The Art of Peace

Wowee, still biased but with a pretty new web site!

2008-05-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

A whole article on Bush's attacks on the media, focused on the new GI Bill. It doesn't mention repeated explanations by PROPONENTS (including McCain himself) that it would keep soldiers in longer by giving people who only served a couple of years much less.

The Washington Times has a pretty new layout, but the same coverage.

Bush League Diplomacy

2008-05-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Via Skewz and willvanhorn.

'Eat Your Words, Mr. Bush!'

"These comments are brazen admissions by the industrialized West that their levels of prosperity are dependent on poverty and malnutrition in the developing world."

By Sitaram Yechury

May 8, 2008

India - Hindustan Times - Original Article (English)

President Bush: Inciting much of the world's population against himself ...

WHITE HOUSE VIDEO: In Missiouri, President Bush discusses energy, food; India comments at 00:40:00, May 2, 01:02:57

George W. Bush’s proclivity to tread on the absurd is amazing. Recently, he sought to blame the Indian people for the global food crisis by saying, “[India’s] middle-class is bigger than our entire population ... When you start getting wealth, you demand better food ... and prices ... go up.”

Not false, but considering our comparative standards of living and counterproductive ethanol incentives, shows a lot of gall.

They Told Him

2008-05-02T22:02:00.001-07:00

Usually Instapundit uses this formula ironically, only to point to draconian measures taken by Democrats. Oddly enough, he refers now to the enforcement of a McCarthy era anti-communist oath. Maybe he figures liberals are to blame because its in California.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we'd see college professors fired for refusing to swear loyalty to the state. And they were right!

Lomborg Redeux

2008-04-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Supposedly Bjorn Lomborgs new book on global warming will be released in August 2008, but it's already available online and in my public library.

A part of his technique is to discuss in depth instances of exaggeration by people expressing concern about global warming - and ignore exaggeration and misleading statements by those who deny or downplay it. In particular, he accepts that the evidence that humans are helping to cause global warming, but ignores those who still claim otherwise.

At least its easy to read.

Apology

2008-04-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

I only caught part of Bill Maher's post apology show today, and he certainly didn't sound humbled by the experience. I'm not Catholic, and on another day I might even agree about certain things not making sense. Today I'm thinking of Christians who are very smart people - and of what things I take for granted that might seem ridiculous in a hundred years.

Washington Times Watch

2008-04-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

Washington Times editorialist Bob Parks reprints a common story as if it were fact, without comment:

Now we know that making a Prius causes more environmental damage than manufacturing a Hummer.

AutoblogGreen lists a few places where that has been debunked. This isn't controversial - many people blindly repeat this, but I've never seen a defense of the original 'study'. Lascelles Linton has hypertext links to more detailed information in the original paragraph, if you click through.

A few comments to my posts on the hybrid in the Knight Rider TV movie, said things like like "spare me." Yes, the Knight Rider TV movie is a remake of a cheesy '80s TV show, but it might inspire Ford to make a hybrid Mustang. Boston Legal's 10 million viewers probably believed the statements about hybrid batteries. My point is: Culture matters. It's probably more important than things like politics, technology, brand or anything. It really does not matter that the hybrid Hummer/Prius study has been discredited (many, many times) or that this argument is just stupid for the simple reason that batteries are recycled by law. If it's repeated on shows like Boston Legal, it's "fact."

Whose Shenanigans?

2008-04-17T19:02:00.000-07:00

Instapundit links don't always make a clear judgement, but here the Reynolds verdict is in - Wikipedia has engaged in Shenanigans.

So let's click through to Lawrence Solomon's complaint.

The thought police at the supposedly independent site are fervently enforcing the climate orthodoxy

No punctuation because this is the subtitle of his article. He doesn't settle down much further on, but he does get more specific. Some of his wikipedia edits have been reverted:

When Oreskes's paper came out, it was immediately challenged by science writers and scientists alike, one of them being Benny Peiser, a prominent U.K. scientist and publisher of CCNet, an electronic newsletter to which I and thousands of others subscribe. CCNet daily circulates articles disputing the conventional wisdom on climate change. No publication better informs readers about climate-change controversies, and no person is better placed to judge informed dissent on climate change than Benny Peiser.

