Jobs Americans Will Do
Despite the credit crunch and the depression in chip sales, Intel is investing $7 billion to build new chip factories right here in the good old U.S. of A. Good for them. I have to wonder if this is an outlier, or if there is some sense developing in the non-finance areas of the business world that they should begin sticking closer to the US, rather than sending their operations to further far-flung regions.
It can be hard to remember this, but the US remains a technologically advanced nation with industries and products that most countries are flat out incapable of duplicating. It would be nice if these industries would actually stay here, rather than send their operations (and jobs) to some undeserving corner of the world simply because the local junta comes up with some cheap labor.
It's fine to support free trade, and decry "economic nationalism," but there should be absolutely no shame in a US company creating jobs in the US for US workers. In fact, it should be encouraged. It's hard to imagine how we will end the Great Recession without improving those sectors of the American economy that actually produce something besides paper profits.
Of course, these American chip plants will be in Oregon, New Mexico, and Arizona. Intel may be based in California, but there's no way they would actually invest billions of dollars in its home state just so it can be swarmed by the state's relentless regulatory agencies and tax collectors.
Icarus at Dawn
Some are already wondering if the Obama presidency has "failed." There's a lot of partisan eagerness under many of these claims. and it does seem a little silly to be crying failure just 2 weeks after the Inauguration.
Still, some of the voices sounding this pessimistic note have been striking. Victor Davis Hanson was one. Now, the hard nosed, sophisticated Martin Wolf has taken a look at the economic plans issuing from Washington and come to the same conclusion. It's hard not to see why. The Stimulus Bill will be too expensive and will not stimulate anything except growth in government. Meanwhile, the latest bank bailout - announced to the fanfare of falling stock prices - is too little to do any good.
I did not vote for Obama. I don't want him to usher in a New Era of permanent Democratic majorities. I certainly do not (and have not) supported any of the bailouts. But, the last couple days have been depressing. The sight of Treasury Secretary Geithner - looking small and tentative - announcing the "new" bailout plan as the Market literally began to plunge as he spoke ... it was hard to watch. The cemeteries are indeed full of "indispensable" men.
Like Rush Limbaugh, I don't want Obama to "succeed" in the sense that I don't want Obama to pass every item on the socialist-progressive wish list. But, I would like to see Obama succeed in taming the financial crisis that seems to have sapped the world economy of its confidence and animal spirits. That hope looks to be increasingly faint.
The Olympics Clean Up Continues
A massive fire destroyed a luxury hotel in Beijing yesterday. And the gov't says the cause was ... errant fireworks?!
THIS?
Was caused by FIREWORKS??
Maybe they were carrier-based fireworks...
Free At Last. Free At Last
Judges order state to free thousands of inmates.
Outrageous. That's the only word to describe three judges ordering the release of tens of thousands of inmates because the California prison system itself, especially the prison health services, is supposedly "unconstitutional" for being cruel and unusual punishment.
That's a joke right? Jerry Brown himself is arguing against this. Jerry Brown! He's the progressive's progressive; a true blue liberal. If Jerry Brown says the prisons are OK, that's good enough for me.
These judges on the other hand...words fail. They would really release so many thousands of criminals out on to the streets? They would be willing to risk a dramatic increase in crime and chaos to satisfy some idealized vision of the perfect prison hospital?
This is a perfect storm of legal issues that have launched a thousand preachy bumperstickers. The legal left in California has complained vociferously about prison constructions for 20 years. They have wailed incessantly about the sentencing guidelines that supposedly "tie the judge's hands" (because so many in the past let people off with the proverbial slap on the wrist). They have complained about the 3-strikes law that ended the revolving door of recidivist inmates. And, they have complained about the "law and order" policies that have been immensely popular in CA, even as CA has gone from Reagan country to Obama land. This attempted mass liberation of prisoners is Christmas in February for this crowd.
