterling from Farmington Rd., to Nebraska nearly everyday and there are always several big suv’s and trucks and the like that zoom past me only to get to the red light and have to wait. I get there a little later and when it turns green I am still rolling and go on past them. They step on the gas and gun it to the next light and the same thing happens. Going the other way you can take your foot off the gas at Nebraska and roll downhill picking up tremendous speed as you approach Farmington Rd.. But do these peopl do that, no, they floor the gas until they get to the bottom of the hill and then have to apply their brakes extra hard. What kind of driving is this? I get there same as them and waste almost no gas doing it, nor do I go through brakes as much as they do. When I see them whizzing by me I think immediately of a huge carburetor with a gaping mouth just sucking in the gas by the gallon. No wonder they all have high credit card bills with the gas they have to buy all the time.
Billy D. reports that Shock and Umholtz are considered favorites to replace LaHood. Is he kidding-what have either done to deserve that fate. Anyway, Ray isn’t going anywhere soon. It would be an emberassment for an educational institution like Bradley to name a politician as their President-and I think Ray is one good man.
The Mouse is right about the illegals and amnesty.
However, the wage decreases have been going on for a while already. (Yes, even here in Peoria) The entry-level factory jobs are being taken by illegals in this area because they will work for less money. Those jobs used to go to recent high school grads who had no interest in college. Illegals don’t just take jobs that American citizens don’t want to do, they take any job, for less money, driving down wages because of the sheer numbers of them willing to work for low amounts.
Sounds more like a competitive market for labor to me. But I guess having a competitive labor market is a bad thing….
Get your head out of the sand, Mahkno, we already have a competitive labor market. Unless your a very good professional athlete, workers have very little leverage. Emplolyers hold all the cards. Ever hear of outsourcing? Any idea how many people in China, India, Mexico, and other places are doing jobs that Americans did 15 years ago? Real wages are going down for the vast majority of workers. If you buy the propaganda that inflation is low, look at your utility bill, your rent/mortgage, your gas, your food, your taxes a few years ago and today. There’s vigorous competition for your utility business, isn’t there? The legilature saw to that, didn’t they? If you want a more competitive labor maket then try living on “a dollar a day”. “Yes you can, in Yucatan!” – go live there. Enjoy the “free” market. That was a real ad, by the way, in an American business publication. Perot didn’t make it up.
Mouse, it’s not as simple as you’re saying. Yes, if Jose cleans carpets for $4/hr instead of the $8/hr that Aaron requires, and all else is equal, then Jose will get the job and carpet cleaning employee #42 will make less money and be ‘worse off’. Every customer at ACME Carpet Cleaning, however, gets their carpets cleaned for less money, which makes them ‘better off’.
The calculation of net utility isn’t as simple as you make it seem. Plus, why is American Aaron any more deserving of a job than Honduran Jose?
For starters, because he’s an American, ben, and this is the United States of America, not Honduras. And we don’t want to return to Charles Dickens’s time – so let’s not all race to the bottom.
Here is a question: What do you do when your neighborhood association votes in support of a zoning change in violation of that associations very Bi-Laws?
This approval has the full unanimous support of the officers. Before you say ‘vote them out’… yeah that would be nice but… The Bi-Laws are deliberately set up to make it near impossible to remove the officers. Voter apathy or disgust with the organization, keeps people away so that pretty much the same dozen or so people show up month after month.
Our city for all of its failings, does listen to neighborhood representatives. So does out Council Person. Neither the City nor the Council Person are going to ask if the ‘support’ is legitimate or not. They are just going to see ‘This neighborhood supports this’.
How legitimate is a neighborhood association if it cannot even follow it’s own bi-laws?
Simple. Resign from the corrupt and ineffectual neighborhood association, create your own, and fight like HELL for yoru neighborhood. Make sure the fight is public. Make sure you make it clear via appearances at public meetings (city council, zoning board) that your group, that the lard asses on the fake group) are the real representatives of the neighborhood. You, not the city government, defines who represents the neighborhood.
Call me, Mahkno.
Now how is someone paying someone $4.00\hr.? Would that be under the table? It sure isn’t the minimum wage. If there were sizable rewards for turning in the “pay under the mininum wage under the table types” and there were HUGE OUTRAGEOUS fines for paying less than minimum under the table without taxes being deducted, matched and turned in, the jobs for illegals would decrease.
I don’t have the link at my fingers but I had posted it somewhere along the lines on one of these blogs… basically, the IRS issued a report concerning tax filings for the 2006 tax year (the ones you sent in, in April). That report concerned taxes being filed by presumably ‘illegal’ immigrants. The findings, much to the wingnuts despair and conventional wisdom, were that the ‘illegals’ are indeed paying their taxes.