For this reason, when visiting Oreskes's page on Wikipedia several weeks ago, I was surprised to read not only that Oreskes had been vindicated but that Peiser had been discredited. More than that, the page portrayed Peiser himself as having grudgingly conceded Oreskes's correctness.

Upon checking with Peiser, I found he had done no such thing. The Wikipedia page had misunderstood or distorted his comments. I then exercised the right to edit Wikipedia that we all have, corrected the Wikipedia entry, and advised Peiser that I had done so.

I read the article, then clicked over to the discussion page. There is no misrepresentation of Peiser's views in the current article - or discussion. You wouldn't think it from Solomon's article, but the discussion page explains a lot. There seem to be two major policies at issue. Wikipedia has established a rule that self published material (such as a blog or personal website) can't be used as a source. That rule may not be perfect, but there is a logic to it, because otherwise anyone could write something on any other page besides wikipedia and use it as a footnote. Also, an editor can't use 'personal research' in an article for much the same reason. Of course, if Peiser wrote a letter or article of complaint in anything not self published, that would be different.

Since Solomon doesn't link to the discussion page or the article in question, I will, although this version reflects discussion after Solomon's article was published. This is just a short quote, there are also defenders of Solomon's viewpoint.

Now to comment further - Peisers comment on Naomi Oreskes paper in Nature is a self published source. To be more specific: it hasn't been printed in a reliable source (in fact it was rejected by Nature), but only on Peisers own website. Despite this we include a mention of his critique, because its notable. It is presented in due weight and in accordance with WP:BLP.
The edits of Mr. Solomon changed that - and introduced a significant bias towards an unpublished critique of a scientific paper, and (might i mention) a critique that the author (Peiser), according to the ABC source - doesn't support anymore. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 15:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know if the link has been posted, but the article referencing this page is Wikipedia's Zealots. Joshdboz (talk) 16:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

He didn't even get Kim's gender right. So much for fact checking... Raymond Arritt (talk) 16:49, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
As if this was an indication of anything... It kinda happens. --Childhood's End (talk) 17:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm impressed that it does... specifically as he makes a point out of it in the article "She (or he?) is an editor at Wikipedia" - had he done any decent amount of research on my userpage and profile as he says in his article - then its in rather plain sight there. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:45, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Another rather interesting detail - he starts by using the name tabletop, which was a user who has made exactly one edit (not related to Solomons at all) here [8], and then he continues on to claim that he is me.
Hmmm - rather sloppy research methinks. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
You'd think "This user is male" on your userpage would be a hint, but maybe that's too obscure for some people. Raymond Arritt (talk) 19:40, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Bill Maher is the left's Ann Coulter

2008-04-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

You could say this was just humor - but when is saying nasty things about someone humor? Via Cybercast News Service:

(CNSNews.com) - Comments by HBO's Bill Maher insulting the Pope and calling Catholicism a "cult" that promotes "organized pedophilia" have stirred resentment among many American Catholics upset he would say this the week before Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States.

The comments were made on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday, April 11. Maher went into a long monologue on his program comparing the Catholic church to a polygamous cult -- the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints -- which was raided on April 3 and whose founder, Warren Jeffs, was convicted last year for being an accessory to the rape of a teenage girl.

The Catholic Church has a serious problem, but accusing the Church as a whole of actively promoting (as opposed to covering up, or stucturally contributing to) this problem is unreasonable. There are plenty of Catholics who sometimes vote Democratic - and are repelled by the Maher wing of the party. Just as Republicans who seriously hope for success in Iraq should be repulsed by Ann Coulters suggestion that Muslims should be killed or converted by force, so should Democrats who really believe we are the party of inclusiveness reject Maher.

Washington Times Editorial Repeats Error!

2008-04-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious! James Lyon of the Washington Times repeated the same mistake he made last month!

History is a good teacher. What comes to mind is the 1968 Tet offensive that was a catastrophic defeat for the North Vietnamese, who lost more than 100,000 combat troops, but was turned into a victory for them by our media, according to the North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. If it worked then, let's try it again.

