WHY I BLOG, (Frazer Chronicles)
An honest question that I suppose many of you loyal readers ask, and like those slick guys that give testimony in front of Congress, I'll answer the question the same as they do, "I'm glad you asked that question." Actually they aren't, but I am."
Without some sort of interested readership, my blog would be nothing more then a study in futility, you see, I do write my blog so that people might think a little bit outside their world. I hope that just a few readers are stroked to think just a bit more. If that happens, my mission has been accomplished.
When I list a news organization after my intro headline, I am not plagiarizing a news article, I am using the paper's article as a "jumping off point," I am read several differing views of the article, put all the different views together in one story line and add my own opinions. That mostly is how reporting is done today, multiple views condensed into one story. I know that is how history is written.
I take news items from all sorts of news organizations, liberal, conservative, foreign and completely crazy, and also the less news worthy. I try to tickle my readers thinking process, because when you can't see the value of other points of view, even if you don't agree, your mind is locked down, and "a mind is a terrible thing to waste."
A STRANGE TALE OF DOWNSIZING, (Huffington Post)
I watched a decent movie the other night, The Company Men with a star studded cast, Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Craig T Nelson and Maria Bello. The "meat" of the story line was that Affleck, Cooper and Jones each were fired from their executive jobs from a ship building company owned by, who else, Craig T Nelson, who can play the hell out of a character that everybody loves to heat. I have listed Maria Bello character simply for chauvinistic reasons, "she has a great body," and I'm in love with her.
Anyways, as these men lose their jobs, their lives begin to spiral out of control, except Tommy Lee Jones, who is older, and has made much better money decision then either Affleck or Cooper, Cooper in fact commits suicide near the end of the movie.
The movie focuses on the younger Affleck and his struggles to somehow regain his prestige as a top salesmen, and get back to his salary of $160,000 a year. He loses his house, his sports car, his golf course club membership and has to move in with his parents.
In the end, to me, the movie isn't so much about the tragedy of loss, rather the triumph of the human spirit, the ingenuity of man and the lengths he will go to reinvent himself. By movie's end, Jones has begin a new company, hiring many of the downsized employees that lost their jobs through Craig T Nelson's downsizing procedures.
I have one more down sizing story that is not ever going to be made into a motion picture. It's a story about a person working in a Midwest setting, for a city in Wisconsin. For the past 10 years, this person has received graduated raises amounting to about 3% every other year through contract negotiations. During these same 10 years, health insurance has gone up, every 2 years about 4%, leaving a negative 1% in her paycheck, not much until you consider the cost of living, which goes up by at least 3% every 2 years, the contracts covering 10 years represents a total loss of 5%.
Couple the 5% loss in a paycheck with the downsizing in her department, where retired workers are not replaced, or employees shifting to other departments means that those that are left have to assume new responsibilities without any form of monetary compensation, and finally when the department director quites and the office manager retires, neither are replaced and more of the work load is dumped on the remaining people.
The directors pay was in excess of $70,000 while the office manager was paid more then $58,000, one can see that by not replacing either, the city would save more then $120,000 in pay alone, even before benefits were factored in.
In the private sector, things are even worse, executive pay over the past 10 years has soared, while the everyday stiff who punches a time-clock see a paycheck that remains, at best stagnate. It's a glorious day to be an American worker, if your an executive, the great recession is a distant memory, your pay is skyrocketing and leaders in Washington are putting labor concerns at the front and center of their agendas.....if you are a worker who happens to be at the top of the corporate organizational ladder.
Executive pay in American, since 2009 is up a whopping 40%, as some of these dudes are pulling down 6, 8, 10, and even $20,000,000 a year. How in hell can a person get paid millions of dollars a year and still threaten to "move on" to another company if they don't get a raise. Talk about a different tax bracket, and off shore accounts, where do these guys stuff their money, and more, how the hell do they spend it?