The IRS has long has a means to pay taxes without having a Social Security Number. There are also those using ‘bogus’ numbers as well, which the IRS can identify.
Mahko,
The association needs to follow it’s own bylaws, or vote to change them if the bylaws are ineffective. Although I am not sure what-if any-associations would have bylaws regarding zoning, so I am assuming that the issue has to do with the vote itself.
Getting people to participate in meetings to decide things is a universal problem and sometimes only a few are making a decision effecting many. Look at the last city council election tallies as a good example. I assume that you were at the meeting and I would assume that you did a point of order to refer to the bylaws and that would be indicated in the minutes of the association? That would be your evidence if there was a bylaw violation to have the organization reconsider the vote. To many unkowns to the situation as presented to give good advice on this one….
Chef Kevin – IF the government enforced the laws that are on the books now we wouldn’t have 20 million illegals in the country, and more coming in every day. They refuse to enforce the laws because big business wants the supply cheap labor. The lust for cheap labor brought us slavery in the 17th, 18th & 19th. century, and we are still paying for that venture (even though only a small percentage of the people then owned slaves, and none of my ancestors did). I say again, Pay Attention, People! If you are one of those who works for a living, pays the taxes, fights the wars and obeys the laws, you are being screwed by your so-called representatives.
Paul,
Our Bi-Laws stipulate that the Purpose of the Association is to first and foremost: “retaining the original vision of the [neighborhood] as a single-family residential neighborhood”
This was specifically amended in 2004 following the med-tech controversy to discourage mixed use. The irony is that the same people who made that amendment then are the same ones wanting non-residential mixed use properties now.
That isn’t a zoning language… that means keeping the neighborhood for families and only families.
Our neighborhood voted to allow a home to be used as an office, leaving the building in-tact (thankfully. for now anyways). No one will be living there. This in itself might not be such a big deal, language of the bi-laws aside, but the party that wants the office has made clear they want several more homes in which to potentially demolish to make way for parking so that they can expand. Their exact plans are unclear.
The party who wants the office has already rezoned another property (it does have a residence tho), without the support of the neighborhood. Well.. I should say, enough people showed up that one night to ensure support was not given. The officers were keen to support the rezoning then too.
BEN – June 17:
Are you so sure that ll of the customers of ACME Carpet Cleaning are going to pay any less for services – whether they use $4 hour illegal labor or $8 hour American labor? That would make any interesting study. Are companies who use cheap illegal labor REALLY going to pass the savings on to the customer?
I hate typing/spelling errers.
@ Mouse: Why does somebody born in the USA deserve a job more than somebody born in Honduras? What a ridiculous and arbitrary distinction. Do you think that I don’t deserve to work in Woodford County, where I happen to live, just because I wasn’t born here? I’m from a whole other state, even! Should jobs in Bartonville be open only to people born in Bartonville?
@ Big Mountain: Of course, I have no idea whether or not ACME will reduce their prices after their employee wages drop. But that’s no different than any other situation in a free market. If you don’t think that eventually competition will drive carpet cleaning prices down as labor becomes cheaper, then you might as well just give up and become a commie. 😉
ben – everyone has the same right to the same job IF THEY ARE LEGAL. We are discussing ILLEGALS, who should have no right to get a job.
ben:
1. Not about where someone is born – see mdd’s comment – it’s their legal status.
2. You may not be a “commie” but your an internationalist – almost as bad. I don’t want a “one world government”. It will inevitably lead to tyranny.
3. For 230+ years Americans have fought and died to keep this country free. We have struggled to build this country and strove to uphold its principles. If an American who comes back from Iraq doesn’t have a right to a job before some guy who snuck across the border last night and will work for less-then-minimum wage, because you think the carpet cleaner is going to give you a few cents off your bill, then this country isn’t big enough for the two of us. If you prevail, I’m going to be looking for another country. I hope you make me that same promise.
No one has a right to a job. Enough with the socialist talk.
To follow Mouse’s numbering…
1. What does paperwork have to do with an argument about principles? Legal vs. illegal is just signatures and semantics. Plenty of great people sneak into the US, plenty of d-bags get work visas (and vice versa, of course).
2. I’m not sure what “internationalist” means in this context. Please explain. I don’t want a “one world government”, either. Heck, I wish our American gov’t was more decentralized (states’ right and all that).
3. It is deceitful to use the example of a veteran as why ‘mericans deserve ‘merican jobs over them durn furriners. Let’s turn the tables, shall we? How about we compare a hard-working, intelligent, upstanding young Mexican with a high school dropout, room-temp IQ, I’m-entitled-to-the-American-dream-but-I-don’t-wanna-work-for-it American. /Now/ who deserves the job? Pretty biased question, no?