Courtesy of the Snopes.com reference on Urban Legends:

Claim: Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap's memoirs pinned U.S. military failure in Vietnam on American anti-war protesters.

Status: False.

Snopes.com has a thorough essay on this false rumor. History professor Ed Moise has studied one of the books where the quote was alleged to be found (the other doesn't exist). Washington Dispatch commentator Greg Lewis apologized for citing a quote from a book that he later found did not exist.

Oh yes. Here's the first time he made that mistake.

Republican Fixer tells all - or almost all?

2008-04-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Allen Raymond, convicted former dirty tricks expert for a number of Republican campaigns, doesn't sound like such a sleezeball on this Jon Stewart Daily Show interview.

On the other hand, he still sounded like a sleezeball when I reviewed his book.

"His first campaign was a local election, and direct mail played a big part in it. He specialized in saying misleading things about his candidate’s opponent, some of which were nasty and personal. If he actually lied he doesn’t tell us about it – that might be illegal. He says his candidate complained to him about how the direct mail people were out of control, and he wanted the dirtier tricks stopped because some of the people who knew the truth and despised him (the candidate) for the misleading tricks were neighbors. Raymond says he encouraged this while pretending to try and stop it, because that was what was needed to get the candidate elected – and he liked the feeling of being an aggressive win-at-all-costs mercenary. I’m not sure if Steve Corodemus (he names names) was really as innocent as Raymond pretends or if he’s one of the few people Raymond still feels loyalty to – but I wouldn’t vote for him, a really capable and trustworthy assemblyman would have found out and put a stop to this garbage."

Joseph Palermo of the Huffington post has a great review, though he doesn't talk about what what our former fixex might still be hiding:

Raymond's experience inside the bowels of the RNC and his expertise in smear tactics, racist push polls and robo-calls, voter suppression, and other Republican mainstays give him a useful perspective. Maybe Democratic candidates in the future can better counter the inevitable Republican smears and attacks with a better understanding of how they work. But I wouldn't count on it.

Are we being patronized?

2008-04-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Are we being patronized or has the Iraqi government (lead by Maliki's party) really planned to allow Washington to 'influence' it?

Iraq's ambassador to Washington, Samir Sumaida'ie, yesterday called on the United States to be patient and use its influence to push the country's fractious political parties together.

"The Americans can help various political factions to moderate their demands, and I think they have a lot of influence on individual leaders," Mr. Sumaida'ie said.

Who blocked this small but useful step to save oil?

2008-04-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm used to blaming Republicans first, but in New York State the Democrats may be in the forefront of the march in the wrong direction.

It was there that Democratic members of the State Assembly, who control the chamber, held one final meeting to debate the merits of Mr. Bloomberg’s plan, ultimately conferring — in secret — before Sheldon Silver, the speaker, emerged to announce the outcome. The opposition was so overwhelming, he said, that he would not hold an open vote of the full Assembly, though many Republicans were supportive of Mr. Bloomberg.
“The congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly,” Mr. Silver, who represents the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said after his meeting with fellow Democrats. A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg quickly denounced the decision as “one of the biggest cop-outs in New York’s history.”

Dragons at Your Door review

2008-03-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

I just reviewed a good book on Chinese businesses taking market share from American ones.

Most of the book focuses on tactics rather than strategy. They have many examples of how Chinese companies do what they do, and some interesting ideas about how American companies can and do fight back. For me the major point is that China backs these companies, and has set the rules to support them. They want to encourage technology transfer to China. If we do too well under the existing rules they can always change them.

A huge company makes refrigerators. They probably sell some of their smallest and cheapest refrigerators to students in dorm rooms. Now suppose a small Chinese company wants to break into the market. They can use their cheap labor costs to build cheaper products. The best Chinese companies even use the cheaper salaries of engineers to design products better as well as cheaper - but many major stores don't want to retail brands their customers have never heard of. Now suppose these small refrigerators can convert into desks with movable tops. Besides limited funds, dorm students are often short of space. Now there's a special product to appeal to what most companies never even considered a separate market. Once retailers have sold a product by a formerly unknown product to happy customers, the manufacturer has begun building name recognition with both retailers and end users.

