Thread turned into an Occupy T&TTT Thread! We the 99%

[S. Heisley]

You're right, wired. That is just one of the things that we are talking about, above. Much of it comes down to the government changing the loaning rules as well as the rules for the import tariffs and all that ultimately rides on the backs of the politicians. However, our people did not have to fall prey to the easy-to-buy homes, etc. You didn't.

[StandUpGuy]

Which I think gets back to the main stream media. People need to really understand the real facts about issues and the media has a major agenda. Example: When Obamas uncle was arrested for drunk driving I was looking for weeks on some article where a reporter was trying to talk to this illegal alien uncle. One...one lone reporter tried to talk to him on the street. No hoard of reporters and nobody trying to get to the bottom of the story. The media burried this story. Try now to find something new out there about it. 85% of the media vote Democrat and many of the high ups in the media worked on democratic campaigns. If Barney Frank had the media on him like Herman Cain is getting now, Barney would have been drummed out of office long ago. Do you know Barney Frank Hired his gay lover to a government paid job? Did you know Barney Frank was caught fixing parking tickets for people that were going to his apartment where his gay lover was conducting a gay brothel? Where is the media on this?

[BigAl]

I made the decision to pull my own post due to the increasingly political nature of the thread. Of which I share in the blame! ;)

[snip!]

[hotrod]

there is a fairly serious labor dispute here at the moment going on with american crystal sugar. During contract negotiations the company locked out the employees and brought in a bunch of outside "help" ..the upper management has every benefit in the world and has seen a 18 to 25 % increase in their pay up to 19.5 MILLION dollars a YEAR plus bonuses..
they the management want the employees to take a severe pay cut.. WTF?? People are fed up with this crap. They are paying their "help" more than their locked out employees were making.. I no longer buy their product or anything made with american crystal sugar..Lets see what happens to the local economy when the heavily government subsidized (corprate welfare, thats ok, its for them, not the rest of us) sugar industry looses its support...

[StandUpGuy]

Well In that union labor contract with the sugar company the company offered a five year contract. I am not familar with the terms of the contract offered. Can you tell me what was offered?

[StandUpGuy]

OK I found the terms of what the sugar company offered as a five year contract:

"...In its latest offer, American Crystal would delay for a year the switch to a new health insurance plan that would be more expensive for workers. The workers said they want a better deal. The company offered a 13 percent pay increase over five years...."


http://minnesota.publicradio.org/displa ... t/?refid=0


I have just experienced a 10% cut in my pay over the past year. They have since restored my pay to what it was before the 10% cut. The economy sucks and this sort of thing is going on everywhere. The contract the Sugar company had offered would have3 been a 2.6% each year for the five years and some increased costs of insurance. Guess what everybodies insurance has been going up.

This new term "Corporate Welfare" that has been created is another word for tax write offs. Tax write offs are not welfare. It is a disengenuous term. Companies get tax write offs for things like buying new equipment. This is not welfare. Frankly I think the 12% increase over five years was equitable. Why was this not acceptable?

[hotrod]

the union folks were more than willing to work with no contract while a new one was being negotiated. the moment the first contract was voted down they were shut out of the company and their jobs. the company had already in place replacement workers who are rumored to being paid more than the regular employees, .. in short they crapped on their people, upper management gets outrageous compensation packages, the company was and is very prosperous, how come they are trying to get rid of the people who have dedicated their lives to make it that way? Is it because they have an ability to voice their opinion as a group? I know alot of these folks, they are everyday working folks who do not make crazy money. they have managed to have good jobs and support their familys. They are fighting to keep their right to work for a living wage and fair working conditions. if they lose the rest of us will be soon to follow.. Without the union there is no way I would do what I do for a living for less than what Im making now which isnt enough most days. If Im gonna earn minimum wage and work 80 hours a week Im going to walmart and work in the air conditioning...
Not everyone owns a buisness or wants to, someones gotta do the actual work and those people are getting fed up with being pushed into submission..
it is corprate welfare, I did own a buisness and recieve tax writeoffs until energy prices forced me to raise my prices beyond where average american folks couldnt afford to hire me anymore in enough numbers to justify being in buisness and I fell to the competition with lower expenses, but thats just buisness...
Im done in this thread now....carry on....

[StandUpGuy]

I have relatives in northern Michigan who are sugar beat farmers. I used to spend summers there as a child. I know for a fact that sugar beet processing plants have been closing down over the past 30 years. I do not believe that sugar beet processing plants are especially profitable. I am sorry and I wish the workers there well as I wish all working people well. These days it is simple nice to have a job at all.

[stumphugger]

The Sierra Club quit sending me membership stuff. It took about 3 mailings for them to do so. They would send me their propaganda with a postage paid return envelope. The envelope asked me to please put a stamp on it to save them money.

I took their stuff, including the torn open envelope, added all the pages of Loggers World (a magazine printed on newsprint) that I could fit in, and sent it back to them. I did not contribute a stamp.

We have plenty of trees so don't feel bad about sending paper back.

[yingxuy]

In the lower middle class wages have stagnated or declined, at the top of the order of magnitude gain. Voting itself is a great salary and allowances of the board of directors intertwined part of blame.

[jstrubberg]

Credit and credit problems are like poison. They can't hurt you unless you drink them. Blaming banks for lending money to make money is dumb, unless you never ask a bank to make money for YOU! We all yell about Wall Street making too much money. How many of us have a 401k and threaten to pull our money out if that fund doesn't make money for us? How many of us have sold a stock,that didn't produce? Pogo was right. We have met the enemy and he is US!

The problem isnt just the top, although there is plenty of greed there, too. We are the problem, folks. You can't have an 80 inch tv on every floor without inflation, and inflation is another word for the American worker pricing himself out of the market. We are guilty, unions are guilty and business owners are guilty. Everyone wants more. Sooner or later someone comes along who will do it for less. Darwinian economics.

[JuneBug]

Here's a pretty clever "occupy" idea...
I have a friend who did it. Took pictures of the envelope with the wood shim in, and dropped it in his mailbox. :lol:

Oh, dear. Flash back to college days when we mailed back an unsolicited credit card application attached to a brick.

Good idea, though. One of my regular chores now is to shred credit card applications and anything else with my or my husband's name on it. This would redirect that effort to made a statement. I like the idea of sending a "statement" rather than getting a credit card statement in the mail.

I went from credit to debit about 10 years ago (when I joined a credit union) and cancelled my credit card. VISA has NEVER gotten over this defection.

[rowerwet]

Tax imports, not income, the way this country worked until FDR...

[working on it]

rowerwet wrote:

Tax imports, not income, the way this country worked until FDR...

... Not sure how that would work out now, since everything is coming in from offshore (except jobs, which the 1% are sending over there) including the new American workforce (seemingly also mostly-recent-imports).

[rowerwet]

that is why we are where we are, almost 100 years of doing things the wrong way. or lets put the fair tax in place as the system we have now is sure broken... http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer