Kerry unveils plan to revitalize manufacturing

[BushGone04]

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922.html">Press Release

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922b.html">Full text of the plan

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/spc_2003_0922.html">Speech announcing the plan

[Maple]

1. Links don't work

Neither will the plan one suspects

[MrPeepers]

3. Here are working links.

The Press Release : http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922.html

The Full Text of the Plan:
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922b.html

Announcement Speech:

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/spc_2003_0922.html

Thanks for that completely unwarranted flame by the way, particularly since you havn't even read the plan yet.

Peepers

[acerbic]

5. Oh joy, more targeted tax breaks = corporate welfare

...that the corporations are going to compete for by bribing politicians. Swell. :-(

[blm]

7. You should read more before you criticize.

Kerry has a LONG record of going after corporate welfare.

[acerbic]

8. So he's flip-flopping and waffling too when wanting to increase it now!

Kerry has a LONG record of going after corporate welfare.

Pass the syrup, please.

[blm]

10. Targeted to those who HIRE and close the loopholes

on them at the same time. He also will not give ANY government contract to ANY corporation that uses offshore banking addresses to dodge their fair share of taxes, like Halliburton.

[acerbic]

11. Nope: it says that it's NOT targeted to all who hire but only to those

...who hire in "manufacturing" and the enormous opportunities to politicians selling their favors are obviously in how that "manufacturing" is defined, if it even will be defined: they can even go for the ultimate in cronyism, giving tax breaks on a case by case basis.

[blm]

28. duh...we were talking about manufacturing hires.

Those are the working class hires. That will do more for the lower and middle class than anything else.

[w4rma]

4. Your suggestion, Maple? Do nothing, perhaps? (n/t)

[Maple]

6. Manufacturing is gone folks

Get used to it.

It ain't coming back...anymore than horses and blacksmiths are.

Move on.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

18. Bad attitude

Kerry has offered some thoughtful ideas here and he has to deal with fatalism too?
Manufacturing is not dead in this country and we MUST have it or we are toast.

[renie408]

21. So much for staying out of things.

I own eight horses. In my county in NC, equestrian activities are one of the largest growing leisure activities and make up a large percentage of the local economy. My farrier earns $100 a head for four around and $65 for front shoes only, $25 for a trim. He earns about $200,000 a year. Really. If I am reading it right, in 1998, there were 5.5 million horses in the US. I actually thought it was more, because I recall the AQHA saying somewhere that it had several million horses in its registry, but maybe that is a total since the time the registry was established.

So, horses haven't really gone away, they have just specialized and changed. And they still generate a great deal of income and cash flow for those people involved.

I think my analogy just ran out of steam, but you catch my drift.

[BushGone04]

29. Sorry again about the links

I figured out what was wrong with them, so that won't be happening again. :)

Also, Maple, I do appreciate that comment. I've long been feeling that there are entirely too many positive threads on this board, and I truly appreciate your taking the time to begin rectifying that problem with an unprovoked and baseless attack that came when you hadn't even read the plan (at least, I'm assuming you hadn't, being that the links weren't working). Keep up the good work.

[LynneSin]

2. Check your links and thanks for starting a positive thread

We don't get many of them in this neck of the woods - gotta give thanks for those that do!!

[BushGone04]

15. My bad

Sorry about the links... I copied them directly from the browser window; not sure why they didn't work. Ah well... let's hope we see more positive threads on here in the future.

[papau]

9. It looks like Motherhood - proven items that work - indeed Bush

said much the same - but then after 3 years we find Bush did none of them.

The ABCNote always says the GOP takes issues that they are losing on off the table by expressing the Dem position as their own - knowing they are lying. The media never calls them on the lack of follow through - indeed in 02 when the Dems tried to say the GOP was not keeping all those compassionate promises, the media ran Daschle's comment on page A19 on Saturday - said to itself that the "story does not have legs" - and dropped the topic.

In 04 we need a very loud voice if we are to get through the media bias - and while I like Kerry - he is my first choice - I am not sure he has a loud enough voice - I am not sure he can get mad at the media to the point he would tell them he is mad at them - and thereby force our issues to be put in front of folks.

I sense Dean or Clark would do so.

[DJcairo]

12. Clark has already rpoven himself as inept at dealing with the media

I mean, he called out "M-a-r-y" (his press secretary, during a recent interview to help him with a question. He also mangled his Iraq War stance and now no one knows what he believes.

[sandnsea]

13. This is what Clinton did

Targeted tax cuts in growth industries, investment in internet infrastructure. The manufacturing Kerry's talking about is creating the alternative energy products of the future, what everybody always says we need to do. People in this thread are acting like Republicans, as if economies pop up out of thin air. They don't. The corporate loopholes are for old and long gone industries. They worked when we needed those industries, it's time to close them up. It's time to look to future industries and government investment, directly and through tax cuts, it's the way we've always created economic growth. This is the best economic plan anybody has put forward. If you don't want it, fine. Just get ready to live in a tent and eat beans.

[acerbic]

14. Say what?

This is what Clinton did
Targeted tax cuts in growth industries

Where do you get that Clinton gave targeted tax cuts to certain kinds of industries? Examples, please?
All mentions I could find (with admittedly quick search) about Clinton's targeted tax cuts were like this, about tax cuts to benefit education, pensions, hiring people off welfare etc.:
http://www.beaconhill.org/NewsLink/NLV11A/nltargeted.html

investment in internet infrastructure

Huhh???? Did you actually read Kerry's plan? Here's the link:
http://www.johnkerry.com/news/releases/pr_2003_0922b.html
Now show where it says anything about internet infrastructure...?