Is Basra to Maliki as Iraq is to W?

2008-03-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Since the Basra assault began Tuesday, violence has spread to Shiite districts of Baghdad and other places in Iraq where Shiite militiamen hold sway, raising fears that security gains often attributed to a yearlong American troop buildup could be at risk. Any widespread breakdown of a cease-fire called by Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who founded the Mahdi Army, could bring the country right back to the sectarian violence that racked it in 2006 and 2007.

Mr. Maliki has personally staked his reputation on the success of the Basra assault, fulfilling a longstanding American desire for him to boldly take on rogue Shiite groups. But at the same time, as criticism of the assault has risen, it has also brought into question yet another American benchmark of progress in Iraq: political reconciliation.

“We don’t have to rush to military solutions,” said Nadeem al-Jabiri, a Parliament member from the Fadhila Party, a strong rival of Mr. Sadr’s party that would have been expected to back the operation, at least on political grounds. Instead of solving the problems in Basra, Mr. Jabiri said, Mr. Maliki “escalated the situation.”

For the third straight day, the American military was reported to be conducting airstrikes in support of Iraqi troops in Basra. Iraqi police officials reported that an American bombing run killed eight civilians.

The American military did not immediately acknowledge the incident. But Maj. Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, said: “We are aware of reports of an incident in the Basra area resulting in civilian casualties. We are investigating the report and do not have further details at this time.”

Impact of Basra on Iraqi Oil Exports

2008-03-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

This article from The Hindu has more detail than I've seen so far:

As the fighting entered its third day, a bomb hit one of the two main crude oil pipelines heading towards the Basra oil terminal. Oil exports are expected to be affected in a big way as Zubair 1— the main pumping station — has also been shut down. Nearly one-third of the oil produced in the area is transported through the affected pipeline.

“Fire-fighters are struggling to control the fire, which is huge. A lot of crude has spilt on to the ground... We will not be able to repair it unless security is provided for the crews,” Reuters news agency quoted an official from Iraq’s Southern Oil Company as saying. Officials estimate that it would take at least three days to repair the pipeline, provided calm is restored.

With Basra as the headquarters, nearly 80 per cent of Iraqi oil exports are routed through the south.

Deregulation

2008-03-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

Via Instapundit, surprisingly enough, EdCone reminds us deregulation isn't always good.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act broke down barriers between commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers established by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Repealing key elements of Glass-Steagall was a bipartisan effort.

In testimony before Congress last year, Robert Kuttner explored links between deregulation of financial markets and the current deleveraging crisis, and suggested (among other things) "some restoration of the walls against conflicts of interest once provided by Glass Steagall."

Falsehood in the Washington Times

2008-03-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

According to the Washington Times,

The late Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap who was the leader of the North Vietnam military stated in his memoirs: "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender. It was the same at the battles of Tet. You defeated us. We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media were definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won."

Fortunately Snopes.com has a site dedicated to urban legends. This is the page where that claim is shown to be false, and the origins of the rumor are studied.

Sorry, got a horrible virus

2008-03-04T07:08:00.001-08:00

Hopefully I'll be posting again in a day or so.

A Shattering Discovery

2008-03-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Read the comments. Debonair Dude thinks the way I use quotations HTML linked to his original posts might be confusing or misleading, so I won't do it anymore, but I didn't change this since I don't want it to seem like I'm trying to hide the way I did it or make his comment not make sense. If he tells me he wants it deleted I'll be happy to do so.

Debonair Dude is a bit annoyed at his fellow conservatives.

Look I don’t know if its me that is not making my point clearly enough, or those people that tend to listen with cotton stuffed in their ears?But I’ll have ONE MORE shot at it. Then you can call me a “Rino” a “Hippo” or what ever other STUPID cliche that you wish to.

Logically he seems to have a point:

2. All of the above have dropped out...ALL OF THEM!

3. The only choice we have now, Or should I say that I have now is to

a. Support the party’s choice who is John McCain.

b. Vote for the 2 Libs, Hillary or Obama ( and that choice will never happen.

