2016 elections - because it's never too early

[Admiral Yi]

I could vote for Kaisich.

[Eddie Teach]

Kasich's main problem is that he's boring as fuck.

[derspiess]

That's how Ohio politicians roll.  Traficant being a notable exception.

[Admiral Yi]

Kasich's main problem is that he's boring as fuck.

If he just stands next to Pataki a lot he should be fine.

[DGuller]

Kasich's main problem is that he's boring as fuck.

If he just stands next to Pataki a lot he should be fine.

If he stands next to Pataki, that means he's been relegated to the short bus debate.  That's not good for you.

[Habbaku]

Kasich's main problem is that he's boring as fuck.

This is a bad thing in a potential President...why?

[DGuller]

Kasich's main problem is that he's boring as fuck.

This is a bad thing in a potential President...why?

It's bad because it keeps you as potential President.

[MadImmortalMan]

That's how Ohio politicians roll.  Traficant being a notable exception.

It's like they concentrated all the crazy and he drew the short straw.

[Savonarola]

Donald Trump visited Birch Run, Michigan earlier this week:

Trump suggests moving some car production from Michigan

Washington — Donald Trump is making the future of U.S. auto production a cornerstone of his campaign for the Republican nomination for president.

Trump disclosed in an interview with The Detroit News Wednesday that Ford CEO Mark Fields wrote to him explaining the automaker's planned $2.5 billion investment in Mexico after Trump criticized Ford in June. And Trump suggested one way to stop automakers' expansion to Mexico is by moving some production out of Michigan to lower-wage states.

"I don't like what's happening," Trump said in the 15-minute telephone interview. "We're losing our jobs. We're losing our wealth. We're losing our country ... Why can't we do it in this country? It's an incredible thing that we're not allowed to make our product."

Trump said he backs government tax incentives to keep auto production in the United States. He said the U.S. shouldn't open its market to Japanese imports unless it drops trade barriers.

The United States has lost more than 5 million factory jobs since 2000; Michigan has shed more than one-third of its manufacturing jobs since then. In an appeal to blue-collar workers, Trump vows to keep the more than 12 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

"We've got to keep (factories) here. It's not that hard to do," he said. Without action, he added, "pretty soon all we're going to have is nursing home jobs."

Trump has repeatedly said that if elected, he would not allow Ford to open a new plant in Mexico. At his campaign announcement speech in New York in June, Trump said he would call Fields to explain the "bad news."

"Let me give you the bad news: Every car, every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we're going to charge you a 35 percent tax," Trump said. "They are going to take away thousands of jobs."

It isn't clear how Trump could legally single out one automaker for punitive taxes.

Ford confirmed that Fields sent Trump an email the day after his announcement speech. Spokesman Karl Henkel said: "Mark sent Mr. Trump an email with information about Ford, including the $6.2 billion we have invested in our U.S. plants since 2011 and our hiring of nearly 25,000 U.S. employees. Mr. Trump thanked us for the information and said that Ford is a great company and that he is a Ford customer. We appreciate his kind words."

Trump said Fields' email didn't change his views about the expansion. He called it a "very, very nice letter," but said it didn't justify "how it is going to be good for the United States, because that cannot be justified."

In April, Ford said it would add 3,800 jobs in Mexico as part of a $2.5 billion investment — on top of the 11,300 Ford already employs in Mexico. The investment will include a new $1.1 billion engine plant that's part of an existing facility and a new $1.2 billion transmission plant allowing for exports of engines to the United States and elsewhere. Ford also is investing $200 million to expand engines production at another plant in Mexico.

Ford has repeatedly said it is not closing any U.S. plants as a result of its Mexican expansion. On Wednesday, the automaker said it was shifting production of heavy trucks — the F-650 and F-750 — from Mexico to a factory in Ohio.

Last month, Ford said it would end small car production at its Michigan Assembly plant in Wayne. It didn't say where it would locate production, but some analysts have suggested the work will move to Mexico. The automaker has insisted it has no plans to close the Wayne plant and will add new production.

Asked why he was focused on Ford when other global automakers have announced plans to expand operations in Mexico, Trump said he wasn't familiar with other automakers' expansion plans. He planned to mention other automakers, he said, and asked The Detroit News to send information about them.

General Motors Co. in December announced a $5 billion investment in Mexico over six years. GM has four complexes in Mexico with 14 manufacturing plants comprising assembly, engine, transmission, stamping and foundry work which employs about 15,000 people.

