I remember when I was in high school, I wrote a paper about how the United Auo Workers Union was ruining the American Auto Industry by demanding too much. At the time, the Big Three were losing billions of dollars and jobs were fleeing the rust belt, where the UAW has a stronghold, as a result.
The time around, the UAW has less ground to stand on in that they cannot strike against Chrysler or General Motors. This was part of the agreement when the US bailed out those two companies in light of the financial crisis. Ford did not take the money, so they do have to worry about a potential strike. Additionally, Ford appears to be the healthiest of the three companies.
In these recent negotiations, there are signs that the UAW and the Big Three are on better terms:
Not many decades ago, contract expirations used to be firm deadlines for the UAW. Agreements, or strike notification, usually came around the midnight deadline when the negotiators were groggy from several nights of very little sleep.
This year it helped that the union had agreed not to strike General Motors and Chrysler over wages.
This shows a pleasant change between the two parties. It's funny how a few lean years can do to a relationship. I think it's always important that the interests of a union and the companies it is negotiating with are aligned. So often, the interests are not aligned and this is not good for either party.
“They’re all new jobs, and quite a few of those jobs were located in Mexico,” UAW Vice President Joe Ashton said. “What we said going into negotiations is one of our major objectives is jobs, and we think we met that objective.”
“I am really proud of our whole team,” King said at the press conference. “We really came into negotiations to create jobs in America.”
Perhaps the most important result of this good news is that it is good for Michigan, a state that has been hit hard by the automakers' struggles:
Although the details will not be confirmed until today, early word suggests that workers will get a nice array of one-time rewards, in the form of a signing bonus and increased profit-sharing. That keeps the company's day-to-day costs fixed going forward, a boon in this still all-too-uncertain economy, while recognizing that workers deserve recognition for the role they continue to play in keeping the company and its products strong.
As a fan of the American Auto Industry, it was important for an amicable deal to get done. Hopefully, this deal will signal a new era of better relationships between the UAW and the automakers. Hopefully, it will lead to a more successful Michigan.
In a midterm election with a weak President and even weaker contending candidates, you would think a senate race would not be very important. However, here in beautiful Massachusetts, a race between heavyweight contenders is stacking up.
Yesterday, Democrat Elizabeth Warren declared her candidacy for the senate. While she has to win the primary against some solid candidates, she has been instantly dubbed the favorite to challenge Republican Scott Brown for his Senate position. If you remember, Scott Brown, improbably, defeated favorite Martha Coakley with a campaign that very much mirrored that of President Barack Obama. For Democrats, the seat has even sentimental value as it was the seat of the late Ted Kennedy. Democrats hope to reclaim the seat and Warren has been a favorite both in the Commonwealth and in Washington. They see her as the right candidate to take on Brown.
Basically, I want to survey how the campaign will go and why you should care.
The Campaign: Warren declared her candidacy yesterday:
She's already a favorite of Democrats because of her work in creating Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's a Harvard Law Professor and wants to fight for the middle class. They feel she can reach their constituency, unlike Martha Coakley.
Warren was tapped by President Barack Obama last year to set up a new consumer protection agency, but congressional Republicans opposed her leading the office. She returned to Massachusetts this summer.
Supporters say her image as a crusader against well-heeled Wall Street interests and her national profile will give her candidacy muscle, though she’s never run for political office.
At the same time, her ties to Barack Obama and her job at Harvard might not cast her in the most positive light amongst the "townies:"
Should the professor win the primary, expect Brown to label her an out-of-touch academic in the mold of another law school professor, President Obama.
Ties to Harvard have all of a sudden become a bad thing with all the academics that have gone into government and introduced failed policies. There's also the negative stigma of elitism that is directed from Cambridge, a city of high intellectual capital but also a center of liberal thought.
But, assuming she gets past the Democratic primary, any attempt to use her background as a consumer advocate to run a populist campaign against incumbent Republican Scott Brown will be burdened by her day job as a professor at Harvard Law School. Even before Warren officially declared, she was already being accused of “Harvard elitism.” Her fortunes in 2012 may well turn on whether she finds an effective response.
