As you probably know, Matt Taibbi has a new book out, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America. Within it, Taibbi moves from his established gig reporting on the weirdness that is modern American poltical campaigning…
… Being in the building with Palin that night [of her acceptance speech for the VP nomination] is a transformative and oddly unsettling experience. It’s a little like having live cave-level access for the ripping-the-heart-out-with-the-bare-hands scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A scary-as-hell situation: thousands of pudgy Midwestern conservatives worshipping at the Altar of the Economic Producer, led by a charismatic arch-priestess letting loose a grade-A war cry. The clear subtext of Palin’s speechi is this: other politicians only talk about fighting these assholes. I actually will.
__
Palin is talking to voters whose country is despised internationally, no longer an industrial manufacturing power, fast becoming an economic vassal to the Chinese and the Saudis, and just a week away from an almost-total financial collapes. Nobody here is likely to genuinely believe a speech that promises better things.
__
But cultural civil war, you have that no matter how broke you are. And if you want that I, Sarah Palin, can give it to you. It’s a powerful, galvanizing speech, but the strange thing about it is its seeming lack of electoral calculation. It’s a transparent attempt to massmarket militancy and frustration, consolidate the group identity of an aggrieved demographic, and work that crowd up into a lather. This represents a further degrading of the already degraded electoral process. Now, not only are the long-term results of elections irrelevant, but for a new set of players like Palin, the outcome of the election itself is irrelevant. This speech wasn’t designed to win a general election, it was designed to introduce a new celebrity, a make-believe servant of the people so phony that later in her new career she will not even bother to hold an elective office.
__
The speech was a tremendous success.
… to a thorough, even obsessive, discussion of the new finance-based reality:
Our world isn’t about ideology anymore. It’s about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate willpower to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power.
Amazon’s currently advertising Griftopia for half off the cover price, and if you order through the link in the right-hand column, I understand you’ll be adding a couple pennies to Tunch’s personal catfood commission. If the Amazon teaser isn’t enough for you, Rolling Stone has an excerpt on “how our cash-strapped country is auctioning off its highways, ports and even parking meters at fire sale prices.”
The witty and foul-mouthed TBogg will be leading an online discussion of Griftopia at the FDL Book Salon on Saturday afternoon, November 27. If you are a faster typist than I, there should be some excellent back-and-forth shared there.
gnomedad
Misread that at first. Turn him into a Centauri, that would.
beltane
Sarah Palin wants to play at being the Pol Pot of the Khmer Redneck. In their cult of Ayn Rand/Impostor Jesus, the only unforgivable sins are human empathy and intellectual curiosity.
joe from Lowell
Taibbi can sure crank out a righteous rant, but he rarely knows what he’s talking about.
No longer an industrial manufacturing power? That is not even remotely close to true.
In the real world, the United States remains the greatest industrial manufacturing power on the planet. Take a look at this. Our industrial manufacturing output, all by itself, without any other economic sectors, would make us the third largest economy in the world.
Once I see a mistake that glaring, I can’t keep reading.
stuckinred
@joe from Lowell: So that means he “rarely knows what he’s talking about”?
MikeJ
@joe from Lowell: Obviously you just don’t like bad language. At least that’s what the fuckwits tell me when I don’t suck Taibbi’s dick.
joe from Lowell
Stuck in Red,
I see crap like this every time Taibbi tries to write about anything except his feelings.
Seriously, how do you make a mistake that big? The guy’s just sloppy.
Industrial output in millions of dollars, 2009.
1 United States 3,122,124
2 China 2,297,404
3 Japan 1,109,905
4 Germany 898,535
5 Italy 529,566
6 United Kingdom 519,698
7 France 516,459
8 Russia 427,771
9 Brazil 399,806
10 Spain 392,363
Omnes Omnibus
@joe from Lowell:
I interpreted this passage as describing the mentality of the Palin worshippers (factual accuracy not included).
stuckinred
@joe from Lowell: I clicked on your link. If it bums you out I guess you shouldn’t read him. I like him because he goes for the throat of these shit eatin dog fuckers!
