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National health care would lift a burden off big business

Re: The future of an industry, editorial, Oct. 14.

Strong blue-collar union membership combined with very profitable industries and little foreign competition resulted in great jobs for workers in the automotive and aviation industries from the 1940s to the 1990s. As your editorial points out, Delphi employees earned about $65 per hour in pay and benefits. The largest benefits were health and retirement plans. Much the same can be said for the traditional airlines and other major industries.

Unfortunately, over time, foreign competition, coupled with poor management appreciation of what that meant, has resulted in a need to cut wages for those industries to remain competitive. Productivity is not an issue because U.S. productivity has increased faster than that of the competition, but not by enough to offset the low wages and government health care of much of our foreign trading partners. Many foreign automakers build plants in the United States and operate them at a profit by limiting those massive union benefits.

I would think that domestic industries should now join forces with "liberals" in demanding that the U.S. government institute a full care, government funded, medical insurance program along the lines of Medicare for the entire population and take that burden off employers of all stripes. That would reduce the cost of labor for the most affected industries. In addition, the combined forces should consider revamping Social Security to make it a real national retirement plan for everybody.

Of course it would take great statesmen, with strong vision and ample courage to accomplish these things. Do we have any of those available at this time in our history? Where are they hiding?

The economic tsunami

It started out that what was good for General Motors was good for America. However, day by day GM has lost the Goliath status it once had. Some of the elements that made GM a great company have turned out to be its biggest liability: the legacy costs.

In the price of each vehicle GM produces, $1,500 goes for health care. That is more than the company spends for the steel to make the vehicle. Since large corporations compete on a global basis, here are some facts to ponder: All of the Western countries provide health care and in most cases retirement payments, relieving their industries of those responsibilities and allowing them to be more competitive. As more and more large corporations file for bankruptcy, they are dumping their health and pension programs in the government's lap. It's not a matter of if but when this will affect retiree benefits. Health care in this country will continue to underserve and overcharge until comprehensive changes are made.

Until then, the problem is a small wave, but with each corporate failure the velocity of the wave will increase until it reaches your front porch. Then it will be your problem. Good luck.

Americans should buy American

Wake up, America!

We wonder why the American automobile companies are losing money and putting people out of their jobs.

I was driving behind a Toyota with a bumper sticker that read, "Proud to be an American" and another that read, "WWII vet, support our troops."

I have a Buick Century that gets an average of 30 mpg. Why would I need more?

Shame on you Americans for buying anything other than American.

Auto dealers seem uninterested

Re: Blame corporate greed, letter, Oct. 20.

Boy, was the letter writer right on the money about GM and the greed that has put the jobs of hard-working employees in jeopardy. Detroit was my home for 23 years, and I have family still working for GM (Chrysler Corp.), so I am a loyal buy-American-cars citizen. But in the past few months I have tried to buy an American car at the local dealers and have found them lazy. And if the car is not on the lot, then they just aren't ready to help you find one.

I am tempted to go to the local foreign car lots to find out if they are as lazy and uninterested in my American money as the local American dealers. It just goes to show the GM executives that if you don't have the employees on the front lines doing a good job, then the rest is easy to figure out.

Our futures are being stolen

Re: You should know when you are being cheated, Oct. 17.

I have to give Molly Ivins credit where credit is due. Her column shows some insight. She has uncovered a robbery in progress. Now, don't expect to hear any sirens or to read in the newspaper that the culprits have been apprehended. They are in the "government protection plan."

She is trying to tell us all that "your" politicians are letting big business and the wealthy "steal" your future. The American dream of working hard, retiring and living out your life in reasonable comfort is being stolen.

The policies of this administration do support this crime, as reported by Ivins. But let's not just blame this particular group. This crime has been planned throughout many administrations. Don't you get it? It is the rich stealing from the poor. They want it all and they want you to work until you die.

It is a fad to file for bankruptcy and dump your pension and benefit plans because government policies allow it. Businesses have taken the profits from the "heyday" years and sent them overseas to exploit Third World labor markets. Now they file bankruptcy in their North American operations to "dump" their liabilities, and they get to keep the foreign interests.

