Truth-Telling From Real People on the Economy
By NoQuarter on February 17, 2008 at 10:35 AM in Barack Obama, Economy, Hillary Clinton
Last night, Barack Obama, in his speech to the Wisconsin Democratic party top dogs, reported that he’s told “auto workers that they must change their ways.” Dear god. I bet blue-collar workers loved that. (See C-Span’s American Perspectives video from last night.)
Here’s what one Honda plant auto worker in economically-suffering Lima, Ohio had to say about Hillary Clinton, via today’s Washington Post article, “Ohio Town’s Democrats See ‘Hope’ Differently“:
“Democrats are taking over Ohio,” [Bo Huenke] says to a chorus of protests. Or, “This war has been a disaster from Day One.” But, every now and then, Huenke makes the rare political assessment that most people here seem to agree on.
“Obama, doesn’t he sound a little naive?” asked Huenke, 52. “He stands up there, so optimistic, preaching about hope and change. It sounds great and everything, but come on. He doesn’t quite get it.”
Voters like Huenke present a difficult challenge to Sen. Barack Obama as he looks ahead to March 4, when primary battles with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Ohio and Texas threaten to halt his campaign’s momentum. In Lima and other fading manufacturing towns, he must confront difficult questions that go to the heart of his candidacy and its appeal to a broad section of Americans:
Can grandiose visions of hope and change resonate in places where change — in this case economic change — has brought housing foreclosures and economic ruin, where hope means avoiding another round of layoffs? Can a candidate whose support has been based on African Americans and upper-middle-class whites transcend class and race in places where racial tension still colors everything?
From Vindy.com’s newspaper (which covers Youngstown, Warrren and Columbiana, Ohio) “Clinton targets economy, opens Ohio campaign at Valley plant“:
… Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton kicked off the Ohio phase of her bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president Thursday with a visit to the auto plant. She addressed several hundred employees and political supporters as she outlined her plan to go after big oil and special interests in what she said is a drive to restore America’s middle class. [...]
Telling the crowd that one of her primary goals is to help rebuild a strong and prosperous American middle class, Clinton outlined a plan that she said would put $55 billion a year into the pockets of Americans by reining in special interests, going after excessive oil company profits, enacting a “fair credit for families agenda,” establishing a Student Borrowers’ Bill of Rights, creating a $50 billion strategic energy fund, restoring fairness to the tax code and putting an end to what she described as health insurance company discrimination.
She said she chose to unveil her plan and launch her Ohio bid at a plant like Lordstown that has weathered the storms and will continue to survive.
“Ohio is the heart of it all,” Clinton told the crowd. “Ohio represents the best of what we can do to build a strong and prosperous middle class.”
She said she envisions the building of a manufacturing belt that would surround Ohio.
Her plan would retool companies, provide universal health care, create 5,000 “green clean energy” jobs and, in general, help to revive the nation’s economy. It would also end corporate subsidies and loopholes for companies that decide to move jobs overseas.
Costs are going up while jobs and wages are going down, Clinton said, adding that she understands what families are doing to try to cope. …
Bo Huenke works hard: “He attaches a metal pipe, twists in four screws with hands that suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome and finishes just in time to stretch his back before the next engine arrives. His hands move from memory while his mind calculates the math: 28 seconds per engine, eight hours each shift, five days a week, 13 years until retirement. …”
Huenke says more in Ohio Town’s Democrats See ‘Hope’ Differently“:
[P]eople like Huenke, white and working class, who sense a disconnect between Obama’s inspirational rhetoric and life’s daily struggles. They prefer Clinton for her experience and economic policies, which they believe might stabilize Lima’s decline.
“A minority president or a woman president — both are hard sells in Lima,” Huenke said. “But Hillary’s easier, because you also get Bill. When you’re thinking politics around here, you’ve got to be practical.”
Here’s why Huenke — who suffers constant pain from two carpal tunnel-afflicted wrists and an excruciating shoulder injury — prefers Hillary:
A lifelong Democrat, Huenke went to a rally in Columbus last month and decided that Clinton’s economic and health-care ideas could help him endure another decade or so in Lima. He liked how the senator from New York outlined her plans with specifics. Obama, he thought, sometimes spoke about long-term goals and principles, which Huenke rarely had the leisure to consider.
