Typically, I see eye to eye with Steve Langford on his hot button remarks and a recent hot button about Gambling laws in Kentucky is no different.
I agree with Steve that Kentucky needs casinos.
Having lived in Wisconsin for so long, I’ve seen what casinos can do for an economy when they are run responsibly.
Now I DO take issue with Kentucky’s government running gamming laws in this state (because they are incompetent by comparison) BUT for how far gone the economy is here and for how poorly both industry AND agriculture are treated in this state, there just isn’t any other choice for Kentucky but to take on casinos to save it’s public works and standard of living.

I can get free healthcare in Wisconsin. Working two or three months out of the year in Canada and I have full healthcare provided there as well. It is tricky but it is there, available and for how good it works, I gladly take the flights and busses to keep myself healthy.
Here in Kentucky, there is a friend of mine who has been out of work for four MONTHS because of a simple stomach hernia.
That’s maybe two weeks of treatment and recovery AT MOST and just because he has no insurance and this state can’t maintain some kind of available public healthcare, he and his family suffer and lose everything.
When he could work, it was 40 hours a week hard labor at $8 an hour and they still couldn’t afford health insurance.
The policy his employer had offered read like a tentative death sentence and he couldn’t even afford it.

This is insanity.
Now, Just HOW MANY other people in this state and other states like it in America, are suffering and dying while forming yet another economic sink hole for the rest of us?
MILLIONS!
This is a simple fix. You keep people healthy and THEY CAN WORK.
Forget that they don’t make anything, at least they can work and PAY TAXES.
We have plenty of illegal aliens working for less then minimum wage but THEY DON’T PAY TAXES.

Now America’s top investment firms are pointing out how weak our market center is becoming while they start investment plans in OTHER market centers like China.
Communist CHINA!

Now, instead of killing off millions of people or throwing them in prison, why don’t get them working?
I’m sick of America having the highest prison population in the world and seeing good friends and family die of common or easily curable ailments.
Do we want to turn this country into a leper colony?
Do we really want China to have a better economy then ours?

I don't know alot about public health care in Wisconsin, but I do have friends in England (where they have public health care) and they are not impressed. They pay 16% sales tax and often wait months to see a doctor.
I strongly suspect that there are far more healthy people who CHOOSE to not work than there are unhealthy who cannot find suitable work. Personally, I don't know anyone who is so unhealthy that they cannot work at McDonald's. I am sure there are some out there, but again, we have made it far easier for people to live off the tax payers than to get a job. Harsh? Perhaps, but having finally completed my income taxes for the year (after working a 11 hr day), I am a little bitter.

quote:

Originally posted by Justin La Plante:


Now, instead of killing off millions of people or throwing them in prison, why don’t get them working?
I’m sick of America having the highest prison population in the world and seeing good friends and family die of common or easily curable ailments.
Do we want to turn this country into a leper colony?
Do we really want China to have a better economy then ours?

First off, I enjoyed finally reading a post from you where you weren't insulting people.

I'm a bit curious what you think the answer to the prison population could be. You said, "Instead of killing off millions of people or throwing them in prison, why don't get them working?"

Not sure who we're killing off, but if we get the prisoners working, wouldn't that further decrease the number of jobs available to the labor market?

I think there's a lot of things that could help turn the job situation around here, but it doesn't include making prisoners do it. For starters, what happened to the push and constant reminder for americans to "Buy American"? Opening up China for trade is just a sign of the times: America wants cheap.

As a society, I think most americans have painted themselves into a debt corner where spending a bit more for US made products just isn't feasible. Americans choose cheap over domestic product; this creates a need to send jobs overseas; this yields fewer good paying jobs; this perpetuates the need for cheaper goods. And the cycle continues.

So who is to blame ultimately? I too have friends that live on the brink of bankruptcy, but they won't do anything to change. Sacrifice isn't in their vocabulary, so they continue to spend what they don't have. And it seems the times I hear the most complaints is when I'm standing in line at Thornton's getting my coffee. I can't tell u the number of times I hear someone complaining about the price of gas and how difficult is to "make it".... yet they've also just bought $30 in cigarettes and $25 in scratch-offs.

