Issues that burn under the skin

[TayTay]

Read this article in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/business/09retire.html?hp&ex=1108011600&en=626a785ff37ba9aa&ei=5094&partner=homepage

This is the kind of thing that Dems need to focus on. This has real resonance with people. Older Americans are going to have to start cutting back on expenses to pay medical bills. American corporations have broken their promises to generations of workers and are not following through on their end of the social contract. This kind of thing really gets under the skin of people and it represents a real opening for Dems. (Or do you want you parents knocking on the door someday, suitcases in hand, saying we lost the condo, can we move in?)

[sandnsea]

1. This is the issue

Not just retirement, but the abandonment of the American worker altogether. I've been thinking about how to fight Bush and right wing "pro-growth" mentality of cut taxes and regulations and the individual will be able to get a job. What's good for business is good for the worker stuff. It's never been true that just because business does well the worker does well.

I was trying to think of a name for all the abandoned workers. We have the rust belt, if we could have a whole big "belt" name that encapsulated this idea.

Also, business works best when there's an infrastructure in place to support it. Transportation, communication, security, educated work force, healthy work force... what else? Couldn't we combat this cut taxes and regulation stuff by saying they're cutting the very infrastructures that allows business to flourish? We need a name for that too, besides "investing" because that doesn't really make sense to small town people I don't think.

[Firespirit]

2. I've seen the following idea somewhere before

It's not mine, but I like it.

The basic idea is redefining the issue as supporting common-sense regulations because they actually encourage competition and level the playing field. That's turning the GOP's talking point (that regulations are stifling and harmful to business) on its head.

Environmental regulations, for instance: Assume there are no restrictions or very lax ones. You have two businesses in competition with each other, one of which wants to be "green" and the other of which doesn't care. The polluter cuts costs by doing so and sells the product at a lower price, driving the "green" competitor out of the market, and becoming a monopoly. That's bad. And the reason why it occurred makes it even worse.

The principle can apply to anything... minimum wage, labor laws, workers' rights, etc. The idea being that responsible business owners are HARMED when there are no laws about what liberties that businesses can take.

Just tossing this idea out. Like I said... it isn't mine, so feel free to tear it to pieces with impunity if you don't think it would work. :)

[sandnsea]

3. Unfair trade practices

I saw that conversation in part about that Oklahoma Labor Bill. It was about illegal immigrant labor and went after business. That was part of their argument. When one business uses illegal immigrants, it's an unfair trade practice to businesses who want to follow the law.

But that only works if you've got people willing to put laws on the books. The right wing response is always that the consumer will stop buying from people who operate in an unethical way and that the market will drive them out of business. That is crap, especially when they just change their corporate name and you never know who you're doing business with anyway.