But why is he using logic all the sudden? Conservatism is about wanting huge deployments and tax cuts too. It's about not trusting our government to make sure all Americans have health care, but saying it can rebuild Iraqi healthcare - and the rest of Iraq too. It's about saying that industial policy can't work because it violates the laws of the free market, and complaining about the unfair advantage of China with it's government supported industries. It's about being unable to give up any tiny sliver of pork, but cutting taxes to force someone to cut pork in the future.

I think he should endorse Fred Thompson. When I first heard an actor was in the race, I thought we were doomed. He could use all his acting skills to convince the religious right he was one of them, and promise his soul to the rich corporate donors. He would have been Ronald Reagan except the trial lawyers would have loved him too. It turned out he didn't have fire in the belly. If the Republicans had been smart enough to feed him lots of beans and make him bend over, then light a match behind his buttocks, they would have seen plenty of fire, and they could have won the election.

Debonair Dude will probably want to say nobody reads this blog. It just so happens I got e-mail from nobody@hotmail.com who said he was getting bored with my blog and wanted to do something more interesting, such as watching the grass grow, so there goes that argument. I may be dumb, I may even be dumber, but I'm not trying to reason with a bunch of Republicans calling "Rino Rino!"

That's the last thing you hear before the herd stampedes and tramples everything in their path.

The Real Goods on Industrial Policy

2008-03-01T12:43:00.001-08:00

Via Avedon Carol's The Sideshow, a Buzzflash book review of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, by Ha-Joon Chang. This review of an excellent book which I'm going to get hold of a copy of is also an essay by someone who knows about the subject. Reviewer Thom Hartmann quotes Alexander Hamilton at one point where the author himself only summarizes,

As Hamilton noted (this is only referenced in the book - I'm filling in Hamilton's actual words here):

It is a primary object of the policy of nations, to be able to supply themselves with subsistence from their own soils; and manufacturing nations, as far as circumstances permit, endeavor to procure, from the same source, the raw materials necessary for their own fabrics.

As to how to accomplish that, Hamilton and Coxe had a straightforward plan, which was adopted by the Founders of this nation:
I. Protecting duties.

Protective duties, or duties on those foreign articles which are the rivals of the domestic ones, intended to be encouraged. [B]y enhancing the charges on foreign articles, they enable the national manufacturers to undersell all their foreign competitors.

II. Prohibitions of rival articles or duties equivalent to prohibitions.

Considering a monopoly of the domestic market to its own manufacturers as the reigning policy of manufacturing nations, a similar policy on the part of the United States in every proper instance, is dictated, it might almost be said, by the principles of distributive justice; certainly by the duty of endeavoring to secure to their own citizens a reciprocity of advantages.

III. Prohibitions of the exportation of the materials of manufactures.

The desire of securing a cheap and plentiful supply for the national workmen, and, where the article is either peculiar to the country, or of peculiar quality there, the jealousy of enabling foreign workmen to rival those of the nation, with its own materials, are the leading motives to this species of regulation. …

IV. Pecuniary bounties [industry direct financial subsidies].

This has been found one of the most efficacious means of encouraging manufactures, and it is in some views, the best. Though it has not yet been practiced upon by the government of the United States (unless the allowances on the exportation of dried and pickled fish and salted meat could be considered as a bounty) and though it is less favored by public opinion than some other modes. Its advantages, are these -- It is a species of encouragement more positive and direct than any other, and for that very reason, has a more immediate tendency to stimulate and uphold new enterprises, increasing the chances of profit, and diminishing the risks of loss, in the first attempts.

V. Premiums [incentives for production, innovation, or quality].

These are of a nature allied to bounties, though distinguishable from them, in some important features. Bounties are applicable to the whole quantity of an article produced, or manufactured, or exported, and involve a correspondent expense.

Premiums serve to reward some particular excellence or superiority, some extraordinary exertion or skill, and are dispensed only in a small number of cases. But their effect is to stimulate general effort. Contrived so as to be both honorary and lucrative, they address themselves to different passions; touching the chords as well of emulation as of interest. They are accordingly a very economical mean of exciting the enterprise of a whole community.

There's a whole lot more Hamiltonian goodness there, but I'm pretty sure President Washington's compatriot is out of copyright by now, and has passed beyond litigation in any event.

