judas forking priest

Wow.
Thanks, egr. This.Is.Ugly.
Rec’d.

In so many of the reports on the economic downturn, there is a failure to adequately depict the human hardship, the human suffering that lies behind the phrase “economic downturn.” Thanks for lifting up our basic humanity in all of this….

McCain has some ’splainin to do.

Economic downturn = despair, depression, families falling apart, alcoholism, domestic violence, personal devastation.

Thanks Republicans.

I dugg your Digg EG.
I am sure we all knew in our hearts of hearts that if John McCain was involved in the deal(Gov level) we knew that all those jobs were on the chopping block! Just like the new air tanker the Air Force wants… John made sure it went to a consortium of companies that make the Airbus… Another stake in the heart of a core industry in this country!!

Thank you kindly, Nahant.

They’ve got a lot of nerve talking about family values when their policies are responsible for the devastation of so many families.

This is what happens when “Corporations Rule The World” Many of these folks going out to get minimum wage service jobs

My favorite book on what has been going on economically
http://www.pcdf.org/corprule/corporat.htm

some of the best programs that I have heard recently on the economy

Economist/Journalist Robert Kuttner was on C-Span’s Washington Journal and on Amy Goodman’s last week discussing his book “Obama’s Challenge”

On the Journal he said that some of the money that Wall Street has been given has been used as “bonuses for executives and dividends to share holders”
Robert Kuttner said this on this program. What a brilliant and reasonable person Kuttner seems to be
http://www.c-span.org/Series/W…..urnal.aspx

Robert Kuttner last Jan and more recently discussing the economy
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/23/recession

Can Grassroots Movement that Propelled Obama to Victory Chart a Better Economy?

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name his Treasury Secretary soon and is moving quickly to form his response to the economic crisis. We speak to Robert Kuttner, author of Obama’s Challenge, and Arun Gupta of The Indypendent. [includes rush transcript]

http://www.democracynow.org/20…..lled_obama

McCain ships jobs overseas. He just can’t use DHL to do that anymore.

You are way to negative. There is good news on the economy. Finally! Forexample, the Treasury Department has just agreed to extend another $40 billion to AIG. That brings the bailout aid to that company to a mere $162 billion and there appears to be no end in sight. Way to go, guys. Oh yeah, and Circuit City declared bankruptcy. So good to see that those fears of recession were overblown. And although this is not permalinked if you go now you can see the forceful leader of Paulson’s bailout.

http://www.ustreas.gov/

egregious,

Thanks for the post. We have been hearing bits of this for the past few weeks here in Columbus, Ohio.

Gosh there are many Ohio FDL’ers…

I hope the grassroots movement steps up to help Obama and most especially, the economy…A powerful grassroots movement could propel new generation technologies for new jobs pretty fast…

*shudder*

I watched my hometown nearly die in the 70s from another Republican induced recession. The human costs are great.

Kuttner was also interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. He speaks to my heart about all this stuff. He also said that Volker has seen the error of his ways

http://www.npr.org/templates/p…..11-06-2008

The big two shippers will have to pick up the slack and hopefully will hire some of the laid off workers. UPS has it’s ginormous Louisville hub, perhaps not too long a trek for some Ohioans.

Unfortunately, there will be an additional ripple effect. My nephew had a job unloading trucks at Fed Ex. The semis that make the cross-country trips from source to hub and vice versa are independent contractors.

Egreg – in my hometown in Upstate NY – Mack Trucks took over Brockway and then closed it down. Destroyed the town for several decades. Someone was selling bumper stickers that read, “Will the last person out of Cortland please turn out the lights?”

But the Gays can’t get married and THAT’S what really counts, right? I think the “What’s the matter with Kansas” syndrome is going to be biting America in the rear for many years to come no matter what Obama does. If I could only believe that Pelosi and Reid were on the side of the average American who is feeling the crunch so painfully right now.

My own pay took a cut this year and the overtime money dried up and I am not making my bills on a month-to-month basis. Yesterday I read that food prices will rise about 7% or more this winter. I have dental work that needs done and I can’t afford it even with my insurance (which has topped off for the year) and I see that AIG is getting another big multi-billion dollar free check. Let’s hope that Obama and the Congress do something to save those of us working Americans who are up to our necks and drowning sooner rather than later….

