The Democrat Thread

[Y2HH]

f*** unions for not eagerly joining the race to the bottom

 

Your absolutely right, and in their haste to not race to the boom, all they did was get to the bottom first.

[Balta1701]

And you get to ignore the actual hotel/city conditions and tourism completely, because every negative thing ever must be 100% the fault of the unions.

[Y2HH]

And you get to ignore the actual hotel/city conditions and tourism completely, because every negative thing ever must be 100% the fault of the unions.

 

I'm not saying that didn't help. It most assuredly did.

 

But you don't combat the falling prices elsewhere by raising your own here.

[Balta1701]

I'm not saying that didn't help. It most assuredly did.

 

But you don't combat the falling prices elsewhere by raising your own here.

No...but if there's a limit to how low you can reduce your prices (which, unless you're building a Palazzo on Michigan Avenue sometime soon)...you are left with the options of taking advantage of the marketplace you do have (selling Chicago, i.e. like the Auto show) or offering a higher quality product.

[Y2HH]

No...but if there's a limit to how low you can reduce your prices (which, unless you're building a Palazzo on Michigan Avenue sometime soon)...you are left with the options of taking advantage of the marketplace you do have (selling Chicago, i.e. like the Auto show) or offering a higher quality product.

 

Which they didn't do.

 

Crappier quality product at a higher price.

 

I don't know why people still relate union work with quality, either. It's simply not true anymore.

[StrangeSox]

Depends on the union, of course.

[Y2HH]

Depends on the union, of course.

 

This is where you're wrong.

 

It doesn't depend on the union. It depends on the individual.

 

Every union has it's share of s***ty workers, just as every union has it's share of excellent workers...workers that don't care about how shoddy of a job they do, so long as it's "good enough", because what's it matter? They're going to get the same raise as everyone else...they're hard to fire, etc...

 

I think, specifically, this is my problem with most unions. Their collective bargaining where everyone gets the same raise or pay decrease in times of concessions. I don't care what times we are in, be they good or bad, there are people that deserve raises, and people that don't. The same applies in tougher times when people are taking pay cuts...there are people that don't deserve to get them. Unions, I feel, by and large, breed a culture of complacence. This attitude bred by unions bothers me. I see it throughout family gatherings from almost everyone that's in a union.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Y2HH

[Jenksismyhero]

Anywho, I just finished up the paper I needed to review, so time for a good rant.

 

I like how it's just reflexively "Unions" why conventions might go to Orlando and Las Vegas. Yup, Unions. No consideration is given, of course, to the fact that those 2 cities have substantial hotel advantages, produced in one case through the fact that one has a clear on-season and an off-season for tourism, which would generate a substantial portion of the year when hotels aren't booked solid and could be available cheaply...and the other which winds up having the price of the hotels subsidized through the fact that the non-geologists blow money in the city. On top of that, Chicago proper has only about 30k hotel rooms according to its olympics application (100k in the metro area), whereas Vegas you're talking 150k just in the city.

 

Chicago doesn't have those advantages. When you host a convention in Chicago, you're not hosting a convention in a place you can go to cheaply, you're hosting a convention there because you want access to the Chicago market and you want to somehow take advantage of that market.

 

That of course, is all the fault of the unions.

 

And re: the electrician. Now, I'm willing to grant that Chicago is unusually corrupt and there's probably a backroom deal or 17 signed somewhere along the line to grease the skids...but on the other side can anyone think of a reason why a large major city might want to have some decently high quality regulation and training of the people who are allowed to do even small electrical projects in the city? Yes, it's going to raise the costs. But the city also has a keen interest in the stability of its own electrical systems, and also has a huge interest in electrical safety, as fires in an urban environment are hugely threatening to lives and property. And Chicago just happens to have a small history involving fire. Not to mention other elemental extremes.