In fairness, the WaPo story also covers a detailed story of an Obama supporter who’s working his heart out, and discusses some racial tensions in the area. But, you know, that’s “real” America, like it or not. I know where I live — where it’s very blue-collar (and where 700 people have just been laid off from the lumber mills because of the housing crisis, including a longtime friend who came over and cleaned my house yesterday, partly to help me and partly to pick up a few bucks so she can KEEP her house!) — that that will bother some people here. Already I’ve gotten lots of e-mails from people around here worried about the church that Obama attends, since that church considers itself more of an African than a U.S. religious entity; the e-mails included some falsehoods about Obama that I corrected in responses, but the part about his church is true (see Wikipedia on that). (Okay, okay — please consider that I am merely reporting what “ordinary” people are worried about. And those “ordinary” people vote because they consider it their patrioitic duty. I truly fear that they’ll find John McCain a more reassuring choice, especially on national security and what they’d consider more sensible approaches to foreign policy.) Trust me on this: The pipe-dream arguments of “latte liberals” won’t impress these people.
Huenke also adds that he doesn’t like the “messiah”-type approach of Obama’s campaign style:
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. He’s all right. If he gets the nomination, well, we’re going to have to vote for him and get behind him because we’re Democrats above anything else. But I just don’t like the preaching that he’s doing. He sounds like an old Bible-thumper to me. I like being talked to. I don’t like being yelled at.”
Then there are the words of many in Eastern Texas who came out to see Bill Clinton on Friday, via the Dallas Morning News:
He asked those in the crowds Friday to raise their hands if they knew someone without health insurance. At each stop, a large number of hands went up. In Tyler, one woman shouted out, “I AM someone without health insurance!”
Mrs. Clinton, the former president said, favors universal health coverage for Americans. Mr. Obama, while also advocating reform of the current system, has a more modest plan that would still leave millions of Americans without health insurance, Mr. Clinton said.
His occasional kind words for Mr. Obama on Friday were in contrast to his tenor in South Carolina.
[...]
But the East Texas crowds on Friday were glad to welcome him back.
Ranita Shows, an unemployed waitress, was the first in line to see Mr. Clinton’s speech at the Maude Cobb Convention and Activities Center in Longview. She arrived at 8:45 a.m. The former president was scheduled to speak at 12:15. He was an hour late.
“I didn’t want to take a chance and miss him,” Ms. Shows said, explaining her early arrival. “He was here in ‘96, and I couldn’t get in. And I think this election is even more important than that one.”
She said she’s firmly in Mrs. Clinton’s camp, because of the experience factor touted by Mr. Clinton.
“I think her ideas and her thoughts are the best, across the board,” she said. “And she has the experience to rally people.
“Mr. Obama is a good man. He has good ideas. I just don’t believe he has the experience to rally people on both sides of the aisle.”
Albert Freeman, a retired gas pipeline worker, said he’s supporting Mrs. Clinton because the sagging economy has him worried. Many East Texans agree with him, he said, including many who have voted Republican in recent presidential elections.
Mr. Freeman said his retirement nest egg is a portfolio of stocks and other investments assembled over a lifetime of work. Now, he said, he’s watched those investments tumble, as the country lurches toward an economic recession.
“I don’t know where the end is,” he said. “And I’m not sure the Republicans do,” either.
He said he wasn’t at all bothered by the notion of Mr. Clinton as first spouse, chief domestic adviser and “co-president” to the next chief executive.
“He knows what he’s doing,” he said. “We were a heck of a lot better off when he was president than we have been for the last seven years.
“With Hillary, you get a second partner. There’s not a thing wrong with that.”
These ordinary Americans need help. My friend Cheryl who cleaned for me yesterday — and needed a few dollars — needs help! She’s terrified she’s going to lose her home. And she’s deeply worried for her mill plant co-workers who also have homes and families to support, and wonders what in the hell they’ll do since there are so few job opportunities in this rural area that is nearly wholly dependent on construction and lumber jobs (both of which are plummeting, with 700 laid off to date, and more to come).
And Hillary Clinton KNOWS that. She knows because she’s worked hard for them for 35 years.
Hilary doesn’t talk about change. Hillary is a change-maker.
As the Vindy.com article concludes:
“My opponent makes speeches. I offer solutions,” she said.
Change will happen whether people want it or not. The question is, who will deliver progress, she said.