What Molly Ivins is trying to tell you is that this is one "trickle-down" policy that will work. We are all becoming "crime victims." Those of you who might think it will not affect you are badly mistaken. We all work every day to provide for our families and live the American dream. You may wake up and discover too late that it has become a nightmare, and you are in it.

The grim, global America

Re: When market and welfare state collide.

The Oct. 19 op-ed article by Robert J. Samuelson of Newsweek explained his view of the causes for the failure of Delphi, and perhaps GM itself, and noted the massive reduction in wages and benefits that will be required of employees and retirees to save these companies. He didn't offer any solution for his statement that management has failed for years to offer a product that consumers want to buy. It seems that anything above $16.60 an hour and decent medical insurance are to be things of the past for the American manufacturing employee.

In the same issue there is an article reporting that the overwhelming majority of college graduates come from affluent homes (Increasingly, college is for affluent). The rest leave school not because of ability or effort but because they lack the money to continue.

Putting these two articles together points toward the new "global America," i.e. a plutocracy of the very wealthy and a large working underclass where two adults must work to keep a family going albeit without decent medical care or a safety net of any kind. Welcome to the Republican future.

Thanks for the table scraps

Re: Catering to rich can bring benefits to a community, letter, Oct. 15.

It's a novel idea that this letter writer proposes! He states that it's actually very wise to serve "the narrower tastes of the wealthy... " because, in doing so, it eventually "... trickles down to us all."

After all these years, how naive of me. How could I have been so ignorant of the writer's obvious "economic truths"? Now I can clearly understand his very cogent logic: If we economically kowtow to rich people, then they, in turn, can provide us poor plebeians with so much more of their table scraps for us to feed upon. What a good thing! Perhaps serfdom and noblesse oblige were not such bad ideas after all?

Upscale brands are available locally

As president of the Beach Drive Downtown Merchant Association, I have been bombarded with reaction to the Oct. 10 article Champagne tastes, boutique shortage. We were very dismayed by the insensitivity shown by your staff writer Mary Jane Park.

Park made it seem that there are no high-end merchants in downtown St. Petersburg. Please be aware of the existence of several high-fashion, upscale brands. I, for one, carry Cartier and other very well-known brand lines. There are specialty and "one-of-a-kind" shops that offer Escada, Sue Wong, Vera Bradley and Lladro, to name only a few. New merchants, which we agree we need, will find a niche in our growing, exciting city.

I can also tell you that anyone who moves to the downtown area will be well-served, now and in the future, by courteous, service-oriented merchants.

A most curious cost of living

Re: Retirees get raise, but can it keep up? In face of inflation, an extra $39? Oct. 15.

Your article on the wonderful benefit increase for Social Security recipients would have been more insightful if you had identified by name, bureaucratic title and paycheck those who created the consumer price indexes on which the increase was based.

It also would be most interesting to know when each of these people last tried to buy a $100,000 house and found it cost $200,000 or more, or when they last visited a market and paid $1 for one apple, 65 cents for one lemon and passed up green peppers at 75 cents each. Possibly they have yet to discover that a $16,000 automobile now costs $35,000.

After the increase in Medicare payments and deductibles for doctor and hospital care, my wife's benefit check last year increased by a whopping $1 per month. This year, if she signs up for the much-ballyhooed prescription drug benefit, she will see less cash. But what the heck - Alan Greenspan and friends have caused the price of everything to go up again with interest-rate increases so we won't have to suffer inflation.

Find out, please, and let us poor mortals know what planet these people live on. It sure isn't this one!

Catastrophe fund makes sense

Gov. Jeb Bush was right on the mark in his recent comments calling for a national catastrophe fund to help states, insurers and consumers better cope with the repercussions of major disasters. As reported in the Times, the governor accurately outlined that dealing with catastrophes is more than an issue of damage to physical structures; it is about preventing long-term damage to Florida's economic viability and individuals' financial security.

For some time, Allstate Floridian has been a leading advocate for a solution where the federal government assumes the broader risk through a national pool that takes into account disasters like wildfires, earthquakes and terrorism - not just hurricanes. Already, congressional leaders have begun to move this issue forward. U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite is leading the charge on Capitol Hill and our company looks forward to playing an active role in reaching a solution that strengthens the industry's mission to protect consumers.

