Remember there needs to be relief for those who travel alone because there is no public transport for many who need to work more than one job. Ever changing start and finish times for many low wage jobs places an unfair burden for those who have no other way to get to work on time. If you live outside the big city, buses and trains don't operate late enough or begin service early enough. Ride share only helps those who have regular working hours. This could work if there was a central rideshare database and gas cards for those who helped out whenever possible. Does any of this sound familiar? I am not alone in my search for alternatives.

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in America I have been forced to compete with cheaper and cheaper labor from overseas. If Obama demands that I pay my employees more he had better tell me where I am going to get the extra revenue because otherwise I will be shut out of the market. Unless you are actually dealing with these kinds of pressures, as most employees never will, you cannot imagine them. It's one thing to a huge big corporation, but most small businesses struggle mightily to get by and keep people employed. It's getting harder and harder to do in this economy as it is.
It's like people think that just because you have a business you must have all this money all over the place, I am lucky to make the rent every month. Put some more obstacles out there for small business owners and see where that gets all of us.
Please think of some other group of people or national institution to scapegoat for the country's problems.

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I'm sorry but unless Obama can prove otherwise, he's no different from Bill Clinton's phoney "populism" campaigning in 1992 at best. So far, Obama would either vote along with the sellout crowd on a piece of legislation or he would sit mum even as a huge chunk of his party makes it easier for the GOP to get what they want. A vote for Obama or Mccain is a vote for Bush !

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In this moment we have an opportunity to attempt to change the status quo. Big money may pay but if we the people would start holding elected officials feet to the fire then and only then will we be able to see some real change. While Sen. Obama has someone on his staff that has had some questionable background, that doesn't necessarily mean that Sen. Obama doesn't have a mind of his own and won't follow thru with changing things if elected to office. Sen. McCain on the other hand has a very long voting record that belies what he now says, and shows exactly how his positions have changed over the years. The devil you know isn't always better, after all it's still the devil.

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I'm all for Obama, but his campaign is showing disturbing signs of Carter-Kerry Syndrome. The symptoms of that fatal malady are: 1)Focusing on noble ideas rather than popular, pratical positions 2) overestimating the intellect and benevolence of the American electorate and 3)stubbornly adhering to traditional Democratic positions rather than reacting to modern political realities.

A good example is Obama's position on offshore drilling, which is correct, logical and consistent. However, it's also politically stupid and guaranteed to lose him a lot of votes in November. It DOESN'T MATTER if the Democrats are correct on this, the popular mythos is that offshore drilling is urgently needed. Correcting that idea would take years of educating the public, and Obama has only four months to go. The same is true of some other ideas Obama has espoused recently, including the windfall profits tax. The term has "tax" appended to it, and so will be rejected by most voters, who have been trained to view all taxes as evil. Mondale and Carter learned this the hard way.

Obama needs to smarten up and stop sounding like a college professor (and stop sounding like Carter and Kerry). Advice: Stop being so damn specific. Stop with the high-minded, impractical approaches. Roll up your sleeves. Wave the flag a little. Kiss some babies. Make more of those general, soul-stirring speeches. And for God's sake, GET ELECTED.

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I think this comment -- "So while prices may be driven down somewhat by forcing domestic workers into competition with foreign slave labor, wages are dropping faster than prices are, meaning Americans are losing out in the deal" -- is fairly arch.

Consider that America runs on the work of illegal immigrants (equivalent to slave labor), who are not necessarily the beneficiaries of so much as the minimum wage.

Think how easy it would be for an employer of an illegal immigrant to say: "You will be happy with one dollar an hour or else..."

It's high time to get informed and pro-active about our own way of doing business here at home before slamming "foreign slave labor." On the backs of illegal immigrants, America is making out quite well, thank you, in keeping prices down.

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He will raise the minimum wage to $9.90 and will effectively making it a living wage by indexing it to cost of living increases.

But that will not happen until 2011 if he gets elected.

We need an immediate minimum wage increase, not one phased in.

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Wages cant seem to keep pace with inflation under NAFTA. Corporate profits taxe that up as margins are lower and every penny possible is kept to improve performance.

