Jones Act, Waivers and Cabotage

Again, I believe we should require all ships that make port here, for buisness purposes, to be built here. That would eliminate offshore competition. Do you think China, or anybody else of consequence would say no, just to protect their shipping industry?


As far as farming goes my family is PAID by the U.S. government NOT to produce food. I suppose to keep the price up.

As far as the working poor go, screw them, if you are poor in this country at this time, it is because you are lazy, or exceedingly stupid.

 

Thanks for the info, Maddy, an informed and Christian attitude if ever I've heard one! This stupidity you mention is clearly everywhere. For example, whenever Walmart advertizes jobs thousands and thousands of applicants show up for just a few openings. By far most of them are clearly too stupid to actually GET these good jobs, hell, simple math should tell them that. And these are GOOD jobs, too. Wonderful pay, great benefits, great working conditions . . . MUCH better than McDonalds, or even Burger King. Not to mention that just because a guy knows how to build a boat or run a complex CNC milling machine, or even an injection molding machine, doesn't necessarily mean he can flip a burger! And of course, as you point out, obviously he is too stupid to flip burgers because more often than not they won't let him!

Let the stupid, lazy, ignorant masses of job applicants who can't actually get jobs because of all the other stupid, lazy, ignorant masses of really desperate job applicants trying to feed their ugly, stupid, flea-infested, snot-nosed brats. . . eat cake.

Besides, it isn't my problem --- I've got a job.

Bill

 

MaddyFish you are a fine upstanding example of your country's finest! If ever a foreign devil wishes to insult the US of A we'll just point him at you and he'll really have something to whinge about!

Most people would consider that I am insulting you, you won't your too stupid! But most of the others will - luckily most will realise that it's you and the likes of you I'm insulting, not the whole damn United States who generally are fairly decent types of guys, but I guess everybody needs to have a 'black sheep' to make the others look good! I'll give you your due, you do that with perfection

 

You sound like an arse, one with little life experence and little knowledge of the world and this country. The middle class is under attack and in danger. Did you ever bother to read about the new credit card reforms Congress passed? They have a bullseye on you and me buddy - don't ever forget it. Bankruptcy laws custom designed to make us all slaves of debt and the credit card companies laugh. They used to put people in jail for loan sharking - and the mob used to charge far less than the current CC companies do.

How about the national debt? Are we all lazy, or exceedingly stupid to allow it to happen? Do you want to even guess what your share is? More than you make in a year, probably more than you can take home in five years I bet.

The chart below is from 2001. Charts like this will be updated later this year, just take a wild guess which way the chart is going. Debt is a real burden on the working poor - oops, I meant middle class.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/creditcardsmarts/P74808.asp


The old; like fools, go out and get themselves sick.......no national healthcare........guess what happens? Charge it!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.whatisleft.org/


http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_13-2005_02_19.shtml


maddyfish, why are you so ignorant? Get an education, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

If this sounds like an attack on maddyfish, its not - it's tough love.

If this sounds political, sorry about that. When someone's hand in my pockets I tend to get distracted, if even for a moment.

End of rant.............waited over a year to get paid the last $5,000 from a client - of course that's all my own lazy fault - got the check today, all of it is going to the tax man.

 

funny thing; I was a comercial fisherman my father was a farmer ,,,,,,cattle, one day I woke up and there was no fish!so I called my dad .I said dad ( no fish, coming home to work the cows,)dad said ( cost more to feed cows ,than to sell them, but come home anyway .You can get a job at bubbas machine shop. so I worked for bubba 10 years , guess what ? Bubba learned to speak Chinese.he wont talk to me no more. So I had to take a job at a power co, .Its a good job .I love it , we only kill 9 men every month working on power lines/ this may be a stupid question ...am I a dumb *** or what?

 

At least by the fish's reakoning your not lazy, unless of course your poor that is, and then even if you work 18 hours a day your still lazy!

Interesting comment on credit cards and how the old use them to pay their medical bills, damn inconsiderate that getting sick when your old?

Crazy but I was under the immpression that it was fairly easy to get sick when your old, especially the guys who've done something for their country - you know a bit of bobing and weaving dodging bullets and the likes 'cos the polticians have f***ed up, again, and your country needs you to pull 'emm out of the poo! But there again those guys must be lazy too! Sh-e-e-e-t guys all those years we been getting it wrong!