MikeJ
@stuckinred: It was his “TARP will cost $27 trillion” argument that pushed me over the edge.
joe from Lowell
@stuckinred:
I guess you’re right, because he rarely writes about anything except his feelings.
Look, Taibbi fans, you don’t read the guy because he’s some unerringly correct source of factual precision, you don’t care about whether his facts and figures are correct – that’s not the point of his writing. So don’t give me a bunch of crap about how wrong I am for pointing out that facts aren’t his strong suit.
SBW
Really, I think Taibbi’s point — since I’ve actually read the book — is that the US is a corrupt and declining industrial power, though his main focus is on corruption in the FIRE sector — but God forbid he say some mean things about Obama, which of course he does.
And the fact that the United States is tied in manufacturing with a country that’s roughly a quarter of the US population, and a chunk of which used to be a communist country….that’s considered….good. Count me unimpressed.
I’m also curious about what the Germans, or Chinese, or Japanese, considering manufacturing. I doubt the definitions are uniform across every country.
joe from Lowell
@stuckinred:
I don’t. But I do read Balloon Juice. Is that OK with you, pretty please?
change
So it seems today that we’ve already won a big victory for conservatism–and we barely had to even fight for it.
All the Bush tax cuts will stay. Yes, even those on “the rich”. The death tax will also stay dead, and the rates on capital gains and dividends will stay low as well.
This just confirms that the President is irrelevant and that the new ruling party in Washington is the Republican Party. We do what we wish to now.
stuckinred
@joe from Lowell: You pointed out one “fact”. I don’t give a flying fuck what you read or what you think. How ya like me now?
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
Too bad most of that “manufacturing” is just weapons for bombing brown people.
stuckinred
@joe from Lowell: where the sun don’t shine pal
stuckinred
Go Falcons!
Kenneth
@joe from Lowell:
All that “manufacturing” we do is most weapons for killing people.
joe from Lowell
@SBW:
You’re the only one who’s said anything about Obama. Nice dodge.
Facepalm.
Jesus.
Read the chart. That’s our INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT vs. everyone else’s TOTAL ECONOMIC OUTPUT.
Why, it’s almost as if his fans don’t care about factual accuracy, and aren’t terribly comfortable with data at all.
stuckinred
Data, now I get it.
arguingwithsignposts
Okay, this is a bit of a blog whore, but also a PSA – Bright Eyes has just released the first song for the SoundStrike record to raise money and awareness about SB1070. A few more details at AWS and The Somebody listen to music, which includes an embed of the song, and a link to the SoundStrike site.
SBW
My mistake. I was thrown off — I’m not sure what point is proven by comparing the US manufacturing sector to an entire countries GDP, when (besides China) the populations are far smaller than the US. Perhaps if it was per capita it would be more applicable measurement — but then again, that’s not the point of the graph, is it?
joe from Lowell
@stuckinred:
Then why did you reply to me, and tell me what I should read?
You know what? Don’t actually tell me.
change
P.S. Obamacare will be repealed by 2012, that’s the next thing Obambi will give up to us…
Omnes Omnibus
The tone of the discussion here is going to make me break out my Unitarian Jihad name, The Broadsword of Courteous Debate, and no one wants that. No one.
joe from Lowell
Per capita, we are #6.
“The United States has lost its industry!” is a rallying cry for people who have strong feelings and bad information, and it bugs me when I see it.
GIGO.
joe from Lowell
@MikeJ:
The fact that I care about this stuff just shows I’m part of the problem, man!
Er…poop.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: mea culpa
Ron Beasley
And it’s complexity that ultimately leads to The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
This has somehow become the conventional wisdom, even though it’s not even close to true. I think there are a bunch of reasons this is true, the biggest of which are:
1) We used to lap the field, while today we only have a solid lead. That loss of relative advantage is seen as a failure of US manufacturing rather than a gain by the rest of the world.
