2012 US Presidential Race Catch All

Jayhawker wrote:

But right now, Republicans cannot make that argument because their base is uneducated and been fed a steady diet of red scare politics for decades. It's not going to be easy to bring them along.

I'm still seeing facebook posts where people are quoting all of these politicians from the 60's talking about how America is in danger of falling to Communism. Naturally they're tying this all back to Obama making the US a "socialist country". I'm honestly shocked that there are still people out there that view communism as the biggest threat to America and the political structure of Satan. It seems like if we put forth any legislation designed to help the public at large then they feel we're two steps away from bread lines and religion being outlawed. It's almost like being thrown back to the 80's or earlier and I truly believe that a lot of people have never gotten out of the Cold War mindset.

Vector wrote:

Does the USA have the necessary amount of doctors, nurses, hospitals, and supplies to provide care for the entire country? Honest question.

Canada has a small population. It's easier to provide universal healthcare when working with less people and very few large cities.

An interesting result of this is that there's likely to be more demand for primary care docs in the US. Primary care is one of the worst paying types of medicine here. Specialists are where it's at for the bucks.

But with all the newly insured people? There won't be enough primary docs to go around, most likely. Could result in market pressure to make more primary care doctors and fewer specialists, which would probably ultimately be a good thing.

Bloo Driver wrote:

Yeah, it's a weird tactic to try and shift the blame. Share the blame? Sure. The Democratic lawmakers should have known (and likely did know) the consequences that would come to the fore. But to say that the Democrats were the ones that did it is dishonest. Companies are more than money-making engines, unfortunately. While the CEO of a company very certainly has the right to run a business in that capacity, when one chooses to value higher profits over the welfare of the employees, they are the ones making that choice.

I think you're painting a yin/yang picture that implies consent or equality that just isn't the case - the government holds all the trump cards - all the carrots and sticks that come with force of law. Companies exist to compete for money, governments exist (in part) to define the playing field and protect the players.

Like you said
Quote: Yes, their primary responsibility is to save/make money.

The obvious addendum being, that by taking this action to save money NOW, they may be shooting themselves in the foot in the long term with sales. I can tell you, when in my power, I will be avoiding them like the plague. Given how often we buy pizza and HAVE from them, this is business lost that will be going to Pizza Hut or a smaller/local chain in the area from now on. Does that support their plan of getting as much money as possible? Not so much, at least not from me in the long term, and I suspect, much like Chik-Fil-A, they'll get lots of woo red team business for the next few weeks with their anti-Obama/anti-Democrats stuff, but those of us who disagree will hurt their business over the long run by going elsewhere, even after the boost from the otherside has disappated.

You know gore. Only in America can anti-single payer be sold as pro business. Everywhere else single payer was touted by industry as helping them out greatly.

A rational single payer insurance system, a pension system, unemployment insurance system frees industry up to do their damn jobs. Putting all of this pressure onto the working people or onto their employers distracts from the work.

Jayhawker wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

You mean the "wackadoodle" moderates from your own party, right? Because you could have passed single payer without a single Republican vote.

Nope. Several of those depend on support from conservatives in their own state, like Claire McCaskill. The wackadoodles prevent a reasonable conversation that I believe educated Republicans would have if they did not feel compelled to market their brand to the LCD.

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

Bear wrote:

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

As I heard one comedian say, if we just accurately labeled Obama as being a caring Republican then this would eliminate a lot of his opposition.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

You mean the "wackadoodle" moderates from your own party, right? Because you could have passed single payer without a single Republican vote.

Nope. Several of those depend on support from conservatives in their own state, like Claire McCaskill. The wackadoodles prevent a reasonable conversation that I believe educated Republicans would have if they did not feel compelled to market their brand to the LCD.

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Because being bipartisan and agreeing that a good idea from either side is a good idea... is crazy? Or that cementing a relationship between two legislators who could then open roads for working together to get something done is crazy?

I don't see how someone voting against party lines on either side is crazy other than for their campaign election staff to have to deal with down the road given the current political climate... which you kind of seem to be ok with perpetuating with that kind of statement. Unless the smiley means instead that you think it's ok for this to happen and you're just making the joke. Not sure what that smiley means there.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Yonder wrote:

As is often the case Norman, your phrasing is anti-democrat to the extent it can be while still being technically true, and sometimes a little beyond. you claim that Democrats don't think Part Time workers "deserve" healthcare because employers are not forced by the law to provide it for them.

