Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

Werthless - are you familiar with the economics concept of externalities, even a little? Your posts suggest you're utterly ignorant of the idea.

Because if you aren't even a little familiar with it, you literally are not prepared to carry on an intelligent discussion about free trade, let alone convince anyone to be 'for' it.

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

wait... i also never said i support "free trade" or whatever that has come to mean. actually what i said was:

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

so maybe you just missed my point on the matter.

and also, yes im upset that the domestic car industry is failing. i like this country and wish it wouldnt suck so much. is that what you are asking?

TenuredVulture wrote:To what extent should what businesses want determine school curriculum? What happens when business says they need a bunch of people who can program in Cobol, but then the world moves on and you have a bunch of unemployable Cobol programmers out there? How many resources should we devote attention to education, and how much should we devote to job skills?

Now, there are some obvious things--write and speak clearly, solid quantitative skills, know not to show up 20 minutes late to a job interview with your pants around your ankles.

And I understand there's a huge need for what we used to call trades.

But what else do the kind of reforms gr wants to implement mean?

TV, your 2nd paragraph is as big a concern as anything, especially for entry level kids right out of school (whatever school that may be). They're commonly referred to as soft skills, and while it sometimes sounds like Baby Boomers bemoaning the lack of intelligence of the Gen Y generation, it's more like a major concern regarding immigration and the disproportionate growth of service sector jobs, which are usually less intellectually demanding, yet very important when you consider that these folks are the facec of the company in many ways.

Without going into all the painful details, the biz community wants (or shoudl wants) problem solving and basic fluency skills that are transferrable. It does NOT want a bunch of COBOL programmers coming out of high school, becuase it can teach the specific stuff onsite. It can't teach the ability to grasp the specific stuff as easily.

The way it works successfully, the biz community approves of the framework it needs and recommends it to the district, so in effect it's not telling the school what to do, just what the demands are. In turn, it gets more engaged in effering interships, being mentors, etc. I'm making it sound very simple because in effect, it is. It just takes effort and focus.

dajafi wrote:Thanks gr. Always encouraging to see another "it-getter" out there.

And yeah, Michelle Rhee is totally my hero.

michelle rhee = the real decider

I do think that one thing higher ed should focus on, perhaps not so much in terms of curriculum but in other ways is entrepreneurship. Kids sitting around campus saying, "we should have a concert series on campus" ought to be encouraged to start one, doing most of the work themselves rather than hiring yet another student affairs bureaucrat to run a series for them.

gr wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:To what extent should what businesses want determine school curriculum? What happens when business says they need a bunch of people who can program in Cobol, but then the world moves on and you have a bunch of unemployable Cobol programmers out there? How many resources should we devote attention to education, and how much should we devote to job skills?

Now, there are some obvious things--write and speak clearly, solid quantitative skills, know not to show up 20 minutes late to a job interview with your pants around your ankles.

And I understand there's a huge need for what we used to call trades.

But what else do the kind of reforms gr wants to implement mean?

TV, your 2nd paragraph is as big a concern as anything, especially for entry level kids right out of school (whatever school that may be). They're commonly referred to as soft skills, and while it sometimes sounds like Baby Boomers bemoaning the lack of intelligence of the Gen Y generation, it's more like a major concern regarding immigration and the disproportionate growth of service sector jobs, which are usually less intellectually demanding, yet very important when you consider that these folks are the facec of the company in many ways.

Without going into all the painful details, the biz community wants (or shoudl wants) problem solving and basic fluency skills that are transferrable. It does NOT want a bunch of COBOL programmers coming out of high school, becuase it can teach the specific stuff onsite. It can't teach the ability to grasp the specific stuff as easily.

The way it works successfully, the biz community approves of the framework it needs and recommends it to the district, so in effect it's not telling the school what to do, just what the demands are. In turn, it gets more engaged in effering interships, being mentors, etc. I'm making it sound very simple because in effect, it is. It just takes effort and focus.

The question of how much industry involvement there should be in schools is one that's been consistently vexing in education (and workforce, if you consider it more expansively) policy. In part it gets back to the question of what the purpose of education is: preparation for the labor market, personal fulfillment, citizenship, something else? And in part, as always, it's about power and money.

In the early years of the Clinton administration, a federal initiative known broadly as School-to-Work took on a lot of these issues. The feds set up incentives to strengthen school/business partnerships, support internships, and define and support "career pathways" (a term that has a few different meanings, but for this conversation we can describe it as a sequence of educational and workplace experiences designed to prepare someone to succeed within a given field). Most of the people involved whom I've spoken with, on both the industry and education side, thought it was a worthwhile undertaking... but as the standards-based education movement really took hold in the late '90s it lost steam, and then when Bush came in it was dumped entirely as a "Democratic" initiative and thus unworthy of support.