 

So yes, Chicago is probably particularly corrupt and I'd be happy to discuss how specific elements of deregulation could help improve the city's economy...but don't tell me that the city ought to allow just any contractor to work on the electrical systems in the city. A city ought to make sure that people who are doing electrical work in the downtown area are certified on their local systems and do double and triple checks and follow city-wide standardized procedures to the letter. And yes, that is a burdensome regulation that costs businesses substantial amounts of money...but fire does too. And blackouts do too.

 

Oh, and one more...in one of my less exciting excursions through someone's anti-union story, here's the actual regulations from the City of Chicago regarding the use of PVC pipe:

So, the City does allow PVC pipes. For the very largest pipe sizes, >24 inch, you are correct that clay is required, but this is not unusual for the largest drains, and frankly, after going through the regulations for other states, Chicago's piping regulations aren't unusually stringent (and it's also not like Chicago has had any sort of recent memory issue with pipes bursting and floods). Crumbling, old clay pipes...that can certainly be an issue...but now we're talking about an issue of lack of upkeep and trying to make a 50 year system last 150 years, like we do with so many other bits of our infrastructure in this country.

 

1) this could apply to any job anywhere, who cares? Make them be certified or licensed, why isn't that enough?

 

2) in my experience with litigation, including City workers and big construction/industrial companies whose workers are unionized, there's absolutely no indication that they're smarter or better trained than their non-union counterparts. If anything they're more complacent about their work because they know how much sway their union holds with the various companies using them. If they f*** up on job A, the union will still get them job B and job B won't know what they did on job A.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

The Smithsonian has an excellent piece entitled "The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson"

 

There's been a bit more surrounding Wiencek's original Smithsonian article on Jefferson's history with slavery.

 

First, there's Wiencek responding to his critics:

 

I am not surprised that Gordon-Reed disliked my book so much, given that it systematically demolishes her portrayal of Jefferson as a kindly master of black slaves. In The Hemingses of Monticello, she described with approval Jefferson's "plans for his version of a kinder, gentler slavery at Monticello with his experiments with the nail factory." Gordon-Reed cannot like the now established truth that the locus of Jefferson's "kinder, gentler slavery" was the very place where children were beaten to get them to work. At first I assumed that she simply did not know about the beatings, but when I double-checked her book's references to the nailery I discovered that she must have known: A few hundred pages away from her paean to the nail factory, she cited the very letter in which "the small ones" are described as being lashed there.

 

Then this NYT op-ed Monster of Monticello attacked Wiencek's arguments from the other side, saying that he wasn't critical enough of Jefferson, that he didn't come to accept slavery reluctantly but did so early and enthusiatically:

 

Contrary to Mr. Wiencek’s depiction, Jefferson was always deeply committed to slavery, and even more deeply hostile to the welfare of blacks, slave or free. His proslavery views were shaped not only by money and status but also by his deeply racist views, which he tried to justify through pseudoscience.

 

There is, it is true, a compelling paradox about Jefferson: when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, announcing the “self-evident” truth that all men are “created equal,” he owned some 175 slaves. Too often, scholars and readers use those facts as a crutch, to write off Jefferson’s inconvenient views as products of the time and the complexities of the human condition.

 

But while many of his contemporaries, including George Washington, freed their slaves during and after the revolution — inspired, perhaps, by the words of the Declaration — Jefferson did not. Over the subsequent 50 years, a period of extraordinary public service, Jefferson remained the master of Monticello, and a buyer and seller of human beings.

 

[...]

 

Nor was Jefferson a particularly kind master. He sometimes punished slaves by selling them away from their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even at the time. A proponent of humane criminal codes for whites, he advocated harsh, almost barbaric, punishments for slaves and free blacks. Known for expansive views of citizenship, he proposed legislation to make emancipated blacks “outlaws” in America, the land of their birth. Opposed to the idea of royal or noble blood, he proposed expelling from Virginia the children of white women and black men.

 

Jefferson also dodged opportunities to undermine slavery or promote racial equality. As a state legislator he blocked consideration of a law that might have eventually ended slavery in the state.

