About ART's article. I know you liberals love to hear the rich denounced, even as you long to see a guy married to an $800 million trust fund as President, but are you so intoxicated by the rhetoric that you don't pay any attention to what is being said?
First of all, we know that the concept of the "rich" is somewhat bogus. Why? Becuase today's rich have a habit of dying off or losing or spending or giving away their money, and today's poor and middle class have a very good chance of becoming tomorrow's rich.
Let's talk about that writer's priorities. He wants to end tax breaks for the rich and extend them to small business. Oops, turns out that most of the "rich" that the Dem's so despise ARE small business owners and operators. So which is it guys, are you going to raise their taxes or cut them? No doubt Kerry will want to be on both sides of that issue, as he is on some many others. By the way, did you know he served in Nam?
But what about all those jobs that went overseas? OK, let's just forget for a moment about the onerous union contracts, make work rules and high wages that make US manufacturing uncompetitive. Ditto the environmental reg's, the taxes, the unemployment comp, the health care and other benefits, the endless discrimination complaints and the miles of redtape. Let's pretend that trial lawyers like John Edwards didn't drive entire industries into bankruptcy, and that they don't raise the cost of everything from health care to football helmets. Let's pretend that it is easy to get enough workers in the US to do all these jobs and that they are just as motivated, just as polite to customers, just as eager to please as the workers in Inida, the Phillipines or wherever.
Let's forget that Kerry voted for NAFTA and trade normalization with China and Edwards for the latter, even as he claims he "would have" voted against NAFTA if he'd been in the Senate. Let's forget that they both voted against the 50,000 highpaying jobs that Alaska oil drilling would produce, even though the unions begged them not to.
No, let's focus on the rich, the heads of these evil corporations that have sent American jobs overseas. Which Democrat has proposed a law banning this practice? Kerry and Edwards are both sitting Senators, why haven't they addressed it already? Of course, that would be Kerry's first piece of legislation in 15 years in the Senate, and Edwards has been AWOL almost since he bought his seat.
At least their hearts are in the right place. Kerry's rich wife wrinkled her nose the other day at the thought of Walmart. "They destroy communities." she said. Later it was revealed that she bought $1 million of stock in the company a year or so ago. Whatever.
Wage arbitrage is a serious issue. The appropriate response to it is not clear to me. There are manymore beneficiaries from free trade than losers, but there are losers for sure. No doubt German and Japanese auto unions are still angry about "their" jobs being exported to the US. Are the Dem's against that too? Maybe, since their US workers no doubt are Walmart shoppers.
