Foley / Malloy: the first debate
I attended the Ordinance Review Committee meeting tonight and missed the first Gubernatorial debate.
Nonetheless, I'm Republican and normally vote GOP. But frankly, I'm annoyed with both of the major party candidates at this point because of their refusal to speak to the existence of Mary Fritz' slush funds.
So I'm still sorting through the details before I decide who gets my vote. As such, I was reading tonight's NYTimes take on the debate, including this not-so-flattering piece:
Mr. Malloy returned to the topic of the company and said that voters should “be afraid that he’ll do to Connecticut what he did to the Bibb company in Georgia”
Reminds me of Dick Cheney's Mushroom Cloud moment. If that's not fearmongering, I don't know what is.
Tim White
2 comments:
For all concerned about Tom Foley and the closure of the Textile Mill, Bibb Co. you must understand a few things about the textile Industry. #1. It chases cheaper labor markets, always has and always will. Basically textiles abandoned New England in the 1950's and found fertile ground in the South. In the late 90's most of them fled the South for the southern border areas or just over the border in to Mexico (remember NAFTA). From there even cheaper mexican labor wasn't good enough. Nearly all textiles are being produced in Asia, China in particular. The expensive weaving and printing technology machines are made by US and German manuacturers or by the Chinese.
Warren Buffet's first acquisition was a Mass. based textile mill called Berkshire Hathaway...I used to buy fabrics from them in the late 70's. He shuttered it and it remains the masthead in name only for his multi billion dollar empire.
I'm sorry about the plight of anyone who loses a job or any industry that loses a foothold but in the world of competition that is the name of the game. We must not accept failure and whine about it but come up with something better, which is largely what US manufacturing has been all about until recently. Gov't can't do anything about that either.
Its time to get Gov't off the backs of industry with it excessive rules and regulations and tax policies.
I'm fine with Foley. #1 he has run a company, survived and moved on to other companies that employed many and prospered along the way and #2 he knows how to lay off workers. We know that cutting this and that in state services means someone is willing to look hard at the numbers of people providing those services. Businesses have had to do this over the last several years and its high time that the state do the same thing.
Tim Slocum
During the last 60 years, I don't think anyone has tried to make sure tax money is spent wisely. It is time to look at all the functions of our state government and determine if all the services are really needed, and if they are, how can they be done more effectively. Let's compare what we do with other states, There are so many examples of how the money is wasted.
Why do we have police at construction sites, other state don't. Wht pay $50 or per hour when the contractor can get people for a lot less and we don't have to pay retirement benefits for people to sit in state cars.
Why do we need 5 state highway trucks to protect one truck that is actually be utilized on a construction or maintenance site.
Does anyone ever check if anyone attends or uses some of the service offered. Once a program is started it goes on forever whether it is needed or not.
Why do we have so many levels within agencies, assistant director reporting to directors, who report to assistant commissioners who report to commissioners. It's not only a matter of wasting money, it slows decisions down to months and years.
Why does our state government have to be so loaded down with polical appointments?
Everyone knows our money is wasted and so many are getting paid above the private sector, but nobody does anything about it.
Well enough said. I hope Foley wins and doesn't just get fat filling the govenors seat. If he wants he could probably reduce taxes enough so that businesses would no only stay, but new businesses would move here.
As for Molloy, he says he'll cut his staff by 15%, big whoop, that's it? And, he'll reduce the number of agencies by 1/3. Just merging agencies isn't going to save anything and could cost more by adding more positions to tie them together.
If either of these candidates simply cut ribbons and sit out their term, we will all be worse off than we are now.
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