I’m very worried for the people in my community and county. With the mills closing down — they are SHUTTING DOWN — because the housing market is plummeting, and nobody is buying the various lumber products they create — people are going to be in terrible shape.
Cheryl also told me that the local paper lists 4-5 foreclosures in this small area every DAY. People are losing their homes. They can’t make it.
The newspaper also reports that restaurants are suffering because people haven’t the money to go out to eat anymore.
And on and on … this trickle-down effect from the housing crisis has enormous consequences for people in all lines of work!
And it all stems from the huge influx of money to fund Bush’s ownership/consumer economy, with no real job creation, in the meantime.
I sometimes wonder too, if incentive should be given to reestablish the manufacturing base in America, both from an economic and strategic POV.
Hopefully, without mindless loyalties to the corporate hierarchy, some good decisions can be made for both business and Americans, stemming the tide of this bloodletting.
Business got so greedy, it ate itself to death. My father used to tell me about a singer, an opera singer, I think, named Mario Lanzo, how he ate himself to death, something about pork chops. As a child, it left me terrified of pork, pork chops, and now I associate gluttony, current corporate mentality, with the pork chop, Exxon as a cut of meat on the pig, just not knowing when to stop.
My point being corporations have to take responsibility, too, they aren’t allowed a free ride, at the expense of their workers, and fellow citizens, they don’t have a right to take everyone down with them, just because they can’t control their appetites, or be respectful.
Speaking of spending, though, the 30th anniversary reissue of Nick Lowe’s “Jesus of Cool” will be released Tuesday, through Yep-Roc records.
A must in any record collection, in case anyone is interested.
Same here in suburban PA. Restaurants that used to need a months notice to get a table are now walk in and sit down. The only use for parking lots now is as open air storage for unsold japanese autos.
Christmas sales were so bad, the retailers were having after christmas sales starting the 22nd of december and the stores were even then no more crowded than on a normal fall weekend.
It’s coming on very ugly and it’s coming on much faster than the deadtree media or the publicairwaves media will talk about.
I wrote a little post the other day about what my local baker is facing. Wheat that was $9 a bag a year ago is $25 a bag this morning.
Where I live, I’ve been noticing even apartments remaining vacant, longer, and the local business parks are empty, downtown skyscraper space remains unoccupied.
Store sales for Valentine’s Day were way down, a lot of merchandise left over, just as for Christmas.
Can a candidate whose support has been based on African Americans and upper-middle-class whites transcend class and race in places where racial tension still colors everything?
There you go with the division tactic again. It doesn’t work.
Just a reminded of what happened in Virginia and Maryland
Exit polling in Virginia and Maryland showed that Obama not only won among groups who had favored him in past elections, but also among those who had been pillars of Clinton’s support in earlier states. Obama won the support of women by double digits in Maryland and Virginia. Among Latino voters, Obama held a double-digit margin over Clinton in Virginia and carried the group slightly more narrowly in the Free State.
All Obama needs to do is keep talking about Hillary supporting NAFTA.
Hillary Clinton has made statements unequivocally trumpeting NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Buffalo News reports that back in 1998, Clinton attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and thanked praised corporations for mounting “a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA.”
Leave it to you to concentrate on that. I’m reporting how things are. people have made tremendous strides in healing racial tensions in this country, but there will always be SOME tension.
You just made a big mistake bringing up NAFTA and Obama’s outright LIES about Clinton on NAFTA. I’m going to write a post about it to set you straight … be back in a half hour or so.
And we all agree NAFTA has not been good for the economy, so what will we do about it?
How can we fix this problem?
What does Clinton say?
Who owns Obama?
And now for something from ORANGE SATAN
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/17/75328/4265/239/458446
Jerome a Paris on the economic situation as seen from Europe. The link is direct to the story no need to fiddle with ORANGE SATAN’s front page.
Debt is not wealth.
Without savings there is no equity investment.
Increasing the amount of debt available throught the fed, increases the amount of money in circulation.
The increased money causes the prices of goods to increase. Since the increased money is debt not profits or savings there has been no new production and no new demand for labour associated with the money creation.
Inflation up
Savings negative
House values down 30-40%
No way to borrow more on a house’s equity since the equite is now negative.
No way left to pay old debt by borrowing on imagined equity.