Why is Harvard bad?
Todd Feinburg, co-host of one of Boston’s popular morning call-in radio shows, told me that “all my callers know about her is she’s a Harvard elitist. They see the country being run by Harvard elitists who don’t know what they’re doing.”
But Massachusetts only has so many registed Republicans. In fact, they only represent 11 percent of the electorate. So who are the ones that elected Scott Brown and who are the ones that Warren will have to win over?
Rather, she’ll be after another group that may already be casting suspicion on her resume—the historically Democratic blue-collar voters whom Scott Brown won over with a barn coat and a pick-up truck in the 2010 special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.
There's a term that they've come up with and I love it:
Specifically, the middle-class and lower-middle-class voters Brown appealed to are what veteran Boston political commentator Jon Keller calls “townies,” those multi-generational Massachusettsans who don’t live in the state’s campus nexuses, poor urban areas or affluent suburbs, but in the hardscrabble towns and cities on Boston’s periphery. Keller argues Brown peeled them off in unprecedented fashion not only because of his everyman persona but because of the way he baited their economic and cultural anxieties: Brown incited small-town fears about illegal immigrants underbidding contracts, and argued that President Obama’s Affordable Care Act would “screw unions out of their gold-plated plans.”
I'll note that there is a difference between the types of demographics in the Boston area. Having lived here my entire life, I've been exposed to them. Most of the educated people in the Boston area tend to side with the liberals while the further you get away from Boston, the more socially conservative people you get. Scott Brown campaigned on the every man campaign and it resonated with those people on the outer parts of the Commonwealth.
One of the problems with Coakley is that she was too associated with Boston. With Warren, the connection will be more linked towards her ties to Harvard:
Which brings us back to the Harvard question. If townie voters identify Warren with Harvard (and echt-liberal Cambridge, where she happens to live) to the same degree they linked Coakley with Boston, Sullivan and other local pundits predict that Brown will carry the election. Thinking along the same lines, Brown’s campaign has already begun calling her “Professor Warren.”
Even though Brown and Warren aren't that different:
Where he was raised in a broken home in tiny Wrentham and did whatever he had to to pay for his education, Warren grew up poor in Oklahoma, won a scholarship to college, and paid her own way through law school. She can also argue that her scholarly work on bankruptcy and contract law hasn’t secluded her in an ivory tower, but given her a pathway to understanding the problems of ordinary people.
With her financial backing and her party popularity, she should run a good campaign. It appears she's ready to put in the work. I'm still skeptical that she can actually reach out to the people, considering she doesn't have New England roots. If you look at all of Massachusetts's politicians in recent years, all of them were deeply rooted in Massachusetts. Can she reach the townies?
Senator Scott Brown remains the most popular major political figure in Massachusetts, but his approval rating has fallen from a year ago, a sign he may be more vulnerable than anticipated as he gears up for a reelection fight, according to a Boston Globe poll.
And the actual numbers:
Though Brown, who faces reelection next year, has fallen a bit from the lofty perch of public approval he had enjoyed, he remains quite popular for a Republican in a traditionally Democratic state. Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, said they view him favorably, compared with 26 percent who view him unfavorably. A Globe poll conducted last September showed him with 58 percent approval and 21 percent disapproval.
That article also says this about Warren:
Warren, the choice of many Washington Democrats and some state party insiders to face off against Brown, remains unknown to large swaths of the voting public, according to the poll. While those who know of her tend to like her - 23 percent rate her favorably, 12 percent unfavorably - 60 percent said they don’t know who she is or have no opinion of her.
“If she’s going to be the candidate, she’s going to have to do a lot of work just to boost name recognition,’’ Smith said.
That work she's prepared to do is good because people don't know who she is. If I was Brown, I would capitalize on this by portraying her as someone from the Ivory Tower of Cambridge and someone who has spent time in Washington DC, but isn't knowledgeable of the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For Warren, the advantage of people not knowing who she is means she can portray herself as she wants. In these days, a lot of Democrats have a bad rap, and she should take solace in the fact that she's not one of those Democrats.
