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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Now Here’s a Video I’ve Been Looking For

posted by on February 21 at 16:15 PM

There’s been a lot of chatter about this anti-Obama speech, by Machinists Union President Tom Buffenbarger, who laid into Obama at a recent Clinton rally in Youngstown, Ohio, describing Obama as a coward, as “Janus, the two-faced God of Roman times,” as “a trained thespian,” and as “a shadow boxer” who won’t be able to hold his own in a real ring with a real Republican.

Buffenbarger reached the climax of his remarks (which Clinton supporters in the audience started to try to drown out by chanting “Hillary! Hillary!”) with this: “Yes we can? Give me a break. I’ve got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies crowding in to hear him speak: This guy won’t last a round against the Republican attack machine. He’s a poet, not a fighter… And this, ladies and gentlemen, is no time for a poet.”


(via Ben Smith)

RSS icon Comments

1
Posted by Peter F | February 21, 2008 4:19 PM
2

This guy is SO ANNOYING!

Posted by Kevin Erickson | February 21, 2008 4:19 PM
3

If this is who Hillary has speaking for her, McCain wins in a landslide in November.

I would hope Hillary can do better than that.

Posted by Andrew | February 21, 2008 4:20 PM
4

Tom Buffenbarger for VP!

Posted by Paul Constant | February 21, 2008 4:21 PM
5

So let's assume everything he's saying is true (even though most statistics would argue that high-end liberals make up a small portion of his voting block) -- are disgruntled machinists really the future? This seems like the Democratic base from the Truman era, not 2007. Just like Iowa wants you to believe they should vote first because they're the true "heartland," these guys want you to believe they're the core of the Democrats still. I don't think this is true anymore.

Posted by dreamboatcaptain | February 21, 2008 4:21 PM
6

I don't see how Hillary wins any more states than Kerry did in 2004.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | February 21, 2008 4:26 PM
7

why are they blaming a Democrat for having their jobs go overseas? they should be blaming the Republicans for the tax breaks these companies get for sending the job overseas. Why aren't they blaming her husband for supporting NAFTA that helped their jobs go overseas?

Posted by apres_moi | February 21, 2008 4:39 PM
8

He certainly ignites his audience.

Some.

Posted by NapoleonXIV | February 21, 2008 4:43 PM
9

The Service Workers Union that endorses Obama? All trust fund babies.

Fuck you, Mr. Buffenbarger. Fuck you and your sweeping generalizations. How's that for poetry?

Posted by tabletop_joe | February 21, 2008 4:43 PM
10

I dunno. Obama seems to be holding his own against the Hillary Attack Machine.

Posted by alan | February 21, 2008 4:49 PM
11

This is another example of why labor leaders and used car salesmen have similar
credibility ratings with the general public. He doesn't serve his membership well with this type of bullshit and hot air either.

Posted by artistdogboy | February 21, 2008 4:54 PM
12

NAFTA didn't send their jobs overseas. NAFTA protects jobs. What sent the autoworkers' jobs overseas is REALITY.

Guys like Buffetburger here are still trying to fight the war that they lost 20 years ago. They're like those Japanese cave soldiers they kept finding up until the 70s. Obama's knocked him out, and he doesn't even know he's been hit.

Posted by Fnarf | February 21, 2008 4:57 PM
13

Fnarf, most people here want tarrifs, quotas, regulated economies, almost anything to save american jobs. they basically want a closed economy while refusing to acknowledge the downsides of that policy.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | February 21, 2008 5:03 PM
14

this primary race is so over, it is now getting boring. obama won, time to start getting ready for old man mccain. dont underestimate mccain, the old man might be "banging cocktail waitresess two at a time," but he is gonna run a tough campaign.

Posted by SeMe | February 21, 2008 5:06 PM
15

Hillary Clinton as Muhammad Ali? Does anyone know what kind of vetting campaigns do with their rally speakers? That guy was reading his script pretty closely, especially on those "stories," which leads me to believe he didn't write it. But who did? Ah, yes ... The Fighter's team.

