NO SHELTER HERE

April is generally known as “Workers' Month” because Worker’s Memorial Day falls in April. But workers in the U.S. are still under attack by greedy corporations who want to take us and our families back to the Reagan Years wages and benefits. All the while the CEO’s and their staffs will party like its 2099.
Case in point is the Whirlpool Corporation from Benton Harbor, MI that announced plans in August of last year to close their Evansville, Indiana refrigerator plant and move the 1,100 jobs to Mexico. For this city of 122,000 that is almost ten percent of the jobs, or more when you figure in supporting employment.
It is time, as Americans, that we stop destroying the livelihoods of our fellow Americans and think twice about having a hand in helping another line of foreclosure signs to pop up. In the 2009 fiscal year, Whirlpool made a 2.39 billion dollar profit. It would seem all is well with this company without the outsourcing. Could it be that we never have enough? This is not Capitalism as Adam Smith, the Scottish political philosopher often called the father of Capitalism, intended. This is slash and burn economics that hurts the masses for the enrichment of a few.
If you recall the State of the Union address, that president Obama gave earlier this year, then you remember the solution he had for such issues. His resolution to this problem was to take the tax incentives away from companies, like Whirlpool, who move production across the border and give them to companies who keep or start production in this country. When president Obama spoke these words, all the Democrats stood and cheered and all the Republicans sat on their hands. If this wasn’t a telling moment for American voters I’m not sure what would be. The Republican free marketers want to pay Whirlpool to leave while the Democrats want to pay them to stay. And the media says there is no difference between the parties.
Consumers can have a say in all this. Maytag, Haier, Amana and Peerless all manufacture appliances in the United States. Many of these are made with union labor. Let’s support the home team and reward these companies for doing the right thing. As for the Republicans and the off-shore free market crowd, I only wish for one thing, that the decision makers of the company would have to live and sleep in the place where they move their production to. Live among those they exploit to get a feel for the life style that they have created; unable to return to the safety of the U.S. each night for a good nights’ sleep on a satin pillow. As the rock band Rage Against the Machine so aptly puts it “There Will be No Shelter Here.”

HEALTH CARE REFORM EQUALS MORE JOBS

We can’t afford health care! Start over! Reign in the attorneys; that will fix health care! Let me buy health care in Idaho that will ease the pain! Let the market decide who lives to fight another day and who is abandoned along the road!
As the president and his democratic colleges work to bail water from our leaking ship of health care coverage the Conservatives and Tea Party advocates keep rowing hard in the opposite direction to protect the insurance and pharmaceutical companies from reality. We are still a long way from shore but we are closer than we have ever been.
Let’s go back where this all started. Most of the (free market rules all) strategies and globalization initiatives began during the Reagan Administration when the subject of unrestrained world trade and monetary policy first came to light. Much has been written concerning the reasons for our wide-open border trade deals but, in simple terms, some wealthy individuals saw a way to exploit the poor and indigent of other countries for their personal wealth. At first it was great fun, ship in a few wiring harnesses from Mexico or source some widgets to China. But as we began to lose these good paying manufacturing jobs, that all came with health care coverage, the costs began to rise because there were fewer and fewer workers to spread these costs between. Currently, health insurance for a family of four costs over $12,000 a year and health care company profits have gone up over 1000 percent during the last 5 years.
Now we find ourselves in a situation where these multinational companies and their jet-set CEO’s are working hard to protect their assets in places like China to the detriment of their home land the United States. Our government needs to stop the support of these companies and the American consumer along with the American worker needs to be heard in this debate.
All of this open-market trade and out sourcing of jobs has had a great impact on our country. Real wages have been going down in the U.S. for a decade and our current unemployment is hovering at 10 percent, not counting those who have given up. Approximately 50 million Americans don’t have health care coverage and some of the largest American companies, General Motors and Chrysler, are just back from bankruptcy, partially from spending more on health care than on steel. Every thirty seconds an individual goes broke because of health care costs and many American companies are on the brink; all because they have to compete with countries that offer universal health care coverage to their citizens.
While talking to a friend, who works as a nurse, he said that half the beds in the hospital where he works are empty, where just a few years ago they were full to capacity. His opinion is people just can’t afford to go any more; or they have lost their health insurance; or their co-pays keep them sick at home. On the other side of the coin, the mortuary business is booming. Is this the new conservative health plan?

Manufacturing jobs paid for a lot of health care insurance coverage in this country. Perhaps the only way to right our ship is to bring them back and one of the avenues to getting them back is to reduce the cost of health care and streamline the entire system to the point that it is cost effective for companies to bring the work here and not fear runaway expenses to insure their employees. Health care reform equals more jobs in the United States. We can’t afford not to do it.