As far as the campaign, I think Brown is still a very popular candidate and so long as he puts up a good campaign, he will be reelected. The Democrats made a huge mistake by taking Massachusetts for granted when Brown was elected. Brown must be weary not to do the same thing.
Why You Should Care: Well, it appears that the Republicans have sured up their position in the Senate. When Brown was elected, he was the 41st seat, which was necessary to filibuster the Democrats. With the current President, the Democrats could have run amok with their spending policies. At the same time, the Republicans are still outnumbered by the Democrats in the senate. Looking at the potential elections for this class of Senators, it doesn't seem like there are many seats that the Republicans will lose, but Scott Brown in liberal Massachusetts may be the most likely, even with his popularity.
This election will go down the same year as the Presidential election and a lot can change with a potential new President. The Republicans will need all the help they can get. It's an important election and they're vulnerable both on the state and national level.
If you were watching the Tea Party Debate last night, then you missed a great football game. Yes, I spent the evening basking in the glow of my television as two Michigan quarterbacks threw for a Monday Night Football record amount of yards. I flipped over to the debate for may be ten seconds and heard Herman Cain speak, but I missed the majority of the action.
I don't know how many of you missed it, but I'm going to review the main talking points.
Social Security: Mitt Romney attacked Rick Perry for calling it a Ponzi Scheme:
In the debate, Romney chided Perry for referring to Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" and vowed to protect the program. Romney called such language "over the top" and said that Perry wrote in his book "Fed Up!" that the entitlement program is unconstitutional.
Rick Perry responded by saying that Romney was using the term to scare seniors. While that may be true, Perry did say that in his book. What's more important to me is that Romney is taking the offensive. My big knock on him has been that he is not very assertive in the debates. He seemed to really leave his mark last night.
I expect him to show that he is serious about being president and taking control of the Republican primaries.
For too long, politicians have been afraid to speak honestly about Social Security. We must have the guts to talk about its financial condition if we are to fix Social Security and make it financially viable for generations to come.
So basically, he says we should talk about it, but doesn't give a solution. He didn't provide a solution last night either. He will continue to get pounded on this and other matters of entitlement reform until he comes up with a proper plan for making Social Security financially viable.
HPV: Perry also continues to be attacked for making young girls get HPV vaccinations. Michelle Bachmann has been the most offended by this:
"To have innocent little 12-year old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong," Bachmann says in her e-mail requesting donations, titled "I'm Offended.
Perry has been weak in defending himself. The thing Republicans seem most offended by is the fact it was passed through an executive order rather than through the legislature.
It's an effort to help these young women healthy. I don't see how you can't strongly defend yourself against that.
Regardless, it does bring into question Perry's values. He has admitted that he would have liked to have gotten it through the legislature, but there's also questions of chrony capitalism in this matter. Bachmann again:
She returned to that line of attack on NBC’s "Today" show. “It’s very clear that crony capitalism could have likely been the cause” of the HPV vaccination program. She ripped Perry for deciding to implement the program through a 2007 executive order.
Crony capitalism or not, I don't know how big an issue is. Yeah, it has brought into question Perry's character, but there are other flaws with Perry related to bigger issues.
Immigration: While I don't see this as being a huge issue, Perry also came weak on immigration:
Third, immigration. In Texas, Perry has extended in-state, taxpayer-subsidized tuition to the children of illegal immigrants. It's a sensible policy, as it brings them into the fold and gives them the opportunity to improve their lives and contribute to the wider economy. But his opponents slammed Perry hard for a policy they called "amnesty." Romney was straightforward in stating what is, for most conservatives, gospel: This is a nation of laws, and we follow the laws.
As a border state, Perry should have a stronger opinion or more connected policies regarding immigration, but he failed once again. Even Jon Huntsman ripped him on it:
Even Jon Huntsman, when he wasn’t making baffling jokes about Kurt Cobain, told Perry his claim that he couldn’t secure the border was “pretty much a treasonous comment.”
