Skip to Content

Hiram Foster

Crystal, MN
Commenter for
5 years 27 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 03/06/13 at 07:12 am in response to Dow at a new all-time high: What additional incentives do job creators need?

Corporations are making money by reducing costs, including employee costs, and it's corporate profits along with a lack of good places to put money outside stocks that is driving the stock market. A case in point that's been in the news lately is Best Buy. Lately, they have been something of a turnaround story, but note the turnaround doesn't come from expansion but contraction of the business along with greater efficiencies, which among other things, means employees doing more, rather than...

Posted on 02/28/13 at 05:32 pm in response to Pull-tab stadium funding: Minnesota's headache that won't go away

What seems to be the case is that the agreement on the stadium has turned out to be illusory. It was not a deal to finance a stadium but rather a short term deal designed to get us just far enough down the road so politicians could plausibly claim that we have gone too far to turn back.

Posted on 03/01/13 at 08:57 am in response to Pull-tab stadium funding: Minnesota's headache that won't go away

I find it hard to imagine that anyone really thought the revenue was secure. For one thing, the whole deal was done in such a hurry, that literally there wasn't enough information available to anyone on which that conclusion could be legitimately based. The whole point of the last minute process was to avoid scrutiny. It's the only way the deal could have been done.

Posted on 02/23/13 at 01:25 pm in response to You can blame whom you want for the sequester crisis

The problem Republicans are having here is that they confuse concessions Democrats are willing to make with policies Democrats acually support.

Posted on 02/22/13 at 09:46 am in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

As a DFL pol myself, I haven't felt particularly called upon to say anything about the orchestra lockouts. If I were, I would tell the unions that this is the 21st century, and that they must be more flexible, more innovative, and that means challenging some fundamental assumptions about the future of their business. I would tell them, that there is nothing to be gained by nursing old grievances, or by vilifying management. What I would tell management is no one goes to the orchestras, or...

Posted on 02/22/13 at 11:31 am in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

Among the realities that both sides are going to have to adjust to, is that they days of blank checks from corporations will soon be a thing of the past. The folks Doug talks about who support the orchestras and who he suggests the politicians must cultivate are men and women of the past, and it is the case that it's their failure of leadership that has put the orchestras in the pickle that they are currently in. What's required is a level of innovative thinking far beyond the capabilities...

Posted on 02/22/13 at 01:22 pm in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

"What I would tell management is no one goes to the orchestras, or listens to the orchestra in any format to hear them."...is himself greatly out of touch with reality.

I thought that was one of my less controversial statements. Nobody goes to Orchestra Hall to hear managers read from balance sheets. I suspect the problem is with me, sometimes my sentence structure does get a little baroque at times.

Management have dug a hole, but if they have, both labor and management are...

Posted on 02/22/13 at 01:40 pm in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

this lockout is not about old grievances or lack of flexibility.

It is hard for me to say what role grievances or lack of flexibility played in the initial decision to lockout the players. Based on their public utterances since then, I am pretty comfortable in saying that both of those factors have played a role in the continuation of the dispute. In particular, I hear a lot of complaints by one party about the other party's choice of representation, something that's none of their...

Posted on 02/22/13 at 01:59 pm in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

European orchestras like the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, I think, are self administering. Maybe that's an option the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra should consider pursuing.

Posted on 02/25/13 at 01:38 pm in response to Political leaders' unusual silence speaks volumes about the complexities of orchestra lockouts

I suspect management isn't very confident about what they are doing. That being the case, what sense does it make for them to go to arbitration?