Good news for us re: Obamacare/ACA

strigori said:
BigRedBuster said:
strigori said:
Bruning and Ricketts have one big thing in common, both are only out to protect and grow their own wealth. I do not trust either of them.
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What tells you that about them?
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Bruning has amassed his multimillion dollar worth after entering politics. And several of his investments are in areas that he has some power and influence over.

Ricketts is a far, far richer. And you tend to see a wealthy 'conservative' focus on little else. Want to make bets on where his tax cut plan is going to shift the burden to? I assure you it wont be him or his father.
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So, basically you don't like Ricketts because he is rich and conservative.

 
I really don't think you can not vote for a candidate just because he is rich or even got rich while in office. Maybe, you could not vote for them because of how they got rich or maybe some bad business or political moves that solely benefitted them, but not just because they have a lot of money. Also, I think maybe voters can make a positive out of that as well. Can they use their skills in how they are able to save this amount of money, and use it to help our State and do we really think it can transfer this over from the business sector to the political sector.

 
BigRedBuster said:
So, basically you don't like Ricketts because he is rich and conservative.
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Do you think that a guy worth dozens (perhaps a hundred) million dollars and endorsed by the Tea Party is representative of and has the interests of the Nebraskan people in mind? It's doubtful

 
tschu said:
BigRedBuster said:
So, basically you don't like Ricketts because he is rich and conservative.
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Do you think that a guy worth dozens (perhaps a hundred) million dollars and endorsed by the Tea Party is representative of and has the interests of the Nebraskan people in mind? It's doubtful
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I ask this because he is actually the only one in the race that I have actually spent time with and had a fairly lengthy private conversation with and I did not come away from that thinking he is some whack job tea partier. I have no idea what his ties to the tea party is and quite frankly, I wish the tea party would simply go away and only be mentioned in history books from now on.

I have asked several people who claim they won't be voting for for Ricketts and many of them simply claim in almost disgust..."He's rich". Well...I tend to look at people who have a family business who has grown it in Nebraska to be very successful as someone who I might be interested in.

 
I find it helpful to have someone in office that knows what struggles specifically Nebraska companies have and possible fixes for that. Grow more businesses means more jobs.

So, if you meet someone who has been extremely successful in a family business you automatically have a negative attitude towards them?

 
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BigRedBuster said:
I find it helpful to have someone in office that knows what struggles specifically Nebraska companies have and possible fixes for that. Grow more businesses means more jobs.

So, if you meet someone who has been extremely successful in a family business you automatically have a negative attitude towards them?
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I'm going to have a VERY negative opinion of anyone picking up endorsements from Palin and Cruz. So he either believes the crazy that comes from those two fools, or he's openly pandering to the tea party faction for votes.

There is a giant difference between 'grow a business' and 'make a business more profitable' and Ricketts is only looking at the later. That's his background. And increased stock prices have zero baring on creating jobs. If that were the case unemployment would be at an all time low, and wages would not be stuck at rates from over a decade ago.

 
strigori said:
BigRedBuster said:
I find it helpful to have someone in office that knows what struggles specifically Nebraska companies have and possible fixes for that. Grow more businesses means more jobs.

So, if you meet someone who has been extremely successful in a family business you automatically have a negative attitude towards them?
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I'm going to have a VERY negative opinion of anyone picking up endorsements from Palin and Cruz. So he either believes the crazy that comes from those two fools, or he's openly pandering to the tea party faction for votes.

There is a giant difference between 'grow a business' and 'make a business more profitable' and Ricketts is only looking at the later. That's his background. And increased stock prices have zero baring on creating jobs. If that were the case unemployment would be at an all time low, and wages would not be stuck at rates from over a decade ago.
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Are you saying Ameritrade hasn't grown?

I must be one of those evil business owners/managers also. In 2007 I laid off 1/3 of our work force. I know one thing, I wouldn't still be in business if I hadn't done that. We are back to being profitable but I haven't brought back on most of those jobs.

It's just a fact in today's business environment. Our sales are much less than in 2007. We are more profitable and employ a lot fewer people. Now, do I wish my business was back to selling at the pre 2007 levels...hell yes as long as we can do it profitably. But, that just isn't the case right now. This is the way many many businesses are working right now.

 
BigRedBuster said:
I find it helpful to have someone in office that knows what struggles specifically Nebraska companies have and possible fixes for that. Grow more businesses means more jobs.

So, if you meet someone who has been extremely successful in a family business you automatically have a negative attitude towards them?
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Absolutely not.

But if I'm voting for someone based on some monetary basis, I'm going to vote for someone who is an economist, not a businessman. His view is your typical lower taxes, reduce spending, blah blah, which incidentally is very good for him and very bad for the middle class. Very bad for the middle class = very bad for businesses. But very good for rich people like him.

 
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Now you can be a successful businessman and still be like, whoa, this system that allowed me to be very wealthy is pretty f'd up for the majority of people. But this shows a sort of self-awareness and empathy that pretty much isn't found in the set of wealthy, who see their wealth as a sort of confirmation bias that they are better or worth more than other people, and less the result of some good variance and a system that benefits them tremendously WRT capital and its returns, the ability to pass wealth to their family, the low tax rates and the ease by which money can be sheltered from taxes when you're that wealthy, etc etc etc. There are very few of the former and countless of the latter.

Besides, if you're always focused on how to deal with things at the business level, you're completely ignoring problems at the private citizen level, things like healthcare and education and other things that a governor can really have an impact on

 
Nebraska already has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation. Shouting "lower taxes to increase jobs" is not only false, but it's also focusing your attention on the wrong thing at this point in time.

 
Really, there's one fundamental question that you should ask when voting for governor in 2014: "Will he enact the Medicaid expansion?"

If the answer is "No," then you're voting for the wrong guy.

 
tschu said:
Besides, if you're always focused on how to deal with things at the business level, you're completely ignoring problems at the private citizen level, things like healthcare and education and other things that a governor can really have an impact on
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Not really. Something that has been a major topic of discussion my rural area of Nebraska amongst business leaders is the lack of educated work force. We have worked hard to improve the education of that work force in our area through both the public school system and post graduate working training courses through the business development community.

A large part of my conversation with Ricketts was based on this. He expressed to me how important it is for companies like Ameritrade to have ample amounts of people graduating from schools in the state with the skills needed to do what he needs done.

I don't know many business people who don't care about the health care of their employees. This could be on a personal level as one human to another or simply the fact that an unhealthy employee costs them a huge amount of money. Work place wellness programs have grown in numbers over the last decade in large part because of this.

We are getting off topic here from the purpose of the thread. But, my point in the questions was simply about the thought that someone who owns and runs a large successful business in Nebraska is automatically a bad choice for Governor.

Seems kind of odd to me...but...hey....everyone has their criteria to look at.

 
Just wanna say, I don't have much to add to threads like this, but I love reading tschu's and BRB's conversations. Very level-headed and informative, good job guys.

 
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