One of these top executive, Jeffrey Immelt, Chief of General Electrics, who pulled down a whopping $15,000,000 last year, has now been tapped by President Obama to help generate American jobs. How the hell can somebody that makes $15 million dollars a year understand what it's like to not have enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes, or a six pack of Budweiser, or worse, how to make his mortgage payment? The short answer, "he can't," and the long answer, "he has no clue."
You might ask how Immelt's
How do most Americans feel about this state of affairs, "pretty dammed unappreciated." Wages in 2011 sit roughly at the same place they did at the beginning of 1980, after adjusting for inflation. Several caveats go into absorbing this data, among them, that millions of women and millions of immigrant workers have entered the workforce, tending to pull down wages. No matter how a person views this information, one glaring truth emerges, "the breakdown of the American middle class opportunity."
Lots of people have tended to their business, gotten up every morning, gone off to work, brought as much money as they could home, and still found themselves sliding backwards. The sad part for these people is that they have been doing the same thing for the past 30 years. They now find themselves in their 50's with few options if they lose their jobs.
This silly notion of re-education for 50 something year old people is some bureaucratic "chuckle heads" pipe dream. Sure some people are willing to take advantage of the service, yet the vast majority simply drift off into some sort of work after-life, working at whatever can bring them and their families some sort of life.
I could continue with this malady of pay disparity, company down-sizing and the bleak outlook of our economy and the future of our country, but I won't bore you and waste your time. When banks loaned money to pathetically poor risks, when executives were rewarded for these risky loans, then had to be bailed out because they ran out of money, when mortgage brokers wrote loans to anybody capable of holding a pen, and were paid obscene commissions, and when banks started betting that the very loans that they were writing would fail, only one thing could happen, and here we are, broke.
We now come down to it, our fearless leaders, the Obama administration and his seeming out of touch attitude with the voters of the country. I for one don't care how cool our leader looks or is, how unattached he appears is what gets me. Get involved, quite pontificating, and get some things done before its to late.
IS THAT BONER OR BOEHNER? (New York Times)
I remember graphically when George W. Bush declared war on almost any Muslim who moved in the Middle-East, I was worried then and I'm worried now. As our country continues to move ever closer to the abyss of financial ruin, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have a new hero in President Obama.
President Obama has continued wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but has now joined with almost every other president since the turn of the twentieth century, in creating his own war, Libya. The White House continues to defend America's role in the Libya military campaign.
In a 38 page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission is "prying loose Qaddafi's grip on power." I have but one thing to say about that statement, "who cares." I personally could give a crap about the Libyans plight, I am way past caring about some dry desert country with Texas tea under ground. I personally can get alone without it.
I agree with John Boehner and his demand that President Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline of 60 to 90 days after notifying Congress that troops had been deployed into hostilities, unless Congress authorizes the operation to continue.
In this case, John Boehner is being.....well, Boehner, and President Obama is being a "boner." It has cost the Pentagon more then $716 million dollars so far and by September the estimated cost will be over a billion dollars. The War Powers Resolution is a safeguard for Presidents not to make war on their own, without a voice from Congress.
Do you know how sick and tired I am with regards to America continuing to be the worlds most war making people on the face of the planet, well let me count the ways:
A. War kills people, our people.
B. War costs money, tax payer money.
C. I become ill thinking about the profiteering that is being done by American industry.
D. I am sick and tired calling our countries war department, "the Pentagon."
E. I am sick and tired of the President and his advisers setting this countries foreign policies.
F. I am sick and tired of the lies that are coming from our elected officials with regards to war.
G. I am sick and tired of people going to bed at night hungry, right here in the United States, when we are giving food away to foreigners.
H. I am sick and tired of our government giving foreigners free health care, when right here in America, we have a health care crisis.
I could go on, but you'd stop reading. In this case, I hope John Boehner gets the answers that we all need with the continuing war making policies that keep coming out of the White House. Do you realize that it's been more then 10 years of war making, and were no further ahead, then when we started. W. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would be proud.