Why is it fair to claim that CEOs don't care about part time workers' health (as the post I was responding to said) but assigning the balme to Congress is somehow a false choice?

Because Congress isn't holding a gun to CEOs' heads and saying "You will provide benefits to your part-time employees and you will not reduce their hours." Congress passed a bill that says that employees working 30+ hours get such-and-such benefits as per the American Healthcare Act.

It's the CEOs who are choosing to cut workers' hours in order to prevent being responsible for the provisions of the act, rather than saying "This is an added cost to the company, let's see how we can make a profit by increasing the price of our product and/or cutting in other areas."

The law itself is the responsibility of Congress. The CEOs of the individual companies are themselves responsible for what happens to their employees, and the ones who choose to cut hours are rightly being called out for their behavior. Trying to foist that behavior off onto Congress is illogical, not to mention disingenuous and wrong.

The problem here, in my opinion, is with publicly traded companies and their attitude of quarterly profits being all that matters. Forcing your employees to spend their own money at a higher rate or go into debt for medical care may solve a short term problem, but it creates a long term problem when everyone does this and there is far less spending money in the consumer marketplace.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

Yeah, it's a weird tactic to try and shift the blame. Share the blame? Sure. The Democratic lawmakers should have known (and likely did know) the consequences that would come to the fore. But to say that the Democrats were the ones that did it is dishonest. Companies are more than money-making engines, unfortunately. While the CEO of a company very certainly has the right to run a business in that capacity, when one chooses to value higher profits over the welfare of the employees, they are the ones making that choice.

I think you're painting a yin/yang picture that implies consent or equality that just isn't the case - the government holds all the trump cards - all the carrots and sticks that come with force of law. Companies exist to compete for money, governments exist (in part) to define the playing field and protect the players.

I'm not sure I follow. My point is that, in the end, the CEO of a company (or whatever relevant ruling body or executive) makes the choice to support their workers and make a smaller profit for the company, or do what Papa John's is talking about doing now. When you say the CEO has a responsibility to raise/maintain profits, that's only partly correct - they have a responsibility to also maintain the well-being of the company. Part of that is deciding what kind of employees (if any) get what benefits (if any). The CEOs have a choice, here. Again, I'm not saying that the law that has passed didn't have any reasonable impact on their ability to make the same profits. But the choice still remains in the hands of the CEO. Saying the Democrats are the ones who did this to the employees is not a fair statement at all and is blindly partisan.

Or, in short: The premise that the only responsible thing for a business/CEO to do in this case is cut hours is entirely incorrect and extremely subjective at best.

But really, when the dust settles, employers still have to compete with their competitors for quality employees. They have never paid anyone because it was nice. It's what keeps the the employee coming back to work the next day.

I used to tell my employees exactly that when they complained that something was not fun. "If it was fun, we wouldn't have to pay you."

The easier it is to replace someone, the less you have to pay them to do the job. But if you are driving them away because of decreased benefits, why would they assume that someone else equally qualified wants to do the job?

Seriously, the bluster from Papa Johns and the like is just silliness.

Jayhawker wrote:

The easier it is to replace someone, the less you have to pay them to do the job. But if you are driving them away because of decreased benefits, why would they assume that someone else equally qualified wants to do the job?

Seriously, the bluster from Papa Johns and the like is just silliness.

Most people working in fast food restaurants are trivial to replace, especially in a really weak economy. Where exactly is an unskilled worker going to find good benefits?

Papa John may be a douche, but he seems to know how to operate a business. It's incredibly unlikely that he's just doing this because he's some kind of dickensian villain who just wants to flip the bird at the President by screwing people over.

Papa John would use immigrant workers, but as a strong Republican I'm sure he's against that.

Bear wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatch...

gore wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

The easier it is to replace someone, the less you have to pay them to do the job. But if you are driving them away because of decreased benefits, why would they assume that someone else equally qualified wants to do the job?

Seriously, the bluster from Papa Johns and the like is just silliness.

Most people working in fast food restaurants are trivial to replace, especially in a really weak economy. Where exactly is an unskilled worker going to find good benefits?

Papa John may be a douche, but he seems to know how to operate a business. It's incredibly unlikely that he's just doing this because he's some kind of dickensian villain.

