The People Who Make Our Clothes And The Conditions They Face
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-12-11/people-who-make-our-clothes-and-conditions-they-face
Dozens of Bangladesh workers making clothes for the U.S. market were killed in a factory fire last month. Debate over the safety of apparel makers and what can be done to improve conditions.
Guests
Steven Greenhouse
labor and workplace reporter, The New York Times
Scott Nova
executive director, Workers Rights Consortium
Kalpona Akter
labor activist, Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity
Alice Tepper Marlin
founder and president, Social Accountability International
Comments
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Jokr8790 wrote: "Anything published by either the Cato Institute or the Heritage Foundation has about as much credibility as anything broadcast by Fox 'News'."
That's like saying the Brookings Institute has about as much credibility as MSNBC. They are completely different. One is a policy think tank and the other is a commercial entertainment entity.
Ferdnam wrote: "Yes, my explorations generally have "intellectual teeth." "Can we agree that we have different opinions on things and that we are exploring each other's views and underlying principles without help from dismissive qualifiers?"
Yes you are an intellectual giant, a legend in your own mind, or maybe just another Clifford with a better vocabulary.
Yes, another Clifford
Ferdnam wrote: "I do not know if you realize what you are actually saying... Are you suggesting that businesses cannot afford to pay "living wages?" Does this mean that workers work until they die of starvation? Do you wish to adopt the concentration camp model? You work until you drop dead, at which point you are being replaced by someone else who is going to work until he or she drops dead?"
Jokr8790 wrote:
"What people like Ecgbert and THX want to do is return Americans to the kind of working conditions like those that caused the factory fire in Bangladesh. They want to bring back child labor and no regulation on corporations whatever. They want to abolish social welfare prigrams and leave workers unprotected to the mercy of the corporations in their insatiable greed for more and more profit. They're hoping some of that will trickle down on them, probably because they might own some stock in tbese sweat shops. Its ridiculous."
What is ridiculous is your contention. You have no basis for it. Have you heard either of us advocating for repeal of child labor laws? Have you heard either of us advocating for sunsetting OSHA?
Or did you just make it up because you don't have a single positive fact-based point to make and can only throw flames that you think will excite your far-left buddies on this mb to hate people with a different point of view? Yeah, that last one. That sounds about right.
Ferdnam wrote:
"I replied to your point in a post to THX...
Some issues were already adjudicated by your supreme court...
The issue of the interpretation of the constitution on the question of "general welfare" has been resolved over and over.
Your only recourse is to constitutionally revert to a different interpretation and this would be very difficult.
It is not what you think is unconstitutional that makes it so. It is what the supreme court says is unconstitutional that makes it so..."
Partly you did. I've already said it's not what I think or what you think, it's what the Constitution says, and, yes, I will accept, how SCOTUS interprets it. But that is an existential argument. I'm asking YOU the philosophical questions. In context, the Constitution at the Federal level refers to the citizenry as a collective, not as individuals. What the FG is tasked with doing benefits all people, not specific groups (see the equal protection clause) and certainly not individual citizens.
And the question that you have avoided is the one wrt to Article I, Section 8. It is the tough one for the Progressive to answer. If what I am saying is not the case, why are the powers of the Congress enumerated?
@ THX...
Why do you reply to a perfectly neutral post by once again resorting to dismissive qualifiers?
I just dissect your positions, deconstruct them and uncover the apparent obvious internal inconsistencies...
In return, you can clarify your positions... I am not holding you to your initial premise.
To me, a conversation lives. It evolves. It is a helical process. It is not a battle between two radically opposed views and between unmovable objects.
Just put forth the points supporting your position and we should be able to debate these robustly, honestly, and respectfully...
Calling me names (even if it is "Clifford") does not prove a point...
ecgberht wrote:
...
And the question that you have avoided is the one wrt to Article I, Section 8. It is the tough one for the Progressive to answer. If what I am saying is not the case, why are the powers of the Congress enumerated?"
I cannot claim to be the last arbiter when it comes to the US constitution.
However, there is a body (your Supreme Court) which determines how your constitution should be understood.
