Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Tim Bishop likes manufacturing. The manufacturing of campaign issues, that is. In his effort to manufacture a campaign issue around overseas outsourcing, he got a lifeline from the White House yesterday when President Obama held an “insourcing” forum yesterday to encourage companies to “bring jobs back to America.” An editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Insourcing for Dummies” describes the effort.
The Democrats are nothing if not persistent. After trying to hang this dismal economy on President Bush while the Obama administration repeats every mistake from the Great Depression to create their own version, Tim Bishop says let’s go all in!
We all know by now Tim Bishop’s position on outsourcing. Rather than being a response to conditions of full employment and poor quality work, it can only be described as despicable. One problem with his view is that he voted to bail out GM who turned around and outsourced good manufacturing jobs to their overseas plants increasing production there by 50%, once the bailout was approved. You don’t hear Mr. Bishop talking about that vote very much. He also doesn’t like to talk about his vote on TARP that sent billions of dollars to French and German banks. He only wants to talk about outsourcing. Not the outsourcing that he has done but only about his opponent.
Tim Bishop has one reason that he consistently gives for sending him back to Congress and that is that his opponent, Randy Altschuler, started a company and Bishop claims it outsourced jobs overseas.
In a New York Post article yesterday, Raymond J. Keating informs us that the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, where he serves as chief economist, just released their Small Business Scorecard for the 111thCongress. The scorecard rates members of Congress on a wide range of votes (27 in the Senate and 22 in the House) that cover such things as workplace regulation, ObamaCare, government spending, tax policies, energy legislation, and bailouts. Overall, he tells us the New York delegation scored just 11 percent on the scorecard, the sixth worst of the fifty states. The two members of the delegation that scored well are Peter King, and John Lee. On the other hand Tim Bishop failed to vote even once with small business on big issues. A big fat zero.
There is an increasingly nasty battle brewing in the Republican race for the nomination to run against Democrat incumbent Tim Bishop in the First Congressional District in New York. With jobs and the economy the number one issue across the nation, the petty personal attacks may result in potential Republican voters staying home in disgust.
In an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal titled, “New York’s GOP Never Learns,” Kim Strassel concludes her article by saying, “The effect has been to enrage and divide a New York party that should have bigger things on its mind. Say, winning this fall.”
Chris Cox is trying to play catch-up to the front runner Randy Altschuler who has been actively campaigning for more than a year. The difficulty for Mr. Cox is that his positions are not that different than those of Mr. Altschuler. So, while Mr. Altschuler has been taking on the Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop and Bishop’s lockstep voting with Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Cox has resorted to attacking Mr. Altschuler. Not to leave his flank unprotected, Mr. Altschuler has been forced to respond and now the race, with two weeks to go before the primary on September 14th, has degenerated into a mudslinging contest. There is a third candidate, George Demos, who is lobbing attacks from the rear with little effect.
Each candidate is calling themselves the “true conservative,” and Mr. Cox has garnered the support of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project the self-proclaimed “Largest Tea Party organization in Suffolk County.” Mr. Cox’s father, Ed Cox, is the head of the New York State GOP. Ms. Strassel reports that the senior Mr. Cox, backed Steve Levy over Rick Lazio for governor to curry favor with the Suffolk County GOP chairman to back his son. It is all the kind of backroom political dealing that have attracted a rush of newcomer candidates and put incumbents of both parties on the endangered species list.
The Tea Party Endorsement
What caught my eye was the endorsement of the Suffolk County 9-12 Project and the announcement by Bob Meyer, co-founder. He gave as one of his primary reasons that, Randy Altschuler was one of those people, “getting rich off the backs of hardworking Americans by outsourcing their jobs.” That sounds more like Jimmy Hoffa, Andy Stern, or Barack Obama’s class warfare than any Tea Partier I know. A commenter on the 9-12 Project’s site, Judyann Joyner added, “Randy is credited with the creation of ‘white collar sweatshops in India.’” Pretty strong stuff. I don’t know if Ms. Joyner or Mr. Meyer visited the company that Mr. Altschuler co-founded in India, but Business Week magazine did.
“The lights burn day and night in the gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street in the southern Indian city of Madras. Here at OfficeTiger, 1,500 young men and women peer into computers 24 hours a day, analyzing and processing U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission reports and other documents drawn up by lawyers and bankers on Wall Street. Walking the floor, sometimes even at 3 a.m., is 34-year-old co-founder and co-Chief Executive Joseph Sigelman.”
Just because the office operates 24 hours per day, don’t be conned into thinking the same people are at their desks 24 hours a day. “Gleaming glass-and-chrome building that towers over a leafy street,” yup, sounds like a hellhole to me. Business Week added, “Indeed, OfficeTiger is the only successful startup in India’s $5 billion outsourcing industry that is owned and managed by a U.S. entrepreneur.” So we have an American company making money in India, in what seems to be a rather large and competitive field, and this is a bad thing? Since when did conservatives turn into protectionists? But what about the jobs they replaced? Okay, let’s examine that.
You have some Wall Street firms that are in a competitive business. A young entrepreneur comes up with an idea to reduce operating expenses by having an external company handle routine clerical tasks that are not one of the firm’s key competencies, that is, people don’t buy that firm’s services because of their typing skills. The company outsources and reduces costs. By reducing costs, they prosper and grow; by growing they create more high skill jobs like lawyers, accountants, financial analysts, IT people, etc. Perhaps even some of the former typists, because of their computer skills can move up the ladder to spreadsheets, and databases. Do some people lose their jobs, yes, just as buggy whip makers lost their jobs when the automobile came on the scene. Okay, let’s shift to India.
In India white collar jobs are created; their standard of living improves; they buy consumer goods like iPods and iPhones and their offices need sophisticated IT equipment from companies like Cisco Systems which grow companies like Apple and Cisco creating jobs in the U.S. We live in a global economy and if we want prosperity and peace, the best way to get there is through free markets. Even Mr. Cox in the policy section of his website blames government policies for companies outsourcing jobs overseas. If it is the government’s policies that make these jobs uncompetitive here and Mr. Cox knows it, why is Mr. Altschuler wrong for reacting to it and helping American companies that use these services remain competitive?
After selling Office Tiger to RR Donnelly, Mr. Altschuler started another company in the U.S., CloudBlue, that recycles old IT equipment. So we have an entrepreneur that has started a couple of companies that have created jobs around the world and that makes him a villain? Perhaps Mr. Meyer should go back and read some of the quotes on his own website:
“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.” – Dr. Adrian Rogers
“I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson
Mr. Meyer’s key criticism of Mr. Altschuler smacks of the government picking winners and losers. This business is okay, but not that one. If your business creates jobs overseas that is bad, but if it creates jobs here it is okay. Well, Mr. Altschuler has done both and he has firsthand experience doing so, which is what we sorely lack in Washington. If the strategy of Mr. Cox continues, including creating another party, the TaxPayer party, to run on and split the vote further, Mr. Cox might as well mail his strategy over to the Bishop campaign as I am sure they will find it very useful in the general election. Not my cup of tea.
The focus should be on defeating the out of control spenders in Congress who got us into this mess, not fighting each other to the death and let the incumbent waltz back into office. The time is now. Mr. Cox should focus on what he would do as a Congressman that is better than Tim Bishop and Mr. Altschuler. If he can’t articulate that, he should drop out. He is not going to win a lot of support by throwing mud at his fellow Republicans.
Note: In the spirit of full disclosure I have done some volunteer work for the Altschuler campaign
Two Doctors Operating. A Lawyer, A Bureaucrat, and An Insurance Agent Oversee the Procedure
In the category, be careful what you wish for, Ted Kennedy should be careful about pushing through Universal Health Care reform. It has been reported that this effort has taken on a sense of urgency because of Mr. Kennedy’s brain cancer. But what if we already had national health care?
Would Kennedy Receive Treatment?
Ted Kennedy will be 77 on Sunday. I wish him well. However in an opinion piece by Betsy McCaughey, she quotes Tom Daschle, who nearly became the architect of health care reform before his tax problems derailed his nomination.
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.
In other words, sorry Ted, since any treatment is not likely to significantly prolong your life such that the expense would be justified, no treatment will be paid for. You will just have to pay it yourself or die. I guess the good news is that Senator Kennedy, like Senator Dascle, and most of the ruling class who pass these commandments down from Mount Capital Hill, are rich enough to pay for private treatment, if it is allowed by law. If not, they are rich enough to take a “vacation” to, say, India and while on vacation wander into a facility their for treatment by American trained Indian doctors.
But what about you and me? Oh dear, you better get your affairs in order.
Health Care Reform You Can Believe In
As long as the treatment received by a patient is paid for by someone other than the patient, the patient really doesn’t care what it costs. The liberal solution is to have the government take it over, and a bunch of bureaucrats will “act on your/our behalf” and make those decisions. The outcome of which is that you better stay healthy. Because if you don’t, you may not get treatment until you wait a very long time for your turn, or you may not get treated at all, if the bureaucrats rule the resultant quality of life is just not worth it.
Here’s what we should really look at doing:
More Liberty Under Fire
The government in proposing universal health care wants to mandate that everyone must have health care coverage. You will not have the liberty to choose. The government demands that you comply:
“comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.”
That’s the requirement, now comes the heavy hand of government:
“The ideas discussed include a proposal to penalize people who fail to comply with the “individual obligation” to have insurance.”
You must obey! The government has spoken!
Here’s a novel idea. How about implementing the above points first and fix the broken system that we have before we throw it out and install another new, massive, government program. After all we can always go to the government solution in the end, confident in the knowledge that these programs work extremely well and efficiently. (e.g., Fannie Mae {bankrupt}, Freddie Mac{bankrupt} , Social Security {bankrupt}, Medicare {bankrupt}, US Postal Service {$6 billion deficit, while CEO get $850,00 salary}).
What Would the Founding Fathers Say?
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. – John Adams
The battle lines are being drawn and the factions are jockeying for position.
The louder the hue and cry against bankruptcy and the need to empty my wallet, the more confident I feel that bankruptcy is the right thing to do. Without fundamental management change, union change, and structural change, no amount of taxpayer funding and bailout upon bailout, will enable the Big Three to crawl off their death bed and once again be giants of American Industry. Bankruptcy is bitter medicine, but without wrenching change that bankruptcy protection can provide, with a trustee making hard decisions and getting concessions from all sides, this patient on life support will die.
I came across this excellent joke on Evolving Excellence that was making the rounds a few years ago, but seems sadly relevant today. As I said it is a few years old, so don’t look too closely at the financials:
A Modern Parable.
A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.
The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.
Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing.
Feeling a deeper study was in order; American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.
They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.
Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.
They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Program,’ with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to ‘equal the competition’ and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.
The next year the Japanese won by two miles.
Humiliated, the American management laid-off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.
The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India.
Sadly, the End.
Here’s something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can’t make money paying American wages. TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter’s results:
TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.
Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting bonuses…
IF THIS WEREN’T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY
It will be interesting to see when the auto executives go back to Washington, will they fly in three separate corporate jets? will they “jetpool”? will they fly first class? will they fly coach? or will they drive one of their excellent products to ask for a bailout? How much trunk space do you need to carry $25 billion? Remember that’s 25,000 million.
About every three years when the labor contracts between the unions and the auto companies come up for renewal, a target company, Ford, GM or Chrysler is typically chosen. The purpose is to threaten a strike on that company while allowing UAW members to keep working at the other two (and still pay union dues), rather than striking against all three.
Here’s my proposal. Since GM seems to be in the worst shape, they should go Chapter 11 right away. Let Ford and Chrysler stand back and watch the result. If it works and GM successfully restructures, you can bet Ford and Chrysler will be scrambling to go Chapter 11 to get their houses in order. If it is a bust, then one of three things can happen. One, they can learn what GM did wrong in the process and perhaps craft a better and maybe even “prepackaged” Chapter 11 filing. Two, they can go back to Washington and try again, but at least they would have a stronger case for why bankruptcy is a bad idea. Three, they can wake up and get all the parties together including management, unions, retirees, suppliers, banks, bondholders, local governments, Congress and make the changes voluntarily that would otherwise be made under a bankruptcy.
What do you think?
It’s hard to read the news about the auto industry and not clench your fists at the outrage. GM and to a lesser extent, Ford and Chrysler, are asking the American taxpayer to bail them out, but what is their position?
This company negotiated an agreement with its union that pays them almost full pay if they are laid off. Let me get this straight. You lay people off, as painful as that may be, to cut costs. GM negotiates an agreement that keeps the costs, but sends the people away. From their perspective, it’s free labor, they pay for it either way so put them to work! But no, I’m sure there are union restrictions about what you can put them to work doing.
In 2000 we saw the Dot.com bubble. What was the fallout? Millions were lost on Wall Street. Companies by the bushel basket went out of business. Thousands were thrown out of work. How much did taxpayers cough up to bail them out? Nothing. The market dealt with it. The strong companies re-grouped, the weak fell by the wayside. John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, changed his own salary to $1 per year until he righted his ship. Today Cisco has $26 billion in the bank and Chambers is still at the helm. Nice work, John. It wasn’t done with arrogance and going hat in hand to Washington looking for a hand out.
In the 1970s and 1980s in the UK, British Leyland, maker of the Triumph, MG, Rover, Jaguar, Austin and five others, was in need of a bailout to keep going. The British government complied eventually pumping in $16.5 billion in taxpayer money to the company. It limped along for another few years and then went out of business. It sold its Jaguar and Land Rover brands to Ford, which then poured $10 billion into Jaguar. It recently sold both brands to Tata of India, getting back about half of what it paid for the brands.
Did the British economy go under? Is the British military without tanks? Let’s not forget that the Jeep was made by American Motors. Where is American Motors today? A company named AM General makes the military Hummer. Guess what the “AM” stands for? GM, Ford and Chrysler combined made about 17 million vehicles in 2007. Does anyone think this demand will vanish if GM, Ford and Chrysler vanish? Of course not. Either GM, Ford, and Chrysler will re-make themselves, new companies will emerge, or U.S. based foreign companies will grow to take up the slack. The jobs will move around. The demand is there, the supply will emerge to satisfy it.
The way out of this mess is to go Chapter 11, reorganize, renegotiate onerous labor contracts, sell off properties no longer needed but tied up in commitments to bonds that were sold to attract a factory, etc. The government should do their part and dump the CAFE standards. Americans will still want high mileage cars and companies will build them. It may not be GM, Ford and Chrysler who build them, but if they trim down, maybe they will. But they do make a profit on their premium models and light trucks. Let them.
But keep your hand out of my wallet.
