by Jack Lee
This is an open letter in reply to comments sent in by Rex Crosely:
R.C. “A man cannot get a job unless he has food, clothes and a roof over his head.”
J. L. That’s bull. Better look at how illegal aliens do it. They proved you don’t need much to get started in America! A roof, clean clothes and good food are available to all those who want them, they need only ask. By the way, Manual Labor is not a Hispanic name.
R.C “With more and more families out on the streets you will only see the Occupy Movement grow.”
J. L. There’s no evidence to support any major increase in families living on the street – are you talking about renters? Renters are not homeless. Very, very few families in America are homeless and then it’s only temporary.
R.C “Giving billions of dollars to corporations has proved to not work because they just create jobs overseas and that is our fault, you say, because we want clean water. However if we put those billions into social programs that help the poor than more people would have an opportunity to make something out of their lives.”
J. L. Giving billions to corporations is NOT a free market concept, it’s a socialist concept, we didn’t ask for bailouts. Rex, do you know what a free market is?
Creating jobs overseas was a spin off from business being unable to compete fairly in the USA because of YOUR (liberals) unions and YOUR heavy handed regulations, and YOUR huge taxes, and all YOUR mandates, that forced businesses into two choices, go bankrupt or move from the country they love to another country with lower overhead and a more business friendly atmosphere.
R.C “Oh all the jobs are gone because we don’t want billionaires destroying our environment and paying us a poverty wage to do so. How terrible of us. There is plenty of untrashed land and plenty of exploitable slaves somewhere else.”
J. L. Nobody is talking about destroying anything. We all share the same air, land and water. As for that silly slave comment, a labor force isn’t slavery! Nobody here is being forced to work. Rex, when it comes to wages. The market determines that. A labor force can’t be paid more than they are worth or their companies go broke.
YOU who went too far – you dictatorial liberals on your power trip with YOUR absurdly restrictive EPA and OSHA regs that few could meet and that don’t exist in the rest of the world. Couple that regulatory mess to YOUR heavy taxes and Y-O-U have all but destroyed small businesses and forced many big businesses to simply move away or outsource jobs.
Rex, do you have any idea of the hoops a business must go through to start up in a community? Apparently not. Here’s one local example: Crystal Geyser bottle water company tried to relocate to Orland – they finally gave up thanks to a tangle of red tape. You Mr. Liberal… y-o-u and your pals killed those jobs.
R.C “That is why you don’t have a job America!!!”
J. L. That’s right, that is exactly why you don’t have a job here. Thank a liberal!!!
R.C “Must have been nice to make your fortune decades ago back when it was easy. I got another news flash for ya Jacky boy. Our form of capitalism is only a few hundred years old (the very idea of capitalism is only a couple thousand and humans have been around way longer than that) and so far has become the most ineffective and oppressive systems around.”
J. L. Here’s a news flash right back at ya: IT WAS NEVER EASY! You think putting in a rail road from coast to coast, fighting for every mile in some of the worst conditions anywhere in the world was easy? Grow up Rex or better yet, get your facts straight.
Rex, capitalism has been around for as long there were venders in the streets selling goods. Capitalism as we know it in America has been the direct cause for extending life spans, creating wealth and insuring freedom and it did it better than any other system in the history of the world. No other economic system has contributed more to the well being of people than capitalism. To say otherwise is to expose your own ignorance.
R.C “Better ideas don’t get passed along, they get bought out and hidden. Price competition doesn’t happen, monopolies do. Prescription drugs exist for everything imaginable. Food gets thrown away, while people starve to death. Sure many forms of consumerism have been tried and failed however before that Anarchy and compassion ruled the earth and people lived peaceful, happy and sustainable lives.”
J. L. Rex, are you on drugs? Anarchy and compassion once ruled the earth and we all lived peaceful, happy and sustainable lives? That statement doesn’t even warrant a response, it’s just stupid.
R.C “With what we know now and with a re evolution of the human thought process everyone could be fed, housed and working towards advancing our society instead of trashing it.”
J. L. So, why don’t YOU get out of the way and quit obstructing us?
R.C “Look at all the damage USA Capitalism has done to the earth and its people in such a short time! You have to be blind to see that a handful of ultra rich people are destroying this country and the world.”
J. L. I must be blind? Now that’s a joke considering what you have just said here. Rex, you talking down a nation and an economic system that caused the greatest advances in productivity, science, music, sports, theater, art and medicine the world has ever known.
Rex, do you realize you talking about the home of Thomas A Edison, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, James Watt, Eli Whitney, Samuel Morse, Albert Einstein, Joseph Salk, Mark Twain, George Gershwin, John Phillip Sousa, the Wright brothers, Georgia O’Keeffe, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Louisa May Alcott, Louis Armstrong, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, George Washington, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, D. H. Lawrence and Booker T. Washington, to name but a few of many thousands of great people that inspired a nation and the world.
