The Domino Effect of Outsourcing

From coast to coast, middle-class communities are shrinking

Fully 1 in 3 Americans who work in the manufacturing sector are receiving some form of public assistance, according to a study released this week by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. Of those who came to their positions through temp agencies half are on some type of safety net program. This was reported by CNBC.

I took a drive up to the Griffith Park Observatory here in Los Angeles last month. It wasn’t for going inside the building. It was a windy day and I anticipated a beautiful view from the parking lot. I was not disappointed. I obtained a photo that included a view of Catalina Island on the horizon. The distance is about 35 miles from the observatory.

I chose an alternate route back home and drove by Los Angeles City College. To my shock the sidewalk across the boulevard was lined with the tents and shelters of the homeless packed closely together. According to the Los Angeles Times there are now an estimated 44,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. How did the numbers get so big?

Sports Chalet (more than 50 locations primarily in California) and Sports Authority (463 stores) are closing all of their stores. They started those closings last month. Kohl’s is closing 18 stores and laying off more than 1,500 employees. Where will the laid off workers go?

Back in November 2015 Macy’s Department stores reported a sharp drop in quarterly sales and lowered their forecast for 2016. Macy’s reported unsold goods piling up in their stores. Today they reported another quarter of sinking sales and once again slashed its financial targets for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile where are the jobs of the past here in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States? Those were the thousands of aerospace engineering jobs that were a major contributor to the strong California middle class that are mostly gone. The falloff in manufacturing jobs during the past 14-year period has caused factories to shed about 5 million workers from their payrolls nationally. Factories from all over the nation have moved to other countries. In their place are low paying service jobs that offer pay rates as low as $7.25, $15, and $25 an hour. Those jobs do not support a middle class family. They certainly do not support a Macy’s or Sports Authority price line.

Discount chains like T.J. Maxx and fast-fashion retailers such as H&M offering jeans as cheap as $17 and polo shirts for $10 are succeeding because that’s all today’s workers can afford.

So businesses keep outsourcing your work to low cost countries because you see it as a way to higher profits. Just remember that those of us left with those low paid jobs will be shopping at Walmart, Target, and the other afore-mentioned discount stores. The vicious cycle continues to drive people from the middle class to poor and homeless.

Don’t tell me you do not know what happened to the middle class.

Change Your Thinking

Change Your Thinking

It will take just 37 seconds to read this and change your thinking..

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.

One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.

His bed was next to the room’s only window.

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end.

They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation..

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake

Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days, weeks and months passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.

She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.
He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed.

It faced a blank wall..

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall.

She said, ‘Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.’

Epilogue:

There is tremendous happiness in making others happy, despite our own situations.

Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled.

If you want to feel rich, just count all the things you have that money can’t buy.

‘Today is a gift, that is why it is called The Present .’

The origin of this article is unknown

A Too Happy Hillary Clinton

My opinion is that Donald Trump is not a Republican. Too many of his views match the Democratic Party views and many of Bernie Sanders’ views.

By Damon Linker in The Week magazine, May 11, 2016

The Clinton campaign seems almost giddy at the prospect of facing Donald Trump on November. That’s a mistake.

Dear Hillary,

I have to admit, you have me worried. And for more than just the usual reasons.

In the week since it became clear you would be facing Donald Trump in the general election, I’ve sensed giddy delight coming from your camp.

Believe me, I get it.

Trump has incredibly high unfavorable ratings. Women hate him, as do Hispanic voters. The very things that made him attractive to the Republican base — the anger, the fear-mongering, the misogyny — could drive millions of undecided voters into your outstretched, welcoming arms.

And all of this comes on top of fundamentals that give a substantial edge to the Democrat in any presidential contest these days. From 1992 to 2012, the Democratic nominee always won 18 states, plus the District of Columbia, that are worth a combined 242 electoral votes — just 28 short of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Over the same six elections, Republicans have consistently won 13 states with a total of 102 electoral votes. That means a generic GOP candidate has a much narrower path to victory than a generic Democrat. Add in The Donald’s distinctive negatives, and it probably looks like you’ll be facing a cakewalk in the fall.

Don’t believe it.