You might be surprised to find out that even in fast food industries, keeping a stable staff of competent workers is hard but essential. That's not to say stores screw this up all the time. Yes, it's easy to replace the botton rung, but every store needs a backbone of workers that can just get stuff done. Take away their health insurance, and they can easily leave for something better. Many good workers stick around against their best interests purely because of the golden handcuffs of health insurance.

The reason it is bluster is because he is not a Dickensian villain. If it is truly in his best interest to decrease hours and withhold benefits to account for what some estimated was a cost of 15 cents per pizza he should do it. But if he decides to eat the cost by raising the price of pizza by 15 cents, then he will do that. This has much more to do with not getting Romney and his promise of lower taxes on the rich than the ACA, in my opinion.

He will get over his bitterness and get on with running his business.

The cost of adding healthcare for a part time worker is actually pretty substantial.
Link wrote:

The costs to this point (basic salary, employment taxes and benefits) are typically in the 1.25 to 1.4 times base salary range- e.g. the cost range for a $50,000/year employee might $62,500 to $70,000.

When you add these same benefits to someone working less than 40-50 hours a week the proportional spending is even greater. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but it doesn't sound as if people really understand how much these changes actually cost.

And I'm going to lob back that you don't really get how much the costs are changing. That link is from "1994-2005"; it's got nothing from any of the changes to health care in the last few years, or coming up in the next decade.

It's a basic tenet of conservatives that allowing the free market to work will lower costs and increase services. Now we get to find out - if we widen the competition, and standardize coverage minimums, will coverage get better?

But what of the employees denied health care by their employers? They will have access to health care, where they may not have before, through state or federal exchanges and probably with subsidies as well. Given that, it will be *easier* for them to leave an employer who is shorting their hours for any reason, because they won't have to suffer the loss of health care that they would have previously had to, and that situation will only improve as the economy improves and the new provisions of the Act come into play. So, if the free marketeers are to be believed, the companies are welcome to play that game, and welcome to deal with the employee morale and quality problems that ensue. And if the market fails us, well, I guarantee single payer is the remaining alternative.

Ford figured out a long time ago that if you screw your workers, you get less from them than if you treat them humanely. I think we're due for another cycle of that.

And Norman, if you think that one party with temporary control over Congress is going to risk forcing through massively important legislation without support on the ground, you don't understand how Washington works. Obamacare was based on nearly a year of bipartisan negotiations and was built from a Republican program. It had lots of support in the population, and there was a general understanding that some kind of reform was needed. Republicans didn't pull out of the negotiation until it was time to vote. And it *still* nearly got stomped in the courts and in Congress, and it was at risk again in this last election. Imagine what a unilateral passage of a truly radical change like single payer would look like, politically. It would be a disaster. These changes *must* be in some ways bipartisan, or they will fail. Obamacare was, but it was based on a conservative proposal designed to oppose single payer.

In reality, truly unilateral action by one party is a really bad idea in US politics.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Bear wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatch...

I've said it before and I'll continue to say it, I see this crap from both sides of the fence, sadly.

gore wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

The easier it is to replace someone, the less you have to pay them to do the job. But if you are driving them away because of decreased benefits, why would they assume that someone else equally qualified wants to do the job?

Seriously, the bluster from Papa Johns and the like is just silliness.

Most people working in fast food restaurants are trivial to replace, especially in a really weak economy. Where exactly is an unskilled worker going to find good benefits?

Papa John may be a douche, but he seems to know how to operate a business. It's incredibly unlikely that he's just doing this because he's some kind of dickensian villain who just wants to flip the bird at the President by screwing people over.

Whereas I see a news story with his bluster that also contains advertising for 2 million free pizzas and an endorsement from some football player I can't identify by name but know he is famous enough to be worth some heavy cash there in that ad, and can't help but think something is weird inside of that company. $0.14 a pizza is trivial at best compared to employees' well-being, and both are better than his political ranting. Either way, it seems like he could also make that money up in not having such a huge promotion (Free pizza for 2 million people? Cool contest, but hurts your point about the economy when you're giving away that much free product.)