Tell me REX, how is it possible that so many of the world’s greatest men and women of all time came from just one country and within the scope of a few hundred years? What is it that could have encouraged such fantastic talent that made the world a better place for everyone – got any clues Rex?
Still laughing.
Rex apparently thinks that slavery, serfdom, and living under the dictatorship of a tyrannically insane monster is superior to a system that embraces freedom, choice, the rule of law, property rights, risk and reward, and free education, K-12, for EVERY child!
Anyone with a little grit can make it in a capitalistic society like ours! How do we know? Millions have done it, some more than once, and some having come here with nothing but the clothes on their backs!
Good responses Jack,
I think some of our liberal friends here don’t believe that CA is the source of its own suffering. They see it as part of the larger recession. Problem is there are states that are pulling ahead and creating jobs (mostly Republican states), and they are doing it by NOT being anti-business.
The last I checked NO ONE is dying of polluted air and water in states that are more business friendly than us. But businesses are dying here in CA.
Anyone remember the Crepe Cafe here in Chico? They were on Nord Ave. Immigrant owner/chef from Africa. Awesome crepes. He was run out of business by the CA State Department of Labor for paperwork errors on two new employees. He actually asked the agent for help with his forms and instead the agent wrote him up a fine of several thousand dollars, which was more than this small businessman had in his savings. He closed his doors and left for Europe where they are more business friendly.
THIS is the product of the Rex Croselys of the world. THIS is the government that he and other liberals have voted for. Welcome to the new oppression. Sadly, when all the businesses are run out, there will be no one to support the public employees who elect all the democrats to our state government. It’s like a party of the lemmings. Don’t worry though, they’ll still blame republicans who are the minority party in CA.
The Northern Pacific Railroad was granted land by the government in exchange for the company agreeing to lay track into the undeveloped territory across the northern border. Other than that financing as the project grew was by private investment. It’s quite a story of American determination and grit. Winners and losers were decided by unexpected events, recessions, and fate.
There are millions of stories of great success in America, both on a large scale and a small scale. They provide jobs (some of them only a few and some of them hundreds or thousands); they participate in community affairs; they help young people go to college; they donate items for countless raffles and fund raising events; they build hospital wings and libraries; they create scholarship programs. a sampling of great American success stories:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2011/11/16/crestron-electronics-george-feldstein-manufacturing/
http://www.americangreatness.org/success-stories/s-truett-cathy/
S. Truett Cathy is founder and chairman of Chick-fil-A, Inc. Cathy started the business in 1946, when he and his brother, Ben, opened an Atlanta diner known as The Dwarf Grill (later renamed The Dwarf House). Through the years, that restaurant prospered and led Cathy to further the success of his business. In 1967, Cathy founded and opened the first Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlantas Greenbriar Shopping Center. Today, Chick-fil-A is the second-largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States based on annual sales.
In 2006, Cathy celebrated his 60th anniversary in the restaurant business with industry-wide recognition: a local celebration at his first restaurant, The Dwarf House in Hapeville, Ga, and the opening of the third Truetts Grill location a concept the chain first introduced in 1996 to recognize Cathys then-50th anniversary in the restaurant industry. In 2007, Cathy celebrated another exciting milestone the 40th Anniversary of the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain. As of February 2010, there are more than 1,480 Chick-fil-A restaurants in 38 states and Washington, D.C. Remarkably, Cathy has led Chick-fil-A on an unparalleled record of 42 consecutive years of annual sales increases.
Cathys approach is largely driven by personal satisfaction and a sense of obligation to the community and its young people. His WinShape Foundation, founded in 1984, grew from his desire to shape winners by helping young people succeed in life through scholarships and other youth-support programs. The foundation annually awards 20 to 30 students wishing to attend Berry College with scholarships up to $32,000 that are jointly funded by WinShape and Berry. In addition, through its Leadership Scholarship Program, the Chick-fil-A chain has given more than $25 million in $1,000 scholarships to Chick-fil-A restaurant employees since 1973. This year, the company will award more than $1.9 million in scholarships to its restaurant team members.
http://www.legalzoom.com/business-management/success-stories/native-american-entrepreneurs
http://www.legalzoom.com/business-management/success-stories/millionaire-moms-top-inventions
http://www.businesspundit.com/12-amazing-success-stories-of-unlikely-entrepreneurs/
Freedom, responsibility, innovation, urge, risk, profit, grit, private property, community, and charity…these are the foundational motivations, principles and ideals that made America great and created abundance and prosperity.
Central planning will kill it.
“Giving billions to corporations is NOT a free market concept, it’s a socialist concept, we didn’t ask for bailouts.”