2) A lot of the areas where the US does the best are things that average Americans either won’t buy for themselves or don’t think of as manufactured goods. We buy lots of consumer goods made in other countries and relatively few made in the USA, so we assume the same thing holds for the manufacturing sector as a whole.
3) Increasing automation means we’ve lost manufacturing jobs even as we’ve continued to make more and more stuff. You’re less likely to believe that we’re making lots of stuff if few of your friends or relatives have jobs making things.
4) Some of our manufacturing growth has come in the form of “foreign” companies putting plants in the US. The average American still thinks of a Honda as a Japanese car even though most Hondas for sale here are made in the USA.
stuckinred
@Roger Moore: Can you support your contention with some hard data please? I mean really.
Elie
@joe from Lowell:
But here , right on this site, we were regalled two nights ago by Der Spiegel (sp) magazine article touted up and down as accurate about the US’s demise.
To be fair, the article addressed our other power, not specifically just manufacturing.
We have to be honest about our weaknesses and failings — but also about our strengths to climb out of this hole…
Why is that so hard? Why is it that even on the left progressives, all we want to tout is our failures, our weakness and hopelessness?
Its just freaky to me. I am not interested in the old trick of ra rahing your own superiority. Can we just start from where we honestly are to improve things? Can we just get off the floor and stand up honestly?
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: And Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason will be standing right behind you.
Between the know-nothing trolling of “change”, the foul-mouthed non-stop insults of “WyldPirate” and the gotcha tag-teaming like the stuff in this thread, I can barely stand the comment threads any more.
Which is a real shame, because that’s what brought me here in the first place.
Mnemosyne
Oh, AP, why can’t I quit you? I know you lie to me.
Democrats pressing Pelosi to step aside
If you’re shocked and surprised to hear that the few remaining Blue Dogs are whining that they don’t want to vote for Pelosi as Majority Leader, raise your hand. And yet the AP frames it as some huge rebellion with quotes from a handful of Blue Dogs.
change
I guess liberals would rather stick their heads in the sand rather than address my fact that the GOP is in the catbird’s seat now.
Just Some Fuckhead
US Manufacturing is doing very well except in the number of Americans it employs, down about 1.5 million since the economic downturn. And that’s all we really care about when real unemployment is in the high teens.
Andre
Not to continue the whole “missing the point entirely” theme we’ve got going on here, but I do have to call Taibbi out on one additional point:
No, no it’s not. Most people all around the world like America. We like Americans. We think you’re crazy bastards and you have a bizarre celebrity-political complex pumping out ever more loony statements and behaviour and that you have a weirdly inflated sense of your own uniqueness, but over all we think you’re pretty swell.
None of this is to take away from Taibbi’s central point, which is true and well made-that Palin and modern conservatism have discovered there is a living to be made from convincing people that they should be angry and resentful all the time.
Roger Moore
@frosty:
Get the pie filter. It will make your life much better. I was having trouble with the trolling today, but the pie filter replaced it with nice REDACTED labels. I’m much happier, now.
Omnes Omnibus
@frosty: It goes through bad patches with trolls, and sometimes the regulars have a bad day and get cranky. When both of those happen at once, it can be less entertaining and less informative than other times. I think, though, that those situations are rather uncommon. Feelings have been running a bit high since the election, but I think that will calm down. In other words, it’s all good.
Probably, no almost inevitably, since I got all moral about politeness, someone is going to piss me off and I will become one of the malefactors.
eemom
@Mnemosyne:
speaking of “framing”….. am I the only one who has been driven to the brink of madness by the entire left fuckosphere — culminating with reinstated Olberfuckk — parroting HuffFuck’s “Obama caving on tax cuts” meme all fucking day today……..just as though it were fucking gospel truth, hadn’t been denied twice by the fucking WH, and did not represent what Axelrod actually fucking said…..??
