Politics Obama - Actually doing a good job?

It might be a ploy oh what a ploy it is ...
The Republicans will have to eat it while he stands there and smiles.
He can tell people he had a plan that would take the pressure off them and make things even better but look who's blocking it - as usual.
And he's kind of setting the next person in the hot seat.
The chances are the next president is going to be a Dem and the will be kind of obligated to carry on the legacy even if that wasn't really what they wanted to do.

 

Where was this Obama about 4 months ago? Where were the Democrats at district and state levels talking about how these types of plans would help ordinary people? They are even posting stuff on social media to explain the issues to people now.

I don't agree with the $500 to married couples who both work thing (we will see if it gets proposed tomorrow). Maybe if they are below a certain income level. But dual income, no kids couple shouldn't be having any problems in this economy financially. And I don't think we should be rewarding people for having more kids than we already are. We have too many people as it is.

 

You seem to be confused. Set aside the silly talking point about corporations sending jobs overseas - do you hold the position that international trade is a bad thing? Do you hold the position that firms based in the US should not invest in other countries? Do you hold the position the firms based in other countries should not invest in the US? Using African countries as an example, are you ok with US countries making profits form sales to those countries, importing resources from those countries, etc., without investing in those countries, i.e. creating jobs, building plants for the notion that a job created in an African country is a job lost in the US? I can not imagine you actually would honestly answer these questions the way your recent posts on this subject suggest. Yes, I get that some politicians want to create a boggy man about the loss of jobs to foreigners but I never believe anyone took that bs serious!
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Here is an example of an evil corporate tax loophole Democrats want to close. In this case Target, invested in Canada creating (temporarily) about 17,000 jobs - the investment lost money. So guess what, those losses can be deducted against total corporate profits, lowering taxes paid in the US. Democrats would say that Target should have never made any attempt to expand in Canada.

Target's issues in the Canadian market had nothing to do with taxes.

Are you suggesting, like DC, that you would prefer foreign companies not invest in Canada and that Canadian companies should not invest in other countries. Should ever country be like China in the 1900's - closed! Would that make the world economically stronger? You seem to know a bit about business, are you agreeing with me or DC on this issue?

 

Obama has not coherent tax policy or plan. He is in perpetual campaign mode, he is not a policy person. All he can do is speak in broad populist language. As soon as his talking points get challenged the subject has to be changed. Rush Limbaugh has been commenting on low information voters, I think I am beginning to get his point. My goodness, to think some believe that international trade is harmful to the overall US and global economy. How dare a US company invest in another country and create a job in that country?!?

 

I don't think international trade agreements are bad for this country.
I think poorly crafted, nontransparent international trade agreements are bad for this country.

Making them all about the companies rather than the workers kills our economy.

 

H-1B visa abuse is the bane of my career, these days. It's hard to compete with indentured servitude.

 

Ace, If you reread my posts, I did nto claim that international trade was harmful, but that the recent trades deals under three presidents starting with NAFTA and including Korea, Colombia and others (and pending for Trans-Pacific Partnership) have resulted in trade deficits, loss of jobs to US workers, little or no environmental protecdtions or worker protections and allowing trading countries to continue with practices of currency manipulation. Bad deals for the US all around and particularly impactful on workers and wages.

Obama' is as guilty as Clinton and Bush but his general tax policy is fairly clear. Middle class tax cuts, restoring capital gains to Reagan levels and corporate taxes that reward companies that insource and closing loopholes that allow countries to outsource and be rewarded with lower US taxes.

As opposed to the likely Republic and rehased Ryan plan from 2012..... two tax brackets, lowering the rate for the top to 25% with some loss of deductions but with the impact of benefiting the top taxpayers far more than working families...and lowering corporate taxes when the effective corporate rate is already lower than most other industrialized countries.

 

I live in North Carolina. The textile industry was a major employer in the NC, starting in about the 1970's the industry has been in decline and now the industry in NC is virtually dead. These were low paying, low skill jobs, in generally poor working conditions. The jobs went overseas - some to Korea through trade agreements. As the textile declined in NC, the banking industry grew. Higher paying jobs, requiring better education, in better working conditions - Outside of the people you were in the textile industry and unwilling to go into retraining, nobody in this state wants to go back in time to an economy with a heavy dependance on textile.