An honest question that I suppose many of you loyal readers ask, and like those slick guys that give testimony in front of Congress, I'll answer the question the same as they do, "I'm glad you asked that question." Actually they aren't, but I am."
Without some sort of interested readership, my blog would be nothing more then a study in futility, you see, I do write my blog so that people might think a little bit outside their world. I hope that just a few readers are stroked to think just a bit more. If that happens, my mission has been accomplished.
When I list a news organization after my intro headline, I am not plagiarizing a news article, I am using the paper's article as a "jumping off point," I am read several differing views of the article, put all the different views together in one story line and add my own opinions. That mostly is how reporting is done today, multiple views condensed into one story. I know that is how history is written.
I take news items from all sorts of news organizations, liberal, conservative, foreign and completely crazy, and also the less news worthy. I try to tickle my readers thinking process, because when you can't see the value of other points of view, even if you don't agree, your mind is locked down, and "a mind is a terrible thing to waste."
A STRANGE TALE OF DOWNSIZING, (Huffington Post)
I watched a decent movie the other night, The Company Men with a star studded cast, Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Craig T Nelson and Maria Bello. The "meat" of the story line was that Affleck, Cooper and Jones each were fired from their executive jobs from a ship building company owned by, who else, Craig T Nelson, who can play the hell out of a character that everybody loves to heat. I have listed Maria Bello character simply for chauvinistic reasons, "she has a great body," and I'm in love with her.
Anyways, as these men lose their jobs, their lives begin to spiral out of control, except Tommy Lee Jones, who is older, and has made much better money decision then either Affleck or Cooper, Cooper in fact commits suicide near the end of the movie.
The movie focuses on the younger Affleck and his struggles to somehow regain his prestige as a top salesmen, and get back to his salary of $160,000 a year. He loses his house, his sports car, his golf course club membership and has to move in with his parents.
In the end, to me, the movie isn't so much about the tragedy of loss, rather the triumph of the human spirit, the ingenuity of man and the lengths he will go to reinvent himself. By movie's end, Jones has begin a new company, hiring many of the downsized employees that lost their jobs through Craig T Nelson's downsizing procedures.
I have one more down sizing story that is not ever going to be made into a motion picture. It's a story about a person working in a Midwest setting, for a city in Wisconsin. For the past 10 years, this person has received graduated raises amounting to about 3% every other year through contract negotiations. During these same 10 years, health insurance has gone up, every 2 years about 4%, leaving a negative 1% in her paycheck, not much until you consider the cost of living, which goes up by at least 3% every 2 years, the contracts covering 10 years represents a total loss of 5%.
Couple the 5% loss in a paycheck with the downsizing in her department, where retired workers are not replaced, or employees shifting to other departments means that those that are left have to assume new responsibilities without any form of monetary compensation, and finally when the department director quites and the office manager retires, neither are replaced and more of the work load is dumped on the remaining people.
The directors pay was in excess of $70,000 while the office manager was paid more then $58,000, one can see that by not replacing either, the city would save more then $120,000 in pay alone, even before benefits were factored in.
In the private sector, things are even worse, executive pay over the past 10 years has soared, while the everyday stiff who punches a time-clock see a paycheck that remains, at best stagnate. It's a glorious day to be an American worker, if your an executive, the great recession is a distant memory, your pay is skyrocketing and leaders in Washington are putting labor concerns at the front and center of their agendas.....if you are a worker who happens to be at the top of the corporate organizational ladder.
Executive pay in American, since 2009 is up a whopping 40%, as some of these dudes are pulling down 6, 8, 10, and even $20,000,000 a year. How in hell can a person get paid millions of dollars a year and still threaten to "move on" to another company if they don't get a raise. Talk about a different tax bracket, and off shore accounts, where do these guys stuff their money, and more, how the hell do they spend it?