Fucking thought so.
Steve
“The root of the Wallace magic was a cynical, showbiz instinct for knowing exactly which issues would whip a hall full of beer-drinking factory workers into a frenzy– and then doing exactly that, by howling down from the podium that he had an instant, overnight cure for all their worst afflictions: Taxes? Negros? Army worms killing the turnip crop? Whatever it was, Wallace assured his supporters that the solution was actually real simple, and that the only reason they had any hassle with the government was because those greedy bloodsuckers in Washington didn’t want the problems solved, so they wouldn’t be put out of work”
Hunter S. Thompson, from Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail: 1972
None of this is new.
Omnes Omnibus
@Andre: Again, I think Taibbi was referring to the way the tea-people view themselves, not stating a factual view of the USA. That was my reading of it, but it obviously was not the way many others read it.
frosty
@Roger Moore: Pie filter? Que es pie filter?
Oh, and can I get a filter that puts REDACTED on Falcons touchdowns?
\Ravens fan, sorry can’t help it\
Omnes Omnibus
@frosty: cleek built it. It replaces the ravings of trolls with talk of pie. I have yet to use it, but many swear by it.
WyldPirate
@MikeJ:
I needed to fix that for you so joe from blowwell can better understand it MikeJ.
Just Some Fuckhead
@frosty:
No problem. There are worse things than the Ravens losing. Like listening to the combination of Millen and Theismann.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sir, may I purchase an injection of your enviable equanimity?
gwangung
@eemom: If there’s no call to action, then it is indeed useless. If it Leeds to a ,movement of calling your Congressman, less so.
stuckinred
@Just Some Fuckhead: Go Falcons! Oh wait, that’s a tag team.
stuckinred
@gwangung: Live at Leeds?
gwangung
@stuckinred: Heh. Stubby fingers on the mobile device.
Though some folks may think that makes me more understandable….
The Republic of Stupidity
I think I’ll sit this one out…
stuckinred
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Y64dpZGnE
live at leeds magic bus
frosty
@Just Some Fuckhead: Boy, you got that right.
“Tonight the Ravens have to take it to the next level”
“… great success” (as opposed to crappy success?)
Those are the only ones I remember. I muted the whole pregame.
Nathan
“Amazon’s currently advertising Griftopia for half off the cover price … If the Amazon teaser isn’t enough for you, Rolling Stone has an excerpt on “how our cash-strapped country is auctioning off its highways, ports and even parking meters at fire sale prices.”
Anyone spot the problem in that paragraph?
Andre
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s the interpretation I would like to tend towards myself, but I felt like it was ambiguous enough to comment on.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I am saving all my rage for an opposing counsel who served me is pissing me off.
frosty
@stuckinred: touche
stuckinred
@Just Some Fuckhead: With pip I’ve been able to listen to Rachel and John Stewart while watching the Falcons whip up on the Ravens!
10-ZIP!
frosty
@eemom: Hmmm … sounds like a Unitarian Jihad name. Shall we dub thee Sister Blackjack of Enviable Equanimity?
Yutsano
@The Republic of Stupidity: Taibbi thread? Wake me when the next open thread shows up.
Corner Stone
Anybody watching this Maddow interview of Stewart? He’s coming off like a real dick. And not too deep of a thinker.
Maybe naive is the word.
Lolis
I heard Stewart is performing badly. He actually said Fox News is not partisan and that Dems should not call Bush a war criminal. Fuck that shit.
change
One part of Bush’s legacy will stand firm–ALL his tax cuts!
change
@Lolis:
What, exactly, makes Bush a “war criminal”?
sven
@Mnemosyne: Did you see this on the yahoo front page?
Is it just me or has YahooNews become a pretty right-leaning outlet?
