louis c
louis c's JournalDon't the Republicans Know How to Negotiate?
The Republicans seemed shocked by President Obama's opening offer. There are no Medicare Benefit cuts or Social Security cuts in it.
No shitting.
I negotiate for a living and let me give you an example of one of the contracts I just did. The company wanted drug testing, we wanted raises in wages and benefits. Going in, I knew that drug testing was on the table. However, I only proposed wage and benefit increases. They countered with no wage increase and no benefit increases, but drug testing. After about 8 weeks of negotiating, we ended up with increases in wages that ranged from 12% to 22% over 3 years and an increase in the employer contribution to health and dental. In addition, the drug testing became a 3 strikes and your out program, with progressive discipline at each step. Step one required counseling paid for by the employer.
The example I use is this. I couldn't propose drug testing, it had to come from the company. I couldn't go back to my members (my base) and say the idea was mine. They put it forward, I amended it and could explain what we received in return for this concession.
If the Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security, they have to bring it up. If it comes from the Dems, the Repukes will never let us forget that we suggested it. Obama already said everything is on the table, but the other side has to put it there.
Obama's opening offer is "this is what we want, now tell us what you want".
It's simple negotiations 101.
Please Help Me DU this Poll for Boston Mayor Tom Menino
Hello, fellow DUers.
There is a local poll for Mayor Tom Menino of Boston.
Just a little recap. He has been hospitalized for about a month and is recovering from an infection and some back problems. He spoke at the Dem. convention this year and really broke his ass for the election of Elizabeth Warren and President Obama.
We need your help in DUing this poll and showing him how much we appreciate all of his efforts.
Please vote yes on his re-election and try to keep this post kicked.
Thank you
louis c
Link to poll;
http://southbostontoday.com/menino-re-election-poll/
Shocker: Romney Finds Out That Republicans Are Hypocrites
Amazing. Mitt Romney's aides are telling stories of how key, big name Republican surrogates were worshiping Mitt Romney as an icon just days before the election, angling to score cabinet posts.
Then the stunning defeat, and the same ass kissers were on TV, just 6 days later eviscerating poor Mittens.
What a surprise that Repukes are hypocrites. It must have come as quite a shock to the biggest hypocrite of them all, the Mittster, himself.
Link to story;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2237651/Romney-aides-blast-hypocrites-asked-cabinet-jobs-just-election-trashing-him.html?ICO=most_read_module
A Story That Will Make You Laugh (or Cry)
I've been a DU member since 2004. I'm the head of a small union in Boston. I'm white, 60 years old and 5' 4".
All this is pertinent information for this story.
I'm a self-admitted big mouth. I don't let stupid statements stand, even if it comes from a stranger and I'm not involved in the conversation. I know what you're thinking "how the f*#k do you avoid getting your ass kicked every day?" To be honest with you, I have no idea.
Anyway, here's the story. I'm off duty and sitting at the bar. I represent the bar-tenders and cooks and almost everyone else in the place (150). Some loud mouthed, nearly intoxicated white male patrons are talking shit about our President. They like using the N-word, since there's none around. Three guys, average height and build (remember, I'm a shrimp). I've had enough. "I just want you to know, it's talk like that that made it easy for us to win this last election. We're lucky Obama's president, and he'll go down in history as one of our best". They're response, "who's talking to you, asshole?" My reply, "Nobody, I'm talking to you. Do you know how stupid you sound repeating Rush Limbaugh's talking points?" "I had a great election night, how was yours?" They responded with the Kenya, Socialist, impeachment bullshit, and I walked away.
As I walked away, I could hear one of them say ,"just as I thought, no answers to the truth."
Now, in a different section of the place (it's rather large), two of my favorite employees were on break. They happen to be African-American. One is 6' 2", the other 6' 3". Both are security officers and the hardest working, nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. I told them what happened and said I'd like to teach these guys a lesson, without making a big deal out of it. "We're in", they said. "Great", I replied. I told them all they had to do was walk with me, back into the bar, and let me do all the talking. I promised them it would not be a big deal. "OK", they said.
So, get the picture. Three white guys who hate Obama sitting at a bar in which everyone at the bar heard the first conversation. I walk back to exactly where I was standing, flanked by these two huge African American security officers, in full uniform and armed. They looked even bigger next to me. You could hear a pin drop.
I stood at the bar for a few seconds and asked the three of them, "Would you like to continue to discuss politics with me?" I paused, looked at all three, none looked back. They just stared down at their drinks. I let another 30 seconds pass and said "I didn't think so".
Laughter filled the air as me and my two buddies turned and walked away.
I love living and working in a union environment.
The Republicans can only win the White House again by lying
It's not that I'm saying that they are liars, by nature. The Republicans must lie in order to have any chance of winning back the Presidency.
Let's look at the facts and the logic.
The loyalists within the Republican Party are committed to issues that no longer can build a majority coalition in the general election. The 30% or so who consider themselves Republicans will be the voters who press the nomination in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. By then, the nomination is basically over. Does anyone believe that the Evangelical vote that dominates the Republican primaries and caucuses is going to moderate its positions? Positions like the extreme "pro-life" stance which condemns the party to a gender gap on abortion rights and contraception. Does anyone think that the Christian Coalition is going to change their minds on Gay rights? Does anyone think that the right wing that assails immigration reform will abate in a Republican primary? If a Republican Presidential candidate even refers to "undocumented immigrants" rather than "illegal aliens" he (or she) will be run out of the party. Compromise will continue to be a dirty word. They will have to continue to assail planned parenthood, labor unions and any kind of immigration reform that has amnesty at it's core.
