Yes, that giant sucking sound you hear is in fact American jobs heading to Mexico. 1400 of them, as a matter of fact.
Down in Mexico, you see, the company will only have to pay workers $19 a day to assemble furnaces and air conditioners. Ain't "free trade" grand?
“This is strictly a business decision,” a Carrier executive tells employees, describing how their 1,400 jobs making furnaces and heating equipment will be sent to Mexico. Workers there typically earn about $19 a day — less than what many on the assembly line here make in an hour. As boos and curses erupt from the crowd, the executive says, “Please quiet down.”
NAFTA is considered to be a big part of Bill Clinton's legacy, but it wouldn't have happened without support from the GOPe - and American workers are continuing to pay the price for Washington lunacy. But even Democratics are getting angry, now:
Indiana politicians, who granted Carrier tax breaks and other incentives, are furious at the company and want their money back. They are also angry because Carrier’s parent, United Technologies, is a major military contractor that receives $5.6 billion annually from the federal government.
“That’s financed by the taxpayers they just fired,” said Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana. “They are trying to be the ultimate free rider.”
Don't worry, Joe; next to be outsourced will be medical lab jobs, because even though they pay about a third less than the Carrier manufacturing jobs paid, other countries will do it for less. In the meantime, Democratics can be counted upon to keep passing laws regarding health insurance, mandated numbers of hours of paid time off, and minimum wages that must be paid, regardless of the skill level of purported employees.
Maybe Joe should talk to his fellow Democratics about the consequences.
Politicians who have never held a real job in their lives really have no business in business issues.
Even though TriMet promotes MAX as a faster, more reliable travel option, buses were more likely to show up on time in eight of the last 12 months.
Their vaunted multi-billion-dollar light rail lines? Late 20% of the time, and people are starting to get a bit annoyed - one long time rider is considering going back to driving between her work site in Hillsboro and her home in Tigard (apparently she parks at the garage at the Beaverton Sunset stop and rides on in to Hillsboro).
She said delays have become routine and the frequent track and train breakdowns "maddening."
Her worst experience of the year came Dec. 23 after a cascade of disruptions: a faulty switch in East Portland cut off part of the Green Line; a collision between a MAX train and a car in downtown Portland caused delays for the Blue and Red lines; and a car stuck on the tracks near Union Station caused delays for the Yellow and Orange lines.
Some delays have been as long as four hours. Unlike their "trains", buses can simply route around obstacles. But developers don't like buses because 1: they're not spiffy, and 2: bus routes can be changed to accommodate conditions. So developers like rail, and Try-Met is only too happy to oblige. What once was a reliable transit agency has become a development agency. Riders are not all that important in the great scheme of things; in the late 1970s, ridership (on buses) was nearly 8% of the commuting population. Since they began emphasizing rail, ridership has actually declined by half.
And they hit a new low for reliability of transit last year, which likely means that more people will return to driving or bicycling.
Although we constantly hear that the economy's improving, it seems difficult to reconcile the rosy stories with the facts on the ground; most Americans may not be living paycheck to paycheck, but they're not setting funds aside for retirement - and worse yet, they're one unforeseen bill away from meltdown:
In fact, about 63 percent of Americans say they're unable to handle a $500 car repair or a $1,000 emergency room bill, according to a new survey from Bankrate.com.
Democratics really helped to fuel this trend when they rammed Obamacare through, as that bill redefined "full time employment" from 40 hours a week to 30, and resulted in many employers cutting staff hours to 29 per week in order to avoid being slapped with Obamacare penalties. The unsurprising result:
American workers are more likely than ever to see big swings in income due to job losses or cuts in hours.
But according to Nancy Pelosi, that's a good thing because it gives you more time to "pursue your passions".
Under a proposal floated this month, buses for Portland Public Schools would ferry white kids from the ritzy West Hills across the Willamette River to attend the poorest middle school in the district, and the only one that's majority black and Latino.
