Hilary's Emails

[drumminj]

Re: Hilary's Emails

The only way your vision could happen is if the electorate said, "We're sending you to Washington to do two things: Institute strict term limits, and eliminate all financial contributions to political campaigns, making every Federal election 100% taxpayer funded, both to begin immediately. You have 30 days in which to do these two things. If you haven't completed your task in 30 days, on the 31st day you and your families will be publically executed."

This is exactly what Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY.US campaign is all about. If you've not read his book, it does paint a picture of hope that this can happen. Like most here I've pretty much been disabused of the notion that politicians may one day act in the best interest of the country/its constituents, but it's still worth supporting and spreading the word!

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

This is exactly what Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY.US campaign is all about. If you've not read his book, it does paint a picture of hope that this can happen. Like most here I've pretty much been disabused of the notion that politicians may one day act in the best interest of the country/its constituents, but it's still worth supporting and spreading the word!

Lessig is an interesting dude, for sure, but I have my doubts that even electing representatives that are in favor campaign finance reform and term limits can achieve anything. There's too large of a corrupt majority there controlling the committees, etc...

A Constitutional Convention might be the only peaceful way left at this point. The problem with a Constitutional Convention though is it's like handing over a signed, blank check. Once it's convened, it can veer into any direction. You don't know what Constitution you'll end up with at the end.

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

They say to "follow the money". well we know where most of the money is going:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8559c84e-d...#axzz3WYQieCms

This is another example why we need to get the money out of politics.

Look at how many fundraising trips Obama has had during his Presidency. Both parties do it but Obama has been one of the superstars of crony politics.

[LazyBoy]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Civil unrest is rising around the world, but except for pockets like Fergusen it's quiet here. Back in the Vietnam era we had massive demonstrations. Now? The public is sleepwalking. It's as if our country is drugged. Oh, wait. It is!

I saw a clip today of people on the street being asked who Edward Snowden is. Nobody knew. Ferguson made better TV news highlights, but I still wonder how many non-African Americans would know what's happened there. I'm sure a higher percentage would know the details of whatever reality TV show is big now.

The US populace is hugely uninformed, very forgetful and generally apathetic until something affects them directly.

The ability to borrow will keep people sleepwalking calmly until maximum national asset extraction is accomplished. Big Debt is the way to take the most from everyone before anyone wakes up.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

The US populace is hugely uninformed, very forgetful and generally apathetic until something affects them directly.

The ability to borrow will keep people sleepwalking calmly until maximum national asset extraction is accomplished. Big Debt is the way to take the most from everyone before anyone wakes up.

Nailed it.

[Master Shake]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I saw a clip today of people on the street being asked who Edward Snowden is. Nobody knew. Ferguson made better TV news highlights, but I still wonder how many non-African Americans would know what's happened there. I'm sure a higher percentage would know the details of whatever reality TV show is big now.

The US populace is hugely uninformed, very forgetful and generally apathetic until something affects them directly.

The ability to borrow will keep people sleepwalking calmly until maximum national asset extraction is accomplished. Big Debt is the way to take the most from everyone before anyone wakes up.

I know what happened there. A thug attacked a police officer and got shot dead. Then, the racial arsonists took over and concocted a Big Lie about Hands Up, Don't Shoot and the media amplified that lie, encouraged by the this vile administration.

[LazyBoy]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I know what happened there. A thug attacked a police officer and got shot dead. Then, the racial arsonists took over and concocted a Big Lie about Hands Up, Don't Shoot and the media amplified that lie, encouraged by the this vile administration.

Well, we were talking about months of unrest in contrast to an otherwise quiet nation. But clearly it's more important that we establish a flashpoint so we can blame a "vile administration".

Yes, there is a definite double standard.

I, too, think that bugging an entire nation is worse than bugging two buildings. Does pinning it on Team Blue make it more bearable? Will voting in Team Red make it stop?


Go Red!! Go Blue!!

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

As I've said, we need to replace both.

We also need an independent press. Currently the left and right wings of the media are propaganda arms of each respective party.

[Raz]

Re: Hilary's Emails

I know what happened there. A thug attacked a police officer and got shot dead. Then, the racial arsonists took over and concocted a Big Lie about Hands Up, Don't Shoot and the media amplified that lie, encouraged by the this vile administration.

And the Black "Leadership" has done a fine job of avoiding ANY criticism directed against ANY black American for Any reason (unless they happen to be conservative, which of course morphs them into an "Oreo").

