Please be a bit more specific in your comments. If you are going to call me a racist, please be prepared to back the comment up. Be a man. Please explain exactly what you mean by this.
This is a very condescending attitude and it's why there is so little open dialogue. Just because you no longer have to deal with it, doesn't mean it isn't rampant. His posts deny any fact which shows non-whites in a positive light or absolves them of blame. Everything is their fault and all bad things are caused by them. Crime is high? Non-whites Unemployment is high? Non-whites Jobs going overseas? Non-whites Divorce rate high? Non-whites War in the Middle East? Non-whites Bush approval rating low? Non-whites Banks get a bailout? Non-whites Businesses close? Non-whites His car won't start? Non-whites He can't buy a plasma TV? Non-whites Out of all these posts, there has been nothing postive about anyone who is not white.
Not earl the pearl here, but one might read "racist overtones into this statement: "Predominantly union, heavily populated metropolitan areas, very liberal, and overly burdened with illegals..." On to the real meat though... WSJ Reports unemployment has risen to 9.8%. Again, where are the facts to support your (now even more absurd) claim that, "Most of the troubles in the US from banking to employment seem to center around only a few certain geographical locations in the US. Predominantly union, heavily populated metropolitan areas, very liberal, and overly burdened with illegals..."
Corwin: I appreciate your response. I'm not going to wate time commenting further on Mia's remarks. As for me, I grew up in a small town outside of NYC. At least 1/3 of the town was Italian American and some native born Italians. I'm not Italian. Lots of my friends and first g/f were. We played all the time and fought. I like to joke that my nose punched out a lot of Italian fists growing up. I appreciate your upbringing. When hanging at friends houses as a little kid and beyond I experienced a lot of Italian family habits and traditions, along with my favorite national cuisine. As to the Automotive world I went back and read your piece and the thread which I missed when it first came out. I found that very interesting. I love reading stuff like that. What insights. There are always crappy companies as you described GM with regard to dealing with their vendors. While anecdotal a lot of those stories points to a company with deep problems. As to the rest of that thread, all those companies were unionized. They all had the same constraints in that regard. Similarly all were paying employees health care benefits versus foreign auto manufacturers that weren't carrying that cost. But from your description it appears that GM was a crappy company from the top down, at least in terms of working with vendors. This made me think of a different business article I recently saw. An LA clothing manufacturer, American Apparal made the news recently. It is firing 1/4 of its staff. The employees are illegal aliens. The thing that caught my attention aside from that fact, was that this company was manufacturing in LA, and was aggressively outperforming and/or performing dramatically well against the incredible flood of foreign made clothes. Today, so much of everything is made in Asia and/or South America. The news article describing the firings referenced some type of proprietary manufacturing basis that allows this American company to succeed against foreign manufacturers while paying American wages and health benefits. I subsequently found this little dated piece about the business...http://americanapparel.net/presscenter/articles/20040600manufacturer.html Pretty nifty for an American company. It also stands in stark contrast to how you describe GM. One of the reasons I sourced the Bed Bath and Beyond article is that it referenced a recently bankrupt competitor/retailer Linens N Things. I knew the founder of Linen's N things. That guy loved my uncle becuz my uncle saved his butt in business before he ever came up and started Linen's N Things. Yrs later the Linen's N Things guy helped me when I was getting started in commercial real estate/retail leasing and sales. It used to be that retailers like Bed Bath and Beyond, Linens N Things and so many others purchased all their linens, towels, etc. from factories in North Carolina. Now all that manufacturing is done in Asia. Too bad those American manufacturers didn't have the smarts that are associated with the American Apparel guy in Los Angeles. For the time being G M is going to be around. I hope it becomes a totally different company than the one you describe.
WTF are you talking about??? More importantly WHO? Wow, I had no idea that unions were a race. I really had no idea that liberals were a race as well. Interesting. The irony here is that all the people that routinely run around calling people racists are likely the whitest WASP's on this board. This Race BS is really gone from silly to absurd to purely pathetic. Of course not. You're a coward. If you are going to call someone a name, be prepared to back up your bullshit.
How exactly do you use the term "illegals"? These days it seems to generally be used as a substitute for spic, wetback, taco, beaner or any number of other clearly racial terms.
Wow. Seems we have a winner. Looks like you might be the racist. "Illegal"? "Illegal Alien" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(law) Specficially: Apparently you consider people of Mexican descent "Illegals"? I'm, if anything I'd say you are really being quite ignorant. BTW John, Mexican is a nationality, not a race. Anyway, how on earth did we get on the subject of disgusting racial slurs? Any particular reason you felt it necessary to throw out a bunch of those terms, and single out Mexican people? Not everyone in the US that is here illegally is from Mexico, or "Mexican", or whatever it is you like to call them. What was it? spic, beaner (not heard that one yet), taco? WOW... The ignorance here lately. It's way out of control. Any names you want to call me too? Get this through your sick, twisted, ignorant thick skull. "Illegal" does not mean "Mexican". Unbelievable.
