Opinions and rants from central MN

The Democrats have started acting as if this election is already won.  Romney may be a gaffe machine.  He may be someone who simply does not know how to relate to others.  That does not mean the election is in the bag.  The economy is terrible and Obama has had a hard time explaining his accomplishments to many of the voters.  One must remember that George W. Bush was also someone with a shoe permanently embedded in his mouth and he started a disastrous war, yet he won 2 elections.   His aides were focused and professional.   Karl Rove  was a master at organizing a campaign.  Bush communication flaws made him seem likeable (and compared to Romney he probably is likeable).

I don’t know much about Romney’s people, so I don’t know if they know their jobs.  The country has become more conservative over the last generation so that should help Romney.  The problem for Romney is convincing the 10% of the electorate that is in play.   His personality will never be a winner but if he does well in the debates that may decide it.

The Republicans in their latest campaign have talked about the need to encourage ‘job creators’.  Given that their candidate worked for a company whose method of  cutting costs was to reduce payrolls it is hard to know what they mean by job creators.   Simply making more money available to the rich won’t produce more jobs.  The Republican program is cut taxes on things that matter at the top (in particular capital gains) and to reduce regulation (the money behind the GOP come from extraction industries: oil,coal, etc.).  There have been few specifics.  Let’s assume that simple tax reduction will create jobs.  Job creation is only one part of the equation.  It doesn’t help the economy much if those jobs are poorly paid.  When one looks at Bain capital’s entry in Wikipedia on sees that Bain has financed a lot of companies that have become famous for cost cutting (ie: firing people) such as Clear Channel and the Weather Channel.  Other companies they have financed are in the retail sector where jobs do not pay much.  Workers are poorly paid and expendible.

There is no understanding that no company can be successful without workers who do their jobs well.  If you want workers to come to work every day and stay motivated you need to offer fair payment.  I worked for AT&T for 20 years. In its heydey it was successful  because people were well trained and people came to work everyday and did their jobs correctly.  They were well paid.  There is no recognition that work and workers have any value in today’s society. Even people who are considered liberal such as Thomas Friedman of the NY Times have bought into the idea that people who don’t want to have their lives taken over by work are somehow less deserving than drudges who do.

The US is slowing becoming a third world country and by that I mean a country in which people who have jobs remain poor.  I see nothing in either party the addresses this.   Still I am voting for Obama who may try to do something, instead of Romney who has promised his wealthy backers that he will do nothing.