I don't get it, when did CEOs/owners decide it was best to shout their political messages and act on them in such obvious and obnoxious ways. If they had just quietly shut up and reduced their hours, I would have been none the wiser when choosing which pizza to purchase, thus making it more likely that you would have my money when I'm too lazy to cook (which is why that $0.14 doesn't matter to me, price is not a breaking point on pizza, nor would that little be the straw that broke the camel's back).

Jayhawker wrote:

You might be surprised to find out that even in fast food industries, keeping a stable staff of competent workers is hard but essential. That's not to say stores screw this up all the time. Yes, it's easy to replace the botton rung, but every store needs a backbone of workers that can just get stuff done. Take away their health insurance, and they can easily leave for something better. Many good workers stick around against their best interests purely because of the golden handcuffs of health insurance.

What you say about a stable backbone is true of course, but presumably those people aren't the ones facing reduced hours. Mr. John didn't just say "hey, no more full time workers" - he just said that franchise operators may need to cut hours. As I recall, some percentage of Papa John's employees already have benefits, and presumably those people are the ones he wants to retain (and retaining them will not actually increase costs, since they're already covered). This would be the time to cut hours on the marginal people.

I don't think I agree with the ease of finding "something better" that actually has health insurance for this sort of worker. What Papa is talking about is a decision making process every similar employer is going to have to figure out on its own, and even if most of them find a way to make the Obamacare mandate work without cutting hours, they're going to feel the pinch from that, and they are unlikely to be in a hurry to bring on more full time people who they have to provide health care benefits for.

I do agree with the general sentiment here that the guy is being obnoxious, but I don't know that his conclusions are incorrect.

Demosthenes wrote:
gore wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

The easier it is to replace someone, the less you have to pay them to do the job. But if you are driving them away because of decreased benefits, why would they assume that someone else equally qualified wants to do the job?

Seriously, the bluster from Papa Johns and the like is just silliness.

Most people working in fast food restaurants are trivial to replace, especially in a really weak economy. Where exactly is an unskilled worker going to find good benefits?

Papa John may be a douche, but he seems to know how to operate a business. It's incredibly unlikely that he's just doing this because he's some kind of dickensian villain who just wants to flip the bird at the President by screwing people over.

Whereas I see a news story with his bluster that also contains advertising for 2 million free pizzas and an endorsement from some football player I can't identify by name but know he is famous enough to be worth some heavy cash there in that ad, and can't help but think something is weird inside of that company. $0.14 a pizza is trivial at best compared to employees' well-being, and both are better than his political ranting. Either way, it seems like he could also make that money up in not having such a huge promotion (Free pizza for 2 million people? Cool contest, but hurts your point about the economy when you're giving away that much free product.)

I don't get it, when did CEOs/owners decide it was best to shout their political messages and act on them in such obvious and obnoxious ways. If they had just quietly shut up and reduced their hours, I would have been none the wiser when choosing which pizza to purchase, thus making it more likely that you would have my money when I'm too lazy to cook (which is why that $0.14 doesn't matter to me, price is not a breaking point on pizza, nor would that little be the straw that broke the camel's back).

They speak their minds in obvious and obnoxious ways because America is political. Culturally so political as a Canadian I don't get it.

Its also publicity like the 2 million free pizzas. I don't really agree if he can afford to do one why not the other. Its his business he can run it as he wants. You also have to remember a certain Chicken franchise that had an opinion. For every angry liberal there was supportive whatever you want to call them that showed up to buy.

Non of this really bothers me or surprises me. As a worker you can choose to take your low paid labour to another organization that is better. As a consumer you can choose not to give them your money.

No one has to work for Papa Johns or eat the pizza...

and btw who the hell still orders Pizza? stuff is damn expensive for something so easy to make and more rewarding to do so.

gore wrote:

I do agree with the general sentiment here that the guy is being obnoxious, but I don't know that his conclusions are incorrect.

Okay, but according to Papa John's CEO, the cost would be 11-14 cents on each pizza sold. That was his claim.

So, taking him at his word, would you be adverse to paying, say, 15 cents more per pizza to ensure that some guy in his early 20's has decent health insurance? I wouldn't.

And I have yet to encounter anyone who thinks that paying those extra pennies is anything tragic or even problematic.

jowner wrote:

As a worker you can choose to take your low paid labour to another organization that is better.

No one has to work for Papa Johns or eat the pizza...