Notice the allegiance … “we didn’t ask” … Jack identifies with the corporatocracy.
Now Jack can explain to us what “other” thing it is that the “K” Street crowd pursues … if not bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies … just any little thing … for the corporatocracy.
Quentin, I’m not quite sure what your point is, but were you griping about the cost of the railroad from coast to coast or about the people who made money off it or what?
The transcontinental railroad, which you have chosen to focus on for some reason actually cost $50,000,000 to build. This makes your estimate a little low.
Construction began in 1863, but it did not get into full swing until 1866. This was a big f’n deal, as Joe Biden would say. It was a way to unite the United States from coast to coast and open expansion and commerce into the west. This was about our national security, about helping to win a war and it was a great undertaking for commerce. Can you even begin to imagine how important this was to our country at that time in our history?
The track cost per mile was $14,285, but this included building bridges across gorges, stations and tunnels through mountains and buying up land. It was the greatest construction undertaking of it’s time. Well over 16,000 people worked on the railroad at any given time.
The magnitude of the transportation problem in 1863 was such that neither individual states nor private corporations were able to meet the demands of an expanding internal trade that desperately needed the transcontinental railroad.
To provide for interstate commerce was a key reason for the federal government to exist and that means to levy taxes to developing roads for commerce (trains didn’t exist yet), so it’s Constitutional and it was the right thing to do, to build a railroad to unite the nation, and it was the smart thing too!
Without Theodore Judah, Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins it might have been delayed for decades or perhaps never happened at all.
The transcontinental railroad is one our greatest human achievements and it is a testament to our pioneer spirit, our entrepreneurs, and lets not forget the 11,000 hard working Chinese that came here to help build it. And NO… it wasn’t easy!
Libby, that’s it? That’s all you could find to criticize? Then by your silence on all my many other points can I infer some agreement?
Here is the original post for those of us that don’t like each line chopped up and disputed as if the writer had absolutely nothing better to do.
“Rex Crosley | November 22, 2011 5:38 AM | Reply
A man cannot get a job unless he has food, clothes and a roof over his head. With more and more families out on the streets you will only see the Occupy Movement grow. Giving billions of dollars to corporations has proved to not work because they just create jobs overseas and that is our fault, you say, because we want clean water. However if we put those billions into social programs that help the poor than more people would have an opportunity to make something out of their lives. Oh all the jobs are gone because we don’t want billionaires destroying our environment and paying us a poverty wage to do so. How terrible of us. There is plenty of untrashed land and plenty of exploitable slaves somewhere else. That is why you don’t have a job America!!! Must have been nice to make your fortune decades ago back when it was easy.
I got another news flash for ya Jacky boy. Our form of capitalism is only a few hundred years old (the very idea of capitalism is only a couple thousand and humans have been around way longer than that) and so far has become the most ineffective and oppressive systems around. Better ideas don’t get passed along, they get bought out and hidden. Price competition doesn’t happen, monopolies do. Prescription drugs exist for everything imaginable. Food gets thrown away, while people starve to death. Sure many forms of consumerism have been tried and failed however before that Anarchy and compassion ruled the earth and people lived peaceful, happy and sustainable lives. With what we know now and with a re evolution of the human thought process everyone could be fed, housed and working towards advancing our society instead of trashing it. Look at all the damage USA Capitalism has done to the earth and its people in such a short time! You have to be blind to see that a handful of ultra rich people are destroying this country and the world.”
Ooooooh…not okay to comment or debate point by point Rex? Why is that?
I would think that you would be encouraged to know that others took your arguments seriously enough to rebutt each of them. If you want a single item response maybe you could make each point in individual an comment…we’d love the extra traffic, lol!
The big problem with your government solution for the poor is that it hasn’t accomplished what you say will happen in 60 years. Too many people settle for a handout and inspire future government dependent children. Look at the larger government subsidized community and tell me that it is “advancing our society. Sorry bud, in large part it is a drain on our society…gangs of men without skills beyond their criminal activity, unwed mothers raising children by different fathers to get more assistance, broken families, high dropout rates, drug/alcohol addiction, and a whole lot of ignorance, hopelessness, and despair. Taxpayers have spent trillions and this is the result. Sorry Rex, that isn’t good enough for me and it is a total tragedy…an abject failure of moral, civic and economic values.
As for trashing the planet…get real. Every environmental “problem” that you can name has been fixed and cleaned up by industry cooperating and responding to DEMAND but….only when it made sense to do so. The problem with current demands is that they are political rather than practical, coercive rather than smart. (A great deal of deception has, of late, driven some of that demand and that NEVER works in the long run)
“Anarchy ruled” and peace resulted? …you can’t be serious! Might makes right? You prefer that to civility, the rule of law, property rights…FREEDOM?