Citibank just halted redemptions on another of its failed derivative thingies. ( Citibank is damn close to a run on itself. It already put restrictions on the amount customers could withdraw from ATMS ).
FDIC has never in its history faced a large bank failure, they have no policies to deal with a Citi going under.
The commercial real estate market is in the doldrums.
There is an 18 month supply of commercial lots available in Atlanta alone.
Job creation for the last 8 years has been in the hospitality industry and the home health care industry. More people are entering retirement each month than are entering the work force. Each new worker is finding that more and more non producers rely on his payroll contribution.
This is the BUSH depression starting, it will be in full bore runaway mode by August.
When did this happen?
. It already put restrictions on the amount customers could withdraw from ATMS.
January. The claim was that there had been several instances of ATM fraud over the christmas holiday.
Consumer? or internal?
it will be in full bore runaway mode by August.
Where do you think the next “dry line” is?
(tornadic activity ala “Twister”)
The article referenced below suggests that Citi was claiming that there were incidences of external fraud at ATM machines.
The next dryline will be this coming week.
Spitzer has given the monolines a very short timeline to obtain really big refinancing. No one is stepping up to refinance them.
Warren Buffet offered to buy the municipal bond insurance parts of the monolines ( the only profitable parts ) and fold them into Berkshire-Hathaway and his insurance giant. The monolines refused. A downgrade of or failure of one of those monolines triggers a whole lot of pain. Retirement funds and other investments that are restricted to only owning AAA grade debt investments will see many of their currently AAA rated investments suffer a decline in their ratings. A bond’s rating is only as good as the insurer of the bond’s payments is. If the insurer is downgraded, the insured debt instruments are also.
Several of the nation’s largest banks have little if any capital reserves. One nervous city, one nasty rumour, and a run can start.
With the internet rumours spread much faster. With internet banking, so can runs.
And to make this shit sandwich with really sour cream, historically banks had to keep on hand about 15% of their deposits to answer consumer demands for cash. The amount on hand at most banks now averages ( maybe on a good day ) 3%. The bankers bought into this cashless society bullcrap and the Fed allowed the banks to reduce ( loan out ) the reserves.
http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/01/03/2008-01-03_citibank_limits_atm_cash_in_city-2.html
Found a link to the Daily news article about the limitations on CitiBank ATM withdrawals. Don’t know if Citi has put the limits back or has kept them tight.
In researching the Obama/Middle East arms/drugs/crime et al syndicates, it appeared a lot illegal monies needed to be laundered, even in terms of governments, and politicians actively profiting from these criminal activities.
Given that, is this second economy affecting the primary American economy, in ways we aren’t accounting for, hence, in ways we’re not addressing, in terms of solutions?
I know it’s kinda out there, but I remember reading in Rolling Stone, a long time ago, about the drug economies in central America, essentially parallel untaxed,unregulated economies, with the money generated from narcotics. Multiple that by arms and goods dealing, (I’ve read the FBI site on money laundering activities, it was very interesting, and informative), the crooks MUST have been looking for bigger and better ways to put that money into the mainstream. It IS plausible it would find it’s way to the stock market, eventually, right?
Hearing all of this makes me wonder why anyone would want to follow Bush. To be frank, this is why Obama really scares me. I can’t shake the feeling that he, with his limited background, would be able to handle a crisis, make that plural. I think the people backing him are not looking at the real world. We don’t need an on-the-job trainee. Has everyone forgotten about George Bush’s response in New Orleans? His FEMA Agency was incompetant. And Bush had at least been a governor. To me, both candidates need to start speaking in specifics in case the bottom were to fall out of the economy suddenly and at the same time a National Security crisis. The next person has to hit the ground running. I think Hillary is the candidate who can do that. Are people crazy? She’s already been through the drill. Do we really have the luxury of a total neophyte who might need 90 days or better to figure stuff out.
People, think about this!!!!!!
Mimi
If we use your standard, the only people in the country with the necessary training to take over the reins of power from George Bush are his wife Pickles and his Veep Darth.
She has had 8 years OJT and her OJT is much more current than anyone elses. She has been there through national security crisis that dwarf any previous first lady’s exposure.
There are plenty of old dem hacks working for both candidates who know how to handle the levers of power and who to call to get something done in every crooked department.
And how do they differ from the republican hacks?
Really, what do you think the main difference is?