I really hope this turns into a constitutional crisis with the governor and AG Brown refusing to obey any order to release inmates on these grounds. An independent judiciary is part of the constitutional scheme, but not when the judiciary has become a rogue body that no longer acts for the good of all Californians, just the ones who commit crimes.
Now My Pants Are Chafing Me
One of the articles of faith of the typical SF progressive is a hostility against "chain stores" (shudder). I won't bore you with the details. If you've ever heard someone knock Wal-Mart, you'll know the basic story. The funny thing is, despite all the self-righteous drama, San Francisco is still filled with Starbucks and McDonalds (but no Home Depot. Take THAT, Great Combine!), so it's mostly an ineffectual exercise.
Stil, every once in a while a "chain" will try to enter a neighborhood and, for whatever reason, the neighborhood will go crazy with petitions and angry town hall meetings. The latest is American Apparel's attempt to open a store on Valencia Street. A/A would seem to be a perfect fit for San Francisco. It has a retro sweaty-funky vibe, and its clothes look cute on some of SF's more waif-like residents. But, the folks on Valencia Street (an unremarkable thoroughfare with the usual mix of bead shops, taverns, taquerias, and used bookstores) decided that this would not do. And, so the drama began. You can read a snarky story about the controversy here.
Now, normally I like to make fun of this sort of thing. But, this time the progressive NIMBY'S got one right, even if inadvertently. A/A is simply not an admirable company. CEO Dov Charney is, to put it nicely, a sleazeball. But, he is a smart sleazeball who knows that the proper mix of hipster cool, sex, and ostentatious progressivism will cover a multitude of sins. And he needs the cover. A/A has been slapped with numerous sexual harassment suits, most aimed at the CEO himself. The company has also engaged in a series of accounting "irregularities" that led to the resignation of the CFO. The place has a distinct ZZZZ Best-ian odor to it.
Mostly, though, Charney is a type who is easily found in the progressive community; an alpha dog who mouths progressive platitudes to get laid and get rich. SF has enough of these guys already. Valencia Street doesn't need to do him any other favors.
I Come Not To Praise Him, But To Bury Him in Invective
Every once in a while, Frank Rich issues forth a decent column from his swelled little head, and today's - on the topic of Obama's failure to understand the populist groundswell that is brewing in the hinterlands outside DC and NYC - is pretty good. But even an OK Frank Rich column cannot escape the calumnious hysterics that are his signature style.
Rich correctly prescribes the Daschle fiasco as representing Obama's fundamental misreading of the times and failure to seize the zeitgeist: that Americans in general (party affiliation really doesn't matter) are growing increasingly disgusted by the scandals on Wall Street and their mirror images in DC, and no longer want to hear about how some guy they have never heard of is "indispensable" in the effort to save American capitalism, especially when the "indispensable man" turns out to have been a featured player at the center of the behaviors that brought us to the crisis point.
But, Rich can't stand the fact that "his" party is now the one in charge and making a hash of things, so he has to find some GOP boogeymen to shoulder the blame and distract the reader from the true state of affairs, all of which leads to the following:
"Voters turned on Sarah Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her claims of being a regular hockey mom were contradicted by her Evita shopping sprees."
That makes sense! Sarah Palin = Evita Peron! What insight! How long did that take you think up? Almost as long as the Iraq = Viet Nam analogy so beloved of progressives?
I will not address the business about Gov. Palin's wardrobe during the late campaign. Go here, if you have any interest in learning the dull reality of the "wardrobe scandal." But I would like to get something off my chest.
Frank Rich, on behalf of myself, the GOP, conservatives, and people of good faith everywhere (but not on behalf of Gov. Palin, who is perfectly capable of taking care of herself); I would like to say:
F--- You.*
Yes, Frank, F--- You. Because the troubles in America goes beyond a bunch of corrupt bankers and their enablers in the so-called Party of the Common Man. There is a worse problem and it is this: there is a moral corrosion in the hearts of our intellectual and artistic elite that sees no problem with combining historic illiteracy with mendacious lies and calling it "analysis." Michael Moore is the worst (and wealthiest) exemplar of this, but Frank you are in the Top 10.
