David A. Schwinghammer, click here
to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
State of the Union Stem-winder 1/29/2014 9:01:26 AM
Obama had the troops fired up.
State of the Union Speech
I was rather surprised by the tepid response from CBS commentators after President Obama’s speech. I thought it was a real “stem-winder,” in the good sense
The women in the crowd, I suppose mainly democrats, were practically doing cartwheels when the president pressed for equal pay and opportunity for women. Women are still only making seventy-seven cents, compared to a man’s dollar for doing the same job. He then went on to talk about time off to have a baby or care for a sick child and even mentioned men in the same breath.
I also thought his comment about Costco paying everyone a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour (the same as his plan for federally contracted workers) was a winner. Costco is betting that its workers will spend the money at home. Henry Ford did the same thing when he increased the daily wage for his assembly line workers to five dollars a day. They could now afford to buy one of his Model T’s, putting more money in his own coffer. They wouldn’t dare buy a car anyplace else.
CBS commentators weren’t too thrilled with his promise to go-it-alone if Congress wouldn’t support his programs, but he did only briefly mention immigration as there seems to be some movement there in The House. They will not offer citizenship, but big business has been pressing for some sort of action, if only legalization. If that passes, citizenship is only a hop-skip-and-a jump away, as early concessions to gay marriage were. Over half of the “pickers” are illegal immigrants. Try to get in the crop without them.
I was hoping for a grand finale to the speech. Instead, Obama concentrated on a wounded veteran in the audience. A man who had almost been killed after ten tours in the Middle East. Certainly this man deserved recognition, but it didn’t fire up the troops, you should excuse the pun. Soldiers don’t vote democratic, perhaps because war time service results in promotion, especially for the higher ups.
He also didn’t mention the Farm Bill which looks like it will finally pass, another instance of cooperation between the parties, something that’s been sadly missing in the past five years.
He did do a better job talking up the Affordable Health Care plan, something he hasn’t done well enough in the past. A woman who would have died of a heart attack if she hadn’t been granted coverage January first was in the audience, the point being that she couldn’t get insurance previously because she had a heart problem. And he mentioned the number of children 26 years and younger who can keep their parents’ coverage under the plan, something that naysayers don’t mention at all. They also don’t tell us that the Affordable Health Care Act was originally a Heritage Foundation idea that Mitch Romney established in Massachusetts. For the uninformed the Heritage Foundation is a conservative “think” tank, although they don’t do much thinking these days with Jim Demint as their leader.
The CBS commentators also seemed to believe that the Republicans have a better change of winning the Senate than the democrats do of overtaking the GOP in The House. Not if the democrats win the two upcoming elections in Florida, which will get the ball rolling, not if Obamacare meets its expectations of seven million new enrollees by March 15th, not if the economy improves significantly, which it could according to Rana Foroohar, a TIME magazine commentator, who says “The U.S. has exited from financial crisis; Asia and Europe have not. China, the second largest economy is the world, is pretty much where the U.S. was five years ago--deeply in debt (I’m sure many of you saw the “60 Minutes” segment with all the empty apartment buildings).” Back then it took a dollar of debt to create a dollar of growth; now it takes the Chinese four dollars of debt for every dollar of growth.
I’m learning I need some attribution if I don’t want my info jammed down my throat by some demented tea-boner, especially on Facebook. The above information comes from Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets. Morgan Stanley has no reason to love the Obama administration They were one of the big banks fined by the Justice Department for defrauding customers. The CBS commentators are betting the American public has amnesia and will forget that the Tea Party in The House was ready to default on our countries loans, all in favor of ideology over sensible pragmatism. I believe there are at least fifty of them in the House and 85 two-termers (not necessarly Tea Party members) elected during the cataclysm of 2010. The democrats actually had three million more votes than the GOP in 2012, but due to gerrymandering, they only won a few more seats. If the Obama health care website straightens itself out and more young people are convinced that it’s not a good idea to break your ankle with no insurance (See the $35,000 bill for a broken ankle) independents will remember the government shutdown or be reminded of it by determined democratic candidates.