Not to obvious that this happens six days after the election.

After corporate America used the Hoffa scandal to beat Unions back ….many of these corporations went elsewhere to make more profits off underpaid laborers. I watched union jobs leaving the Dayton..Cinci area by the droves during the late 60’s/70’s. That sucking the jobs our of the U.S. sounds has has been going on for close to forty years.

Christmas is coming if Christmas sales are not good expect a lot more business failures right as Obama becomes President.
Obama has to work fast and think big to get the economy going because the GOP is going to blame him for the aftermath of all of Bush’s mistakes.

Meanwhile the Fed refuses to disclose where it has dumped two trillion of our money
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..=worldwide

Circuit City files for bankruptcy
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/1…../index.htm

I can’t say I’m sorry . . . this was the company that fired all their knowledgeable, long-term sales associates and replaced them with new (cheaper) hires. The fired employees were to be allowed to compete (after a brief waiting period) for the new, lower-paying jobs. To me, a company that values their employees (and concomitantly their customers) so little, deserves all sorts of good happenings . . . . like filing for bankruptcy. Just my opinion.

While I sympathize with the DHL’ers who are losing jobs . . . and those at Circuit City who will soon follow, I wonder where the sympathy was for those who got the ax months ago in cost-cutting attempts aimed more at reassuring stockholders and rewarding the expert ‘leadership’ that demanded such cost cutting. I wonder if we will ever witness AMERICAN companies, more concerned with the welfare and goodwill of their EMPLOYEES and CUSTOMERS instead of their bankers and executives?

We’re going to see a lot of this in the next couple months, IMO. And we’re going to start hearing about how bad things really are. Couldn’t have people voting with actual facts about the economy, you know.

But if these businesses are teetering and about to fail isn’t it better that they fail while Bush is at the helm?

Will Obama’s team stop the hemorrhage?

that is the real Magilla isn’t it. Personally, I have been reading tons of material this past month on WWFDRD. FDR put people to work through CCC, WPA, etc. but it is far above this dfh’s paygrade to see if (let alone how) it can be applied in our time.

ps – found this in my reading and have been wanting to share with y’all:

“The lugubrious Hoover sat and sulked, because his disastrous economic sophistry of allocating money at the top in the belief that it would percolate down to the common people had failed. And amidst all this tragedy he ranted in the election campaign that if Franklin Roosevelt got into office the very foundations of the American system – not an infallible system at that moment – would be imperiled”

Charlie Chaplin

ThinkProgress reports that the Project For A New American Century is hiring. PNAC is directed by William Kristol, one of America’s most reactionary and neo-conservative war monger. Kristol’s impressive resume includes chief of staff to America’s greatest Vice President Dan Quayle. From 1985 to 1988, he served as chief of staff to Secretary of Education and professional gambler William Bennett.

PNAC is devoted to right wing propaganda, False Flag operations, and destroying liberal leftist influence in America.

Closing American Operations – It looks like a good way to silence independent voices as well, this silence is particularly telling.

Cascading Catastrophes

http://powerofnarrative.blogsp…..ophes.html

Everything old is new again.

If you’ve read What’s the Matter with Kansas?” you know that the people who have been making the policy that has decimated your finances is the same party that is attempting to deny the civil rights of gay people. So you have something very much in common with the plight of gays and it doesn’t do your situation any good to rag on them. There are a lot of new Dems coming into office and they’ve made a commitment to address all these problems. Our economic ones are quite obviously #1 — even before civil rights, no matter how much that may hurt some people. Obviously they are not going to be able to fix everything overnight — BushCo took eight years to make these problems — but let’s give them a chance to do their best. Unfortunately, it will be two more months before they can even start if Bush has his way in blocking plans for a stimulus package.