One of these top executive, Jeffrey Immelt, Chief of General Electrics, who pulled down a whopping $15,000,000 last year, has now been tapped by President Obama to help generate American jobs. How the hell can somebody that makes $15 million dollars a year understand what it's like to not have enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes, or a six pack of Budweiser, or worse, how to make his mortgage payment? The short answer, "he can't," and the long answer, "he has no clue."
You might ask how Immelt's
How do most Americans feel about this state of affairs, "pretty dammed unappreciated." Wages in 2011 sit roughly at the same place they did at the beginning of 1980, after adjusting for inflation. Several caveats go into absorbing this data, among them, that millions of women and millions of immigrant workers have entered the workforce, tending to pull down wages. No matter how a person views this information, one glaring truth emerges, "the breakdown of the American middle class opportunity."
Lots of people have tended to their business, gotten up every morning, gone off to work, brought as much money as they could home, and still found themselves sliding backwards. The sad part for these people is that they have been doing the same thing for the past 30 years. They now find themselves in their 50's with few options if they lose their jobs.
This silly notion of re-education for 50 something year old people is some bureaucratic "chuckle heads" pipe dream. Sure some people are willing to take advantage of the service, yet the vast majority simply drift off into some sort of work after-life, working at whatever can bring them and their families some sort of life.
I could continue with this malady of pay disparity, company down-sizing and the bleak outlook of our economy and the future of our country, but I won't bore you and waste your time. When banks loaned money to pathetically poor risks, when executives were rewarded for these risky loans, then had to be bailed out because they ran out of money, when mortgage brokers wrote loans to anybody capable of holding a pen, and were paid obscene commissions, and when banks started betting that the very loans that they were writing would fail, only one thing could happen, and here we are, broke.
We now come down to it, our fearless leaders, the Obama administration and his seeming out of touch attitude with the voters of the country. I for one don't care how cool our leader looks or is, how unattached he appears is what gets me. Get involved, quite pontificating, and get some things done before its to late.
IS THAT BONER OR BOEHNER? (New York Times)
I remember graphically when George W. Bush declared war on almost any Muslim who moved in the Middle-East, I was worried then and I'm worried now. As our country continues to move ever closer to the abyss of financial ruin, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have a new hero in President Obama.
President Obama has continued wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but has now joined with almost every other president since the turn of the twentieth century, in creating his own war, Libya. The White House continues to defend America's role in the Libya military campaign.
In a 38 page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission is "prying loose Qaddafi's grip on power." I have but one thing to say about that statement, "who cares." I personally could give a crap about the Libyans plight, I am way past caring about some dry desert country with Texas tea under ground. I personally can get alone without it.
I agree with John Boehner and his demand that President Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline of 60 to 90 days after notifying Congress that troops had been deployed into hostilities, unless Congress authorizes the operation to continue.
In this case, John Boehner is being.....well, Boehner, and President Obama is being a "boner." It has cost the Pentagon more then $716 million dollars so far and by September the estimated cost will be over a billion dollars. The War Powers Resolution is a safeguard for Presidents not to make war on their own, without a voice from Congress.
Do you know how sick and tired I am with regards to America continuing to be the worlds most war making people on the face of the planet, well let me count the ways:
A. War kills people, our people.
B. War costs money, tax payer money.
C. I become ill thinking about the profiteering that is being done by American industry.
D. I am sick and tired calling our countries war department, "the Pentagon."
E. I am sick and tired of the President and his advisers setting this countries foreign policies.
F. I am sick and tired of the lies that are coming from our elected officials with regards to war.
G. I am sick and tired of people going to bed at night hungry, right here in the United States, when we are giving food away to foreigners.
H. I am sick and tired of our government giving foreigners free health care, when right here in America, we have a health care crisis.
I could go on, but you'd stop reading. In this case, I hope John Boehner gets the answers that we all need with the continuing war making policies that keep coming out of the White House. Do you realize that it's been more then 10 years of war making, and were no further ahead, then when we started. W. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would be proud.
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