"I don't suffer from insanity, I'm loving every minute of it!

 

(heh heh..time to stir the pot some more.)

Your point about east-asian shipyard workers being paid a meagre wage would be a valid arguement if the highly unionized German shipyards weren't kicking your asses too.

 

Aren't they semi-nationalized like the whole Airbus/Boeing comparision?

http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6010/6010_6.html

 

Good point, Thunderhead,

And the reason they can do that is the tools they use. Ten very skilled East Asians using files to make parts still can't come close to the productive capability of one semi-skilled German using a CNC mill, computer controlled water-jet cutter, and a robot welder. In the U.S., however, our masters have chosen to not upgrade machines (capitol investment) and keep the work here, but to upgrade the machines in their plants in East Asia instead --- and reap the short-term profit.

Of course, our "stupid" neighbor, the man who ran the now-antiquated CNC machine he used to use to multiply his productive capability beyond all others at any wage level, now has to "re-train" in some "anchored" job that can't be moved, like delivering pizzas. Or flipping burgers.

China is currently making a huge investment in Japanese machine tools (the best in the world, in my opinion). When they get them, they will have at their disposal: 1, A highly educated and motivated, massive work force. 2, The capitol investment in a massive inventory of modern machine tools. 3, A massive technological knowledge base, because they are doing all the modern high-tech manufacturing for the world now, even though our own citizens may own the plants. And 4, the means to ship their products worldwide.

Given the fact that our own governments are allowing this to happen, and even promoting it through mechanisms like NAFTA and CAFTA, and the further fact that many monied people living here will make massive short-term profits on this trend, it doesn't seem likely to stop any time soon.

BUT, as soon as China gets everything into place --- will ANYONE be able to compete with them?

Our wealthy capitolists will have their pile gathered around themselves and will probably invest quite a bit of it in their own personal fortresses. They will also buy laws to keep the rest of us firmly under their control.

The rest of us, all those "stupid" people Maddy mentioned, will keep having kids, will keep praying instead of doing, and will be worked to death, one way or another.

Welcome to our brave new world.

Bill

 

I think this falls into place with the article I posted. The Germans were closing old East German faclities with the cheap labor and the poor tooling, but keeping open more modern West Germany faclities.

 

I've often thought that one domestic shipyard, if it really got it's act together could absolutely KICK the CRAP out of every one else out there. I like CEOs like Lee Iacocca because he's an engineer, and he knows what it takes to run a manufacturing comany. I really think some of those Harvard suits who studied Law and got an MBA are more like pirates. They only know how to improve the bottom line by cutting costs.

 

Absolutely right on, Thunderhead,

They ARE pirates, interested only in their bottom line and their "golden parachute." And everyone else be damned. They seem to forget that it is their society and the people who went before them who built the foundation they are plundering, and that they are not building anything.

And you would like the Chinese leadership. Mostly scientists and engineers. Unlike the mostly ignorant, and in one case at least, drug-soaked fascist frat boy, we have as "leaders" here in the U.S.

It is exactly because our leaders couldn't screw in a light bulb without technical assistance that they don't understand the true foundation of wealth --- which is the people who produce it with the tools they use to produce it. The rest is just paper.

Bill

 

Of course we Brits (are there any left, those with sense have followed Bergalia (? meaning?) have solved that problem - we don't make anything anymore! We still have a 'viable economy' just don't make anything! We have such useful things as Security, Quality and Safety; but nobody actually makes anything! Conversely the powers still make a lot of money on the backs of the lazy nerdowell's theres something in this but I ain't quite got it yet! We DO have lots of service industries where cheap foreigners clean up and, i would say take our jobs but as nobody either understands or wants these jobs that's OK

As you just said Bill "it's all paper" but what paper! Personnally I ain't done anything useful for years, Ok I've watch a few people change things but as to actually doing anything useful - no! More use pushing paper, pays better to! I can do this (one of maddyfishes disciples? - f***ing lazy? or just well placed?)

 

There's an old Chinese curse that goes like this: "May you live in interesting times."