For starters, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not especially popular either. Sure, Trump’s unfavorables are higher than yours — but yours are pretty damn high! And it’s not like those numbers are likely to move very much. You’ve been a fixture on the political scene for close to a quarter century now. And those young people who know the least about you have been Bernie Sanders’ most passionate supporters in the primaries. That might not prove fatal in the general election, but it’s not exactly good either.

And then there’s Trump.

With 10 contests left to go in the primaries, Trump has already surpassed Mitt Romney’s vote total for the entire 2012 primary season by roughly 700,000 votes. And he did it against a more sharply divided field, and while winning a smaller portion of overall votes cast (though that number will narrow between now and the end of the primary season on June 7). Republicans are energized, with turnout up sharply from four years ago. This means that the baseline assumptions that have held since 1992 may not pertain this time around.

In every single one of those elections, the Republican candidate has run on pretty much the same cluster of issues: tax cuts, especially for the wealthy; muscular internationalism; social conservatism; free trade. That’s also the matrix of positions Democrats of your generation are conditioned to respond to and attack.

But Trump is different. He will hit you from the populist far right on immigration and free trade. He will hit you from the far left on the Iraq war, Libya, and Syria. He will directly challenge you on economic policy by supporting an increase in the minimum wage and higher taxes for the wealthy.

And he will relentlessly, mercilessly attack you (and your husband) personally.

How will you respond to the onslaught? I sure hope the answer is that you have no idea yet. Because if you think the answer is obvious or simple, you’re deluding yourself.

It’s certainly going to take more than selling merchandise emblazoned with utterly lame slogans like “Dangerous Donald” and “America Is Already Great.” Isn’t it a tenet of progressivism that America isn’t already great? That our national greatness is always a work in progress, a goal achieved only in the fullness of time? If conservatives are prone to nostalgia, the left is inspired by eschatological hopes for the future. Barack Obama, with his frequent references to the arc of history bending toward justice, certainly knows this, and I’m sure you do, too. After these feeble gestures, I can’t say the same about DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. You might need to have a talk with her.

No Democrat has ever run against a candidate like Trump. He overturns every settled ideological and temperamental expectation of normal politics. He will go after you with a ferocity we’ve never seen before, and the assault will be unremitting — yes, on the stump, in TV and radio ads, and in the debates, but also in 24/7 cable news coverage and an endless stream of infectiously quotable tweets, half of them capped by what’s become this election cycle’s all-purpose three-letter dismissal: Sad!

So don’t be cocky. Fire anyone on your staff who tells you this is going to be easy.

Then tell the staffers who remain that they need to be nimble, thinking on their feet and outside of the proverbial box. Yes, the Democrats have very real demographic advantages, and that will help — but not as much as the usual consultants and data crunchers want to assume.

Don’t try to define Trump, whether by labeling him “dangerous” or anything else. He’s a master of rhetorical jujitsu, instantly turning criticisms and insults into honorifics. Let Trump define himself. Of course he’ll try to define you, too — as “Crooked Hillary,” among other things — but your self-definition needs to prevail over the one he tries to pin on you. If it doesn’t, you’ll lose.

Most crucially, you need to show voters by your words and actions that you’re everything Trump is not: sober, smart, informed, sensible, level-headed, presidential. Yes, a lot of Americans at all points on the spectrum are angry these days. But are they so angry that when presented with a clear and obvious choice a plurality of them will actually opt for the candidate who is manifestly less sober, less smart, less informed, less sensible, less level-headed, and less presidential?

I don’t think they will.

If I’m wrong, your bid for the presidency is doomed — and so, perhaps, is the country.

Sincerely yours, A concerned anti-Republican

Man is Polluting This Entire Planet

Humans are destroying planet earth! It’s happening slowly enough that most of the people alive today will not realize the consequences of their behavior.

It’s not just the atmosphere that is being polluted. We are fouling the water, the seas, and the soil. Almost everything we do on this planet has a negative effect.

Business and government, in general, are only mildly concerned. Their primary concern is providing products and services to the population.

What are the long term consequences of the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? What are the long term consequences of the Aliso Canyon methane gas and oil leaks in Los Angeles?