But everybody still wants some connection between the business community and the schools. So you have organizations like PENCIL and programs like "Principal for a Day," which I guess are better than nothing, but not much... and a few companies, like Washington Mutual, will support fairly widespread internship and summer hiring programs.

The problem, at least in NYC, is that each school and each company is more or less on its own in building those relationships, which take time and effort and resources. When you've got so many other mandates--from NCLB, from state authorities, from local governance--it often seems like building those relationships is a luxury the school can't afford.

And this in turn contributes, as gr says, to the unacceptably high number of students who graduate (or not) without either the basic workplace competencies known as "soft skills"--showing up on time, dressing appropriately, communicating effectively, working in teams, problem-solving, and so on--or the baseline levels of literacy and numeracy that workers must have in order for firms to give them the customized training ("teaching them COBOL") they need to positively impact the firm's bottom line.

drsmooth wrote:

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

Werthless - are you familiar with the economics concept of externalities, even a little? Your posts suggest you're utterly ignorant of the idea.

Because if you aren't even a little familiar with it, you literally are not prepared to carry on an intelligent discussion about free trade, let alone convince anyone to be 'for' it.

Yes I am familiar with externalities. Where can I submit a resume? You question my economics intelligence yet are critical/suspicious of the benefits of free trade?!?

How do you feel about the US losing its marketshare in the textiles industry? How do you feel about tshirts being made overseas? Is that a problem with the strength of the US, that tshirts are no longer made locally? I do not think so. In fact, I find it an encouraging sign that processes like this are decreasingly done by US citizens. The production of cars does not NEED to be done by American companies. Besides, Honda employs a ton of people in US factories.

EDIT: Drsmooth, perhaps you could tell me about deadweight losses, and how they pertain to trade barriers? And when you're done, tell me why you think they don't matter. Thanks.

Camp Holdout wrote:

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

wait... i also never said i support "free trade" or whatever that has come to mean. actually what i said was:

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

so maybe you just missed my point on the matter.

and also, yes im upset that the domestic car industry is failing. i like this country and wish it wouldnt suck so much. is that what you are asking?

I'm sorry for confusing your post with someone else. That was careless. I thought you said you support free trade, then questioned a certain aspect of it. Free trade is one of the few policy questions that economists can agree on; it's pretty close to a consensus among folks who have "thought about it for more than 10 seconds." I'd be happy to engage you in debate, but I doubt that's what you intend to do.

Good insider/newsy piece from Ambinder:

There is an affect gap between how members of the Democratic political establishment view the presidential race right now -- concerns, bordering on panic -- and where Barack Obama's campaign brain trust thinks the race is at -- a mix of confidence and sobriety, but nothing approaching rank worrying.

This gap has a lineage. Jimmy Carter's Atlanta campaign headquarters and the National Democrats had their moments, as did the National Dems and Bill Clinton's Little Rock headquarters. Both sides argued, then fought, and then drew insights from each other, and Democrats managed to win the White House. (1988...and 2000...were a little different).

Call this first group National Democrats. They see 55 days left, an Obama campaign dropping in national polls, an enthusiastic Republican base, a public that, darn it, seems to like Sarah Palin, an Obama campaign that can't figure out how to respond to a changed dynamic, and, on top of all of that, millions left to raise.

Chicago Democrats notice that John McCain is doing better in traditionally Republican states outside of the West; that an engaged Republican base changes the map, that Obama is winning right now in every state that John Kerry won plus Iowa and New Mexico, and that the remaining electoral votes he needs could come from Nevada. Or Colorado. Or Montana. Or Virginia. The fundamentals are strong; the election will turn back to the economy; everything is OK. The campaign is about Barack Obama versus John McCain, and on November 4, it will be about Barack Obama and John McCain.

gr wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:

dajafi wrote:The truth is that neither of these guys is going to "change the tone" in Washington. They just won't. That's beyond the capacity of any one individual, maybe even one party (which would be accused by its mobilized base of "unilateral disarmament"). This is the residue of what I consider almost the "cold civil war" of our politics.

I think Obama will at least try to change the tone. That's a start. Presumably any big change begins with trying something different.

not gonna happen. washington cannot be changed by one person, no matter how charasmatic or successful.

B-b-b-but... Barack Obama is just like Jesus (YouTube link)

Why oh why do these guys try to be clever? More often than not they end up looking like dufuses. Speaking of, that dude's hair can sure use a divine miracle

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Werthless wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it.

i should clarify what i mean. im all for toying with the "natural" market forces, but in smart ways. so the automobile industry of course is a spot where our american companies seem to be WAY behind on the innovation scale and are struggling. so i'm all for getting involved and helping out. but not just to help them 'keep the money rolling in' but 'helping them actually compete and make better products.'

so when a government policy tries to interject itself in this natural competition process by handicapping the competition... it doesn't help that losing company innovate at all, it just helps them tread water with the status quo.

in case you haven't gleaned it, im thinking about helping american automobile companies catch up in the alternative fuel game. we suck at it.. a lot.

just one example though, i think, of the way the idea of "free trade" has been warped big time.