Trump asserted that new plants in Mexico will cost jobs.

"Detroit needs a lot of help — and it certainly needs a lot of help when factories are closing to move to Mexico — when you are closing up your car factories in order to build the same factory in Mexico, meaning a modern version of it in Mexico. We just can't have that. It just can't happen, and we have to stop it."

In addition to the Ford and GM expansions, BMW AG, Volkswagen AG and its Audi unit, Nissan Motor Co., Kia Motors, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV are among the automakers that have built or announced new plants or plant expansions.

Many automakers have decided they can't build small cars profitably in the United States. Auto workers in Mexico make as little as $9 an hour. In addition, Mexico has dozens of free trade agreements around the world, free or nearly free land on which to build, and fewer regulatory hurdles.

Trump dismissed the lower-wages argument.

He said U.S. automakers could shift production away from Michigan to communities where autoworkers would make less. "You can go to different parts of the United States and then ultimately you'd do full-circle — you'll come back to Michigan because those guys are going to want their jobs back even if it is less," Trump said. "We can do the rotation in the United States — it doesn't have to be in Mexico."

He said that after Michigan "loses a couple of plants — all of sudden you'll make good deals in your own area."

Although wages are lower at non-union U.S. plants owned by foreign automakers, hourly employees for Detroit's Big Three are paid the same no matter what state they're in, under the terms of United Auto Workers contracts.

Trump also criticized Japan. Japan has boosted auto production in the U.S. dramatically but is still exporting more than 1.5 million vehicles from Japan to the U.S. annually. Last year, the U.S. sent Japan just 23,000 vehicles.

U.S. automakers have long called Japan's auto market one of the most closed in the world. Trump said the barriers to U.S. auto exports are "ridiculous — and the U.S. says, 'Oh please, we're sorry to offend you.' "

"Until you open your markets, you're not selling any more cars over here," Trump said. "That's going to force people to build in the United States."

But Trump has been supportive of the $85 billion auto bailout, telling Fox News in December 2008 he supported a rescue. "I think the government should stand behind them 100 percent. You cannot lose the auto companies. They're great. They make wonderful products," he said.

He told The News on Wednesday that GM and Chrysler could have been saved without government bailouts. "I think it would have worked out the other way, too," Trump said. "It would have been a free-market deal."

Trump lamented that some products aren't made in the U.S.

"I just ordered 4,000 television sets — the only place you can buy them is in South Korea," Trump said. "They all come from South Korea — and Sony, but Sony lost its way."

The News is a Republican-ish paper and didn't put in some of Trump's more inflammatory comments.  Like this one from Bloomberg news:

"Ford is building a $2.5 billion plant in Mexico," he roared to a packed auditorium in Birch Run, Michigan, and 2,000 voices responded with lusty boos. "I'll actually give them a good idea. Why don't we just let the illegals drive the cars and trucks right into our country?"

Oh Donald, you scoundrel you.  While his plan is completely impractical and probably unconstitutional; it all didn't sound that unreasonable to me, considering it came Donald Trump, but with enough punditry:

Donald Trump suggests a sneering plan to cut auto pay

By Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor

I guess I should be happy that Donald Trump is at least addressing income inequality.

But this was not what I had in mind.

Trump, the surprising early front-runner for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, this week suggested a novel way to lower wages even more for Michigan's autoworkers.

Send Michigan's auto jobs to states where people are happy to work for less, he says, then bring the jobs back to the Great Lakes state once people here are desperate for any work, at any pay level.

Mr. Burns on "the Simpsons" couldn't concoct a more sneering, resentful corporate strategy.

Trump's bright idea reflects a stunningly altered view of economic fairness, given that entry-level work in the auto industry pays around $16 an hour, while the companies' chieftains rake in millions upon millions every year.

And it says everything that not one of his Republican opponents will strike at his Dickensian policies, arguing against hardened income stratification. It's essentially a foregone conclusion in the GOP not just that profits matter, but that nothing else really does. If people toil for a lifetime in jobs that barely pay the bills and offer no chance to improve their economic station, the current Republican philosophy says, basically, they should wait for insane corporate profits to create more low-paying jobs that won't really build opportunity.