Posted by Bub | February 21, 2008 5:07 PM
16

Totally agree with @7, complete b.s. Take McCain's ED medicine, and he's as link-dicked as they come. I mean that in the figurative sense of course.

Posted by left coast | February 21, 2008 5:25 PM
17

He leads a union that is shrinking in size, while all of those home care workers and school bus drivers and their trust funds in the service employees union are growing by leaps and bounds.

What's the expression? A lot of sound and fury signifying nothing...

Posted by ahava | February 21, 2008 5:27 PM
18

One of Obama's biggest strengths is that people continually underestimate him, dismiss him as a lightweight who can't bring the game, and therefore they cannot prepare for him so he wins. They'll do right up to the day he walks into the White House as our next Prez.

Posted by mike in oly | February 21, 2008 5:36 PM
19

It's slimy little combat avoiding scum like Fluffenbarger I'd like to grab by the scruff of the neck, slap a chute on both of us, and parachute into a combat zone to show what the frick war is like, and why only poets know how to fight them.

Sooner we leave, sooner this former Army Sergeant will heave a heavy sigh of relief.

Posted by Will in Seattle | February 21, 2008 5:37 PM
20

Yes, because as we all know the rhetoric surrounding "fuck hope" can really unite the people.

Posted by Chris B | February 21, 2008 5:42 PM
21

@12 & 13

Fnarf: how does NAFTA protect jobs?

BA: I'm curious about your depiction of what "most people" want. You talk about tariffs and closed economies, but failure to enact some tariffs and protections basically negates a state's ability to regulate labor in favor of the workers -- it's the old "race to the bottom" argument. Likewise environmental regulations and so on. Countries that let corporations work people 16 hours a day and don't require them to treat their effluent can attract more investment, but countries that *do* try to protect their environments bud who don't block imports from countries that do are basically cutting their own throats.

What's your alternative?

Posted by Judah | February 21, 2008 5:46 PM
22

NAFTA and free trade protect jobs by keeping businesses and industries alive that depend on trade. The jobs that are supposedly being sucked out of the country by NAFTA would be gone anyway! If autoworkers can't be productive enough to justify their high salaries, the companies that employ them will succumb, and are succumbing, to foreign companies that can. And, in reality, there is nothing unproductive about American auto workers; they're the most productive in the world. That's why foreign car companies come here to build cars. It's not the workers who are at fault; it's GM and Ford, who have outdated plant, outdated methods, outdated designs. Free trade makes those jobs possible.

Also, autoworkers building cars provide a small portion of the total job market for the automobile sector. Repair shops, parts, retail salesmen, Teamsters to load them off of ships, even car washes employ far more people than making them in the first place does. By allowing labor to flow where the wage/productivity ratio is more favorable, prices come down, and more cars are sold, and more people work in the auto sector, EVEN IN THE US.

The jobs supposedly "lost" to NAFTA were going overseas anyways. There's no way to profitably make brooms or cell phones in the US no matter how protected the industries are. This is exactly how countries become rich: they make stuff that other people want to buy, at a price they can afford. If brooms cost $1000, no one would ever buy one. How many jobs does that protect?

This is how free trade works. NAFTA does hurt some people, but nowhere near as many as it helps -- both here AND in Mexico. Free trade is a win-win all around, and people who live in countries that recognize this have higher incomes than people who live in countries that don't.

America has an extremely mixed record in this regard. In textiles, agriculture, and many other industries, markets are distorted and suppressed by protectionism -- protectionism that doesn't protect jobs in the US, but jobs in freaking China -- at the expense of some of the poorest countries in the world, in Africa and the Caribbean, for instance. How that helps American workers, I don't understand at all.

Posted by Fnarf | February 21, 2008 6:21 PM
23

Stupid old working people! Why don't they die already! Its our turn!

Posted by Obama SuperFan | February 21, 2008 6:43 PM
24

@22

1) I don't believe that it's impossible to make a broom or a cell phone profitably in the United States. It may be impossible to produce those goods competitively against Chinese labor, but that's not the same thing as not being able to make them profitably.

2) Even accepting the definition of profit that you seem to be applying to the production of durable goods in the United States, that profitability is not sustainable. The trade deficit that results from allowing foreign labor markets to compete against American labor markets will result -- and is resulting -- in a balancing of purchasing power across markets. As the value of the dollar drops against foreign currencies and American consumers deplete their reserves of wealth to maintain their lifestyle in the absence of an actual working economy, Americans will cut off their access to foreign labor markets -- or at least destroy the economic advantages that have made foreign labor markets "competitive". This will result in a sharp retraction of the economy, as people find themselves suddenly unable to purchase durable goods at the prices they have been accustomed to. And all those secondary industries you mentioned will dry up and blow away.

This is what we're facing now, by the way.

3) "Free trade" is only a "win-win" if you assume that other considerations are secondary. So, for example, environmental considerations. As long as the United States allows goods and services to flow freely across its border, American environmental regulations penalize American manufacturers and make it impossible for them to meet the prices of foreign manufacturers. The United States government could offset the cost of environmental regulations by setting a tariff on incoming goods from countries without environmental regulations. All other considerations being equal, foreign manufacturers could still compete with domestic manufacturers -- just not by undercutting our environmental benchmarks. Likewise labor and so on.

According to your theory about the failures of American markets (Ford's crappy manufacturing and so on) foreign manufacturers would still be able to compete with American manufacturers in a system like that -- and more power to them, as far as I'm concerned. But pretending that tariffs are only a question of free trade -- and have no bearing on other considerations -- seems shortsighted and somewhat dogmatic to me.

Posted by Judah | February 21, 2008 7:04 PM
25

Ok, lets start with the commentary by Mr. Sanders.
May I ask how you are able to read the intentions of the audience such that you can state that they are trying to drown the speaker out? Further you excerpt class warfare material for shock value. How about next time highlight more of the salient points?
Others here betray their anti-union, anti-worker bias by belittling the union working classes(@ 5 & 11,12,13). May I ask when was the last time you worked at a shit factory job that should have been unionized? Have you ever walked a picket line in support of any worker? Oh and 13, what are the downsides of saving american jobs? Your car costs too much? Oh I know Walmart wouldn't be as cheap. Here's a real downside: not as much money to spend on education and healthcare resulting in decreased social mobility and a long list of other problems. meanwhile 17 thinks the U.S. economy's deindustrialization and shift to a service economy invalidates the priorities of those who still work in manufacturing, who actually produce a product.
Still other responses are paranoid or so off point. 15 thinks because he is actually reading his speech it isn't his. I thought it was just that he hadn't memorized it. Even if it was written by a speechwriter, so what? He's the one saying it and he likely believes every word of it. This is how working people fight in the class warfare trenches when they've been fucked over before. The reason they scoff at "hope" is because hope alone doesn't get results. Action gets results. As much as MLK used hope, there were people on the line backing it up.
Finally where are the responses to the actual examples given? Talk about lack of rigor. Maybe Obama didn't help the two unions in question, maybe he tried to. I don't know, but I would like to know. However, your comments don't reveal any real engagement. just defensive air. You aren't helping Obama's case this way. Will you just froth at the mouth when McCains people come after him or will you act.
If you look at 270towin.com you can see that it really may all come down to Ohio just like this union guy says. deal with it. Now. start thinking about going to Ohio in the fall. start thinking about what you will say to a working class person whose door you knock on. How will you sell them on Obama? How will you sell him to an independent or a reagan democrat who says "some of my best friends are black, so I might vote for him" because you are standing in front of him but in the booth may be an example of the Bradley effect? If Obama means that much to you do whatever you must to get to Ohio for at least a week.

Posted by LMSW | February 21, 2008 7:16 PM
26

With tariffs foreign manufacturers would only be able to compete with our manufacturers to the extent that that tariff allowed them to -- taking money out of the pockets of consumers, and thus hurting sales. The tariff doesn't magically clean the water in China.

And it's not correct to say that workers in China are giving equal value to American workers, while being paid less; they're being paid less BECAUSE they are less productive. American workers are paid more because they are more productive. As productivity balances out wages will balance out.

And countries with poor labor and environmental practices have low productivity. It's often overlooked, but the cheapest, most efficient way to run an economy is OUR way, not theirs; that's why we're rich and they're poor.

I am not dogmatic; I'm laying out the basis of the theory. Obviously nothing is in black and white. But anti-free trade arguments are presented in even more simplistic, blind ways that appeal even more to our basest instincts than pro-NAFTA ones.

Trade agreements, so far from being a way to block labor and environmental controls, are in fact the only realistic way of spreading them. You'll never get anywhere by blocking trade out of hand; you'll just hurt yourself more. Trade groups like the WTO are the only way poor countries and social concerns are allowed to speak. The fact that racist nativists like Pat Buchanan are among the leading spokesmen for anti-NAFTA, anti-WTO action tells me everything I need to know about their motives.

Posted by Fnarf | February 21, 2008 7:17 PM
27

Free Trade isn't free, Fnarf. It's basically subsidizing pollution and low cost wages that destroy societies and the environment.

Fair Trade is what works.

Economics has Goods and Bads. Nobody talks about the Bads anymore, but I'm a classical economist by nature, and I'm with Adam Smith on this one.

21st Century economics is going to be all about the Green GDP and the Bads, not just the Goods.

Posted by Will in Seattle | February 21, 2008 7:25 PM
28

@26

With tariffs foreign manufacturers (snip) China.

I set conditions for the use of tariffs in my post. A tariff can be designed that specifically offsets the price advantage foreign manufacturers derive by having different labor laws. Foreign manufacturers who can compete in other arenas are welcome to do so. That's perfectly fair, and it allows the United States to pursue a domestic regulatory agenda without slitting its own throat economically.

And, without getting into whether or not we should care whether the water in China is clean, the object of these tariffs would not be to clean the water in China -- it would be, as I said above, to allow the United States to regulate domestically without handing an advantage to foreign competitors.

And it's not correct (snip) less BECAUSE they are less productive.

That doesn't make any sense.

If one Chinese worker is half as as productive as an American worker and is paid less relative to his or her productivity, then the Chinese worker is earning half as much as the American worker. Fine. But the corporation that hires the Chinese worker then has to hire twice as many Chinese workers or have the Chinese worker work twice as many hours in order to get the same product that the American worker produces in half the time -- meaning that the company has absolutely no motive for hiring the Chinese worker because their total expenditures on labor will be the same in either case.

The only motive for offshoring the manufacture of goods that will be sold in American markets -- as far as labor goes -- is that either the American worker is being paid more than he or she is worth or the Chinese worker is being paid less than he or she is worth.

And countries with poor labor (snip) that's why we're rich and they're poor.

Well, that all works out then, doesn't it.

The fact that racist nativists like Pat Buchanan are among the leading spokesmen for anti-NAFTA, anti-WTO action tells me everything I need to know about their motives.

I'm utterly helpless before such a mercilessly objective analysis. I yield the contest.

Posted by Judah | February 21, 2008 8:08 PM
29
...either the American worker is being paid more than he or she is worth or the Chinese worker is being paid less than he or she is worth.

Or it could be that the cost of living in the United States is so high, employers must pay Americans more just to keep them around. Third World countries are much cheaper to live in. Even if manufacturers paid what amounts to a living wage there, it may still be cheaper than employing an American here, unless, as you mentioned, lessened productivity undercuts those savings.

Posted by keshmeshi | February 21, 2008 8:17 PM
30

wow Fnarf is eloquent today.

Here's the thing. NAFTA doesn't cause jobs to go overseas, trade does.