 

As president he acquired the Louisiana Territory but did nothing to stop the spread of slavery into that vast “empire of liberty.” Jefferson told his neighbor Edward Coles not to emancipate his own slaves, because free blacks were “pests in society” who were “as incapable as children of taking care of themselves.” And while he wrote a friend that he sold slaves only as punishment or to unite families, he sold at least 85 humans in a 10-year period to raise cash to buy wine, art and other luxury goods.

 

David Post, over at Volokh, made this rather unfortunate post in response:

Why Don’t People Get It About Jefferson and Slavery?

 

Why is this so hard for people to see? Even if Jefferson had done nothing more than pen those words and get them inserted into the foundational document for the new country — and he did plenty more, see my paper here — declaring that principle to be a self-evident truth and at the foundation of any legitimate government was an act of political courage, not cowardice or hypocrisy, at a time when slavery was at the heart of the way of life and an economy across vast swaths of colonial America. Maybe Prof. Finkelman would have come up with a way to more quickly eliminate the institution from the new republic than Jefferson did, one that would have eliminated the horrible bloodshed of the Civil War. But nobody had such a plan, at the time – not Jefferson, not Washington, not Clay, not anyone.

 

Jefferson, Finkelman tells us, was not a “particularly kind” slave-master; he sometimes “punished slaves by selling them away from their families and friends, a retaliation that was incomprehensibly cruel even at the time.” And he believed that ”blacks’ ability to reason was ‘much inferior’ to whites’ and that they were “in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” So what? Really – so what? If you want to think that he was a bad guy — or even a really bad guy, with truly grievous personal faults — you’re free to do so. But to claim that that has something to do with Jefferson’s historical legacy is truly preposterous.

 

which set off a large amount of criticism for the callousness of the "so what" question:

 

Thomas Jefferson: American Fascist? (Corey Robin) examines the origins of "race domination--of white supremacy" and traces them back, at least partially, to Jefferson's writings in Notes on the State of Virginia. There are some really abhorrent quotes in there, even if I can't agree 100% with Robin's line of argument.

 

Scott Lemiux questions the pretty incredible claim from Post that few people did more than Jefferson to eliminate slavery by noting:

 

This assertion strikes me as, to put it mildly, problematic.

 

The Declaration of Independence was evidently very influential and contained any number of noble sentiments, some of which proved to be a resource for people who opposed slavery and white supremacy. But let’s also not get carried away with exaggerating the causal impact of the Declaration on ending slavery. The fact is, a particularly brutal form of slavery persisted for upwards of a century after the Declaration in the states governed by Jefferson’s fellow southern political elites, and it it had to be vanquished not through voluntary emancipation but through an extraordinarily bloody military conflict. And then after the Civil War, in spite of the Declaration the states controlled by Jefferson’s heirs maintained apartheid police states for nearly another century. The leaders who risked (and in many cases) scarified their lives before and after the Civil War deserve far more credit than Jefferson for ending these appalling social systems.

 

And, as Corey says, Jefferson himself played a major role, in both theory and practice, of establishing the norm that the Declaration’s announcement that “all mean are created equal” wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.

 

Ta-Nehisi Coates has two response. One, "Slavery Is A Love Song," is a short dismissal of Post that contains a powerful letter from one former slave to another. The two had been married but were separated when one of them was sold.

 

I would much rather you would get married to some good man, for every time I gits a letter from you it tears me all to pieces. The reason why I have not written you before, in a long time, is because your letters disturbed me so very much.

 

You know I love my children. I treats them good as a Father can treat his children; and I do a good deal of it for you. I am sorry to hear that Lewellyn, my poor little son, have had such bad health. I would come and see you but I know you could not bear it. I want to see and I don't want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet.

 

I am married, and my wife have two children, and if you and I meets it would make a very dissatisfied family. Send me some of the children's hair in a separate paper with their names on the paper. Will you please git married, as long as I am married. My dear, you know the Lord knows both of our hearts. You know it never was our wishes to be separated from each other, and it never was our fault.