The only way to win a general election for Republicans is to lie to their base and then change their tune, within weeks, and contradict themselves on issues that they have had to make public statements on. If the candidate doesn't, due to the demographic changes, he (or she) is doomed to a defeat. Math doesn't lie.
On the other hand, Democrats can actually espouse what they believe in during the primary process. Equal pay for women, immigration reform, workers' rights, choice for women, gay rights. All of our positions are not only viable in our primaries, but also garner majority opinions with the general public when the November election rolls around.
I feel the Republicans are in a position of being damned if they do or damned if they don't. They are the new Whig party of the 21st century.
Obama Care Should be Repealed and Replaced
with Medicare for all.
First off, it makes the most sense. The system we now have (before the full implementation of Obama Care) is geared to the Insurance companies. I negotiate insurance premiums into union collective bargaining agreements, so I have a little understanding of the concept. Insurance companies gather profits because the premiums paid are greater than the medical payouts. Therefore, the younger, healthier participants supplement the older, sicker ones and include the profit for the insurance company. As the participants become older and sicker, they then are put on the government roles (Medicare at 65).
This is a scam for the insurance companies. If the government already has the older, sicker participants in their system, it is irrational for us to not include the younger, healthier participants. Hence, Medicare for all.
This would be a boost to all businesses, large and small. Unions could negotiate the supplemental portion of medicare as an additional benefit (medicare advantage), which would be less expensive to the company than what they are paying now to the insurance companies for full-coverage for their employees. It would also reduce the employee contribution, thereby increasing the employee's take home pay.
This was Danial Patrick Moynahan's proposal during the Clinton years. He said that all we had to do was eliminate one word and a number to the current medicare bill "over 65".
We've taken the first step, let's take the next.
Why Minorities Will Not Vote for Republicans
The Republican party and those who support them just don't get it and will continue to lose minority voters in general elections for at least another generation.
Let me give you a personal example. I'm a white, ethnic male voter. 60 years old, third generation Italian. I am married to a Filipina, 57 years old.
When we would go to family gatherings, my Republican family members would never hide their disdain for Obama and use very derogatory names to describe him. In addition, someone would invariably say something like "the whites will soon be the minority. THEY will make up the majority." They never thought that they offended my Asian wife. She never said a word, but told me she would no longer attend family functions, and she hasn't for the past 4 years. They don't even know that she's offended and I keep making excuses like she's working or attending a function with her own family. We have no children, so it's not really that uncomfortable.
Today, I read a Bloomberg piece that put my personal situation in the proper light. Asian Americans, by percentage of the population, have more $100,000 earners than any other demographic. So, they certainly don't fit into the Republican definition of "takers vs. makers" in the stereotypical Republican bigotry. They have no intention of including Asians in their bigoted statement. Yet they voted for Obama by a 73% to 26% margin. That's a significant number, even greater than Hispanics. You see, I have learned from my personal experience with my wife that if you're a minority, you take offense at demeaning any minority. You know that they will say the same thing about you when you're not there. As a Western European decent, I take offense anyway. I know we should all take offense, and I do, but the point I'm making here is that Republicans shouldn't think for a minute that undocumented aliens are isolated from the vast amount of all immigrants. I know that a great deal of second and third generation Americans think of themselves as the "us" in "us vs. them", but we really shouldn't.
The Republicans and their supporters need a lot of social education before they "get it" and I believe they have lost an entire generation of voters.
Link to Blomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-08/asian-voters-send-a-message-to-republicans.html
We Better Not Take This Victory for Granted
Now that the euphoria of Tuesday is wearing off, the election reality of the past three elections over the past 4 years should teach us something. If we turn out the vote, we win, if we don't we're doomed.
Here in Massachusetts, it's a striking difference between the Special Election on Jan. 19, 2010 and Nov. 6, 2012. In a large turnout election, no one touches our candidates. In a low turn out election, a half-witted Republican took Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in the Bay State.
2012 was a great victory for us. I loved it, and it made an electoral statement. But here's a fact of life, politically speaking. There are more of us than there are of them. Young people, minorities and union members. However, we seem to turn out in Presidential Election years and they turn out all the time.
If we don't keep the same passion and organization for the 2014 elections as we did this past Tuesday, we will have a short lived celebration, and the other side will clean our clock in the "off year".
I never miss a vote, and I'm sure those of you here at DU don't either. But if we want to avoid elections that appear like ocean tides that run in two year cycles, we had better not let happen to us again what happened to us in 2010.
Moochers? Blue States Subsidize Red States
Again, I must reply to my ill informed right wing Republican friends to not let their facts get in the way of a good argument.
As it turns out, the top ten states that send more money to Washington than they receive are among the most reliably blue states in America. In contrast, of the 10 most dependent states in America, 8 are Red.
Digging deeper into the numbers, blue counties overwhelmingly subsidize red counties.
Here is a September 18, 2012 article on the subject. (Ironically enough, that date was my 60th birthday).
Link:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/09/18/obama-supporters-subsidize-romney-supporters-with-their-taxes-
Here's an incredible historical fact
No Republican presidential ticket has won a general election since 1928 (Hoover vs. Smith) without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket.
Amazing.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Boston
Home country: USA
Current location: Boston
Member since: Fri May 14, 2004, 05:52 PM
Number of posts: 8,652