Before we blame the companies, I think we need to take a tough look at ourselves. The corporate world responds to customer wants, and American consumers repeatedly support foreign made products.

Well look what we have gotten from trade with China.
Pet food that kills our pets, toys with poison paint and metals and there are still plenty of “aqua-dots” on the illicit drug market.
They own 80% of our national debt. While Bush sent trade negotiators to lower tariffs and restrictions against China, I still can’t send one package of media content without significant processing fees and a complete strip down with possible rejection for one package of CDs or T-shirts to china.
Our state department just took China off the human rights violators list yet they still use prisoners as slave labor, random kidnappings and murders are still rampant and they still execute prisoners for non-violent crimes like heroin trade.
That is just bad business.
China has designs on development and they still maintain that there are “other” countries that they have to “emancipate” from their current governments.
It is just a matter of time and build up before they start another push.
Like when Regan thought it would be a cool idea to arm all those rebels in Afghanistan. We certainly felt the push from that one come 9/11.
There is no foresight in this type of diplomacy and the worst part about it is that it’s effects don’t just resonate to later generations. It hits home now.
I hate to say it but the “regonomics” mentality is what is to blame for our economic problems.
Wal Mart benefits the most from product trade with China.
WELL, everywhere Wal mart goes, small businesses evaporate almost over night.
That destroys small business and working class development in rural areas.
Not everyone can work at Wal Mart either.
So you have a few industries and small commercial fronts employing what is left and those small businesses liquidate into bankruptcy or they try to barrow and co-op to weather into a new dynamic.
Which only ends up costing us ALL more because redevelopment like that never works for more then 5%.
So all that barrowing gets thrown into more bankruptcies and abandonment after consolidation.
Eventually that extends to local industries that can now pay their employees less because there are fewer jobs locally.
With fewer small businesses, you also have more influx of outsourcing and foreign investment.
Well outsourcing with industry is never cost effective inside the US so you get wood from Canada and base textiles from Asia.
Metals are getting cheaper from China and Bush was actually promoting more metals trade in Asian markets.
Well the strongest in Asia are the communists and that psycho Putin so pretty soon we are going to get a huge resource flush from china and Russia in metals because Bush can’t put on the back bone to deal with them in OUR interest as apposed to his own.

I think the root of this problem is that at the dawn of the 20th century, the republicans and democrats tried to trade places because of all the resentment from previous generations of political conflict over things like federalization and states rights.
But the old republicans were not skilled in economy and the old democrats were not skilled in rural interests or desegregation.
So what we got from that transition were two mutant strains of each political party.
The new republicans adopting the worst aspects of both while the new Democrats became everything the republicans were supposed to be only much lazier.

The best model for economic Development in America is New York.
An economy where democracy and local trade built a development engine unlike any other in the world.
Even today, there are plenty of small businesses and local inter trade markets.
Although everything is shrinking around them.
You can’t maintain something like that without a TRUE sense of free trade in the interest of the country itself.
Because free trade does work. Just not the way Bush and the WTO try to sell it.


The majority of American prisoners are not violent offenders. These are people who were raised in ghettos and areas where education and resources are just not available.
Throw any one of them an honest job, even at minimum wage and they change course.
Most people don’t realize that but it does work.

In Holland, they don’t prosecute most non-violent crimes and they recover a huge economic surplus because of it. They don’t suffer heightened levels of crime or poverty because of it either.
We illegalized several substances but the one that has caused more illegal activity through out history as a result of it’s use, we have legalized.
Go figure.

These are simple fixes and other countries benefit from them while ours does not.
We have to be more tolerant and start learning from our mistakes as apposed to repeating them.

Funny, you fault both Reagan and Bush for our situation with China, yet fail to even mention Clinton. Your bias is unrelenting. And now Reagan is to blame for 9/11 even tho it was during Clinton's years that... oh forget it. You are unbelievable.

And offering criminals minimum wage jobs isn't going to make them honest. Nobody can live on minimum wage.

While I hate to see our jobs go overseas, we really have nobody to blame but ourselves. When I look around my house, how many items can I identify which will have the "Made in USA" logo? The fact I don't even know without looking probably means the majority is going to be imported. I bet I'm not in the minority on that point.