Check this DHL guy out. He’s a Bushy-type

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Hillblom

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

`Unclog the Market’

Frank said the Fed shouldn’t reveal the assets it holds or how it values them because of “delicacy with respect to pricing.” He said such disclosure would “give people clues to what your pricing is and what they might be able to sell us and what your estimates are.” He wouldn’t say why he thought that information would be problematic.

Revealing how the Fed values collateral could help thaw frozen credit markets, said Ron D’Vari, chief executive officer of NewOak Capital LLC in New York and the former head of structured finance at BlackRock Inc.

“I’d love to hear the methodology, how the Fed priced the assets,” D’Vari said. “That would unclog the market very quickly.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..=worldwide

My bold The other thing knowing where the bailout money went is that it would tell us what banks are in the most trouble.

Perhaps I am just to economically undereducated but we are STILL “allocating money to the top in the belief that it would percolate down to the common people” aren’t we? Unless and until Obama and the Democratic Congress put in place powerful regulations that prevent Detroit and Wall Street from continuing the failed, anti-worker policies that got us here then all the billions we throw at them are just insulating THEM from the economic collapse and leaving us hanging in the wind. I can’t wait to hear what our newly elected government is going to do for US and how they are going to do it.

The unregulated movement of capital and pretend capital ‘worthless margin paper’ is the root of all this economic turmoil. Bush administration is creating ‘junk Federal bonds’ to cover over for short term stability. The Federal Govt is bankrupt and needs to reverse all the rich tax giveaways to restore permanent stability to the US. It will take years so the sooner the better. Health care reform, end the wars and rebuilding the US infrastructure are the only options.

Honey I AM gay and I was being facetious. I have read the book, hence my comment. I am getting it from both directions. That was my (poorly made, apparently) point.

Oh it is better yes, but I’m worried about a bunch of GOP business waiting until after Obama is in charge to file for Bankruptcy.
Imagine if DHL had filled for bankruptcy a month ago.
We would have had Ohio all the cash we spent in that state could have gone to Georgia or Montana.
I hope DHL never does business in America for the next 8 years.

Agreed

Did you see the 60 minutes segment on “The Wasteland” last night. Now this was some serious investigative reporting. Circuit City and more in “Wasteland”.

This is a must watch (I know you hear that all the time)
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4586903n

There’s also news that Paulson snuck a tax change through in September that benefits – surprise! the corporations we’re handing money to.
Apparently there are also people who think that little bombshell was done illegally. (seen at TPM)

This could be a made for tv movie.

RE DHL: Later reports in the German media news (ARD) indicated a major part of DHL’s problem was an inability to compete against the USPS and FedEx because of legal barriers which seem to have been erected in the US against DHL. This led to some billions in losses and, to DHL management, it seemed inevitable that the losses would only grow, thus there was no real question that cutting off the bleeding was the only way to go.

Deja Vu this has all happened before.

almost included it in my comment !

although this is equally appropriate

CNNMoney:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Global delivery company DHL announced Monday that it was cutting 9,500 jobs as it discontinues air and ground operations within the United States.

DHL said its DHL Express will continue to operate between the United States and other nations. But the company said it was dropping “domestic-only” air and ground services within the United States by Jan. 30 “to minimize future uncertainties.”

They figure to keep three or four thousand people in the US for the international side.

wilmington is a family farm area.

article from august when mccain was in ohio and talking about DHL and how he was going to help all he could.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/p…..-dhl_N.htm

Since The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer broke the story, Democrats and labor groups have been eagerly pointing out that five years ago McCain and Davis aided German-owned DHL in completing its purchase of U.S.-owned competitor Airborne Express, which had long operated the Wilmington shipping hub.

During a campaign visit last month, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met with Wilmington Mayor David Raizk to pledge his help if elected.

In 2003, McCain, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee urged then-Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens to abandon a proposed bill to prohibit foreign-owned carriers from flying U.S. military equipment or troops. Airborne Express said the bill was aimed at torpedoing its merger with DHL, the U.S.-based shipping unit of German postal service Deutsche Post AG.

teh google list of mccain dhl closings
http://www.google.com/search?q…..=firefox-a

New Twolf1 post on the front page: The Secret Service Blames Palin For Obama Death Threats

But what about the aspect of this story that no one’s mentioning? Most of the reason that DHL is losing in its competition with other carriers is that DHL is incompetent and provides really really crummy service.