Obama needs to talk to these issues as well as taxes.. There is much fear that America will become a socialist state under his tax and spend plans.

Regardless if thats true or not, someone I spoke with yesterday said he just read taxes will go as high as 60% under Obama so he has to be defeated... I've yet been able to decipher his, or McCains tax proposal impact.

Traditional liberal tax and spend policies in a time when
Americans need less government, low taxes and incentives to reinvest in industry in this country is the wrong answer for all Americans. Americans dont want handouts, they want to work!

As far as the race card, I think the one playing it soundly is Obama. . Blacks would vote for him if he were mickey mouse!

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In 2000 when they told us that GWB "won" the election I predicted that by the time he left office he will have screwed this country up so badly that the people of this nation would elect Donald Duck to the presidency before we'd elect another republican.

Although I think that most politicians are "bought and paid for" puppets I do believe that Barrack Obama will work harder for the middle and lower class working people of this nation. He is also the better choice for saving our current and restoring our lost civil liberties. He is intelligent, young, energetic and brings to the table fresh new ideas for real change moving this country forward. The biggest problem I see for Obama is being able to make any real significant changes for this country once he is elected given the way our govt. has been hijacked by those with real money and thus power. But it all has to start somewhere if the chance for recovery is ever going to be possible.

Although McCain is a very honorable man who has served his country well in terms of his military service and patriotism he is old and tired and lacks the "outside of the box", "cutting edge" vision needed to pull this country back together for the good of ALL. That coupled with the fact that the republican party itself is "owned" by the religious and corporate entities hell bent on total domination and self serving control through monetary superiority makes it highly unlikely that a McCain presidency would be much different if different at all from the last 8 yrs we've witnessed with "the frat-boy that couldn't believe he actually got the presidency to begin with" idiot that has caused this mess and will be leaving it for the next guy to clean up.

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Please tell me how the Democrats' and Obama's position on offshore drilling is "correct, logical and consistent?" Yes, it's true that additional drilling will not decrease the price of crude. The price of this fungible commodity is determined by a global market and the additional production will not be enough to meaningfully affect the price. But it is also true that oil and gas produced domestically gives hundreds of thousands of Americans jobs, good paying jobs. You want to increase gas consumption standards on newly manufacured vehicles, fine. You want to give incentives for the production of alternative engergy sources such as wind and solar, fine. You want increase public transportation, fine. You want to tax the ungodly compensation of some oil company executives, have at it. But the fact is, even if we do all these things, the end of the gasoline burning internal compustion engine is decades away. And in the meantime, we will continue to pay at the pump. The issue is do we put paychecks in the hands of thousands of Americans to produce our energy or do we offshore these jobs to other countrys, many of which hate our guts.

Oh yes, the enviormental issue. Mustn't forget that. There are thousands of rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and there have been no spills whatsoever, none, not even when Katrina blasted its way through. Before you throw the Exxon Valdez at me, let me point out that that was an incident involving the transportation of oil, not its production. Increased importation of oil will only increase the risk of another tanker spill, not drecrease the risk. Through the use of high bonding requirements and strict liablity regulations, the enviormental issues can be dealt with.

When it comes to this issue, the liberals in this country are governed by blind hatred. The evil oil companies must be punished. Forget common sense and practical economics. Just pour on the hatred. You claim to represent the interests of working Americans, but I guess the oil and gas workers don't qualify.

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You mean, "Obama to Adopt the John Edwards Agenda of Two Americas" don't you?

The best man ain't running folks. And the one who has the nomination is slow-walking to the White House.

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It is remarkable to read so many comments posted about what their candidate for President will do. "He will raise the minimum wage" "he will open up oil exploration". This is truly worth noting, for what this implies that these voters still want an Imperial President, only perhaps, a more benevolent version.This is unfortunate for it reveals that so many do not even care about the Constitution, which is suppose to be the law of this land. If it had been adhered to, and Congress, not the President, has the right to go to war, there would have been no invasion of Iraq.
But the rule of law has become moot. Even their beloved Senator Obama favors extending more powers to the executive branch, in the name of security, terror, or simply, to make things more flexible.

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Not large corporations. The wage gap in our economy is outrageous. But we do need to keep small business alive.