Eh... That's not entirely true, especially in some parts of the U.S. Sometimes you are forced to take whatever job you can at whatever pay you can get simply because you have no other options.

and btw who the hell still orders Pizza? stuff is damn expensive for something so easy to make and more rewarding to do so.

Note, only purchased when lazy (i.e. not enough energy for either me or my wife to make dinner).

As for that chicken franchise, amusingly, once the story and the crazy lines died down... there they were trying to act as if they were reversing their position (because holding fundraisers for is different than giving money to an organization *rolls eyes*). I don't think Papa Johns has hit quite the same level as the chicken place did, but if he doesn't shut his trap and just sell pizzas, he might... and I suspect he'll be having a fun brainstorming session with that other place's owner on how to drum up business that's been lost because he wanted to make a political statement with his company.

Phoenix Rev wrote:
gore wrote:

I do agree with the general sentiment here that the guy is being obnoxious, but I don't know that his conclusions are incorrect.

Okay, but according to Papa John's CEO, the cost would be 11-14 cents on each pizza sold. That was his claim.

So, taking him at his word, would you be adverse to paying, say, 15 cents more per pizza to ensure that some guy in his early 20's has decent health insurance? I wouldn't.

And I have yet to encounter anyone who thinks that paying those extra pennies is anything tragic or even problematic.

I can't really make a comment on that personally, since I don't buy Papa John's pizza except on rare occasions when I travel.

I can say that I would fully expect an organization like Papa John's to have actual metrics on what increasing the cost of their pizza would do to their bottom line, and would know better than the Internet how price sensitive their clientele are.

I suppose we'll know for sure once Papa John actually does something more than just talking about things. But reducing hours really does seem like a logical response to me.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Bear wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatch...

I appreciate the honesty contained in answering "why do you have to be so blatantly partisan" with a blatantly partisan link.

ruhk wrote:
jowner wrote:

As a worker you can choose to take your low paid labour to another organization that is better.

No one has to work for Papa Johns or eat the pizza...

Eh... That's not entirely true, especially in some parts of the U.S. Sometimes you are forced to take whatever job you can at whatever pay you can get simply because you have no other options.

Then you pick up your sh*t from hell hole U.S.A where your only option is working at Papa Johns.

Were talking about the bottom of the labour market food chain. The economy is bad but its not 20% unemployment bad.

If Papa John wants to scrape the bottom of the labour barrel by all means they have that right. They will also see a direct result in the quality of work they get. I'm sure this will have a knock on effect of the quality of their product and as a result in their sales.

Costco was mentioned earlier. They obviously feel like if they offer a better pay/benefit etc structure they will get better/happier/productive workers. In their case I'm sure they get to be picky with who they employee especially in a buyers labour market.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Bear wrote:
NormanTheIntern wrote:

Oh. Well then - I agree that Republican party members who vote Democratic are "wackadoodles" by definition :)

Serious question, does every idea or proposal instantly have to be qualified "Republican" or "Democratic"? Seems the label is far more important that the substance.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatch...

Good to see where you get your "information."

I'm currently writing a paper on why conservative satire doesn't work, so it makes sense that an out of work conservative comic has decided this is a better medium. I'm sure he would be just as impressed with an academic article out of Ohio State that examined the inability of conservatives to realize that Stephen Colbert is laughing at them, not with them.

It mostly has to do with ambiguous information and our brain's power to fill in what we don't understand with our personal bias. It works the other way, too. It's just rare for conservative satire to be good enough to actually gain an audience.

So yeah, we could trade videos of Michael Moore doing the exact same thing, yet it is all a shell game designed to provide bogus information about the intelligence of the other side. That's why looking at the raw numbers of the political views of college educated adults is far more informative than anecdotally going out to make the guy on the street look like an idiot.

And to be clear, the number one mistake I feel John Kerry made when running for president was embracing Moore. Had he instead excluded him and distanced himself from Fahrenheit 9/11, he would have won.

When I say wackadoodle, that is not code for Republican, or even conservative. That is for folks like this and this and this. We can play false equivalence games, but there has been a real movement to grow this segment of the public and stoke their anger by Karl Rove, Trump and other power brokers.

jowner wrote:

Then you pick up your sh*t from hell hole U.S.A where your only option is working at Papa Johns.

The people who have no options other than to work at crappy fast food restaurants are generally the same people who lack the resources to just up and leave.