The manufacturing Kerry's talking about is creating the alternative energy products of the future

Well, the plan does say "Kerry has a plan to provide tax credits and subsidies to manufacturers to develop the next generation of automobiles" but it doesn't say anything about how to make the auto manufacturers actually use those subsidies for their intended purpose any better than they are doing right now...

[sandnsea]

16. Pay more attention

Helping schools fund computers and internet access was one way Clinton put money into a new industry. Providing grants and tax credits for small communities to offer ISP's is another way. Just simply talking about it all the time was another. Clinton did alot of things to invest in the internet and if we had a forward looking President, that industry wouldn't have suffered as much as it did.

In the same way, Kerry is talking about investment in alternative energy products. Because he was talking to Detroit, he brought up cars. Increase the CAFE standards and provide the tax credits and R&D investment in new auto technology and the auto industry will move forward. But that's just one area, and this was a manufacturing speech in Detroit which is why he focused on cars. There's more to his economic plan than this, it's at his web site, johnkerry.com. And the reason I'm not linking it is because people ought to be doing their own research on the candidates, just as a matter of their regular decision making process.

[acerbic]

17. Making it up as you go along, I see...

Helping schools fund computers and internet access was one way Clinton put money into a new industry

Umm... that is not a targeted tax cut to an industry.

Providing grants and tax credits for small communities to offer ISP's is another way.

Now where did you get that?

Just simply talking about it all the time was another.

Umm... that is simply nowhere near a targeted tax cut to an industry.

[sandnsea]

19. mind boggling

Computer and internet technology is not an industry??? I can't even respond. I got the grants and tax credits because I'm in a small town and have looked into them MYSELF. And using the bully pulpit is an example of how a President helps focus economic growth. When President Kerry challenges the auto industry to move forward on fuel efficient cars as a matter of national security and oil independence, that's putting the right kind of focus on the issue in order to gain public support of the policy. That's what we need to be doing and John Kerry is already leading the way. Read his speech.

[acerbic]

20. "Computer and internet technology is not an industry" ???

You're of course entitled to that opinion of yours, as weird as it may be... I just don't understand how computer and internet technology is not an industry, and that must be your opinion since I clearly didn't say anything like it but instead that "Helping schools fund computers and internet access" is not a targeted tax cut to an industry, and nobody can be that badly reading comprehension impaired... :shrug:

[sandnsea]

22. ????

Question marks means it's a question and not a statement.

Government funding to schools and tax credits to industries that help schools and other government agencies is targeting an industry. Digital Divide legislation, telemedicine, broadband, wireless; all of these have had a variety of funding and tax credits that helped the IT industry. Some of it is targeted depreciation tax credits, some of it is matching funds, some of it is direct investment. But it also takes an administration that is excited about the future and talking about the future to get people on board. Bush is only excited about drilling oil, which I would hope we could both agree on. Economic growth happens because of alot of factors and Kerry's plan is the best one I've seen to address our economy in a comprehensive manner.

[renie408]

23. Well

When you think about it, they have to get the computers from somewhere, right? So an incidental benefit of funding schools buying computers is support for computer companies, right? Or is that not targeted enough?

[acerbic]

24. The difference:

Funding computer purchases by schools because the schools need computers is quite different from giving targeted tax breaks to certain companies because politicians think that those companies are good business or somehow deserve the extra help.

According to my personal preferences politicians should be taking care of infrastructure like schools. They shouldn't try to decide what kind of businesses are good business but leave that to businessmen. I consider that kind of targeted favors a bad idea whichever candidate proposes it.

(Politicians should still decide what kind of businesses are BAD business though, as in polluting or otherwise destructive...)

[renie408]

25. Thing is

Can you really take care of the schools in areas where large chunks of the supporting tax infrastructure (in the form of a mill or factory that supplies thousands of jobs to the area) disappears over night? Where I live, they just lost about 4800 jobs in a town near here that has a population of roughly 10,000. That community isn't going to recover from that. It doesn't do a kid much good to have a great computer in a great school when their parents don't have jobs and can't feed them. It is easy to be cynical and blase and say that manufacturing is dead, but remember that there are a lot of PEOPLE attached to that death.

I don't think that we, as a country, should be investing in the same kind of manufacutring that we have now indefinitely. But I just listened to a segment on NPR yesterday, I think, that said that US manufacturing was not dead, it just needs to evolve. Maybe what we should do is give manufacturing some breathing room, so that it can either reinvent itself or die a little slower and more easily absorbed death.

edit: correct typo

[sandnsea]

26. Nonsense

We have ALWAYS invested in technologies that will change the course of the country and provide economic growth. I'm getting hoarse from repearing this, but from the Old National Road in 1806 to railroads to telephone to highways to the internet and now renewable energy, we've always done it. I can't believe I'm arguing this on a Democratic board.

[renie408]

27. I think you guys are talking at cross purposes

I don't think he means the same thing you mean.

[Octafish]

30. I was there when Kerry gave the speech.

My table had some academic types, a lawyer or two and me, a social democrat. Most there liked what Sen. Kerry had to say about the importance of manufacturing — particularly manufacturing jobs — for protecting the nation and preserving the American dream of a growing middle class. Most of the people at my table paid attention, but some of the GOP bed-wetters who make up the majority in the Detroit Economic Club started fidgeting when Sen. Kerry said there were four parts to his plan. Thinking is hard for pukes.