The schools in question are Skyline K-8 and George Middle School in the St. Johns neighborhood. While Skyline receives generally favorable reviews, George doesn't so much. Skyline sits in the tony West Hills, and a lot of families moved into the area because of that school's reputation. There's also a lot of parental involvement there. By contrast, George sits on a dead-end road in a neighborhood that sees more than its share of violence, and it enjoys comparatively little parental involvement, as many of them are "single moms" with two or three kids. Although some gentrification is occurring in the St. Johns area, much of it is still stuck in the 70s.
Portland Public Schools is redrawing the map for its schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade. The plan is simple, at least in concept: The district is trying to move students from crowded classrooms to empty ones.
Not that the classrooms at George are empty, but there's more space available there - and since in the educational milleu the money follows the child, PPS figures that busing a bunch of kids from Skyline in would raise the funding levels for George. There is, however, a slight problem with this line of reasoning: first of all, the parents of kids at Skyline, for some unknown reason, aren't too keen on the idea of busing their precious snowflakes ten miles away so that they can attend an underperforming school.
Second of all, the roads involved are a little problematic; the bus would have to navigate Skyline Road and Germantown Road, both of which are prone to weather-related shut-downs, and then putter across the iconic St. Johns Bridge, which is prone to traffic tie-ups (and the occasional landslide at its southern portal). Then they'd have to get the kids back at the end of the school day. All in all, these are not minor issues, and would likely add two hours to each school day, assuming that there were no problems. You can tell that the folks at PPS are unfamiliar with the logistics of living up here in the hills.
And then there's the really big issue: many of the parents of kids at Skyline are filthy rich; get a few of them together to hire one of Portland's top lawyers, and PPS would find themselves on the short end of the stick in no time. Alternatively, they might simply pull their kids out of PPS and place them into private schools. Neither of these scenarios would appear to advance the apparent goals of PPS.
And if the kids go into private schools, there's another problem: funding is linked to actual school population.
Portland politicians puffed pridefully as they presented their pretty and iconic (it's got to be iconic, after all) carless bridge, which they named the Tilikum. Because they're just that cool. When you're busy being a "national leader", you've gotta be cool.
And what's especially cool about this bridge over the Willamette River is that only streetcars buses, and light rail are allowed on the thing; cars and trucks are out. Of course, bicycles and pedestrians are allowed as well, because "active transport". That's really the hot term around town these days.
Not to disparage their "iconic" dreams, but it seems reasonable to suggest that they might sort of want to re-work some of their "iconic" bridge's "iconic" features. After all, a week and a half ago, a woman landed - eventually - in the hospital after a bicycle rider ran her down.
You might be thinking that had to hurt. Carole Barkley, who was taking her dog for a walk at the time, seems to concur:
“I have four broken ribs, my shoulder was separated,” said Barkley, who also has a chipped vertebrae. “I'm a mess of bruises.”
Well now, however could this sort of thing happen? This is a brand-new bridge that's designed to be a "national model"! Oh:
“I pushed the pedestrian button and waited for the light and I started to move and I was aware of something coming at me from the left and it registered that it must be a bicyclist," she said "But before I could process anything, I got hit. I was on the ground thinking, 'Why didn’t he stop?' Because I know I had the light.”
This never happens; everybody knows that bike riders are courteous, safe, and obey all traffic rules at all times. The problem is those idiot drivers in their cars and trucks - that's a given, here in Portland.
Better yet, Portland police refused to take a report on the incident:
Sgt. Pete Simpson with the Portland Police Bureau said because it’s not a roadway and it's not otherwise prohibited to ride on the bridge, the collision is not a police matter.
But hey, it's an "iconic" bridge, and at least the dog wasn't hurt.
Granny's path to the White House has become more than a little encumbered along the way, which is probably why she's taken to comparing Republicans to Nazis, of late.
An FBI “A-team” is leading the “extremely serious” investigation into Hillary Clinton’s server and the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information,” an intelligence source told Fox News.
The section of the Espionage Act is known as 18 US Code 793.
A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign’s standard defense and that of Clinton is that she “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” at the time.