That's not free trade. Actually, it's the opposite. You are the one warping the idea of free trade. If our local businesses can't make cars effectively, I don't see why government needs to support them. Are you upset that US companies make few of our tshirts and other clothes? My guess is no, and that's how we should feel about the failing domestic car industry.

wait... i also never said i support "free trade" or whatever that has come to mean. actually what i said was:

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

so maybe you just missed my point on the matter.

and also, yes im upset that the domestic car industry is failing. i like this country and wish it wouldnt suck so much. is that what you are asking?

I'm sorry for confusing your post with someone else. That was careless. I thought you said you support free trade, then questioned a certain aspect of it. Free trade is one of the few policy questions that economists can agree on; it's pretty close to a consensus among folks who have "thought about it for more than 10 seconds." I'd be happy to engage you in debate, but I doubt that's what you intend to do.

It's tough to sell a stainlees steel system with no government supports at all for those who 'fail'. It's tougher to sell a test tube free market. Free trade is good. Simply casting those aside who might be negatively affected by it isn't. I believe jeff2sf 's post about 'b-schoolers' is a good one for you to read.

This couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has "a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)"

LaDuca, who previously had called Martin Luther King Jr. a "pariah" and a "fraud," also wrote: "And man, if sayin' someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we're ALL in trouble."

The College Republicans asked LaDuca to resign after his remarks were publicized by the Pennsylvania Progressive, a blog written by a Democratic committeeman from Berks County. The group announced LaDuca's resignation on its Web site Friday.

LaDuca said Monday that he regrets posting the comments and understands how they can be construed as racist. "In hindsight, when you read it a second time, it's like, 'oops,'" he said. "It was just a dumb move on my part to make a statement like that public."

Yeah, just say it privately!

This guy's been a jerk for quite a while now, I'm surprised the College Republicans would put this guy in any sort of power position. At least he's gone now.

found a link to parts of his facebook

pacino wrote:This couldn't happen to a nicer guy:

Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has "a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)"

LaDuca, who previously had called Martin Luther King Jr. a "pariah" and a "fraud," also wrote: "And man, if sayin' someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we're ALL in trouble."

The College Republicans asked LaDuca to resign after his remarks were publicized by the Pennsylvania Progressive, a blog written by a Democratic committeeman from Berks County. The group announced LaDuca's resignation on its Web site Friday.

LaDuca said Monday that he regrets posting the comments and understands how they can be construed as racist. "In hindsight, when you read it a second time, it's like, 'oops,'" he said. "It was just a dumb move on my part to make a statement like that public."

Yeah, just say it privately!

This guy's been a jerk for quite a while now, I'm surprised the College Republicans would put this guy in any sort of power position. At least he's gone now.

I like the fact that they're asking him to resign now, not because he's racist, but because he's embarrassing the organization.

No offense to anyone 21 or younger, but I couldn't possibly care less about what anyone 21 or younger thinks or says. You know nothing about anything at that age. You just think you do.

dajafi wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

Camp Holdout wrote:

Warszawa wrote:free trade - meh

i almost posted something to this affect after JH's post. i'd love that debate to open up a little bit about "free trade". what that actually means, why it actually seems to be hurting american business when coupled with other policies, and why it seems to have hindered innovation on an international scale.

i feel like its something that people think they should be for because it has the word "free" in it. but if they actually think about it for more than 10 seconds they might realize its a pretty iffy prospect...

Free trade also produces opportunities for American business.

While some right wing economists like to charge the New Deal with exacerbating the Great Depression rather than improving economic conditions, there's no doubt that protectionism, adopted by almost every country, made things a lot worse.

i hear ya. its a messy thing. i just think its a debate that is needed in this country. the republicans would of course win it because if you are against something with the word "free" in it, you must be against "freedom".

i think the odd thing is that when we just trust our american businesses to compete on a global "free" scale, and we start losing... badly, we should do something about it. the automobile industry is a pretty interesting case study on this point, and one that might actually be appropriate for this election cycle.

Ultimately, the way you win in the global economy is by producing the best-educated, most highly skilled workforce. (I'm pretty sure this is true even outside my professionally self-interested take on it.) Problem is that this doesn't happen in a vacuum: you need big public investment, ideally guided by and supplanted from the business community, in schools, job training, mid-career counseling, and so on.

Neither party has come remotely close to supporting this kind of investment (though the Dems have been consistently better, or less awful, than the Republicans), and the business community, while interested in the abstract in more help from government in up-skilling their workers, continually makes it less of a priority than lower taxes, less regulation, etc. I think this is in part a result of the shorter-term thinking endemic to corporate executives... which is understandable in light of their obligations to stockholders, but really just means that we need more far-sighted, proactive government.