Currently, private insurance works well in covering multiple routine events, not extreme catastrophes. Insurers must have the means to meet our commitment to our customers. Unfortunately, unpredictable major catastrophes make it virtually impossible. Last year's hurricanes in Florida, the storms on the Gulf Coast this year, and the recent floods in the Northeast have shown us that it is impossible for insurers to continually maintain the resources to protect consumers on our own.

A government-backed national catastrophe fund will help alleviate this problem by making insurance protection more available and affordable to homeowners as well as increasing capacity for providing financial assistance to victims of large-scale catastrophes. Federal and state taxpayers already pay recovery costs for such events. It makes sense to plan and save for the time when the next catastrophe occurs, sharing the risk.

Why can insurance "cherry pick'?

I am not sure what the competitive pricing implications are to the following, but it is an interesting question:

With Allstate Insurance backing off from writing homeowners insurance here, why does Florida allow the company to "cherry pick" what types of insurance it will write here? The company does not want to write homeowners policies but will write auto, life, annuities, etc.?

Why isn't it required that insurance companies must write policies on everything or they do not do business in Florida?

League is worth a look, governor

Re: Bush defends gulf drilling compromise, Oct. 7.

I'm truly sorry that Gov. Jeb Bush, who recently said, "I don't know who the League of Conservation Voters are," has missed the great work that we have been doing for the past 35 years on behalf of candidates all over America - candidates who consistently support our environment. In Florida, we have 16,000 supporters and an Orlando office with a full-time staff working every day to inform the public about environmental issues and the voting records of their elected officials.

While we understand 2004 was a busy year for the governor, allow me to give a glimpse of what the league was able to accomplish in the Sunshine State:

284,383 doors knocked on.

110,459 contacts made.

Bolstered by a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign the last two weeks of the campaign, the largest single state ad buy in the history of the environmental movement, 800 league volunteers knocked on 83,000 doors the final weekend of the campaign. Who noticed?

". . . the League of Conservation Voters . . . launched . . . a $3-million TV ad buy in Florida, attacking oil drilling off the state's coast." - Wall Street Journal, Oct. 21, 2004.

"But the Democrats are bolstered by tens of thousands of paid staffers and volunteers working with a coalition of organizations formed to unseat (President) Bush . . . The League of Conservation Voters is one of the better known." - Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 25, 2004.

We're truly sorry that Gov. Bush did not have the opportunity to observe our work on behalf of pro-environment candidates.

No feud among Democrats

Re: Against tough odds, Helm runs for mayor, Oct. 15.

The Times keeps trying to say there is some sort of feud between Ed Helm and the Democratic Executive Committee. This is completely incorrect. Many of our members are very strong supporters of Ed Helm for mayor of St. Petersburg. And while many of our members are actively working for the Ed Helm campaign, the DEC itself simply does not participate in nonpartisan elections.

The argument inside the DEC is actually between those of us who support Helm, and those who would prefer to overlook the actions of Pinellas County Commissioners Calvin Harris and Ken Welch. Harris and Welch are "automatic members" of the DEC. They are members because they are registered Democrats who won an election. They do not represent the DEC or participate in our decisions. In fact, I have never seen Harris at a DEC meeting, and have only seen Welch at two.

Those of us who are angry with Harris and Welch are angry because of their actions. They take our Democratic loyalty and support for granted, while publicly endorsing a Republican. As county commissioners, they really should not have become mired in a "down ticket" municipal election. As private citizens, they may vote for whomever they wish and write a check to whomever they wish, but as elected Democrats they really should not have publicly endorsed a Republican.

When these candidates endorse the opposition, we feel betrayed. After all, we voted for them because they claimed to support our platform and our values. The incumbent St. Petersburg mayor does not share our values and beliefs. Hence, party loyalty is an issue.

Hoping for humane treatment

Re: 205 pounds of cute, Oct. 19.

Let us hope that the new baby male elephant, a bundle of joy, and his mother at the Lowry Park Zoo are treated humanely. This would include a large enough area in which to roam as well as careful personal attention and not have to suffer the abysmal fate of so many elephants in a number of zoos, resulting in death.

[Last modified October 22, 2005, 01:13:18]