Here's another example of the ongoing cultural rot...

Mom angry at man who shot her son after teen robbed a series of stores



Can you believe this? A Mobile, Ala. black mother is irate that some man shot her son after the wayward boy robbed a series of convenience stores with a gun in the Mobile, Ala. area.

Adric White, 18, has five separate robbery charges hanging over his head, but it was the latest that put that dangerous string to a halt. White was holding up a Family Dollar when a legally-armed man just so happened to pull up as the robbery was taking place.


The Good Samaritan, who requested he not be identified, told FOX10 News he was shopping at the Family Dollar on Stanton Road when he noticed a masked gunman leading one of the employees to the front of the store.
“He had the gun to his head. He had him on his knees,” said the man. “I drew my gun on him and I said ‘Hey don’t move.’ At that point he swung around and before he had a chance to aim the gun at me I fired. I didn’t want to shoot him.”


The Good Samaritan added that he wouldn’t have done anything differently. He said he didn’t know how it would have played out if he had not shot the suspect. White could have “fired a shot outside,” had he remained neutral. But “my daughter was outside.”


White, who was shot five times, was transported to USA Medical Center, where he remains in police custody.


Relatives of Adric White, 18, believe the Good Samaritan who opened fire should have “just left the store.”


“If his (the customer) life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him – what gives him the right to think that it’s okay to just shoot someone?” said the mother. “You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever.”


FOX10 had interviewed White’s parents but they later called and demanded the video not be aired.
What is so bodacious about this is the fact that White was out on bond for robbing The Original Oyster House at gunpoint a little more than a month before the Family Dollar robbery.


Another relative of White was mum about the accusations.


“We don’t know. Like I said, we don’t know anything. We only know what we’ve been hearing second hand through the news. I would not like to comment because I don’t know,” she said.


Records show the Baldwin County District Attorney’s Office has now filed to have White’s original bond revoked.
Mobile Police have also arrested 19-year-old Tavoris Moss as an accomplice to the Family Dollar robbery.

http://rollingout.com/shame-on-you/m...series-stores/

[dcarrigg]

Re: Hilary's Emails

del

[lektrode]

Re: Hilary's Emails

del

awww COME ON, dc - your .02 on stuff like this tends to be the only 'neutral' POV we get around here

LETS HAVE IT, if you would sir, please.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Hilary's Emails

awww COME ON, dc - your .02 on stuff like this tends to be the only 'neutral' POV we get around here

LETS HAVE IT, if you would sir, please.

I just went on some long screed.

Began by thinking of economy like a Newtonian problem.

Action -> Reaction

1. Change trade rules to make hiring American manufacturing workers forever uncompetitive in the US.
2. Jobs and factories move.
3. People need to pay rent, put food on the table, and have health and dental etc.
4. No more middle class jobs. So middle class has to go somewhere
5. They go to work as administrators in meds and eds sector.




So we sit around asking "why are there so many administrators?" and "why are healthcare and education so expensive?"

Well, isn't it obvious? People need to make a living. They find a way somehow. Little actions every day expand the administrative sector. Mid-level employees with hiring power expand it. People help their friends and neighbors. People need jobs. Something has got to give. You can't give every job to China and expect people to just sit home and starve.

Of course, there's more money than ever before. Charliebrown talking about the under and unemployed said that "people have no money to pay them." But of course there's money to pay them. More than enough, in fact. But why do it? Google could undoubtably make more money if it fired 90% of its staff. Mostly they're messing around doing unprofitable pet projects. They had far fewer people and better margin not too many years ago. They'd crank revenue by 25% year over year. Now they employ 5 times the people to grow revenue 9%. They're experiencing a serious reduction in revenue/employee. And that's just an example. Looks to me like this phenomenon is tech-industry wide.

Meanwhile, labor's share of total income is declining worldwide. Yet we set tax rates to prefer capital to labor. It's easier to make return off teching up the finance operations than it is by doing anything productive, and it's tax preferred. Even better, you can hoard piles and piles of cash and make a better consistent return gambling or investing overseas than actually doing anything. Just turn corporations into endowments. Beautiful, brand new cities and subways pop up all along the silk road from Mecca to Astana to Chongqing to Shanghai. Capital is not patriotic. It only cares about return. And the best return isn't here. Google's as much Harvard as GM. So they'll go off and build their new campuses.