I think a number of EU countries are passing us by. I've mentioned this book before, I really encourage some of you to check it out:

The European Deam: How Europes'Vision of the Future is Eclipsing the American Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin.

Because of our service sector economy with part time bank tellers and part time clerks at Wal Mart -- we are falling behind. We are becoming weaker and weaker and only our militarism is keeping us up at elite status in the world stage. We still lead in certain areas, certain engineering and innovations -- but less and less -- there is tremendous wealth here in the USA, but also all the distraction of the religious right again distacts us from real improvements to education. Fighting over Creationism as a valid theory is taking us away from the real skill building we need for the worldof the future.

Less regulation has lead to nothing but greed, corruption, pollution. It's an illustion that companies prosper and then it ripples out to the well being of the land at large. A small few benefit.

Werthless wrote: ree trade is one of the few policy questions that economists can agree on; it's pretty close to a consensus among folks who have "thought about it for more than 10 seconds."

doubtful that economists agree on free trade as a policy issue; while there's fair agreement among economists that free trade is good economics, there's almost certainly less agreement that they agree on "it" as good policy, if for no other reason that as policy, there's no unitary "it" to agree on.

In the year and a half the 110th Congress has been in session President Bush has vetoed eight bills. Aside from Bush’s first six years when he had a Republican Congress no President has vetoed fewer than eight bills in a Congressional session since Warren Harding 85 years ago. That was a Republican Congress. No President has vetoed less bills when the opposition held control of Congress since Andrew Jackson in 1833. Considering that in the first 40 years of this government the veto had only been used ten times and three Presidents never vetoed a bill it isn’t surprising Jackson didn’t use many vetoes. Grover Cleveland vetoed 414 bills in four years when his party was in the minority. It is unprecedented in the last 175 years to find a President and opposition Congress so in agreement.

Since we know Democrats agree with the President on nothing, as Barack Obama reminds us every day, the only reason I can see for this is the Democrats having no interest in actually changing Bush administration policy. If they did that they might fail to make things better. So they couldn’t run on the idea that the Republicans were ruining America. If they were actually successful Bush might get credit. Either way they might lose at the polls in 2008. When it came to a choice between doing what they said they’d do and getting bigger majorities in 2008, the Democrats chose the latter.

Laexile wrote:In the year and a half the 110th Congress has been in session President Bush has vetoed eight bills. Aside from Bush’s first six years when he had a Republican Congress no President has vetoed fewer than eight bills in a Congressional session since Warren Harding 85 years ago. That was a Republican Congress. No President has vetoed less bills when the opposition held control of Congress since Andrew Jackson in 1833. Considering that in the first 40 years of this government the veto had only been used ten times and three Presidents never vetoed a bill it isn’t surprising Jackson didn’t use many vetoes. Grover Cleveland vetoed 414 bills in four years when his party was in the minority. It is unprecedented in the last 175 years to find a President and opposition Congress so in agreement.

Since we know Democrats agree with the President on nothing, as Barack Obama reminds us every day, the only reason I can see for this is the Democrats having no interest in actually changing Bush administration policy. If they did that they might fail to make things better. So they couldn’t run on the idea that the Republicans were ruining America. If they were actually successful Bush might get credit. Either way they might lose at the polls in 2008. When it came to a choice between doing what they said they’d do and getting bigger majorities in 2008, the Democrats chose the latter.

I really don't like being in the position of seeming to defend Democrats. So I'm going to be clear, I'm only a Democrat in name. And I only want them in there because I think they are the lesser of evils. And nothing you have ever posted, no logic, no so-called facts has ever demonstrated to me how republicans make better policy, or lead the country in any direction I want to go.

So you can keep lawyering away all these nuances about how you are exposing the hypocrisy of Democratic voices, and debunking the OBama mythology. But I'll cede you almost any of it, and you still can't convince me or most real Democrats, that McCain/Palin is good for the country nor will they do more good than a Dem White House.

I don't have unrealistic expectations of Obama. Or how the game works in DC. Nor do I even think the president is th emost powerul person. I just think its the lesser of evils. Simple as that.

Bringing in an Alaskan who has been totally positioned with propoganda who is a radical right wing religious zealot is grounds enough for me to refute McCain and his presidential bid.

This has nothing to do with my socialist under-tones. It's simple. Palin scares the bejeezus out of me. And McCain is an old boy republican that at his best is still less likely to lead as I expect Obama. I prefer Obama's intellect and youth alone even if policies are similar.

You know, I'm sure all you cynics and "everybody is stupider than me" folks probably see it as marketing, but I think it's pretty nice that Obama and McCain went to the WTC memorial together today.