"What we did in the state of Texas was clearly a states right issue. And the legislature passed with only four dissenting votes in the House and the Senate to allow this to occur," he said. "We were clearly sending a message to young people, regardless of what the sound of their last name is, that we believe in you. That if you want to live in the state of Texas and you want to pursue citizenship, that we're going to allow you the opportunity to be contributing members in the state of Texas and not be a drag on our state."
I'm not quite sure how well that's going to fly, especially with Tea Party voters. Anything that suggests providing subsidies is a hot button issue. Giving these benefits to illegal immigrants is, as Bachmann put it, "not the American way."
Also notable was Rick Santorum's flub:
Former two-term Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum suggested that Perry's support for the Texas DREAM act was a ploy to attract Latino voters.
"What Governor Perry's done is he provided in-state tuition for -- for illegal immigrants. Maybe that was an attempt to attract the illegal vote -- I mean, the Latino voters," Santorum said, quickly correcting his flub.
I don't think attacking a race of people is a good idea, Mr. Santorum.
Jobs: Romney finally made a strong case for Perry's record:
It's easy to do well when you have everything going for you. In Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal states, Romney didn't have a lot going for him. He had a democratic state senate. He had high taxes. There were jobs leaving the state. There were a lot of things going to the other way.
Romney is correct that Massachusetts was losing jobs month after month for nearly a year before he took office. Those losses stabilized in his first year, and the state then began to see job growth. According to BLS statistics, over the entirety of Romney's term in office, the ranks of Massachusetts' employed went from 3,224,600 to 3,270,400. That’s a 1.4 percent increase. However, that was far slower growth than the national average, 5.3 percent. In fact, as Perry and Huntsman correctly pointed out at the debate, Massachusetts ranked 47th in job growth over the length of Romney's term. The only states that did worse: Louisiana, Michigan and Ohio.
So what's the difference between the rate at which Massachusetts was losing jobs and the job growth that Romney had? Are we not talking turn around? Or are we just focusing on job growth?
Isn't this a legitimate question to see whether he did turn things around even if at a slow pace?
General Impressions: It sounds like Perry is losing his lead or he's suffering from being the front runner at the moment. As the front runner, he is taking the brunt of the crossfire from his opponents. He has a target on his back and the rest of the candidates, even Michelle Bachmann, are hitting it.
The most important thing to me was to see Mitt Romney actually take control and assert himself. He took command and showed that he is passionate about wanting to be president. He showed them that he means serious business. That's what stood out to me.
The rest of the candidates aren't legitimate contenders to me. Bachmann is this year's Sarah Palin. Ron Paul still isn't a viable mainstream candidate. Rick Santorum isn't really making any headway. I've been very disappointed with Jon Huntsman who has yet to be in bloom.
As the candidates continue to debate, we'll learn more about how things are going to turn up. It seems now that there are two horses with the rest nipping at their heels.
Everybody remembers where they were when they found out. They remember it like yesterday and it will be something they will never forget. Events like that will never escape your memory. It will forever be there, haunting.
i was in Mr. Means's (yes that was his real name and he was anything but mean) math class when it happened. We got called in for an assembly. The entire middle school was called in. i had no idea what was going on. Ms. Newman told us what had happened. It didn't hit me. I was 13 at the time and I didn't grasp the magnitude of the situation.
After we were dismissed from the assembly, I remember checkin CNN and reading what was going on. I was more naturally curious about what happened than shocked or anything else. I wasn't frightened at the time.
That night, all I did was watch the news. They told us that Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were responsible for the attacks. They showed his face. Suddenly, I was filled with fear. It finally hit me. That night, I cried. I couldn't sleep. There was a feeling of helplessness, fear, and anger. This was my first real exposure to what terrorism is.
In many ways, it was the day I lost my innocence. I don't remember every moment of that day, but I will never forget how I felt.
10 years later, I'm still haunted by it. I look at the New York skyline and it seems empty. I had the chance to go to the World Trade Center, but we went to the Empire State Building instead. When I imagine what would have happened if we had gone there on the day of an attack, it makes chills go down my spine.
In memoriam, we all remember the events of that day, hoping that it never happened.
