Election results (Senate 2014)

[zigzag]

Corporations are frequently stereotyped as evil empires, and there certainly are a number of them that are. And they're obviously too entangled with gubment.

 

However, there are a lot of good corps out there that employ a lot of people, paying damm good wages/salaries and providing damm good benefits. I would hate to see the opportunities these companies provide get thrown out with the bath water ... or something like that. :)

 

I cannot disagree bob.

 

But look at the industries that support the military machine, the companies involved in energy, the health care industry, banks, investors, lobbyists... Look at large companies who move overseas for cheap labor and less regulation (the best companies in China are still US owned), the media, Walmart, the entertainment industry, and Monsanto and Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical)(remember Bhopal?) for godssake. I could go on. What is the goal of all business?- to make money. It is the owners and board members who determine their own company morality and humanity, with a little help from the government. The Koch brothers are buying (republican) legislators in hopes of doing away with regulations that will allow them to run unrestrained, free to pollute in any expedient way. Their reputation is so bad they have to run commercials saying how nice they are, just like oil companies (we're cleaning up the gulf... ) and chemical companies like BASF (we don't make the products you buy... ).

[milod]

Ziggy...

 

Actually my "thing" is with bureaucracy period. I think it's obviously horrid in both government and private business.

 

But it's worse in government because that's stealing money from the sector of the economy that produces it in the first place.

 

Efficient government is an ideal that never will be found, nor will efficient large corporate structures.

 

That's specifically due IMHO to bureaucracies. The "right" in the U.S. is kinda engaged in forcing bureaucracies to be more efficient and the bureaucracies are fighting back tooth and nail through their employee unions and such rather than doing anything whatsoever that would cut the minions of bureaucrats - and that means the folks actually doing productive work of government are the ones hurt. But those real workers are hurt not by the funding cuts per se, but by the policies of bureaucrats everywhere to protect themselves rather than those who actually get work done. It's identical in corporate environments, btw. That's the nature of bureaucrats. They redefine and shift "work" so regardless of inefficiency, the bureaucrats' minions are protected - and they blame others.

 

I will admit that government bureaucracies are a far more obvious target to me since there is a potential of a greater degree of correction than there is from stockholders of corporations who tend only to care for their own stock returns. Then again, "voters" of governments tend also to look only at their own perceived "stock returns" from government.

 

Also, "regulation" may sound fine when there's an oil spill, but I can point to regulations that are praised by some, but cost millions from working class Americans, including me and folks around me. It's to the point where it appears farmers will have to ask governmental permission to plow a field on long-term farmground. That is a travesty.

 

As for corporations moving overseas, check to see how much stock is owned by labor unions demanding more returns regardless that it may end up hurting their own membership directly or indirectly. It's short-sightedness and immediate gratification that empowers bureaucracies to long-term control. Ditto government and business.

 

Then again, being old may have the single advantage of having a broader view of such vicissitudes of culture.

 

m

[zigzag]

Just shows that there is a lot that needs fixing, and what the government can fix, it won't because there's too much to lose. Show me a politician that left office with less than he went in with and I'll show you an honest politician or an idiot.

[milod]

Or a combination of the above.

 

Politicians are like the rest of us - once they start thinking about retirement, their perspectives change.

 

That's after knowing more than a few at local, state and national levels.

 

It's also not an insult. I don't see a reason why they shouldn't come out of a life in "government service" starving in retirement.

 

OTOH, I've also seen very few from my small population, large land area state who've come back to retire. Actually few I've known have "retired" at all, and I think for the same reason that "retirement" is dangerous for folks who've been in high adrenalin careers. We all have this bad habit of dropping dead 6 to 18 months after dropping out of the career if we don't find something else to keep the blood flowing.

 

I know I'm not ready for that, and I'd not recommend it to politicians I know from both sides of the aisle. At least not the ones I know and like who are about half and half on the right and on the left.

 

m

[milod]

BTW, as far as "buying" politicians - or politicians "buying" an electorate, I've seen what could be considered both.

 

Bottom line, though, is that folks in politics over the past 2,500 years or so, if not longer, have been making the same back-and-forth.

 

My concern in one sense is that nearly every child in public school in America today, at least, is being taught by a member of the national teacher's union. Whether one thinks that's good or bad is often a matter of whether one figures there can be a level play on the field of ideas when the left controls education from kindergarten through university level.

 

On the other hand, I've also seen more than enough of corporate mismanagement that leaves the big wheels wealthy while they destroy the stock values and thousands of jobs for hard-working, hands-on people who were sold out for a couple of bucks and a bucket full of corporate error and/or stupidity.

 

It's my observation that in many cases both business and government work best at the local level. On the other hand here, though, we also have the difficulty of requirement of economics of scale where error is compounded as well as good (or lucky) decisions.

 

But again, I keep thinking that the entire "whole" would be different were we able to keep our populations and politics closer to roughly where they were in 1950. Yet it ain't gonna happen.

 

m

[jannusguy2]

[Marshall Paul]

Don't vote, it just encourages the bastards.

[Searcy]

Suckers.

 

 

[badbluesplayer]

This place officially sucks my schlong bigtime.

 

Bigtime douc&e factor.

 

You kids need to go outside and play and stop bothering the adults. And stop ruining the Gibson Board just for kicks.

 

This has been three pages of what we're not supposed to talk about. When's it going to stop?

 

This place officially blows. You guys have fun.

[Murph]

I thought it was just getting better............

[Marshall Paul]

This place officially sucks my schlong bigtime.

 

Bigtime douc&e factor.

 

You kids need to go outside and play and stop bothering the adults. And stop ruining the Gibson Board just for kicks.

 

This has been three pages of what we're not supposed to talk about. When's it going to stop?

 

This place officially blows. You guys have fun.

So, let me get this straight...your trying to say what? :unsure: