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Member since: May 14, 2008
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Yawn.
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You bought a foreign manufactured car while they were laying off Ford, GM, and Chrysler workers. You shopped at Walmart the import arm of China while the mom and pop businesses in your town slowly went bankrupt.
You rejected the arguments of Ross Perot and supported Nafta and the free trade arguments of big businesses who want to sell you products in this market but want to manufacture those products in markets where its ok not to pay a living wage and its ok to pollute the enviornment. Then you stood by and watched as Apple, Bama, Zeledyne, Zebco, and many other companies offshored your jobs.
You argued about abortion, gay rights, gun control, and prayer in the public schools while the bankers credit swapped and the federal reserve traded one financial bubble for another till their house of cards collapsed on your collective heads and then you allowed your political leaders to bail out and make whole the bankers and investment houses that mismanaged the money.
You failed to learn the lessons of vietnam and you subjected the country and its young to the mistakes of two illadvised wars which accomplished little other than to plunder our national treasure.
Now you are unemployed or underemployed, now your government is bankrupt, now your future has become murky and you wonder why. We did it to ourselves.
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Which "upholding quality American principles" does establishing plants in China fall under? Just another CEO who puts profits ahead of patriotism and justifies it by claiming America is becomming more anti business. America isnt anti business we just take into consideration social costs (safe workplace standards and a living wage) and enviornmental costs (pollution standards) which countries like China pay lip service but ignore in practice.
The time has come to take these CEO's to task with home country trade rules that say if you want to sell your product here make it here. BAMA pies from China huh? Well that is a far cry from the days of the walk up window where we used to buy the pies that didnt make it off the assembly line intact.
Typical business model championed by the Great disappointment generation thinkers that sells this country out on a daily basis by offshoring jobs while still expecting to sell their products value added tax free in the largest consumer market in the world. How very sad.
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Back in 1980 then Mayor Jim Inhofe was all over the TV touting a "temporary third penny sales tax" that would be used to fund capital improvements that the city budget could not cover. Once the capital improvements were complete we were told the tax would expire. That was 28 years ago and the tax is still with us.
Now the city is going back to the 1980 play book with a "temporary tax" on property owners that will run for either 5 or 12 years and again so the arguement goes will expire at the end of that time. Now I ask you Mr. Bates do you really think this tax will just disappear at the end of its scheduled life? Hell no.
The arguement in 1980 was hey its a temporary tax. Then the city switched the pitch and went to a hey its just an extension of a tax you are already paying so your taxes wont go up.
Mayor Taylors 2007 city budget numbers assumed continued passage of the third penny squarely moving it from a temporary tax with a time certain expiration to an ongoing tax with an open ended life of its own. . The same will happen with this new property tax 5 or 12 years down the road.
Anyone with an ounce of sense realizes that if this tax is passed it is likely to become a permanent funding source for the city long after the debt created has been retired. What we are seeing is nothing less than the creation of a new funding source for city improvements on top of a third penny sales tax that has arguably been poorly spent.
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Thank you for writing this article. I read this paper every time I eat at the Super China Buffet over here in BA. Anyway, I got an urge for some egg drop soup last week and wound up getting an education on this election. Didnt even know it was comming up. Thanks for drilling down into the details of these two ballot questions.
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