A violation of the Espionage Act would be a felony.
The involvement of an FBI "A" team underscores the seriousness of the situation in which Granny finds herself, as it appears that Obama's appointed head of DOJ, to whom the FBI reports, is pulling out the stops. One almost gets the impression that Barry doesn't want to see her as the 2016 nominee.
But at least she says that she "takes responsibility"....
We all knew that, and it's in violation of the state Constitution, but of course the Oregon Lottery doesn't enforce their own "rules" and the Legislature is disinclined to take any action, either:
Legislation that would have labeled lottery-dependent retailers as casinos,House Bill 3316, died in a committee this year largely because of revenue concerns. Tomei's successor in Salem, Rep. Kathleen Taylor, D-Portland, told The Oregonian/OregonLive the change could have cost the state $83 million.
So-called "limited menu" purveyors — which pair wall-to-wall video gambling with cigarettes and bare-bones food options such as microwave burritos — have been free to flout state rules meant to keep retailers from earning more than half their sales from gambling, the audit found.
The problems are multiple: when Oregon voters agreed to an Oregon Lottery, we were told that it would involve only scratch-off tickets and that any revenue would go to fund schools and economic development. Oregon Lottery still sells scratch-offs, but some years ago they switched gears and devoted most of their resources to highly addictive video poker machines; something the voters had not agreed to during the initial sales pitch prior to the vote.
As well, the state saw a big pot of money rolling in from those things, and so - as they always will - they began diverting those revenues to other things. Today, the state is so dependent upon the lottery income that even the Democratics, who are always out there fighting for the little guy (to hear them tell it) absolutely refuse to rein Oregon Lottery in.
The fact that virtually all of the cash comes from low-income addicts who desperately hope for a big "win" doesn't seem to matter. Not when the state stands to lose out on $83 million a year.
"It was never the intent of the public to have little casinos all over the state. It's immoral."
Former Democrat Representative Carolyn Tomei is absolutely correct in her assessment; it's just too bad that she couldn't rally her fellow Democratics to the cause of reining the lottery in.
A coalition of black pastors has petitioned the Smithsonian to remove a bronze bust of Margaret Sanger from their exhibit because they don't consider the racist founder of Planned Parenthood to be a hero of justice. They are correct.
A report submitted last week to Portland City Council elucidates what many of us have intuitively understood: city policies have shut down housing in most areas of the city to all but upper-income white folks; in many areas, all other groups are effectively priced out.
And don't even think about buying a condo, much less a home; those are for elite whites only:
When earning the median income for their Census tract, single mothers have almost no chance of renting a home with more than one bedroom in Portland. A median-income black household can’t afford to rent anything bigger than a studio apartment outside the Southeast 122nd Avenue and Division Street neighborhood. Median-income Native American households are limited to studio apartments in Parkrose or Cully.
The demographic that had the highest median income and the most housing options was married couples with children, at $88,088 a year, followed by whites, moderate income earners and Asian households. African and Native American families are completely priced out.
People in most cases now can't afford to live near where they work. The Portland solution? Build more apartments along light rail lines, with no parking. Currently in the works are massive developments in the Lloyd Center area that would add over 900 new apartments - with no way for would-be renters to get to and from jobs unless they're fortunate enough to have landed work along a light rail or bus line (and bus services have been scaled back to support rail operations).
Obviously, what's needed are more jobs that pay median or higher wages, and these are largely in the industrial sector today - such as Greenbriar Corp. and Vigor, both of which are located along the waterfronts. Pembina Pipeline wants to build a LNG terminal at Port of Portland property, which would bring in 800 construction jobs and 40 permanent jobs paying double the local median, but Portland mayor "Streetcar" Charlie is dead set against it.
Oh, my. Thursday afternoon, Oregon Department of Justice rebuffed a request from former Oregon gov. Retread's First Squeeze to have the state pay related to her lawsuit seeking to block release of her emails to The Oregonian. Yesterday, current gov. Brown ordered them released to all media. The First Squeeze has to be madder than a wet hen, as the gov. just blew her lawsuit right out of the water. And if he had the capacity, Retread would be embarrassed as well, as one of the emails I perused seemed to perfectly encapsulate their relationship:
From: John Kitzhaber To: MURDOCK Jan
CC: Cylvia Hayes
BCC: MURDOCK Jan * GOV
Date Sent: 2011.04.16 20:57:24 Date Received: 2011.04.16 20:57:26 Attachment(s): Subject: RE: Get together in Salem
Ah, but my cruise director ... the Goddess of Greenness and the Highness of Hunger ...has exercised her Executive Power to override the previous directive and has signed me up to cook. And as a dutiful House Husband, I ALWAYS do as I am told.
Cyvia replied:
Ha! Although I very much like the illustrious titles and the tone of obedient and
well--trained House Husband, this change in plans was mutually arrived at.
Speaking of illustrious titles, Jan, did John tell you about our new monikers when
travelling with the @ I thought it would be good if I were referred to as"Golden Eagle
is now in flight" and that John, naturally, should be referred to as "Balding Eagle." Ha ha
ha ha! I am still laughing at my own joke.
I love you so much Dear (you too Jan, though differently *).
Amazing. Actually, her Indian name is "Walking Eagle" - she's so full of crap that she can't fly.
And others clearly demonstrate that she was determined to insert herself into state business, as this excerpt from KATU shows:
"But emails uncovered in the first hours of our investigation show Cylvia Hayes defying the governor's staff in order to insert herself into Kitzhaber’s inner circle and most sensitive policy discussions."
From: Cylvia Hayes [cylhayes@gmail.com] To: ROWINSKI Mary E * GOV [Mary.E.ROWINSKI@state.or.us] CC: John Kitzhaber[governor.kitzhaber@gmail.com]; Curtis Robinhold[Curtis.ROBINHOLD@state.or.us] BCC: Date Sent: 2012.09.14 22:41:05 Date Received: 2012.09.14 22:41:10 Attachment(s): Subject: RE: Senior Staff meeting September 25, 11:00 am
Greetings M,
Can you check with Liani and Curtis about this? I would like to attend the Senior Staff meetings but have been told that I cannot since I am not a state employee. From an implementation perspective it makes a lot more sense for me to attend these meetings than the general staff meetings.
Thanks, C
"'M' is Mary Rowinski, Hayes' personal assistant; Governor Kitzhaber and then-chief of staff Curtis Robinhold were copied on the email. 'Liani' is Liani Reeves, Kitzhaber’s general counsel, who fielded any ethics questions about the First Lady’s role.
Ten days later, a message from Robinhold indicates the matter had been decided in Hayes’ favor. Read in hindsight, the email sounds almost prophetic, foreshadowing the media’s conflict-of-interest discoveries less than three years later, which would help bring down Kitzhaber’s administration."
From: ROBINHOLD Curtis * GOV[Curtis.ROBINHOLD@oregon.gov] To: Cylvia Hayes[cylhayes@gmail.com] CC: BCC: Date Sent: 2012.09.24 09:47:21 Date Received: 2012.09.24 09:47:22 Attachment(s): Subject: RE: Senior staff meet
Yes.
I think we need to risk the public records request challenges in order to make sure you and the senior staff are all on the same page regarding priorities, work ahead, coordination, etc. I’m looking forward to having you in the room.
"By 2014, Hayes was no longer a spectator at these meetings; she was actively participating and advancing her own agenda, and that of her private consulting firm, 3EStrategies."
Small wonder that she was desperate to keep these things out of the public eye. And there's a lot more to come. What a pair. Someday, as she once said, there'll be a book about this. Heck, at this rate, maybe a movie. Not that she'll be able to profit from it....
It looks as though the current gov. has had enough of the distraction and drama, and just decided to toss Retread and his First Squeeze under the bus.
Down in Mexico, you see, the company will only have to pay workers $19 a day to assemble furnaces and air conditioners. Ain't "free trade" grand?