Amazing what the difference an 's' can make - illegal (adjective) vs. illegals (noun) - don't you think? The sad fact is, and this might well include you, the vast majority of those using the term illegals, are using it identically to any other racial epithet. The wiki article you referenced doesn't even use the term illegals (noun)in its body. (BTW, "Hispanic", rightly or wrongly, is considered a "race". Not sure what it means that you would confuse Hispanics with Mexican nationals. You would do well to review this list of racial slurs so that you can be more precise in which particular group or nationality you want to malign.) The National Association of Hispanic Journalists would seem to agree with me on this point. Sorry Mia, your language gives you away
Speaking of racist and cowardly actions....I might as well show the latest.....ANONYMOUS RED REP I got. Sort of funny. The only anonymous comment is "RACIST". It came with a lot of red rep. The only one who could provide it is you Mia. It was attached to something I wrote here in 2004. Who else has that much hatred and anger that they are going to waste there time doing that. By the way, you know what is funny? Every time you give me anonymous red rep and I post it, a bunch of people have come around and given me positive green. Never expected it. Keep giving out that hate filled "anonymous power packed red rep, Mia. It appears there are a lot of people who find it grotesque. Then after all the rep giving is passed around I end up with more positive green rep than your ANONYMOUS red rep provides. Frankly, people can't stand haters. Now I could go through a bunch of your citations all over this forum, filled with hatred, horrible allusions to anyone you can't stand, or those that suffer the horrendous curse of being democrats...so they naturally end up being called names that are full of racist/hate filled anger......or worse yet, you've wished them death. I could cite all those things, but why bother. Plenty of commentators in these forums have already seen them. On the other hand, I appreciated Corwin's comments. Corwin's and my political perspective are very different. He responded with an adult commentary. He described his upbringing. Man, I can relate to that, as I described above. He went on to describe first hand experiences. They were intelligent. He referenced a post and thread about the differences in Detroit auto makers. It was very intelligent. It described insights that few of us see unless we are as close at hand as he was. Anyways, others have already responded to you. I guess that means you'll be hard at work giving out a lot of supercharged anonymous RED REP late at night. I hope others reveal those ANONYMOUS red reps also. Then I suspect, if there experiences are at all like mine...they'll get a net increase of positive green rep. And that is a small example, a teeny example on how many people relate to the outright anger and hatred expressed by a few. but it appears I don't have to do that. Other people have already responded. Your commentary is appalling.
Another interesting picture for you Mia. Take a look at the "red States" bank failures in 2009. Idaho 1 Wyoming 1 Utah 2 Colorado 2 South Dakota 1 Nebraska 1 Kansas 1 Oklahoma 1 Minnesota 3 Iowa 1 Missouri 2 Alabama 2 Kentucky 1 Indiana 1 Ohio 1 Georgia 19 Illinois 16 Texas 2 Nevada 3 Total: 61 Looks like those ""Predominantly union, heavily populated metropolitan areas, very liberal, and overly burdened with illegals..." may be a fantasy after all. That's 61 of 95 bank failures - just about 2/3rd's - out of the most rural, conservative and non-unionized areas of the Country. Who woulda' thunk it? BTW, if you want to check the Unionized part, you can compare that picture with this one.
With stock and commodity prices zooming for the past 3-5 months and improved sentiment, people have started believiing that recession is over.Howeer, U.S. is reporting bank closures every week!!........Don't know when speculative and predatory lending will return for greedy bankers and their fat pay bonuses......greed+risk appetite is back although in limited fashion....
WRONG! YES, it is! The economy is about employment. All other metrics fall to insignificance compared to employment. The economy is directly related to employment. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is either cold-hearted, or hiding something.
At it's core, the two most basic functions of any form of government is: 1. Provide for the safety of it's people (physical security), and 2. Provide for an environment where people can make money so as to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate themselves (economic security) If you doubt this, you might want to re-read the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, especially the parts about "insure domestic tranquility", "promote the general welfare", etc. High unemployment always indicates that the government has failed to provide conditions of economic security. Rising unemployment indicates that the government absolutely does not know what it is doing, like we have now. Ignoring unemployment is the same as saying "screw the poor", right? This is the COMMUNIST mentality - the upper class is doing fine, so who cares if people are starving???. Or, as it was once coldly said, "Let them eat cake". Typical liberal (communist) mentality - as in, Who Cares if people are unemployed and suffering, as long as our liberal political party is popular, right?
Wasn't there a new rule that barred bitching about rep? What a whiner. I'll stand by the coward comment. As I have stated many times before. When you bitch about rep, that's when I gladly red rep you. Accuse me of doing it, I'll give you some as well. Don't you have anything better to do than bitch about rep, accuse me of doing it, all the while continually race baiting me? That's pretty pathetic. What's this topic about again? In the short time you've spent attacking and name calling me here, the Unemployment rate jumped to 9.8%.
No matter how long, crazy and accusatory your rant, you can't change the fact that pretty much all mainstream economists will tell you what I said, that the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. You might want to look up what that means, because once you understand that, you may gain insight into how uninformed your post looks. I'm not going to hold my breath, though.