A Forum for Grinches and Ho-Ho-Hoes

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ironweed
Oh how Carlos Mesa wishes this were true. I thought you read The Economist?

1) That article is in the issue I will receive tomorrow in the mail. I know I am a dinasour that actually likes to sit down in my lounge chair and read from paper instead of a computer screen.

2) I was talking about actual employees of a company demanding it leave. Or did I not understand the article.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky
2) I was talking about actual employees of a company demanding it leave. Or did I not understand the article.

That's a refuckulously high standard. It's generally pretty hard to find anyone, anywhere, who will publicly criticize their current employer to that extent -- it's a guaranteed job loss.

And I'm sure you will say that anyone who has already left a company and criticizes it is a disgruntled former employee who was probably fired for cause. "Cause" meaning, like, you know, criticizing the employer.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
That's a refuckulously high standard. It's generally pretty hard to find anyone, anywhere, who will publicly criticize their current employer to that extent -- it's a guaranteed job loss.

And I'm sure you will say that anyone who has already left a company and criticizes it is a disgruntled former employee who was probably fired for cause. "Cause" meaning, like, you know, criticizing the employer.

mmmmm Currants.......

[Tyrone Slothrop]

So Congress is working on a highway bill that envisions more toll booths on interstate highways. Meanwhile, the gas tax, the major source of federal funding for highways, hasn't gone up in a decade.

I would much rather pay for highways through a gas tax than at tolls. Tolls are just irritating. Why is Congress doing this? Is gas tax money being used to pay for non-highway projects? Tolls can raise a lot of money* -- is Congress looking to raise money through tolls because there is such opposition to taxes?

* Read The Power Broker, about Robert Moses. The key to Moses' power for decades was his control over the spigot of money from toll bridges into and out of Manhattan.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
So Congress is working on a highway bill that envisions more toll booths on interstate highways. Meanwhile, the gas tax, the major source of federal funding for highways, hasn't gone up in a decade.

I would much rather pay for highways through a gas tax than at tolls. Tolls are just irritating. Why is Congress doing this? Is gas tax money being used to pay for non-highway projects? Tolls can raise a lot of money* -- is Congress looking to raise money through tolls because there is such opposition to taxes?

* Read The Power Broker, about Robert Moses. The key to Moses' power for decades was his control over the spigot of money from toll bridges into and out of Manhattan.

Perhaps they're looking at California's experience. Increased purchases of hybrid vehicles has taken a big chunk out of gas taxes.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Tolls are just irritating.

You're conflating tolls and toll-booths (or the blogger is). Tolls, especially electronically paid, allow for congestion pricing to be implemented. Gas taxes do not.

ETA: There is, however, a reasonable concern with any tolls that can be implemented unilaterial by states on inter-state portions of highways. See, e.g., the reCOCKulous tolls on the Maryland and Delaware portions of I-95.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by sgtclub [list]Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stood with one of her most conservative colleagues yesterday to announce a bill to curb sex-and-violence-drenched TV shows and video games.

Both of them are moving to the center (tsunami relief, anyone?). She's already raising lots of money. Consider this plausible scenario -- spun out to me recently by a man who probably would be an Ambassador today if the 2004 election had gone otherwise.

Sen. Clinton is running for reelection to the Senate in 2006. She raises $40 mm for her campaign and spends $10 mm to win. With the remaining $30 mm as seed money, she and hubby begin fund-raising all over the country.

Based on their past track record and Kerry's recent fund-raising results, Sen. Clinton should be expected to easily blow past the $200 mm record set by the Bush campaign in the 2004 cycle. One could expect the GOP to also set fund-raising records for the campaign against her -- but the candidate won't be W.

A bloody battle royale.

S_A_M

Originally posted by Spanky
1) That article is in the issue I will receive tomorrow in the mail. I know I am a dinasour that actually likes to sit down in my lounge chair and read from paper instead of a computer screen.

Fair enough. It just popped up on Google, and I thought I could avoid Hank's fury by citing to it instead of some site with links to Pacifica Radio.

2) I was talking about actual employees of a company demanding it leave. Or did I not understand the article.

That's fine, but (as fringey pointed out in her silky manner above) how much does it prove if only the workers actually employed by an exploitative foriegn company want it to stay?

If the whole rest of the community is violently opposed to a company's presence, it would seem to me that the company in question is not showering the benefits of economic advancement on a grateful populace, to put it mildly.

And I thought I would get extra points for the water company being French. Sheesh.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by taxwonk
You actually sound like a McCarthy Republican. I'm not swallowing any "communist line," you're just talking out your ass. What I'm saying is that in Latin America, to take the easiest example, United Fruit came in and entered into contract farming or purchasing arrangements with large landowners. The US companies did nothing to foment the development of a skilled labor/merchant/educated management class. The counrty's economy continued to be run by the existing elite.

None of this did anything for the poor. The host country did not increase the level of public education, nor did they provide health services or build infrastructure in poor rural villages or city slums. The US did not contract with small farmers. They actually created an incentive for the plantation system to grow, squeezing out the land available to squatters or small farmers.

Thus, the only available employment for the poor was in the country, picking fruit for large landowners or in the city, acting as servants or waiters in the growing number of restaurants and nightclubs. Nobody had the opportunity to get an education, and to work their way up through the economic scale. There was no support for small merchants to develop. Ther was no growth of a service industry.

All of these factors led to an increasing concetration of wealth in the hands of a few, and a greater portion of the poor forced off land that had been available for small farms near the rural villages for decades, if not centuries.

Which country was this? That is a nice story but where did it actually happen? Latin America is not a country.

