Too Bad We Won't Get One

I agree with this, but what do I know?:

The economic paradox we are facing is that we truly need an old-time Dem in office right now. We have got to change our policies enough to put some stimulus into the lower half of the income bracket, and we don't have too many options to do it. We don't have the money to send people checks all the time, and we haven't been saving for retirements so we can't cut taxes much or at all on the bottom two-thirds of the income distribution. Our tax pyramid is sharp enough that we can't afford to raise them too much on the next 20% of the income distribution either, and if you target just the top you are asking for flight. Ronald Reagan did more to raise the incomes of the bottom half of the distribution than the modern Dems, which should tell us all something.

I and I and Dieter

[posted by Callimachus]

Chrysler's Newark, Del., plant got the axe today.

The Delaware plant makes the Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen SUVs. Gas-guzzling vehicles grew unpopular last year after gasoline prices shot up. The plant had been operating at only about half capacity, says consultants Harbour Associates.

I know business is complex and markets are fickle, but I can't help thinking a whole lot of lunchpail guys just lost their careers because of bad choices made by some suits who will keep theirs.

Reader can testify to this: It's hard to find any adult around Wilmington or Newark who hasn't worked at one time or another for Chrysler or DuPont. Or both.

Did you know that the list of people who have manned the assembly lines at Newark's Chrysler plant over the decades includes Bob Marley? Yup. His mom moved up to Delaware in the early 1960s, and periodically in the late 1960s, when Marley's music career in Jamaica hit a slow spot, he'd come up to Newark and lived with his mom and worked in the Chrysler plant for a while. I've read that he wrote many of his best-known songs while in Newark.

According to his son's reminiscence, he brought the family with him after he married.

During the 1970s stint, 8-year-old Ziggy and his elder sisters came along with Bob and wife Rita Marley to "live in my grandmother's house on Tatnall Street" and go to elementary school.

"I got teased a lot, but it was a real eye-opener," Ziggy recalled. "It was the first place I ever saw snow. And we still have a lot of relatives, cousins in the area."