This is sort of like the essay I wrote a few days ago, except twenty times better. My work as a blogger is cut out for me.

A truly moving tribute to William Buckley

2008-02-29T18:36:00.000-08:00

A tribute to Buckley as a person - rather than an ideological construct - has to be written by a progressive.

William F. Buckley was my friend.

I'm hard on conservatives. I get harder on them just about every day. I call them "con men." I do so without apology. And I cannot deny that William F. Buckley said and did many things over the course of his career that were disgusting as well. I've written about some of them. But this is not the time to go into all that. My friend just passed away at the age of 82. He was a good and decent man. He knew exactly what my politics were about—he knew I was an implacable ideological adversary—yet he offered his friendship to me nonetheless. He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire.

Congradulations Bloomberg!

2008-02-28T16:57:00.000-08:00

I want to congradulate Mayor Bloomberg on his decision not to run - and start thinking about who is funding Nader.

Industrial Policy

2008-02-26T20:15:00.000-08:00

The newest firestorm in the blogosphere is over Obama's corporate tax reform plans. I've seen too many blog posts to link to them all. Will they really help us? Are they just vaporware, or does he have real plans? Where can we find the details?

It seems they should be important, because some people are worked up.

According to Paul Craig Roberts on Counterpunch (click through to read the whole thing):

As reported by the Financial Times, Obama proposed a lower tax rate for US companies that maintain or increase their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce.

Economists, who have crawled out on a limb in defense of jobs offshoring, quickly denounced Obama's plan. As the US economy continues to lose relative ground, economists hold more tightly to their misconception that a country benefits by moving high value-added, high income jobs abroad and replacing them at home with low value- added, low income jobs. This view, which places the rights of capital far above the rights of labor and the duties of citizenship, is economically nonsensical as well. Whatever the defects of Obama's plan, it shows more serious thought than can be found among Washington policymakers and the economics profession.

I haven't been able to get at the article in the Financial Times, so I looked for links to Obama's speeches that were closer to home:

I don’t know about a time-out, but I do know this – when I am President, I will not sign another trade agreement unless it has protections for our environment and protections for American workers. And I’ll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I’ve been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate – we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.

Here at last we have something specific, a reference to s specific bill with the details worked out. Here are some details from the Patriot Employer Act, not a link to the original bill but a summary on Obama's Senate web site:

The Patriot Employers legislation would provide a tax credit equal to 1% of taxable income to employers that:

After all that? One !@#$%^& percent, not of revenue but of taxable income? What about all the companies that pay no taxes at all - how will this affect them? Speaking of which, what about companies not incorporated in the United States? If this were a value added tax it would hit companies regardless of where they were incorporated - but I don't see that on his website. Has he told the Financial Times something not on his own website? He's still talking about the Act I just quoted in his recent speeches.

I'm not saying this isn't a small step in the right direction - though I'm not sure it is. We need to think hard about industrial policy though, and before we can ask if Obama's policy will bring us towards our goals, we should ask what our goals are.

We need an example – a nation which has successfully used industrial policy to promote growth. That nation is China. For all their faults their growth rate has been phenomenal over the past few years, greater than that of any industrialized country. We must certainly consider the costs as well as the benefits of the policies we look at – but look we must.

According to the libertarian ‘fundamentalist’ interpretation of Adam Smith, industrial policy can never benefit industry. The original Adam Smith speaks out for government funded public education, favoring those industries which require a large number of educated workers. Other than that, his disciples haven’t distorted his work too much – he’s pretty laissez fair.

So, look at the Chinese industrial policy, forcing auto makers to build plants in China in order to be allowed to sell cars there. Perhaps this has been of no long term benefit to China. Perhaps all Chinese efforts to foster electronics and computer industries are doomed to leave Chinese manufacturers worse off than a laissez fair policy would have left them. So maybe we have nothing to worry about.

Those of us who don’t find that completely convincing may need new ideas. In modern American corporate life, it is not uncommon for people to change jobs. Sometimes something may make a balance sheet look good for ten or twenty years forward but not benefit a corporation or the nation that gave birth to it in the long term. With all it’s corruption and inefficiencies, the Chinese government seems to have found ways to manipulate our institutions. Perhaps with national unity of purpose even government can be effective.