The philosophical question you raise is an interesting one as it is answered in the constitution of my country. The powers of my country's Federal Government are "only those" that are expressly delegated to it. Everything else is handled by the cantonal (State) legislative, judicial and executive authorities. I am in total agreement with that legal philosophy.
We can discuss the origins of your legal system (derived, as I understand it, from the Anglo-Saxon traditions). The role of interpretation and precedent in your judicial system is very different from our (my country's) system...
"The philosophical question you raise is an interesting one as it is answered in the constitution of my country. The powers of my country's Federal Government are "only those" that are expressly delegated to it. Everything else is handled by the cantonal (State) legislative, judicial and executive authorities. I am in total agreement with that legal philosophy. "
Me too. And so is our Constitution, specifically the 10th Amendment, we just haven't followed it very well, IMO.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Ferdnam wrote: Ridiculous
Good god man! It's like talking to a robot, a liberal robot.
THX1138 on December 12, 2012 @ 7:19 pm wrote: “Ferdnam wrote: Ridiculous Good god man! It's like talking to a robot, a liberal robot.”
ecgberht on December 12, 2012 @ 3:31 pm wrote: “And so is our Constitution, specifically the 10th Amendment, . . . ."
I avoided getting into this discussion for a variety of reasons, including having other things to do, plus the fact that so many others were able to clearly see your nonsense, gentlemen, for precisely what it is. But these last two Comments are irresistible, both for what they demonstrate about you both, and because one of them mangles the Constitution.
Ferdnam never wrote the word “ridiculous” (except when quoting others, particularly THX1138 himself). But, of course, that little fact is of no importance whatsoever, since neither of you gentlemen ever let a little thing like facts get in the way of your partisan and ideological rantings.
As for the U.S. Constitution, ecgberht, are you really that blind? The point Ferdnam made (that his country's Constitution includes the vitally important word "expressly") seems to have slipped right by you.
As your own quote from the Tenth Amendment shows, that word is nowhere to be found in the Constitution you (like so many conservatives) pretend to revere and follow. (Instead, you follow a Constitution of your own making, that exists only in your imaginations.)
The omission of that vital word was no oversight, and to demonstrate just how important that omission is we must look at history
TO BE CONTINUED
PART TWO.
The predecessor to the Constitution was the Articles of Confederation. It created precisely the kind of weak Federal government conservatives dream of, with the U.S. reduced to a loose confederation of States (in many ways resembling both the League of Nations and the United Nations in its actual impotence). The Articles were scrapped in favor of the Constitution precisely to make a stronger and “more perfect Union”. (That’s from the Preamble to the Constitution, of course, but read The Federalist Papers for a fuller discussion of all this.)
And what did those original Articles say about the powers of the State governments versus the Federal?
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” - Article II (Emphasis added).
Note that the key word “expressly” is itself expressly written into those Articles. But it is missing from both the original Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.
TO BE CONTINUED
PART THREE
That’s no accident. At least twice during the drafting of what became the Tenth Amendment an attempt was made to insert that word, so that under the Constitution (as under the Articles of Confederation) the U.S. would have only those powers “expressly” delegated to it. Both times the attempt was defeated, with James Madison leading the fight against it.
See, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Richard Labunski (Oxford University Press, 2006), pages 229 - 230.
And Madison had previously devoted Federalist Paper Number 44 to explaining why that word had been omitted from the original Constitution. He also discussed the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (which makes Federal law supreme over State law) - a provision not to be found in the Articles of Confederation.
None of this is a new observation. It’s been recognized as part of Constitutional Law since 1819, when the landmark decision of McCulloch v. Maryland was rendered. (4 Wheat. 316, 4 L.Ed. 579) The Federal government is not limited to just those powers expressly stated, because the Constitution never said that it was!
This doesn’t mean the Federal government is all powerful, in fact its powers are more limited than those of the States. But said powers are far greater than either of you gentlemen pretend.
It’s ironic. Ferdnam (who I take it is from another country) seems to have greater knowledge and understanding of our Constitution, Law, and legal system than either of you (supposed) Americans.
Instead, you both sound like badly programmed robots, conservative robots.