Dear Senator John Goff

Two Words

Freaking fantastic. 5

venting

We have a program to help the poor. It is called prison. Although true it is not funny. I lived out of my car for many months at a time. But st least I had a car. It so hard to get started when you have nothing. I appreciate your need vent. You do have one resource and that is your developed writing ability from your work ethic. It has got to be worth something to someone. Blogs and the like.Good Luck

I'm sure you feel better after writing this, but a number of issues could be debated as to their accuracy and in fact often are in our country. For instance, companies mfg goods, or providing services in foreign countries and keeping the money their due to tax advantages. Why not, would you rather they spun off the business, sold it to someone in that country and thereby became a smaller company. Maybe eventually they would become less efficient, smaller and go broke and put more people out of work here?

I always get a bit of a laugh about mention of all the good American jobs leaving the good ole USA and moving overseas. There is a simple reason for that, and basically it is our own fault. Every time I see someone driving a Toyota, Honda, or (insert name here) and they tell me it was "made in the USA" I am reminded that most are "assembled here" from varying percentages of imported parts. Most companies sent jobs overseas not because they hate the country, but because "WE" were buying less expensive products made with cheaper labor. Their choice often was to compete, or go out of business because "WE" were no longer buying what they made because it was too expensive. Unfortunately that is a slippery slope and as our buying power as middle class declines, the opportunity of shopping at Walmart becomes ever more attractive as a means of economic survival. Once upon a time their was a great sage named Pogo. He said "we have met the enemy and it is us", words of wisdom I have never forgotten.

It is easy to vilify the evil corporations and our current Grand Potentate has perfected the art of class warfare to the point that you may never find a job until the Government employs more than fifty percent of the population. At that point they may as well change the name of our country to the United States of Europe, or something like that because what we were will no longer exist.

Don't get the impression that I did not like your writing, as usual it was interesting to read and assuming that part or all of it is true, or that you know some people in those dire straits it was enlightening and sad. I don't think anyone is unaware of the jobless, which when reported as a statistic is usually lied about to make it less traumatic. A lot depends on where you live as to how much of an impact it has on your daily life, because if you don't see those people they slip out of mind as we go about our daily lives. That doesn't mean they don't exist, just that it makes it easier to not think about it.

No doubt some may take issue with my response, but when offering thoughts on a public forum, particularly political thoughts, alternative views on the subjects are invited.

I liked that you changed his name to Senator Jack Goff.

US companies are greedy.

Illustrated by thinking 100% markup is normal. The 'richest company in the world' is exactly that because it makes everything with cheap foreign labour but charges top-of-the-range prices.

for the.gop`er

honda,toyota and nissan's cars on average have 80% of their parts made in the usa (enough for them to be considered domestic cars except for the fact that they are foreign based companies) while many so called american cars are made in mexico of mostly foreign sourced parts.

Outsourcing happened because stock analysts love cheap labor abd ceo's and executives make their 20 million dollar pay days on stock price.More importantly wal mart as the biggest retailer,with their mania for lowest prices,forced companies to go overseas because wmart wanted to sace 50c on a tape measure.What wal mart abd the harvard business school and the gop forgot is who will buy the stuff..cho yun in china making 50c an hour can't buy an iphone (that has labor costs of 30 bucks on something that sells for 650 bucks to the phone company and end users).

We are told that us workers 'want too much' ,are greedy,but then when you criticize ceo's who cut 10000 jobs or sends them to china while collectibg 20 million in compensation that is class warfare.And yes things can be done despite all the hoo ha about chinas econony they dont have a big domestic economy and without the us would be.lost.If companies want to sell here then resuire a certain prrcent has to be made here.The foreign car companies know that,they could be making cars in china a coolie wages but they know it would be economic suicide to do so,for example,suddenly mitch.mcconnel would be talking tariffs and penalties and restriictions on selling the cars here.And despite the lies from conservatives the primary reason jobs go overseas is because. they are paying workers 1920's salaries in 2012,including no benefit,and that makes for,for example,a 500 buck margin on each iphone apple sells at 650 ( the real price,what you pay has the difference paid for by the phone carrier)

Alternatives ?