Originally posted by taxwonk Take Brazil as a classic example. There is an article Hunter Thompson wrote for Collier's, years before he became a gonzo journalist, which begins with the image of a wealthy resident of one of the cities, shooting golf balls off his balcony, to land in the slums below. That pne paragraph speaks volumes..

You are quoting Hunter S. Thompson in a discussion about development? A country of over one hundred million people, and a GNP over a trillion dollars and you reduce it to a picture of guy hitting a gold ball?

Originally posted by taxwonk This situation is repeating itself in Brazil today, with thousands of acres of the Amazon rain forest being plowed under to be replaced by large ranches, mines, and natural gas fields. The large companies come in and basically run off the villagers in the area, or they simply destroy the ecosystem they have lived off of for generations, forcing more peasants into the cities. There are no jobs, there is not adequate education or health care.

There is a democracy in Brazil, but I wouldn't call the country democratic, and I certainly wouldn;t describe its economy as a free market. What you have is an oligarchy, and an economy that serves it.

Its new President - Lula - the former union representative - seems to have converted to be neo-liberal economist. I guess it takes someone like him to institute the free market reforms. Kind of like Nixon going to China.

Originally posted by taxwonk You're on the right track. A thriving, free market economy with a strong middle class, supported by small to mid-sized merchants and manufacturers, peopled with entrepreneurs and middle managers is the key to a truly democratic society. But this middle class doesn't simply appear. Someone needs to provide the infrastructure and the financial, police, and political support for it to grow.

The lack of this middle class is a product of, and a support mechanism for the totalitarian regimes of all stripes that populate the developing world.

I agree with that 100%

Originally posted by taxwonk If we really want to spread democracy, we'd be sending in the WHO and AID along with our military.

Actually, in the countries we occupy, we should focus on building the infrastructure, developing the education system, and creating a stable legal system, to creat the environment where a middle class can develop. Isn't that what we are doing in Iraq?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
So Congress is working on a highway bill that envisions more toll booths on interstate highways. Meanwhile, the gas tax, the major source of federal funding for highways, hasn't gone up in a decade.

I would much rather pay for highways through a gas tax than at tolls. Tolls are just irritating. Why is Congress doing this? Is gas tax money being used to pay for non-highway projects? Tolls can raise a lot of money* -- is Congress looking to raise money through tolls because there is such opposition to taxes?

I agree with you. Although I understand the theoretical economic argument for tolls (making the actuall users of the resource pay for it) in reality they suck. I prefer the Gas tax also. But clearly I am biased because I am a user of the resource. How about cutting all corporat subsidies, farm subsidies and export subsidies and using that money for the highways?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop * Read The Power Broker, about Robert Moses. The key to Moses' power for decades was his control over the spigot of money from toll bridges into and out of Manhattan.

On the subject of Caro - when is he coming out with the fourth book on the Johnson series? I am sick of waiting for him to finish the series.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Perhaps they're looking at California's experience. Increased purchases of hybrid vehicles has taken a big chunk out of gas taxes.

Really? I can't believe that. There just aren't that many hybrids on the road, even in the crunchy area I live, and while they get better mileage, they still burn gas.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ironweed
Fair enough. It just popped up on Google, and I thought I could avoid Hank's fury by citing to it instead of some site with links to Pacifica Radio.



That's fine, but (as fringey pointed out in her silky manner above) how much does it prove if only the workers actually employed by an exploitative foriegn company want it to stay?

If the whole rest of the community is violently opposed to a company's presence, it would seem to me that the company in question is not showering the benefits of economic advancement on a grateful populace, to put it mildly.

And I thought I would get extra points for the water company being French. Sheesh.

The water company is providing a service, and the customers don't like it. Not surprizing, because, like you said, the company is French. Any company that does not satisfy its customers should be sent the way of the dodo bird. I was talking about a company setting up a factory in a country and "exploiting the workers". The only people that bitch about the exploitation are people that are not from the community. When Ford opened its plant in Costa Rica you didn't see the residents bitching about the new jobs and the new money flowing through the local economy.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Perhaps they're looking at California's experience. Increased purchases of hybrid vehicles has taken a big chunk out of gas taxes.

I heard that before, but I find it hard to believe, given how many SUVs I see around here.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
On the subject of Caro - when is he coming out with the fourth book on the Johnson series? I am sick of waiting for him to finish the series.

If you made it through volumes one, two and three, I am truly impressed. I was impressed with myself for finishing The Power Broker. Which is an incredible book -- everyone should read it.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ironweed
Oh how Carlos Mesa wishes this were true. I thought you read The Economist?

The Economist emails me when it produces new articles. I just got the email, so you got that article right of the press. I am surpirzed that Google had it in their system so quickly. I got this at 10:23 AM Pacific time. Isn't that weird Google had it so quickly or am I just behind the time?

Eau dear
A turbulent week in Bolivia: President Carlos Mesa resigned, saying that protesters were making the country ungovernable, but then agreed to stay on, after securing the support of a majority in Congress. Protesters continued to demand the immediate expulsion of a French water company and higher royalties on foreign oil companies.

See article

In another Latin American prison inferno, a fight between rival gangs was reported to have set off a fire which killed 133 inmates at a jail in the Dominican Republic.

Argentina's economy minister, Roberto Lavagna, met officials of the IMF and the United States Treasury, for talks on his country's suspended loan agreement with the Fund. Argentina claims to have put its debt default behind it, after 76% of defaulted bonds were tendered in a debt swap offer; some Fund shareholders want Argentina to make provisions for remaining bondholders.

The presidents of Paraguay and Colombia signed an agreement to co-operate on security and against drug-trafficking. Paraguay's government believes that Colombia's FARC guerrillas had a hand in the recent kidnapping and murder of the daughter of a former president.