Why don't people get hired? Because they don't need people working to make return. But people need jobs or they go homeless and hungry. So we make work for ourselves. Fill out forms, dot I's, cross T's, make websites that say the same thing 1,000 other sites do, collect data, display it to argue some political point or another, start a competing non-profit, beg for cash from the higher-ups holding it all, fundraise, fundraise, fundraise: you get the idea.

So ask yourself, how can a city like San Francisco, with some of the highest real estate prices in the world and a huge tech boom be charging people $2,000/mo for a crap 100 year old tiny apartment and have a century-old sewer system that's falling apart and leaking raw sewage everywhere, while they can build entire cities and subways and highways and bridges and buildings bigger than anything we have here whole-cloth in Asia? And with all the money we have, we can't get a sewer system right in the richest places here? Meanwhile, down the road, brand new futuristic shiny tech campuses built by famous architects with first class amenities and robot cars and drones. It's the 21st century equivalent of taking a short trip from fishing docks to Newport.

The disconnect -- and I don't think it has sunk in for most people yet -- is that there is no sense of nationalism whatsoever left among America's elite. Not any more. They do not care. They would rather do their own thing. They're not interested in making the city they live in a better place to live. They're interested in building a walled off compound and squirreling trillions away offshore and making return in the third world. They've disconnected in a major way from the rest of us. Dubai is more real than Racine. Bangalore is more real than Poughkeepsie. Davos is more real than Jackson. Hvar is more real than Tucson. And odds are you've never even heard of Hvar.

The personal networks are changing. Scoop kids up at 18 and fly them directly to everywhere they want to go. No more highways and byways. No connection at all to the rest of the place. More likely to hear about an investment opportunity in Bora Bora than in Billings. Because you'd never go to Billings. Hell, they're more likely to throw money at Guangzhou than Staten Island, even when they can see it from their offices. Boy the way Glenn Miller played songs that made the Hit Parade...

The money's there. And it's being invested. It's just a matter of where. Who's in the network? What do they value? Would they rather dodge taxes and plunge it into the Chinese markets? Why not? They're up 75% these last few months. Easy money. And the darkest truth is that a big reason why they don't want to do similar things here is democracy. You can't just take an American's land to throw an infrastructure project up. You have to compensate them. You can't just make Americans live in factory dorms and work 120 hours per week for $2 per hour any more. They get a say. So the money flows to authoritarian regimes where that doesn't matter and return comes easier. But hey, who cares about UAE human rights abuses when you're at your 7-star hotel in Dubai checking out the world's tallest building and artificial islands shaped like palm trees? We're getting real money now. Meanwhile, the BRICies are getting ICkies. But I could have told you that long ago. All you have to do is look at where Ivy League kids go on spring break or semesters abroad or home for the summer. It's rarely Moscow and Rio...In fact, every one of them has a huge interdisciplinary India and China studies center, but not an equivalent Russian or Brazilian program. Forget every other prediction you know, and take a look at what's happening in the top schools. That's where the future comes from:




And it's all pretty simple. People need jobs to do something. The money's there. But the money wants an easy return and the people holding it don't care about borders. The people in charge know more about rail transit in China than dairy farming in Upstate NY. And they're not interested in learning more either. The networks that control the money and the investments in this world waived bye-bye to middle America. It's not very interesting. So they don't invest in the middle class. But the middle class still has one or two dull old teeth left. So they push out the administrative sectors on both the public and private side to keep from sinking. But they're not part of the big game. Not anymore.

Even the party system threw off the local pols 30-40 years ago. Now it's all about cutting a check to an ad firm to do media buys. They don't even have to convince the party rank-and-file to nominate them at the convention by promising to build a road. They just play a bunch of adds about "liberty" "hope" "values" "freedom" or some other such buzzword with smiling kids and waving flags on sunny days and hope for the best. Meanwhile, they spend the bulk of their real time on Park Ave and Beacon Hill and in Mountain View begging the real players to fund them - or at least begging them not to fund ads against them.

So of course it's easy to get fed up with it all. I'm beginning to think that the best long term hope for the American middle class is a program that dumps patrician kids in with the native plebs for a semester or two. The networks need to overlap. But right now they're just pulling apart. And only places rich kids are interested in have a shot in an increasingly unequal future where investment decisions are made by an increasingly smaller subset of the population. There's no other way around it. The old US has to keep taxes somewhat up to keep the post-war order going. The military machine must go on, or the house of cards collapses. You can cut them to the absolute bone, eliminate minimum wage, and cut workers' salaries across the board in the US. Real estate prices and rents alone will ensure that American workers will never, ever outcompete third world workers for ROI. It's not possible.