 

Oh, I can see you so plain, at any-time, I had rather anything to had happened to me most than ever to have been parted from you and the children. As I am, I do not know which I love best, you or Anna. If I was to die, today or tomorrow, I do not think I would die satisfied till you tell me you will try and marry some good, smart man that will take care of you and the children; and do it because you love me; and not because I think more of the wife I have got then I do of you. The woman is not born that feels as near to me as you do.

 

You feel this day like myself. Tell them they must remember they have a good father and one that cares for them and one that thinks about them every day-My very heart did ache when reading your very kind and interesting letter.

 

Laura I do not think I have change any at all since I saw you last.-I think of you and my children every day of my life. Laura I do love you the same. My love to you never have failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry, that I am. You feels and seems to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura. You know my treatment to a wife and you know how I am about my children. You know I am one man that do love my children....

 

the second is a refutation of the argument that Jefferson was merely "a man of his times"

 

As is pointed out in subsequent comments this claim, while convenient, is false. Moreover Jefferson lived at a time when it was relatively common to manumit slaves. One need only look at Jeffersons cousin John Randolph:

 

[...]

The notion that Jefferson was merely following the crowd, and that everyone else did the same thing is convenient for us. But it has the unfortunate effect of erasing the courage of those who were willing to live their words, and pay the price.

 

Edward Coles doesn't deserve to be forgotten merely to redeem Jefferson.

[bmags]

1) this could apply to any job anywhere, who cares? Make them be certified or licensed, why isn't that enough?

 

What's more, in an era with information on performance easier than ever, do we really find this necessary? This regulation is just localism. Saving a select amount of workers and families at the expense of the correct policy.

[StrangeSox]

What's the correct policy?

[Jenksismyhero]

Good stuff.

 

I always thought Jefferson's actions were somewhat constant with the 18th century mindset. You're talking about an elitist who has time all day to read books and debate/think about big issues with other elitists. That's going to be different from the realistic, day-to-day management of his estate. So while he might have thought, in an idealistic sense, that slavery should be abolished, in the present it was still legal, still socially acceptable (to most people), so he used it.

 

I'm looking forward to reading Jon Meachum's new book on Jefferson. I liked his book about Jackson a lot.

[bmags]

What's the correct policy?

 

Trying to reduce rent-seeking behavior, not encourage it.

[StrangeSox]

A couple of those posts specifically rejected that "man of his times" defense, though. He really didn't seem to think slavery should be abolished and worried greatly about a post-slavery, mixed-race society.

[Jenksismyhero]

A couple of those posts specifically rejected that "man of his times" defense, though. He really didn't seem to think slavery should be abolished and worried greatly about a post-slavery, mixed-race society.

 

That's because he couldn't fathom that the slaves would stick around. He thought as soon as they were freed they'd head back to Africa. That was a common way of thinking that even Lincoln shared and discussed as a possibility.

 

Edit: He's got the current liberal mindset of minorities - "they NEED our help because they can't do it on their own!"

 

n the mean time are you right in abandoning this property, and your country with it? I think not. My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, & be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them.

 

The laws do not permit us to turn them loose, if that were for their good: and to commute them for other property is to commit them to those whose usage of them we cannot control. I hope then, my dear sir, you will reconcile yourself to your country and its unfortunate condition; that you will not lessen its stock of sound disposition by withdrawing your portion from the mass. That, on the contrary you will come forward in the public councils, become the missionary of this doctrine truly christian; insinuate & inculcate it softly but steadily, through the medium of writing and conversation; associate others in your labors, and when the phalanx is formed, bring on and press the proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

That's because he couldn't fathom that the slaves would stick around. He thought as soon as they were freed they'd head back to Africa. That was a common way of thinking that even Lincoln shared and discussed as a possibility.