I’m not suggesting that there is a secret Chinese Adam Smith who has written a book about how to take advantage of a capitalist society where ‘campaign contributions’ are legal, although certain kinds of overt corruption are much rarer than they are in China. Adam Smith didn’t so much invent entirely new ideas as codify, relate, and organize disparate ones, discussing for the most part what was already done by business owners and suggesting it worked for the common good. Similarly, through trial and error the Chinese have come upon tools which may be the seeds of something much larger.

Suppose we decided that Chinese divergence from free market principles will not be its own punishment. Our industrial policy would probably come in two parts – interim and long term.

Although the doctrinaire conservatives of today might not wish to acknowledge it, a good start for our interim policy might be Ronald Reagan. Don’t look so surprised. When Japanese auto imports were threatening Detroit, he didn’t push protectionist legislation, which would have been anti free market. No he got the Japanese auto companies to agree to voluntary quotas. I don’t know if he threatened them with protectionist legislation behind closed doors, but they certainly knew legislation had advocates in congress. The Chinese will understand the logic, and the name of Reagan may help attract American support. It won’t be easy though. The Japanese already had a great deal of market share to lose why Reagan made them an offer they couldn’t refuse – and if we wait until the Chinese have that much before saying anything, the dollar might collapse. The Chinese own huge quantities of dollar denominated assets, so they wouldn’t want that to happen – unless they concluded it would advance their long term strategic interests. Hmmm.

Lets think about our long term interests. The Chinese have found many clever ways to encourage American companies to manufacture things in China, where the skills and knowledge of workers, engineers, and managers are eventually available to Chinese companies. Of course they have low labor costs to tip the scales in their favor – but it seems long term policy is a part of it.

Asked whether Chrysler was worried that the alliance might help Chery develop into a competitor that might threaten its U.S. partner, LaSorda told The Associated Press, "No, we're not. With us or without us, they're going to grow. So the question is, 'Are you going to go with a winner?'"

********************************************

Ford is not saying how many workers it expects to take the buyouts by a March 18 deadline. But Wall Street analysts say the company has set a goal to get 8,000 employees to sign up.
General Motors is also extending buyout offers to all of its 74,000 hourly employees, while Chrysler is offering buyouts to workers on a regional and individual plant basis.
The belt-tightening comes after years of declining market share and increased competition from foreign automakers, led by Toyota.

It may well be that American auto companies are indeed doing the rational thing in terms of maximizing shareholder return - cutting jobs in the USA, accepting gradual losses of market share now in exchange for short term earnings which don't have to be discounted by risk or forgone interest. Is this really the best thing for the country? If not, the problem isn't really the free market. After all, it's the Chinese acquiring our technological skills rather than the reverse. Yet the strategy of building huge monster trucks which don't fit in a garage doesn't seem a long term winner for a variety of reasons - one being that China may do it too.

Cost cutting is needed, but there's no reason why American cars can't be world leaders for modern technology and low maintenance and quality, much as Toyota is today. I wonder how we could structure free market incentives so that making this a long term project would be cost effective.

Savings will be needed - and the first place to start is upper and middle management. The USA automakers seems to have more people in management than many other companies.

Ford is planning on giving retirement incentives to older workers and rehiring new ones for less. The union is part of the plan, so it doesn't seem all bad for workers. Maybe work rules could be changed too - right now it's hard to shut down plants that are temporarily unprofitable. Maybe workers could even be encouraged to get temporary jobs elsewhere during temporary shutdowns, with a small subsidy instead of full salary from their regular employer.

Wow

2008-02-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

I have to admit you have a heck of a lot more fans than I do - but so does Hillary Clinton!.

A protest less blogged than Berkley

2008-02-21T19:46:00.000-08:00

The Political Cat links to a blog about a protest less warblogged than the Berkley one. Perhaps this is because the atypical Berkley protest does show hostility to the military, while the Michigan protest blogged at Wyan.blog is full of 'support our troops - bring them home' signs.

You can find a bunch of great protest photos at Wyan.blog.