Jim Newell
I was in that arena for palin’s speech and like Taibbi can’t really explain how frightening it was. It didn’t help that it immediately followed Giuliani, who gave the second most disgusting speech of the night. But god. All those sassy shithead lines like “the difference between a hockey” followed by the vile, rabid cat calls and hoots of the fat angry delegates on the floor, just losing their minds and getting boners. Booing like vulgar children when she sneered about “community organizing,” meaning “be scared of the black man.” The scariest part, though, was just thinking about the fucking glowing media narratives we’d hear afterwards. Dear god, she better not run for president. Imagine the cheap narratives and endless coverage at their very worst, but then 100 times worse — dumber, pickier, louder. We’ll all watch this spectacle for a year. It will be a national suicide pact.
On the other hand, BIG PAGE VIEWS!
Anne Laurie
@frosty:
__
Cleek’s Pie Filter
To self-blogwhore: Did you know we have a Lexicon?
Pie, it’s not just for Thanksgiving any more, although many people have given thanks for the filter!
Just Some Fuckhead
That was pretty cool when the Falcons crowd chanted “Heap..” after he caught it.
joe from Lowell
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Services and construction and other sectors are also down since the economic downturn. What’s interesting is that manufacturing is one of the sectors that is driving the recovery here in Massachusetts – a leading-edge economic zone. Newer industries like biotech and pharma, not just mature, rusty industries, are a major part of that.
But the larger point – that increasing efficiency means fewer manufacturing jobs per unit of economic output – is a real one. It’s important to recognize this for what it is, if we’re going to do something about it. This isn’t about a decline in American manufacturing, but a shift in its character. Different situations require different solutions, and if we try to design an employment-boosting policy that assumes that the problem is a decline in manufacturing when there is no such decline, it’s not going to work.
SBW
Roger Moore,
This goes beyond automation. Having lived in a bubble state for the housing boom, I am skeptical of dollar figures alone being able to accurately represent the health of an economic sector. And yes, just like housing, when it diverges from what I see I tend to get skeptical.
About products Americans perhaps don’t classify as manufacturing, I don’t consider something like software as manufacturing, or fast food, or making dog food or soup. But then again, Purina or Campbell’s do have factories — and they do employ. And for smaller consumer items perhaps food in the supermarket is the only thing I see made domestically.
Joe from Lowell — a very interesting link. I think 2004 yields the US as being in 4th place, even a better showing, per capita, per dollar. Clicking on the US also showed some industrial production details:
http://www.nationmaster.com/red/country/us-united-states/ind-industry&all=1
Actual production figures: making 5,000,000 cars and 7,000,000 vans/trucks/SUVs in 2004 is impressive — seriously. And very unsurprising, just like I would expect for something like aircraft production.
And what else? How many cell phones? Processors? RAM Chips? Bicycles? Vacuum cleaners? Lamps? TVs? Desks? Clothing? Hard drives? Shoes? Routers? Pots? And a myriad of other items.
I’ve looked before for annual production figures for various consumer goods. If there was an industrial almanac somewhere with raw unit production I would appreciate a link, because I’m not convinced the US is not making less stuff — per capita — than before.
frosty
@Anne Laurie: I don’t remember seeing that in the Lexicon (which I love). Should have looked it up before I commented. I’ll try it out.
joe from Lowell
@change: Yes, it’s almost – almost, mind you – as if nobody gives a crap what you have to say.
Omnes Omnibus
@joe from Lowell: We had a perfect shunning going.
Just Some Fuckhead
@joe from Lowell: Ok, manufacturing is down almost 17% since it’s highwater mark in the 90s. Fact is, we can’t compete with brown children living in dirt hovels without what you euphemistically call “efficiency”. Many of the jobs in the manufacturing sector were lost by outsourcing to other companies under the auspices of “business services”. So instead of a janitor making a decent wage working for a leading manufacturer, he’s instead working as a subcontractor for a contractor making little more than minimum wage with no benefits,
change
@joe from Lowell:
Massachusetts isn’t growing anymore. People are fleeing it for low-tax New Hampshire and even more for low-tax, solid red states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona.
change
BTW, “recovery”?