Looks to me like it's going to be very interesting indeed when the only country in the entire world that can actually manufacture anything competitively is in Asia. They will, of course, be very kind to us about it all --- just like we were to them. Our fine leadership brings to mind two old Navy descriptors: "Circle jerk" and "Cluster F**k." Yet, try and get anyone to do anything about it. Will they join in a demonstration? No! "What would the neighbors think!" Will they join a strike? Hell no, the union leaders mostly work for the corporations anyway, so there won't be any strike to join. Will they sign a petition? Maybe, but who cares?

After all, that nice comfortable sand is so nice and pleasing for the head.

Very interesting times.

Bill

 

Wait, wait, wait, wait.....Jimmy Carter wasn't a lawyer! He was (wait for it) an ....ENGINEER. On paper he looks like a hard-working, uninteresting bureaucrat, who people quickly forgot. One term.....Oh, and one of those Nobel Peace Prize thingees.

Now, as I understand it, the US President doesn't actually author legislation, or even make policy. From what I've been told, he's just has the last word on what goes and what doesn't. Am I wrong here? Someone educate me (I learned most of my US history from Bugs Bunny).

Let's get back to this cabbotage thing. One of the most defensible aspects of the existing cabbotage laws is the juristiction of US labour laws, occupational health and safety regs, etc... being manditory to all ships earning profit between US ports. Also there is the issue of construction standards of foreign vessels. Fair enough, but they bundled a bunch of other craapp along with it! Many countries like Canada, Norway, Germany, France, the UK, Australia, blah blah blah, have equivalent or better standards for construction and have some pretty decent labour laws to boot. There should be some kind of teaty for that. Do you guys realize that cruise ships travelling from Hawaii to San Diego have to stop in Mexico along the way because the US can't make a cruise ship worth a damn?

Let's say for example that Maddyfish gets his way and that no kind of sea-bourne trade can happen with the US without a US built ship. First of all, aircraft carry a lot of consumer goods these days, and there are no such laws governing air-transport, but that's another matter. The price of all imported goods goes up 30% or so.

This is then good for domestic manufacturers because their prices are suddenly more competetive. Well they would be, except that importers in Canada and Mexico can bring goods in without those laws, and ship them across the border just as cheaply. Then the duties paid are paid to Canada and Mexico, not the US, and cross the border.

The Canadians and the Mexicans then also collect fees associated with using their ports and US ports are hurt even more. So then Shipyard and port workers lose their jobs and because they are suddenly "lazy and stupid" have to stand in line with the other thousand people waiting for a job at WAL-MART, so they can afford to buy inexpensive (but now slightly more expensive) goods to meet their basic (but now more pressing) needs for food clothing shelter and hygene.

Then the US decides that they have to tear up the NAFTA agreement (even though they've been ignoring it for years already). Then they impose tarrifs against Canadian and Mexican products to shore up the whole situation. But now things get really expensive for Unemployed Lloyd from the dockyard. But now some american firms have to hire a few more people to meet the rising demand for domestic products.

But the labour pool is huge and the jobs are still few, and sales aren't good because everyone is poor and goods are now expensive. Minimum wage is now the order of the day, and unless intrest rates start dropping, DE-flation starts to set in (because people won't be able to afford goods unless they can borrow the money or the price comes down.)

Why is DE-flation bad? Heck! the purchasing power of a dollar is then going up! Problem is that if you have to sell your goods for less than what is costs to make them, you go out of business and everyone who works for you is then unemployed. So let's say intrest rates go down (more than now).

In that case, money starts to become "asswipe" and the US then has a currency chrisis, like they had in Germany before the Nazis took over. The US Dollar then plummets on the international exchange and trading is halted. Then the US goes to the IMF for a bail-out. But the IMF doesn't have enought money because the US hasn't been meeting it's obligation to the IMF for decades. The Arabs get allarmed and demad payment on the Hundreds of Billions of dollars of US Debt that they are financing, and the US says ,"Uh, NO!"

Then everyone who holds any US debt panics and a worldwide economic chrisis gets set off. The US then tries to invade what by then would be a stable, self sufficient, debt-free Canada. But unpaid soldiers are in no mood to fight and start defecting in droves, and Mexico is threatening the southern border.

Mayhem ensues. A civil war lights up inside the US. Warlords arise, leading different factions against eachother as the government starts to collapse, and the world sits back watching the slaughter helplessly. Nato springs into action to try to secure the nuclear arsenal, but before it can happen someone steals a bomb.

Interesting times, yes, interesting times....