You're just too dumb to hold down a job

That was the message that all two humans in the living room got from Bush when he kept replying to the question of jobs with education. As my boyfriend succiently pointed out, telling someone that you'll "train" them when they lose their job isn't much help, especially if they already have a degree or two or years of on-the-job training. And as Kerry pointed out, it's no help if the funding for "training" isn't there. (I'm sick of the conservative idea that education's only purpose is to get jobs for people. That they see education for your children as a system not for expanding their minds and improving the lives, but just a system to make them better worker bees should be upsetting. That's why they cut after school and arts programs without much thought.)

Everyone I know who has gotten laid off has years of experience and a bachelor's degree. My best friend from high school showed up to a job she got shortly after she graduated from college yesterday to only be told they cut her job out. She bitterly noted that despite the massive layoffs, the CEO's pay and bonuses were not touched. It is worth noting that CEO bonus checks alone are usually large enough to save most of the jobs that are cut when they have layoffs. This is people's reality--even people who vote Republican are more than aware that rich corporations are robbing their workers blind.

It's also utterly insulting to people who are watching skilled labor disappear to be told that they need more "training". All I could say was, "What part of the word 'skilled' don't you understand?"

Kerry stayed on message with that, and it's sure to penetrate some people's skulls. Terrorists aren't coming to Palookaville, Podunk but layoffs are. It's pathetic that the minor fixes that Kerry proposed are way beyond the pale for Republicans--higher minimum wage, keeping middle wage salaries for people, not giving tax breaks to people who are busy getting as many jobs as possible out of the country. It's pathetic that people don't understand that basic idea that the economy is healthiest when a large number of people have enough money for saving and discretionary spending, and not when a teeny-weeny minority has most of the money hoarded up.

It's a shame that real reform on the economy is far out of reach. Anyone who gets elected is going to struggle for every teeny-weeny measure that gets more money and jobs to ordinary people, so we can kiss real reforms goodbye. (Until some of the scarier Republicans are finally exposed for the creeps they are.) We need expanded overtime pay, a shorter work week, money to the SEC so they can do their jobs properly, and legal penalties for corporate boards and CEOs that screw over their workers. I think a law making it illegal to pay CEOs who lay off workers would be a popular reform--for every job cut, the CEO should have that equivalent amount of that person's pay and benefits sliced from his salary and stock options, with no loopholes.

On the subject of taxes, I feel Kerry hit it out of the park. The line about workers subsidizing the loss of their own jobs was great, and completely true, and unlike Bush he actually explained what it meant. Closing loopholes that encourage outsourcing and incorporating in the Bahamas needs to happen immediately--that would make up what we're losing in the Iraqi war. Since Bush's strategy was to lamely repeat the same lines about taxing the middle class to everything Kerry said, he began to sound like he was talking about another universe entirely. Kerry said he would cut out corporate loopholes, Bush said that would hurt small business owners--again, he thinks we're stupid. We know that Halliburtion and the Quickie Mart are not the same thing. Kerry said he would raise taxes on the top 1-2% of people, which he carefully reminded people meant those who make over $200,000 a year, and Bush called it raising the taxes on the middle class. We are not stupid--any asshole who made more than $200,000 a year and whined about his meager middle class lifestyle would get a swift kick in the ass from me.

The best was Kerry bringing up the way that federal spending cuts are showing up in higher local taxes. Someone needs to say it--our property taxes are strangling us here. I hoped that clicked with some people who just can't seem to put two and two together. No amount of lame bleating about the marriage penalty is going to override the fact that so many people are in a death match with their local tax boards over rising property taxes. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if voters weren't wising up to the fact that discussions of the marriage penalty are a pathetic way to dodge the real issue, which is that women's salaries are still only 75% of men's.