Oklahoma has experienced a major increase in earthquakes in recent years, including a 5.7-magnitude temblor that injured residents and damaged 200 buildings in November 2011. Swarms of quakes have continued in 2015. There is general consensus among scientists that the spike in Oklahoma’s earthquake activity has been triggered by disposal wells, used to dispose of waste from oil and gas drilling operations — including hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” — a phenomenon known as “induced” seismicity.

“Inside the Billion-Dollar Dig to America’s Biggest Copper Deposit” is the report in Bloomberg Businessweek that tells of the One Billion Dollar investment by the world’s two largest mining companies to drill down more than a mile to a copper deposit that is believed to justify the investment. The problem is that a forest is being destroyed and that land, about 2 miles in diameter (2,400 acres), and the removed soil could result in a 1,000 foot deep crater.

The issue of pollution isn’t just an American problem. Think Beijing’s air pollution is bad? There 10 cities that are worse. 13 out of 20 cities on world’s worst air pollution list are in India according to CBC News.

The Fukushima Daiichi reactors impacted by an earthquake will result in areas around the crippled nuclear plant could remaining uninhabitable for 20 years. But no one really knows. After all the crippled Chernobyl 4 reactor now is enclosed in a concrete structure that is growing weaker over time. Ukraine and the Group of Eight industrialized nations have agreed on a plan to stabilize the existing structure by constructing an enormous new sarcophagus around it, which is expected to last more than 100 years.

In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day.

The polar ice caps have melted faster in last 20 years than in the last 10,000. What will they call GLACIER NATIONAL PARK place once the glaciers are gone?

Of course all of this information can be found on the web. The problem is that no one wants to confront the reality that over time all of mankind is destroying the planet. Global warming deniers, pollution deniers, habitat deniers are leading the band wagon.

Fear for your grandchildren!

Americans Are Struggling with Behavior that Contradict with their Beliefs

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump understand Americans real beliefs and hatreds and are playing on those viewpoints.

Strictly religious Christians and Jews have very rigid laws about human behavior. They really do not want any behavior by anyone that conflict with their beliefs

Thus we see laws proposed (and some signed into law) in Arkansas, Georgia, and Indiana that would protect the rights of people who choose to discriminate. Specifically these laws give people the right to discriminate against homosexuals and gay marriage. Similarly many states have created laws that limit the right to an abortion.

All of these laws are a response to evangelical Christians, orthodox Catholics and Jews.

However, Muslim beliefs are not to be tolerated by those religious Christians and Jews.

It now appears that money may impact their willingness to tolerate those that are different. The Walt Disney Co. would stop film production in Georgia if they sign into law their right to discriminate law. It is estimated that $106 million is spent in Georgia by Disney. Other companies are contemplating similar action in the three states I have identified. So far, lawmakers in Georgia haven’t heeded those concerns. Legislators in Indiana and Arkansas passed similar bills last year.

What does this situation tell us about Americans? The answer is sadly obvious.

March 28, 2016

Good news! Under increasing pressure from major corporations that do business in Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal announced Monday he will veto a bill that critics say would have curtailed the rights of Georgia’s LGBT community.

Can We Trust Government Officials to Keep Us Safe?

Invariably when a government agency head or elected official makes a mistake he says, “I take full responsibility.” What he doesn’t do is resign or pay a fine and most certainly does not go to jail. So what does “taking responsibility” mean? It really means I apologize for my errors and hope not to be caught again.

The problems started after the push of a button, a toast with Flint River water and a budget forecast of saving $5 million that had to be tempting for a city in the midst of a financial emergency.

Despite the complaints that the water appeared dirty and had a peculiar odor and taste Flint, Michigan continued pumping water from the river.

The consequence is lead poisoned water that can result in brain damage to children and possible early death. The financial cost to replace the ruined piping is estimated at $75 million.

Porter Ranch residents suffering from headaches, nausea and other symptoms from a natural gas leak that has displaced thousands are assigning blame to a damaged well in the Santa Susana Mountains north of Los Angeles. Some government agencies are questioning the claims that although some people have experienced some problems there will be no long term effects.

This reminds me of the high school built on an abandoned oil field in Los Angeles. The abandonment of that project took major community involvement. Or the Virginia communities that were impacted by the Dan River spill of coal ash in February 2014.

Is there any evidence that government and business officials can be trusted to provide honest information about health issues?

The answer is an emphatic NO.