Ck -
Nothing against politically disinterested former librarians, but to compare her experience to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s is silly.
Senator Clinton went to Yale, was a practicing attorney for numerous political entities, has a brilliant husband who while President avoided unnecessary wars, has a talented smart daughter who stays out of trouble, was way ahead of the curve on Health Care and is a U.S. Senator.
Sure Laura Bush killed a kid in high school, but I’d rather Senator Clinton didn’t have that experience.
Yes I was a bit over the top with that. Pickles lacks Jackie Kennedy’s sense of style and Hillary’s Ivy league degree ( but she does have an Ivy league husband). Now Darth on the other hand does have all that requisite experience and is not a disinterested spectator.
I personally thought the american intervention in the serbian civil war, the somali adventure that led to black hawk down ( a little landmine the Bush 1 administration left to detonate under Bill ) and the invasions and incursions into Haiti were not all that mandatory. But then I am not big on empires no matter which wing of the unitary party the emperor comes from.
Oh and the Kosovars are celebrating their independence today. Another islamic state in the Balkans thanks to Bob Dole and some president.
Amazing, where there was once a unitary nation now there are now seven mininations (Kosovo, Macedonia, MonteNegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia). Secession is a good thing for some folks I guess. Hello Vermont?
Bill Clinton is the son of a working class mother and the product of a working class culture, and that shapes his reality and his politics. Hillary has the same understanding of working class culture and a willingness to act in the interests of the working class. Both have navigated the world of education, politics, and manners-making some economic/political missteps, but overall have never moved away from a recognition of the working class and their needs-not only here but abroad. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking their money and their position have changed their cultural reality.
The Bushes, Kennedys, et al, live within their own cultural reality in a visceral fashion they will never let go of no matter how much they dissemble to admirers. They can call their adherents “turd-blossom” and let the Marilyn Monroes partake of just enough of their world to think they might have a public part to play in it, and let Obama be the the new Robert Kennedy in front of crowds, but it will never happen.
As a nation we need to get a grip on how these two realities affect us, how profoundly they are embedded in our society.
I belong to the demographic that supposedly supports Obama and yet I find myself thinking of how hard my parents worked all their lives to send their kids to college, to own their own home, to have a few years of retirement before their bodies just wore out. If the working class are still like my folks - smart and self taught - then they are looking for some real answers…the sense that the candidate has actually thought things through that will help them. I would be suprised if they would dump HRC for Obama considering the clear difference in approach not to mention exerience. Obama is trying to change his tune to being more compassionate, but he still comes across above it all as opposed to in the trenches and that is why I think he will lose Ohio.
Susan, you are wasting a lot of time and energy trying to point out Obama’s flaws. Criticizing Obama does not increase support for Hillary.
Hillary has to convince voters to support her. She cannot assume that she is entitled to every vote because she is Hillary Clinton. She can’t win many votes by questioning Obama’s experience or lack of achievement. She has to stay with her ideas and programs. She also has to say something about the role her husband will have if she is elected. No one believes he will become her John Thatcher.
Serge07 -your post is disturbing. Are you saying Susan should not bother to point out a potential president’s weaknesses BEFORE election? You didnt work in the media during the 2000 election, did you? Cause they said the same thing - hey, maybe it doesnt matter that he has failed at everything he has ever done cause gee, I like him and would like to drink beer with him!
That’s right, Judith!
[...] Truth-Telling From Real People on the Economy (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter) [Saturday] night, Barack Obama, in his speech to the Wisconsin Democratic party top dogs, reported that he’s told “auto workers that they must change their ways.” Dear god. I bet blue-collar workers loved that. So, he really DOES like the Ronald Reagan approach. Slap ‘em upside the head. Click through for a link to the video. [...]
SusaUnPC writes: Last night, Barack Obama, in his speech to the Wisconsin Democratic party top dogs, reported that he’s told “auto workers that they must change their ways.” Dear god. I bet blue-collar workers loved that.
From WaPo’s transcript of the speech:
Automakers, Miss Litella. Not Auto Workers, Automakers .
Ooops. How embarrasing.
Apologies Susan; late to the thread as usual and got the wrong date and wrong speech to boot. As Miss Litella would say, “oh. never mind.”
I hope it’s clear in any case that Obama’s target is in fact the automakers, despite his tongue-tangle in the speech you saw.
Again, sorry!