 

Yeah, Lincoln proposed colonization. But he didn't believe they'd leave of their own accord AFAIK. From Corey Robin, in the comments:

 

But I think I wasn’t as clear about something in my post as I should have been. The real significance of the text is not so much its influence — although again it was considerable — but the problem it is addressing: Jefferson is really grappling with the question of emancipation. And here’s where it gets interesting — and why he is so important. Jefferson never did much for emancipation, and as time went on he did even less. But he did think slavery was wrong and he did think/fear/suspect it was going to be eliminated. So what you see going on in the text, I think, is not so much someone who’s dealing with the question of slavery and trying to justify it (as a lot of people seem to read the text) but someone who is grappling with emancipation: how in the world can we (white people) live with these black people? (Which is why everyone who wants to read those passages that are sympathetic to emancipation kind of miss the point: for Jefferson, emancipation is not the end of a problem; it’s just the beginning.

 

And the answer he comes to is, we can’t live with them. This wasn’t just a theoretical position; this was something he worked to enshrine in law. His contribution to the revision of the laws in Virginia — which he alludes to in the text — was to put more and more legal liabilities and restrictions on free blacks. It is the black freedman he’s most concerned about.

 

Edit: He's got the current liberal mindset of minorities - "they NEED our help because they can't do it on their own!"

 

GMAFB. Jefferson's rationalization for his continued participation in and support of a monstrous institution is not in any way similar to the "current liberal mindset" that seeks to correct for the centuries of injustices perpetrated by men like Jefferson.

 

eta: your framing is interesting as well, as if minorities themselves aren't liberal and don't advocate for and support those policies.

Edited December 3, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

Yeah, Lincoln proposed colonization. But he didn't believe they'd leave of their own accord AFAIK. From Corey Robin, in the comments:

 

 

 

 

 

GMAFB. Jefferson's rationalization for his continued participation in and support of a monstrous institution is not in any way similar to the "current liberal mindset" that seeks to correct for the centuries of injustices perpetrated by men like Jefferson.

 

eta: your framing is interesting as well, as if minorities themselves aren't liberal and don't advocate for and support those policies.

 

That was partially a joke.

[StrangeSox]

Sorry, I just happened to have read Frederick Douglass's collective works last week so I'm a bit touchy on the subject.

[Jenksismyhero]

Yeah, Lincoln proposed colonization. But he didn't believe they'd leave of their own accord AFAIK. From Corey Robin, in the comments:

 

 

 

 

 

GMAFB. Jefferson's rationalization for his continued participation in and support of a monstrous institution is not in any way similar to the "current liberal mindset" that seeks to correct for the centuries of injustices perpetrated by men like Jefferson.

 

eta: your framing is interesting as well, as if minorities themselves aren't liberal and don't advocate for and support those policies.

 

Is it a leap to suggest he's fearful of freed blacks, as compared to having concerns with setting them free for their own good? Maybe he was coming from some moral position that he truly believed it would be worse for them if they were freed. Probably not right, but that block quote doesn't really have any support for concluding that he's just a white slave owner terrified of having to live with slaves. Also, this is a guy who was publicly attached to a black woman, so it would seem odd if he was fearful of living with them when he, well, lived with them.

 

[StrangeSox]

There were numerous 'moral' justifications for slavery along the lines of "it's better for them." It was referred to as the Domestic Institution. It's all part of the same "white man's burden" strain of thought and you can still find traces of it today in the "well, the descendants of the slaves were better off in the long run, so maybe it wasn't so bad!" excuses.

 

Robin explains his argument above that comment, it's linked in my earlier first post. He overreaches in some regards, but I don't think he does in that one. What was to be done with emancipated slaves was a genuine dilemma in a white supremacist society. You could not (coherently) argue that they were equal human beings that should not suffer under slavery while turning around and forcibly denying them the rest of their rights. But, as Wiencek explains in his original Smithsonian article, Jefferson wasn't even really that opposed to slavery and grew increasingly less so as time went on.