The only chance is to get them interested in us again - to want to spill some of that capital on Bangor or Winchester or Stockton - to feel a real connection to them the way they feel connected to Doha today. And that's going to be hard. Because these places are not going to have luxury resorts. So you need to make it interesting in another way. Make it cool to slum it - compare it to camping - who knows?

Because I'm pretty certain the reality is worse that everyone thinks. It's not that people aren't hiring because they hate middle America. It's not that they're not hiring because it's any less competitive than it ever was. The reality, I think, is that they're not hiring because they just don't think of it.

It simply doesn't come to mind. Middle America is not part of their lives.

And if you're not on the radar screen of the people who control the wealth, you're not getting the investment. That means you're going to have outdated, and undeveloped infrastructures and workforces. Which means you'll be even less competitive moving forward.

I ate a (business) dinner last night in a joint that charges $50 just to sit at a table before you even order the food. A cover charge for no entertainment. The point was to keep people out, not get them in. Half the people I ate with don't have cars. They just jetset and take trains up and down Bos-Wash, and grab cabs when necessary - never straying far from downtowns and train stations. Most keep 4 or 5 homes - a condo near every train station, and one "real" home on a decent chunk of land somewhere the never spend enough time in. One was leaving for New York the next morning. Another, to Paris in two days. And so on and so forth. Every day is like living in a hotel. Nowhere is permanent, even though you own a lot of real estate. Just have other people deal with it, and work on laptops and tablets and fly around everywhere talking and signing. And these were nowhere close to the real wealthy people.

It's just a completely different life. Much more different than I think people appreciate. And if you look census-tract by census-tract, you'll see that unemployment is almost nonexistent wherever they go, but often very high just 5 miles away. It makes me guess that the unemployment question is really the question of whether that gap can be bridged.

[LazyBoy]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Great stuff, dc. You should share this in a wider venue. Guest blog it somewhere or something.

[vt]

Re: Hilary's Emails

DC, yes we had a loss of jobs to outsourcing, but that is changing now. Here are examples of what has been happening in the last couple of years. It will accelerate soon.


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/.../America's new manufacturing revolution:


http://aceee.org/blog/2014/07/smart-...olution-going-


http://www.forbes.com/video/3418530441001/


Onshoring:

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/urban-onshoring/

and this:


Onshoring, The Next American Apparel Revolution?

The local option needs to be automated enough to be efficient and price competitive versus other options from other places.By Christopher Bernat, Chief Revenue Officer, Vapor Apparel

Many buyers looking for a way to bring things back to the US need the same capabilities that they had offshore.

Onshoring. Noun or verb? Ask experts on the topic and you will hear both answers. Regardless, onshoring is bringing manufacturing of goods back from low cost-of-labor countries to the United States. A steadily growing trend, onshoring is spurred by a combination of factors. To understand and benefit from it, you need to have a grasp on all the different contributing causes and to stay up-to-date on these causes as they change and evolve. A large-scale apparel operation is not a simple business, but a challenging environment that can be maximized for profit.


Where?

They say the best place to make something is in the market in which you sell, but there is a caveat. The local option needs to be automated enough to be efficient and price competitive versus other options from other places.


This onshoring trend started about 20 years ago in some industries. Consider the car industry. In 1994, BMW launched a manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina for their X3 and X5 SUVs. The brand knew that the SUV was going to have a higher level of sales in the United States over Europe. The size of the market and the national affinity for larger cars made it obvious. Manufacturing the vehicles in the United States bore many cost benefits versus making them in Germany.


According to a recent study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), more than a third of US-based manufacturing executives at companies with more than $1 billion in sales are planning to bring production back to the US from China. In addition, it found that, by 2015, the US would have a cost advantage of five to 25 percent over manufacturing goods exported when compared to countries such as Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.


Labor costs in China have skyrocketed, shooting up 500 percent since 2000, and are expected to continue to climb an average of 18 percent each year. Added to that is the price of natural gas, which has fallen so far in the US, that gas in Asia now costs four times as much.


