licentious radio

Saturday, October 4, 2003
[12:55:35 PM]

Big corporations.... They don't hire American workers. They don't pay American taxes. All they do is sell their products here, and move the profits to off-shore accounts. (That's the trend.)

We're going to have to find a way to protect the quality of employment, or our economy will spiral down as too many people are forced into low-wage service jobs that don't pay enough to buy all these products. And if the corporations refuse to pay taxes, and the workers don't earn enough money to pay taxes, the government will be in serious trouble.

If a corporation has a choice between paying Americans $10/hour plus benefits or paying Indians $1.20/hour with even fewer or no benefits, an awful lot of corporations choose to pay $1.20.

Typically despicably, the Republican party is even out-sourcing their fund-raising calls to Americans. The *good* thing about this is that it makes everything absolutely clear. Technology makes it possible to outsource, but competition and values determine the outcome. Competition forces a race to the bottom -- as a matter of self-preservation and greed. But there is a question of values, also, and Republican corporate and political values have become so reprehensible that the Republican party won't even hire American workers.

The good news is that if we can fix this problem it may well solve the future problem of technology eliminating a large percentage of existing jobs. The bad news is that it isn't obvious how we can save our jobs now.

Let's be clear: it is *entirely* appropriate for government to set rules about the conditions of employment. Corporations individually following their narrowly perceived, short-term interest will seek to increase their profits by reducing costs as much as possible -- within the rules of the marketplace. The rules are determined by governments. The narrowly perceived, short-term interests of corporations are not always in their own long-term best interests, and are *certainly* not necessarily in the best interests of the employees, people, and nations. The way to generate long-term prosperity is to make sure people earn enough money to buy lots of goods and services. We now have many decades of proof -- economic wreckage under Republicans, prosperity when government stands for the workers. Even the rich get richer when the entire economy does well, but they have to earn it, and can't rely on handouts from their cronies in the government.

One positive indication: when the general economy prospers, there is much less pressure to cut costs. Fixing the economy will probably give us some time to deal with the outsourcing problem. But we have to get the Republicans out of the White House before we'll have a prayer of fixing the economy.

[11:56:24 AM]
So it looks like DICK Cheney's Chief of Staff is the prime culprit in the Wilson-gate affair. Makes you wonder how there could be so much buzz about Rove.

The *fun* thing would be if the reason Bush knew it wasn't Rove is that he knew it was out of Cheney's office.

Suspicion centers on Lewis Libby (from Salon.com).

[11:23:11 AM]
"I know that the people of California can see through this trash politics.

"Let me tell you something, let me tell you something: A lot of those that you see in the stories is not true, but at the same time, I have to tell you that I always say, that wherever there is smoke, there is fire. That is true.

"So I want to say to you, yes, that I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I have offended people.

"And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do." --Arnold Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger accused the women as a group of lying, without admitting which stories of harrassment were true, then apologized for how some people might have *felt* about what he did. He didn't apologize for *what* he did, and he didn't apologize to the specific women he harrassed.

This is not a "courageous" apology, but rather an attempt to defame the women involved and to frame sexual harassment as being unimportant.

[11:04:30 AM]
"An outraged President Bush immediately demanded the names of those responsible for exposing Ms. Plame. He repeated his father's statement that 'those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources' are 'the most insidious of traitors.' There are limits to politics, Mr. Bush declared; Mr. Wilson's decision to go public about his mission had embarrassed him, but that was no excuse for actions that were both felonious and unpatriotic.

"Everything in the previous paragraph is, of course, false."

--Paul Krugman

[11:00:58 AM]
People don't say this enough: Joe Wilson is a hero. When Saddam Hussein threatened westerners as hostages during the first Bush Gulf War, Joe Wilson's courageous personal acts kept them safe.

Smearing Wilson is even more despicable than most Rovian/Republican smears.

[10:35:54 AM]
Schwarzenegger actually apologized for *offending* people.

That is, he didn't apologize for touching women's bodies or making sexually explicit remarks, but rather for how people feel about what he did.

Most people are sloppy about apologies and responsibility, but when the whole world is watching, it's time to be precise.

Schwarzenegger surely has the best Republican writers and best Republican strategists that money can buy. He should not get a pass for sloppiness. Rather, we should demand precision, and assume that his statements are precisely what he means.

In this case, his statement was a phony apology with an accusation that some of the women are liars, but without acknowledging which episodes he knows to be true. That, frankly, is a McCarthy-ist tactic.

[10:05:58 AM]
Bob Novak had just better shut up entirely. His "counsel" told him not to comment on some aspects of the Wilson case, but he shoved his foot up his own derrier again, anyway.

Novak implied that Mrs. Wilson violated campaign finance laws by listing a fake company as her employer. The fake company, it turns out, was a CIA front company.

If any bad-guys were trying to figure out how much damage Wilson had done to their cause, Novak just publicized a big piece of their research. Thanks, Bob, you "most insidious of traitors".

(Technically, I don't agree that exposing a CIA agent is necessarily "traitorous". The man who said that is among the vilest of Republican crooks. But, you know, if the shoe fits....)

In particular, Novak is explicitly partisan, and served as the instrument of a Republican slime campaign, without regard for potential consequences -- consequences to the effort to prevent the spread of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

Novak should admit this was a terrible mistake and apologize. Otherwise, this should be a career-ending episode. I wouldn't hold a bad mistake against him, unless he doesn't learn from it and help the nation learn from it by acknowledging the error.