I seem to hear a lot of same-old, same-old here. I consider myself a Libertarian. Our tax laws are draconian and discourage investment and exports. Never have we had a President who has been so completely non vetted. I am reminded of the Manchurian Candidate. What do you expect from our "Savior in Chief" and his puppet masters who are all students of Sol Alinsky. Do read "Rules for Radicals" as Obama's teleprompter writers use it as a bible.
Things will get worse in the next 4 years, sadly.
CajunBill

Real good one

The complaint and the suffering are real and is the truth.The question also is most responsible .The Democrats want to tax the rich and the Tea Party Republicans are pro rich ,These Big companies evade taxes using Tax Havens and a lot of money in the stock market comes from Tax Havens.The Republicans will not allow the SEC to function really and all Wall St Bankers who were responsible for the biggest financial crisis have never been arrested because they give large donations to Tea Party and the Congress Majority of Republicans will defeat anything good for the large majority of US and World and yet from 2010 and now 2012 they hold the congress till 2014.I am also saying Democrats have not done their job,but the Tea Party Republicans allowed the 2008 Recession and the Iraq war and bankrupted the country. President Obama went after Switzerland Banks atleast ,but unless you take on the Wall St and Tax Havens you cannot improve your economy which improved will give more jobs

Quite the Letter!

Love your play on words (Sen. Jack Goff) and understand and even share your outrage. In both your entertaining rants and in several responses, there are several errors most likely born of misunderstanding or misinformation. And politicians love the misinformation because it benefits them immensely. If the public doesn't know the truth and doesn't understand things economic, then the public doesn't know when they are bring lied to by the politicians which is virtually always.

There's great wisdom in the old saw, "How can you tell when a politician is lying? When he is saying something." The alternative answer is, "When his lips are moving."

The biggest driver of exporting American jobs to locations overseas is a combination of various factors mainly among them being regulations both market and environmental, high corporate taxation, union monopolies, etc.

The biggest driving force behind the housing bubble and crash was the federal government and that driven mostly be Democrat legislators in both the House and Senate. The Community Reinvestment Act passed by Jimmy Carter and revitalized under Bill Clinton and George Bush using government regulatory authorities coerced lenders to make loans to people who, in a free economy with rational lending standards, could not be qualified for home mortgage loans (sub-prime lenders, sub-prime because the prospect of their being able to make the contracted payments was poor to non-existent).

Other government regulators allowed these sub-prime mortgages to be bundles into investment securities which then were purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Government Sponsored Entities (GSE's) providing taxpayer backing for these high risk loans. In return, congressmen (mostly Democrats but not all) got nice campaign contributions from the GSE's for allowing the taxpayers to be on the hook for the inevitable failure of these fraudulent investment mechanisms.

During the Bush administration, on several occasions, the problem with the housing market and the GSE's was noted and attempts initiated to try to establish some kind of control before the bottom fell out but the Democrats (Barney Frank being a major player in the house and Chris Dodd in the Senate) blocked any effort to preclude the magnitude of the ultimate disaster they created.

And another thing about which many of the comments are erroneous regards companies using tax shelters to avoid taxes. These are created by Congress and for the vast majority of the past 60-70 years, Democrats have controlled the house where tax law is written. The Democrats have crafted the tax laws and they then bad-mouth the corporations who utilize the very laws they enacted in their American v American class warfare.

In a free market economy, a company would have the freedom to decide whether it would bargain with a union or not. But since the FDR dictatorship and the illegitimate [unconstitutional] creation of the NLRB, unions were given a coercive monopoly in that a company was required by law to bargain with a union whether or not it wished to do so.

And finally, one thing every American should understand; no business or corporation pays taxes. The tax monies a business/corporation forwards to the government are monies collected from their customers and passed along to the government. The tax is just another cost that goes into producing the product or service the company offers which does nothing to improve the quality of the product or service.

As the tax laws become more complex and more convoluted, the cost of collecting and regimenting these monies collected becomes more complex and thus more costly to the business/corporation due to accounting complexities and thus become a hidden cost increase in the products or services you and I buy from them.