 

I don't know that Jefferson was "publicly" attached to Sally Hemings*. It's still not known for sure that Jefferson fathered children on this slave, though it is likely and the most plausible scenario. It's not particularly odd for him to have been fearful of blacks because he lived with them as owned property to which he claimed complete and total control. But Robin isn't claiming, as far as I can read it, that Jefferson was "terrified," but that he couldn't imagine a functional society composed of whites and free blacks. Jefferson doesn't seem to be expressing a fear of retaliation against former masters but of a larger collapse.

 

*Hemings was also 3/4's anglo fwiw

Edited December 3, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

There were numerous 'moral' justifications for slavery along the lines of "it's better for them." It was referred to as the Domestic Institution. It's all part of the same "white man's burden" strain of thought and you can still find traces of it today in the "well, the descendants of the slaves were better off in the long run, so maybe it wasn't so bad!" excuses.

 

Robin explains his argument above that comment, it's linked in my earlier first post. He overreaches in some regards, but I don't think he does in that one. What was to be done with emancipated slaves was a genuine dilemma in a white supremacist society. You could not (coherently) argue that they were equal human beings that should not suffer under slavery while turning around and forcibly denying them the rest of their rights. But, as Wiencek explains in his original Smithsonian article, Jefferson wasn't even really that opposed to slavery and grew increasingly less so as time went on.

 

I don't know that Jefferson was "publicly" attached to Sally Hemings. It's still not known for sure that Jefferson fathered children on this slave, though it is likely and the most plausible scenario. It's not particularly odd for him to have been fearful of blacks because he lived with them as owned property to which he claimed complete and total control. But Robin isn't claiming, as far as I can read it, that Jefferson was "terrified," but that he couldn't imagine a functional society composed of whites and free blacks. Jefferson doesn't seem to be expressing a fear of retaliation against former masters but of a larger collapse.

 

This is why I want to read Meacham's book. He was on CBS Sunday Morning talking about this topic and he referenced the fact that Hemings was with Jefferson while he was in Paris and she refused to come back without some kind of guarantee that he would free their kids. And I could have sworn he said they would socialize publicly.

 

Edit: Here's an excerpt from the book:

 

“She [sally Hemings] was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved,” said Madison Hemings. “So she refused to return with him.”

 

It was an extraordinary moment. Fresh from arranging terms with the bankers of Europe over a debt that was threatening the foundation of the French nation, Thomas Jefferson found himself in negotiations with a pregnant enslaved teenager who, in a reversal of fortune hardly likely to be repeated, had the means at hand to free herself.

 

…So he began making concessions to convince Sally Hemings to come home to Virginia. “To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years,” Madison Hemings said.

 

Sally Hemings agreed…

 

Their father kept the promise he had made to Sally in Paris. “We all became free agreeably to the treaty entered into by our parents before we were born,” Madison Hemings said. It was one of the most important pacts of Jefferson’s life.

Edited December 3, 2012 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

Yes, her being in Paris with him is a strong indicator that he fathered children on her. He was also at Monticello at the appropriate times for the other children, and of course he did free her children when he died. But she traveled with him as his slave-servant.

 

If anything, though, taking slaves as concubines is even more reprehensible than the brutality of the fields and workshops.

Edited December 3, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Robin expands on his argument here:

 

http://coreyrobin.com/2012/12/02/jefferson...on-not-slavery/

[StrangeSox]

Warren to Senate Banking Committee!

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/bank...-senate-banking

[Y2HH]

Warren to Senate Banking Committee!

 

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/bank...-senate-banking

 

I find her oddball feigned anti-banking system is rigged bulls*** to be a bit funny, considering she has a net worth of over 14 million dollars, was making 500k a year in salary alone a year ago and has over 8M in stock/bond investments, planting her firmly into the 1% spectrum. The way she talks like she's one of us poor saps that the system is "rigged" against, is hilarious to me, when she is, in fact, one of them.