Do you mean “Recovery Summer”?
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@joe from Lowell: Now you did it. And I see it’s already responded to you.
Suck It Up!
@eemom:
They are prepping for two outcomes:
If Obama caves its: “I told you so!”
If Obama doesn’t cave its: “we held his feet to the fire and made him do it!”
*never mind that they always say Obama doesn’t listen to them ever*
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
Oh wow, 100,000 Hispanics left Arizona after SB1070.
And DNA test casts doubt on executed man’s guilt.
eemom
@Suck It Up!:
I reckon. Dunno, I was just particularly depressed at how eagerly Chris Hayes ran with it on Olberfuckk. He’s such a cutie.
Omnes Omnibus
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):For some people the fact that Hispanics left AZ would be a feature not a bug and the execution of an innocent person would be something about which they would not care in the least.
Mnemosyne
@change:
Yeah, you may want to take Florida off that list.
Hey, maybe they all went to Massachusetts!
WyldPirate
Seems like a Chief of Staff for a Dem Senator wasn’t too impressed with Axlerod/Obama weasling and inaction on the Tax Cut extension:
“Tell me about it”:
“It’s hard to know what to make of David Axelrod’s tax policy comments to the Huffington Post, and Dan Pfeiffer’s subsequent denial, other than maybe it was a trial balloon that got shot down, or maybe Axelrod went further than he was authorized to go.
In any event, the White House and the Democratic congressional leadership made a terrible political mistake by avoiding a fight with the Republicans on this issue before the election, when it could have clearly demonstrated the hypocrisy of the GOP’s constant harping about deficits, as well as their most critical concern: the “plight” of the poor rich people.”
snip
“Now it appears that we may well make the same mistake again (unless you assume the HuffPo writer got it wrong, and I don’t). If that’s what we do, it will make President Obama’s many comments about fiscal responsibility an utter joke— how can we talk about raising fees for veterans’ health care, messing with student loans, etc., when we’re going to blow a $700 billion dollar hole in the budget because of our concern for folks who make $250k and over, who are doing more than fine? Or because those bad Republicans are just too mean?”
(bold emphasis added)
“Utter joke” sounds about right to me.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh I know. I’m not sure many of them hang out on BJ. Trolls excepted.
John - A Motley Moose
@Anne Laurie: I just installed it and I’m loving it. I have it set for WyldPirate and change for now. I replaced the redacted text with ***I am an idiot*** Seems fitting for both of them. Now I won’t get sucked into nonsensical arguments with either of them.
MikeJ
@John – A Motley Moose: There’s also a version for chrome. I would give you a URL but even though I ported it, I don’t remember what it is. Google would probably find it.
catclub
@Steve:
Of course, when the Wallace magic did not actually result in his getting elected. And when the similar approach by palin did not result in HER getting elected, calling it magic may be a misnomer.
The american people are sometimes smarter than most americans give them credit for, even if they are not as smart as we might like them to be.
John - A Motley Moose
@MikeJ: Thanks. I’m running firefox. I’ve got chrome installed, but never use it. I’ve also got Opera and IE. I prefer FF.
Roger Moore
@SBW:
I was thinking specifically of pharmaceuticals, which are one of our big exports. You don’t typically think of them as a manufactured goods, but they are. They’re a very high value added good that depends on skilled, well paid workers– exactly the kind of industry we should be trying to develop.
General Stuck
@eemom: @Suck It Up!:
The really surreal part of this whole ‘lets bring Obama down” episode, is that Axelrod clearly stated in the actual Huffpo interview that he was not talking about making the high end tax cuts permanent. That we couldn’t afford it, and realized a temporary high end extension might be the only way to continue the middle class cuts at this time.
Which is sometimes a confusing thing in this debate when people forget to nuance between permanent and temporary.