Other compelling reasons behind onshoring include higher US worker productivity, more flexible unions, the lack of intellectual property (IP) protection in China, less supply chain disruptions, and the desire of companies to be closer to their customers. According to the BCG study, the companies involved cited top factors driving future decisions on production locations that include: Labor costs (57 percent), product quality (41 percent), ease of doing business (29 percent), and proximity to customers (28 percent).


How can you grow your business as a result of this trend?

So what does this mean for the American apparel decorator? Are we about to witness all of the large brands bringing production back to the United States? Probably not. Fast fashion retailers like H&M and Zara will likely never manufacture anything in the US, unless to simply say they did.


But there are American apparel manufacturers and decorators who are already bringing business back, and even more who will be able to gain ground with this trend. Your business model and how you position yourself as the trend continues to build momentum will have a huge impact on your opportunity to gain customers.
One of the largest factors in the success of onshoring is the demand for “short-run” production, which is driven in part by the need for fill-in stock and the demand for limited edition designs. The other factor driving much of the opportunity is customization. As customization continues to grow, so does the market opening to bring more things back to the US for production.


Product Mix & Expertise

What you do and what makes your operation unique will have a big impact on how you maximize the onshoring trend. Large-scale production houses can pull customers back to the US if they maximize the opportunity to provide high-level customer service. Many buyers looking for a way to bring things back to the US need the same capabilities that they had offshore. Sometimes that means capital investment in secondary platforms, but still more than that is needed to justify the slight increase in costs. Quicker turnaround times, Web-based ordering systems and special decorating applications can all lead customers back onshore. You need to be able to offer the same output as the foreign competitors.

Customer Base

There are two types of customers: Those who like value and a good price, and those who care about price, price and price. More often than not, the trend will lean toward one or the other. Sure, you have both types of customers, but one group probably dominates the other. Both types of customers will be affected by this trend, but at different times. Automation may interest customers seeking value-added services. Customers who are totally price conscious are more likely to be driven by changes in price due to currency value.


Supply Chain
Where you buy materials will also impact your competitiveness. In the last 24 months, several free trade agreements have taken effect — Colombia, Panama and South Korea among them. This has removed duty on most products, and created a more competitive environment for Asian goods. For domestic apparel manufacturers, some of these countries also offer a faster turnaround time when compared to that from Asian countries. Having a weekly airfreight come out of South America is much more nimble than, say, a 40-inch container out of Asia. A more deft supply chain means lower capital risk for your customers.


Currency

As we speak, a currency war is raging. Japan appeared in the news recently, reporting a dramatic decline in the value of the Yen. Similarly, much information suggests that the Chinese Yuan is undervalued against the dollar by as much as 40 percent.


As the global recession took hold, the US quickly made a move to devalue the dollar as part of a strategy to reinvigorate the economy. Now, the US Dollar is slowly increasing in value against other currencies. If the US continues to grow and improve its economic performance versus other countries, the value of the dollar will continue to increase. When compared against the US dollar, currency values in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia are declining, making them more competitive versus Asian goods that also carry a duty.


Technology & Automation

The more you automate, the lower your labor costs per item. The lower your labor costs as a total of your cost structure, the better chance you have competing against countries where cost of labor is low. One thing that buyers continue to be frustrated by is the lack of cohesive communication with offshore suppliers. Making yourself “easy to do business with” is where automation can be the winning ticket. The importance of information technology is only increasing in the garment business. Getting ahead of the curve can mean a major investment. But it can also save employee time, by 40, 50 or even 60 percent. This time can be used to find more revenue or can be consolidated to reduce costs further.


Words to Action

Everyone reading this article has a different set of conditions to consider. No two businesses are the same. But taking action to move your business forward is essential for all of us to succeed. Information and trends are only powerful if they cause thoughtful action. As you move forward, keep tabs on the areas mentioned. You may find more and more large customers listening.


If you can position your business to maximize a shorter supply chain, mass customized output and digital print technologies — you are poised to take full advantage of this moment in the marketplace. Automation is a huge part of how this type of business becomes profitable. With digital files come the need for an information system that is easy to access and eliminates opportunities for error.


Christopher Bernat is chief revenue officer at Vapor Apparel, and an SGIA Board Member. He focuses on sublimation and domestic cut and sew programs.

[shiny!]

Re: Hilary's Emails

Beautiful, dcarrigg. Agree with LazyBoy: This piece definitely needs to be posted in a wider venue!