To stop the shift to the lowe cost producer you would have to put huge taxes on imports, or ban capital going overseas. In other words, make avocados from Mexico cost 3x more, hurting us the consumers and also those MExican producers.

And when they work for $4 a day not $7 a hour, the tax you have to put on their products to stop the imports is like 500%.

IF YOU DO THAT, guess what? All other countries in the world retaliate. We can't fucking punish China they could stop buying our debt. Our taxes on goods from China aren't going to stop jobs from flowing to China because then they'll make shit that Brazil buys. And if they all start putting taxes on our exports to them -- oh, stuff like airplanes and software for example -- at similar 500% levels -- our whole economy will be destoryed.

What we need is an end to demogoguery on trade. Then international organizations that raise union and environmental standards by setting minimum floors. Not banning, taxing or otherwise stopping imports from other countries most of which are desperately poor anyway and need the fucking work more than us rich Americans.

Oh and those autoworkers? If we had national haelth insurance our automakers would save about $4000 per car. So our failure to have universal health care is the biggest trade subsidy going on right now and it's a subsidy from us to the forieng auto workers. REally, really, really dumb. Those tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas? That's nothing. Those little tax breaks pale in comparison to cost saving on goods made in factories where the workers are not very skilled.

Obama was funny tonight, he blamed jobs going to China on NAFTA.

Posted by unPC | February 21, 2008 8:25 PM
31
Or it could be that the cost of living in the United States is so high, employers must pay Americans more just to keep them around.

There are a lot of reasons for disparities in labor costs between countries (or within countries, for that matter). I was only addressing Fnarf's model, in which there is a hard link between productivity and compensation.

Posted by Judah | February 21, 2008 8:33 PM
32

That was kind of ugly. Just listen to the angry, unsettled crowd. Creepy.

But maybe that's what the end of a campaign sounds like.

Posted by Interested Observer | February 21, 2008 9:45 PM
33

Funny how Janus was the god of CHANGE in the Roman pantheon, and the two-facedness had nothing to do with deception...
Just saying.

Posted by Justin | February 21, 2008 11:35 PM
34

"latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies"

hey old man: birkenstocks (a haflingers) are COMFY!

except for the trust fund & the fact that i can't AFFORD a prius, that's me!

my sister has a prius & birkenstocks, but she doesn't drink lattes & alas, no trust fund either.

our office car is a prius.

Posted by maxsolomon@home | February 22, 2008 7:23 AM
35

Obama’s efforts to connect to the Republican Party, specifically Bush, and Dick Chaney, of the Halliburton Company, dates back to the Presidents Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and indeed Chaney was once an executive officer of Halliburton.

The American military pounds Iraq with Artillary, bombs, and the like, destroying large sections of cities, and infra-structures, then Halliburton comes in to rebuild. Halliburton and Halliburton associated companies have raked in ten’s of billions.

Obama is just like the BIG HALIBURTAN. Haliburton has contracted to build detention centers in the U.S. similiar to the one in Quantanammo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton does nothing to earn the Two Dollars for each meal an American Serviceman in Iraq eats.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

Halliburton was scheduled to take control of the Dubai Ports in The United Arab Emiirate. The deal was canceled when Bush was unable to affect the transfer of the American Ports.

Now we see what some might suspect as similiar financial escapading from the Democrats.

Two years ago, Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company - Companion- owned by now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO) Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley, to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States. An Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo. Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract.
Involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor of Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former cop Daniel T. Frawley, is Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON --
Obama should be vetted and disclose his connection to the criminal money generating underworld. Besides, his connections to the REZCO MAFIA types, his up-coming tax fraud charges — Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke "GLORK" Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He is MAD!!! --

OBAM YOUR NO JFK --
"GLORK" Obama looks like Alfred E. Newman: "Tales Calculated To Drive You." He is a MUSLIM "Glork" He's MAD!!! Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of Mad. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek.

Posted by Janet Reno | February 24, 2008 7:40 PM

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