You say Sarah Palin is an "Evita." Well, Frank, I think spending all those years going to the "thea-tuh" and hanging out with Andrew Lloyd Weber has warped any historical perspective you may have once had. The real Eva Peron ("Evita" was her nickname; but, you knew that, right?) had two things in common with Gov. Palin: she was a woman; and she was pretty.
The real Evita was poor, beautiful, and ambitious. So, she followed the traditional career path for such women in countries like Argentina and Manhattan; she married a powerful, much older man and insinuated her way into wealth and power on his coattails. She was famously popular with slum dwellers and other urban poor, mostly because she would deign to visit them in their tenements to distribute shoes, baby clothes, or what have you. Such behavior is typical of the queenly among us; an ostentatious show of concern for the poor while shuttling around in one's limousine. Marie Antoinette, the wife of the governor of Arkansas, or the daughter of the mayor of Baltimore would all be familiar with this.
People like you delight in calling the Perons "fascists." That's because you have convinced yourselves that "fascist" is synonymous with "conservative Republicanism." It is not. Fascism is all about corporate statism, and the Perons were major leaguers in that arena (and the closest they ever got to being true fascists). You know who were the Peron's base of support? It wasn't the Argentine middle class (such as it was). It was the trade unions, and the urban poor. Sound familiar?
And, you know something Frank? All the noises your side keeps making about directing banks to lend? Or ordering auto manufacturers to build "green" cars? Or using the courts to rewrite mortgages? All of that walks right up to the line of corporate statism, even if you don't really intend it to. And, if there really does come a day when Barack Obama or (God, help us) Nancy Pelosi is telling GM what type of cars it should build, then that line will have been crossed, and fatally so for this country. As late as 1929, Argentina had the 4th highest GDP in the world. Look at it now. After decades of heavy state interference in every aspect of the economy, it is a perennial basket case. That will always be so, no matter how many glamorous "progressive" lady presidents the Argentines vote into office.
Sarah Palin has never said word one about doing anything that would result in such a dangerous combination of political and corporate power. Her public statements are all about individual responsibility, entrepreneurship, and cutting spending and taxes. Her life is about her husband, her state, her children, her state, and her career. She may not have gone to an Ivy League school, but when I hear the sort of lock step analysis and policy prescriptions that issue from our so-called elites, I have to wonder if they have acquired any knowledge about how the world works AS IT EXISTS, rather than as they would like it to exist.
Sarah Palin has raised 5 children. She hunts. She fishes. She has gone out to sea in a commercial fishing boat. She has lived throughout America's rugged mountain states. She has looked the governor of her state in the eye and told him he was a corrupt old fool (or words to that effect). She knows more about life, death, and what lies in the hearts of men than the entire graduating class at Yale for any year of the last 40 that you would care to name, except the year Clarence Thomas graduated.
And I am willing to bet that she has more charity and goodness in her heart as well. I know that you always say government should take a strong role in alleviating poverty and sickness. But, what are you personally doing to accomplish this? I don't know you Frank, and I don't know Gov. Palin. But, I am willing to bet that she donates a bigger percentage of her income and time to charitable works than you do. Actually, I am not sure that a bet will be necessary because we both know without looking what the answer will be.
(I will also say parenthetically that your attempt to work "Slumdog Millionaire" into this is beyond parody. Frank, you are a well off, well educated urban liberal who writes for the NY Times and has appeared on Oprah! You have absolutely nothing in common with a poor kid living in a Mumbai/Bombay slum. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Less than nothing, actually. In the same paragraph where you falsely diss Sarah Palin, you also manage to mention Joe the Plumber's tax lien. Yep, you're a real friend of the workin' man Frank.)
Frankly, Frank (heh), I am not sure you are worth all of this. It could be that Sarah Palin will never become president. But, she will become something because she is bigger and better than you and all of your "Evita" cracks. So, I think I will simply leave you with one final thought:
F--- You very much
*sorry this is a family blog