I note these in my scandals list entry on the housing bubble and the financial meltdown. I am sort of amazed that there are so many of these scams in the hundreds of billions or even trillions that are going virtually unreported. The Fed has 3 or 4 of these loan facilities and almost all of them dwarf Paulson’s $700 billion bailout but the media simply don’t mention them.

I know some people who work for DHL. What is happening is roughly this. DHL can not compete with FedEX and UPS on an even basis. Both other companies have way to big a reach. DHL has been more like FedEX than UPS in that they have never gotten a very large volume of package mail. What they are doing is continuing the international package delivery but giving up the interUS package delivery. They had been working on an agreement with UPS to fly their packages to a delivery point and then DHL would take over and deliver to the address. To me that would have pretty much been a takover by big brown of DHL US-or perhaps DHL will just be aquired by UPS for the entire(world) package. IOW DHL can not compete with UPS/FedEX, but then neither could the american company that DHL took over. Capitalism=Darwinism. In fact the US Postal Service ie snail mail, sends their entire express/priority mail via FedEx which is why you now see FedEx collection boxes in front of post offices. A few years ago(more than 10) the USPS had to take up the slack when UPS drivers went on strike-yes I know some UPS drivers, their avg salary is about $60K-they(USPS) came damn close to total collapse due to the massive influx of mail, they got it taken care of, but it cost a whole lot more money than they made on the deal. BTW, UPS/FedEX are heavy contributers to the republician party and the biggest boosters of getting rid of the USPS first class delivery monopoly. IMO this would not be a good idea because right now you can send a letter from Key West to Nome from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to NYC and always pay the same price. This is not true with either UPS or FedEx. Also I have spent some time in NZ=NewZeeland where they sold their Post Office to a private company. No door to door delivery, in fact no delivery at all. You want your mail, you have to go to a post office to either mail it or get it. Only 5 day delivery, not 6 day(the USPS has been trying for over 25 years to get rid of Sat. delivery) and during the last 8 years they have been trying very hard to eliminate the RFD(old legal term means Rural Free Delivery or for those who live way out in the country and have a rural carrier deliver your mail directly to your end of the driveway mail box) in the US. Think about that the next time the republicians take over-after all they are the pander to big business party, aren’t they?

scribe, should be UPS/FedEx not USPS. BTW, the company that DHL bought was only getting a very small piece of the pie for many years before DHL-the people that I know that currently work for DHL as delivery drivers have worked for the company that was bought out by DHL for many years- bought them out. Other than the First Class mail monopoly that the USPS enjoys, theire are no legal barriers for any company that wants to set up shop to deliver packages and express letters.

DHL is to close all its service centers and halt its loss-leading, US-only domestic shipping by land and air, the company said at its headquarters in Bonn on Monday.

Via Der Speigel

Der Speigel has a great English site for all non-Deutsch speakers/readers/writers.

Oh – yeah….

Deutsche Post blamed its decision on heavy losses in the face of fierce competition from established rivals such as FedEx and United Parcel Service in America. The US business is expected to rack up losses of €1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) this year, the company added.

I hate to see anyone lose jobs but DHL, from my experience, is horrible. They must pay their help in wrapping paper because they seem to hate their job. Not sure why they couldn’t make it, the government gave them a pretty good deal where they drop packages off at the local depot and the mailmen take it from there. Of course they usually were always trying to deliver my packages at the depot while they were closed, losing a day of transit time for the package.

You are warped…

Everyone can thank John McCain for this.
We have got to stop allowing our companies and jobs to be sold overseas.

Why overlook the obvious anti-union bias. Though the Euro workforce is unionized, DHL has avoided the many attempts to unionize it’s American operations. With the Obama election and gains in the leg and our fervent hope that the EFCA will soon pass, companies who do not want a workforce with the right to collectively act, DHL has decided to screw it’s current employees. I hope that the employees find meaningfull work in the near future,including a living wage, health care benefits and safe working conditions.