The absence of discussion about other, proven methods for growing the economy more evenly — investments in education, in the social safety net, in infrastructure and in affordable housing — reflects how moribund the intellectual dynamic in economic debate has become on the right side of the political spectrum.

What's more bizarre, though, is how popular Trump is among the very people whose pay he's looking to slash. A Washington Post-ABC news poll last month showed low-income earners — those making less than $50,000 — are backing the Donald more than any other economic group. He's also more popular among those who generally have less opportunity to change their economic fortunes. Trump enjoys 31% support from those who don't have college degrees. Just 8% of college-educated voters are rallying to his side.

And this is an important reason why Trump's clownish candidacy persists. The bizarre predilection among the poorest Americans to think of their fellow low-wage earners as undeserving or greedy, and of wealthy Americans like Trump as their saviors, is one of the more pernicious dynamics of modern politics.

Too many who have little, and little chance to get more, believe that their foils are other low-income or lower-income Americans. Autoworkers whose unions have fought to hold them harmless from massive wage deflation. Teachers and government workers who are branded as lazy and greedy.

This is also fueled, I believe, by the false sense of "other" that Trump and others in the GOP cultivate. Poor whites too often feel they have more in common with rich whites than poor blacks, or brown-skinned immigrants - the scapegoats Trump has made repeated victims of his rhetorical attacks.

Meanwhile, Trump, who first inherited his wealth, then built it more through real estate speculation and development, can win acceptance as a straight-talker who preaches about rebuilding middle-class opportunities while advocating policies that will make people poorer.

There's a severe mind-meddling behind Trump's rhetoric that finds its roots deep in Republican politics these days.

But this also highlights the significance of the debate going on in the Democratic primary contest, where favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton is quickly losing ground to insurgent candidate Bernie Sanders. Sanders' campaign is focused on reviving an honest debate about income inequality, centered around the shortcomings in industrial and trade policy, corporate profiteering and other issues.

He has about as much chance of winning the Democratic nomination as Trump does the GOP primary, but he's raising — without nearly as much fanfare and attention as Trump — a provocative, alternative agenda for the nation's liberal party. And frankly, that's where an actual agenda for attacking the growing income inequality is likely to coalesce, and take root — even if it's in a Clinton candidacy.

But there's irony on the Democratic side, too. Sanders' attacks on runaway wealth and expanding poverty? They're most popular among college-educated, upper-income earners in the Democratic Party, according to the July Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Poorer Democrats, those who would purportedly benefit most from Sanders' policies, are as ambivalent as their GOP counterparts are enthusiastic about Trump's campaign.

The bizarre resistance to anti-poverty talk and policy may be the one thing that consistently crosses party lines.

Of course Henderson forgot to mention that the good paying jobs that go somewhere would be created in America's heartland, Mexico, rather than Michigan.  Oops.

[Valmy]

I have to say that is impressive Trump. A lot of people are going to be receptive to that message. That combined with his boast about how he buys politicians in the debate almost make it worthwhile that he be in this race. He is saying a lot of things many people are thinking and deserve discussion. Pity about the inflammatory race baiting and woman-hating and general douchebaggery.

[Admiral Yi]

The absence of discussion about other, proven methods for growing the economy more evenly — investments in education, in the social safety net, in infrastructure and in affordable housing — reflects how moribund the intellectual dynamic in economic debate has become on the right side of the political spectrum.

[Phillip V]

I like John Kasich the most on the Republican side so far.

[DGuller]

I like John Kasich the most on the Republican side so far.

He's definitely gunning for the reasonable Republican primary voter niche.  I'm not sure that niche is big enough to accommodate an entire candidate, though.

[alfred russel]

James Franklin, the Penn State coach, got in trouble a few years ago for saying that he evaluates assistant coach applicants based on the hotness of their wives--his idea being that if you can land a really hot wife, you will probably be a good recruiter.

I just saw that Marco Rubio's wife is a former NFL cheerleader. Maybe a reason to think he might get the nomination? 

[Phillip V]

James Franklin, the Penn State coach, got in trouble a few years ago for saying that he evaluates assistant coach applicants based on the hotness of their wives--his idea being that if you can land a really hot wife, you will probably be a good recruiter.

I just saw that Marco Rubio's wife is a former NFL cheerleader. Maybe a reason to think he might get the nomination? 

Rubio or Trump wife.  Which is hotter?

And some candidate wives are aged now.  Maybe look at old pics or their daughters.