North Carolina in the Global Economy

However, we get liberals in ivory towers in Washington courting union votes who focus on textile companies who sent jobs overseas while ignoring the benefits to both Asian economies and the US economy. You folks need to think this stuff through. This forum is not Meet The Press - weak talking points won't work.
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How can you say "kills our economy?" Our economy is growing and aside from brief recessionary periods has always grown. No other country's economy comes close to the US economy. What we are really talking about are trivial matters in context of total economy. Opening up free trade with other nations is a much bigger deal for them, as they grow their middle class - and as other countries grow their middle class, they will have more disposable income to spend on US goods and services. It is a positive cycle. What we need in the US is a work force willing to grow with the changes that occur. Waxing poetic about the good old days of a US worker on an assemble line turning a 9/16 bolt eight hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks per year for 30 years, getting a pension and dying a year later is a waste of time.

 

Ace, I have a degree in Engineering with 30+ years of experience in IT. My resume includes IBM and AT&T. I'm not exactly low skilled labor, yet my job is being outsourced, too.

 

Ace,

The trade agreements of Clinton, Bush and Obama never lived up to the promises. They cost US jobs and US net exports (trade deficits). Those are facts, not talking points.

Talking points or the mantra of Republicans that prevails to this day and likely to be at the center of a Republican tax proposal (rehash of the Ryan '12 proposal) is supply side/trickle down economics works and benefits the middle class and working families when in fact it results in little or no economic growth or create jobs but does add significantly to the debt and furthers income inequality.

 

Why not report abuses to the Division of Labor under the FLSA? It is their job to enforce the law.
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IBM has been in a cost cutting mode for at least 30 years, have you been on edge the whole time? AT&T is not a growth company either. Why not get into a growth industry? It is interesting Netflix and IBM just announced quarterly earnings today - an announcer said the difference is one company is about what can be, the other about what was. What does IBM do? It is not really clear to me. What about - Facebook, GOOGLE, Tesla, Amazon, Apple, Twitter, Ebay, Priceline, Yahoo, Linkedin, Zillow....

 

Sidetrack.

I do like the fact that all of the tech companies above are on board with Net Neutrality pushed by Obama and hopefully set in place by the FCC next month, despite attempts by Republicans to kill it.

 

So, you are caught up in the concept of "trade deficits"? And you fail to see that some jobs may be lost but that others are gained. The US is a net consumer of international goods, why do you think that is? Why would you want that to change? When was the last time the US was a net exporter? Was that a good time for the world and the US? Is that what you want again for the world?

I asked some specific questions about what you believe - you have not answered those questions. When I present what is considered a talking point, ask me a specific question about the point and you will get a direct answer.

Regarding trickle down, why is New York doing this?

I would suggest to you that they realize that if the have a healthy environment for new business growth that everyone else benefits - classic trickle down theory, lower taxes to benefit the overall economy.
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The verbiage gets people confused on this issue. Most Republicans are against FCC over-reach, but are proposing Net Neutrality legislation that would prevent abuse by the FCC. I do not want the FCC to classify the internet as a utility. Do you?

 

Ace

Ace,

I am pointing out the bad trade deals that cost US jobs.

You want a specific example of how to create more manufacturing jobs in the US?

Stop currency manipulation, most notably by China but also Korea (ignored in the Korean trade agreement) and others. It artificially lowers the cost of US imports and raises the cost of US exports., thus resulting in those trade deficits.

Addressing this currency manipulation alone could lead to better exchange rates for the US and, at the very least, taking some of the competitive advantage away from those cheaply produced foreign goods we thrive on at home and lessening barriers to exporting US made goods to trade parnter countries.

 

Why yes, yes I do.
It's not my favorite option, I'd love one that simply told the IPs that they couldn't change anything from the way it is now.
And that broke up some of the bigger ones into smaller pieces, kind of like the baby bells.
However that isn't going to happen.

So I will settle for regulating them like a utility because while having the government involved sucks I feel like having Comcast and company controlling things is worse.
Can you come up with a better system that doesn't allow the IPs controlling what websites get better access, what my bandwidth is going to be, etc.
Speaking of which I was happy to see the President talking about how much the US sucks in terms of bandwidth.

 

Republicans are certainly not proposing or supporting Net Neutrality....neither in Congress nor on the FCC.

I dont know a better either, but allowing Comcast/Verizon/Time Warner (soon to be Comcast) to control content access and delivery is hard in the public interest.

 

I was pretty impressed with his SOTU speech.
The focus that he's making for supporting the working class makes perfect sense.
It was positive and focused.
I loved his response to his the Republicans sarcastic applause when he said he wasn't running anymore.

 

I kind of wonder if that was planned or just a quick thinking snub. It makes a good meme though.

http://d2ws0xxnnorfdo.cloudfront.net/meme/467777

 

It seemed off the cuff but he might have had it on hand just in case.