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Plutocrats control the democratic party too. And America is making another grave mistake in assuming that Obama is going to serve the people, the country, or the constitution over the Plutocrats. The election is over. The Plutocrats won. If you care about your country then you'll stop caring about the election because there is far more important work to be doing than watching WWF staged theater. They will NOT touch on any real issues. No matter how bad things get they will always lie and they wont even care how obvious it becomes.

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All jobs leave a trail back to Wall Street. Fact is that's how our economy works. Regulations have all but vanished. That's what got us all screwed. People can't be left to their own devices and markets do not run themselves. The current problems are all the result of a lack of enforcing regulations. Obama can help to change that by putting the right people in charge. Oil futures trading is bring examined right now. Thanks, ANNA

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I agree that wages are a huge problem and the only way we're going to fix that is by the mass-unionization of service sector jobs that can't be outsourced. However, the other big reason we don't have enough money is because we're told that we need to buy all this new shit. We've got enough used/second-hand products in the US that nobody really needs to buy anything new. Imagine that, we keep expanding our unionized service infrastructure and say fuck you to cheap overseas manufacturing. It's a win win!

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likely to put 'liberal' judges on the bench than Bush-Clone McPain.

And this is the only reason why I'll be voting for Obama.

Other than that, he is no different than the psudo-liberal DINO that make up the majority of the elected Democratic party.

We live in a two party dictatorship, and given that there will be at least 1 if not 2 openings on SCOTUS bench, I would bet on a DINO to do at least one right thing in the Oval office.

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Only consumers can do that. And American consumers are ignorant slobs.

So GM is closing its SUV and truck plants? We need $5/gal gasoline to accomplish that? And now we have a nation full of empty or foreclosed McMansions. And it has taken an economic recession to accomplish that? Every elderly couple needs a 4 bedroom, 3 bath, 3 car garage home, because it's a good investment?

Obama won't save us from ourselves because no one can. Advertisers are the ones who push us to consume. And like kids we immitate what we see. Foolish consumers are foolish voters. The people already have power--if only we'd stop abusing it.

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Perhaps the best way for the Senator to win in November is to ask Ralph Nader onto the ballot. If Ralph said yes, you'd have a pretty good idea that Obama might go another direction with trade issues.

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"Free Trade" is the establishment mantra. Even Bill Clinton got sucked into it. Its time to return to the roots of our self-interest, protecting truly American workers and the industries they work for. Yet we not only accept the lunacy of forcing American workers to compete with foreign workers via "free trade", we allow traitorous corporations to import even more competition known as "undocumented workers". And then we criticize and condemn those who speak up. We have hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of discouraged young people who could be trained to learn a trade, but the corporations would rather hire an illegal alien who already knows how to work and works cheaper out of desperation. Close the loopholes! Train Americans and legal immigrants to work! Penalize lawbreaking corporations! Its better for everyone in the long run.

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Then Obama has only one choice for his VP: John Edwards. The ass-kicking conservatives so richly need will proceed from that point on to victory in November. It will be inevitable.

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Yeah you're right David since he won't even mention the existence of the Enron Loophole or the Commodities and Futures Modernization Act or how the Speculators are gouging America's eyes out and bringing our economy to it's knees in the biggest rip off swindle in history..

If we get paid more then they can raise the price of gasoline and heating oil even more I'm sure Obama would go for that..

I'll vote for this guy but John Edwards was our best chance and hope for change real change but my vote will be against McCain..

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"In our us-versus-them culture..."

The ones left out of the public discussion are
those who have fallen out of (beneath) the working class and those who are unemployable.
The message in recent months is: Lose your job, you disappear.
Maybe people assume there is help for those who can't, by reason of health or circumstances, work. Indeed, some might find help, but there is no longer an entitlement to aid based on need, just because you meet the requirements. Our soaring levels of hunger and homelessness show the impact of current policies against the poor.
Not everyone can work, nor are there jobs for everyone who can. What we call "welfare reform" created a massive group of people desperate for jobs, willing to work for a fraction of what current employees are paid.
(Corporations love this, since it spares them the cost of moving jobs to Third World countries in search of lower wages/higher profits.)