And if anyone now doubts that much of the netroots are four square anti Obama, this dustup should make it clear they do. And alleged democrats that should only be ignored or lumped in with the must defeat Obama wingnut ranks.
WyldPirate
@General Stuck:
Obama and his staff or the ones bringing him down.
You folks treat Obama like they did Reagan back in the day–he was responsible for nothing in his supporters eyes, it was always someone else’s fault.
Reagan was like teflon to them–nothing could stick to him.
Jane_in_Colorado
@SBW: “And what else? How many cell phones? Processors? RAM Chips? Bicycles? Vacuum cleaners? Lamps? TVs? Desks? Clothing? Hard drives? Shoes? Routers? Pots? And a myriad of other items.”
These items bring up an interesting point. I worked in high tech for about 8 years, 5 of them at Intel. So much of the product, from processors to flash memory, switches & routers, PCs & laptops, etc, was said to be manufactured by US companies. The design engineering, some of the testing (during the debugging phase), and all of the marketing was indeed done in the US. But (for the most part) the actual wafers were fabricated and sorted in Taiwan or Korea, and actual assembly and test done in Korea or Indonesia or Singapore or Malaysia.
Is this accounted for in the manufacturing numbers that joe from Lowell provides? Is it considered to be US manufacturing, or manufacturing in the subcontractor countries?
I’m just curious.
Sort of off topic, but when I worked at Intel (I suspect still true today) they kept a certain percentage of their manufacturing facilities in the US. This is for strategic reasons–they are aware that political upheavals and/or natural disasters in Southeast Asia could rob them of much of their manufacturing capacity, perhaps without warning. Keeping some of the manufacturing here guarantees they will never lose all of their capacity.
burnspbesq
The absence of editing is not a style. Taibbi isn’t fit to carry P.J. O’Rouke’s dirty socks to the laundry.
burnspbesq
@MikeJ:
I have no need to know whose dick you do or don’t suck. I know you don’t suck mine, and that’s all I need to know.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Is that anything like Botox? I’m sure you can get some right up the road in McLean.
SBW
Well, at least I know who doesn’t have any fucking clue, or taste.
10+ books and only Parliament of Whores is worth reading.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Jane_in_Colorado: I read somewhere once that domestic mfg. numbers are inflated because of what you describe with pieces and parts being manufactured overseas. But I don’t remember where I read it and I was too lazy to look it up.
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq: Jesus, PJ O’Rourke is a fucking dork. Maybe he was funny when he was the only dope-smoking Republican but now they’re all on something.
burnspbesq
@Just Some Fuckhead:
PJ is honest about being a humorist. Taibbi wants people to think he has something important to say. What a joke.
joe from Lowell
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You think that might have something to do with the greatest economic contraction since the Great Depression? Housing construction is way down, too. Should we attribute that to foreign competition as well?
There’s no doubt, some jobs have gone overseas, because they can be done just as well (or nearly so) and cheaper than here. I don’t think anyone is going to be opening any carding mills in Lowell for the foreseeable future. My answer to this is to promote those industries that rely on the competitive advantages we have in America, or which are location-dependent. Efforts to slow the outflow can have merit – especially actions like ending tax breaks for companies that offshore jobs – but that’s ultimately a rear-guard action. If we want to add jobs, we need to do so at the other end – innovation industries. I’m very much a partisan of Robert Reich on this.
Judas Escargot
@change:
Massachusetts’ unemployment numbers would say otherwise.
Love him, hate him, or stay neutral– but Gov. Patrick has tried really hard to get those 21st century jobs (biotech, software, aerospace, robotics, alt-e) to the Bay State. And those folks spend money, helping the blue-collar sector as well.
Enjoy your victory dance in the crab bucket, little toadie: Some of us are actually looking forward to out-competing you and your Redstate kind to oblivion over these coming decades.
Foad DeToad
As if Pharma/Insurance will let that cash cow go.