Man are you confused…or what?
Basically I will say that all of your argument suck. You are proposing that poor people all shack up with their cousins and grandmothers and so on when if people could afford their own places the housing market wouldn’t be so far in the crapper.
News Flash: Homeless shelter patrons are on the rise (at an alarming rate) and its not the current bums because they are used to sleeping outside. It’s economically destroyed families with no where else to go. “40% are families with childrenthe fastest growing segment.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#2009_Annual_Homeless_Assessment_Report_to_Congress
If moving jobs off overseas was a result of liberals wanting safe conditions, a decent wage for everyone and clean air then maybe the people at the top have too many people making too much money? Also if the jobs got moved because of the liberals why didn’t the republicans stand up for Americans and rally to keep jobs here? You can’t really argue with the fact that average CEO earnings are higher than ever and that banks have bought out both parties. You blame liberals for bailouts when it was Bush who handed them out.
http://tinyurl.com/3napoek
I wont argue that this nation and its achievements are not great and that this system has a lot of good to it. However the path taken was not best at all times. The upper class elite of our society have dictated the flow of economic growth and is more for them and less for us. How can we afford wars and globalism when we can’t even take care of the sick and the mentally ill right here in our country? This liberal/conservative war is nothing but a spectacle to divide the people while they do whatever they want behind our back and there is no end to their path of destruction. We must stand up for peace! We must occupy.
Rex, I don’t have time to discredit all your false notions, you have too many. Maybe later I will come back and give it a shot but for now let’s just deal with your fundamental premise for everything you said, “Anarchy and compassion ruled the earth and people lived peaceful, happy and sustainable lives.”
Anarchy and compassion… never ruled the earth, NEVER! This is some ridiculous fantasy you have latched on to that has no basis in reality.
The further back in time you go the closer you get to the law of jungle. Back then it was survival of fittest, kill or be killed, raiding parties, plundering, hand to hand combat….that’s the reality and anyone who has gone beyond the 3rd grade should know this! Because you don’t know it and you did go beyond the 3rd grade, I’m thinking you are just delusional, but, most liberals are…liberalism, its a mental disorder!
Jack takes King Crosley’s idiotic statements, dissects them one at a time, and crushes them.
The response is, “Here is the original post for those of us that don’t like each line chopped up and disputed as if the writer had absolutely nothing better to do.”
And
“Basically I will say that all of your arguments suck.”
I will “basically” say that Crosely has no argument. Have another bong hit, dude.
As for railroads, you can read a more complete historical synopsis here, for instance, on the Pacific —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
Anyone who depends on a Quentin Colgan for a complete and unbiased view it an idiot. Jack is far closer to the truth in his short statement that Colgan will ever be.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/22/374271/companies-layoff-workers-share-buybacks/
I love how in the past 24 hours all that I’ve gotten from you and your peanut gallery is insults and personal attacks. I can find hundreds of links supporting my case you guys provide one about railroad trains. Perhaps a college class on proper arguments and fallacies would help you cats out.
Occupy Thanksgiving.
This may come as a suprise to you Rex but companies don’t belong to the employees. Whether fair or not, a business must do what makes sense to the owners and share holders whether that means expanding when business is plentiful or pulling back when business is slow. When government or workers create a hostile, oppressive, or unreasonable environment a business will seek out a space that makes doing business more pleasant, more trouble free and more profitable.
Another surprise may be that employees are in business too. Just as businesses must now compete in the world market so do workers have to compete with others around the world. When American workers vote for people who love big government and big government control they vote against themselves in the marketplace. When they vote for people who place unreasonable regulations on business or have designs on shutting down coal plants and drilling rigs they work against their own personal interests in the marketplace. When they demand unreasionable wages and benefits they work against themselves and in favor of lower wage earners in other countries.
When government takes a hostile position regarding taxes, energy cost, and healthcare costs, as Obama/Pelosi/Reid have, business people are like bears preparing for a long winter; they hunker down, protect their assets, and wait for a better environment. It’s the natural response in times like these.
The article from Think Progress is designed to make you feel resentful and hostile toward business. They’re working for votes for the progressive candidates in the coming election. How’s that attitude working out for you? Do you really think that greater hostility and resentment will make those business people put their assets at risk? Do you think that attitude will do anything at all to open markets and job opportunities?
I think it will just make them hunker down more stubbornly. Cooperation is a two way street…fairness is a two way street.
And by the way…if homeless shelters are “on the rise” you have only unreasonable progressive policies to blame. Not only did they create the housing bubble and crash, they have since created a sluggish nonrecovery that is oppressive for everyone and harms the little guy the most.
Re King Crosley’s: “Perhaps a college class on proper arguments and fallacies would help you cats out.”
ROTFLMAO!