I have tried many times to describe in artful ways how the big-government policies of would-be tyrants like Barack Obama slowly and sometimes quickly suck the lifeblood out of a nation. See for example, Obama’s Fascism: Impose Central Control (Obamacare) And Then Grant Waivers.
But death by government bureaucrat is sometimes so subtle (while being deadly nonetheless) that it can be largely invisible to citizens, particularly those whose utopian fantasies of benevolent central power blind them in myriad ways.
While researching Barack Obama’s role in the government’s harassment of Boeing, I came across the following paragraph in a piece by Joe Nocera in which he wrote with outrage about Barack Obama’s and the NLRB’s role in restraining Boeing from operating its new $750 million manufacturing plant in South Carolina (Occupy Wall Street: “Jobs Destroyer“).
That is what is so jarring about this case — and not just for Boeing. Without any warning, the rules have changed. Uncertainty has replaced certainty. Other companies have to start wondering what other rules could soon change. It becomes a reason to hold back on hiring. <source>
What I love about this paragraph is that it highlights the central malignancy of governments run by petty tyrants, namely that citizens do not know whose head King Henry will chop off next, and that they therefore become paralyzed.
This uncertainty causes everyone to freeze in place lest they make a wrong move and pay the ultimate price (or a lesser, but still painful, price — who knows?).
Nocera drills right in on the actual fact of what this paralysis costs us: companies postpone hiring decisions, and a million other decisions for that matter, while they try to ascertain which way Caesar is leaning. The Manchurian would have us believe that the jobless recovery is someone else’s fault, but we know that it is the direct result of his disastrous policies alongside his imposition of rule by exception, which is impossible to predict and plan for (when do laws matter and when do they not?) and furthermore leads companies down the rat hole of wasting precious capital on currying favor at court instead of hiring workers and increasing the nation’s wealth.
And isn’t the capricious behavior of tyrants the very reason the Founding Fathers of the United States created a “nation of laws, not men”? They did so because people in positions of power without accountability inevitably destroy wealth and society as their own emotional needs overwhelm all reason. Laws based on inalienable rights are not only a higher standard of governance, they are more durable and unchanging and provide the foundation on which a free people can live and plan for the future.
One more thing I loved about Nocera’s piece is that he functions as the citizen who dares to point out that the king is wearing no clothes, in this specific case on Barack Obama’s role in the NLRB’s action against Boeing. This is crucial when fighting tyrants, because tyrants need the cloak of deception and obfuscation to keep their grip on power. But Nocera will have none of it:
When he was asked about the Boeing case earlier this summer, President Obama said that the N.L.R.B. is an independent agency and that his hands were tied. That may be true, though it’s worth pointing out that most of its top executives are his appointees.
There you have it: the tyrant installs his own henchmen in key positions so that he can control society through them as well as through himself and yet also maintain a measure of deniability when accountability comes calling.
If you are a Democrat, are you going to stand for this?
“Tried to describe in artful ways…”? You have most certainly succeeded.
Thanks!
If you are a Democrat, are you going to stand for this?”
I know it was a rhetorical question, but the answer is “of course they will!”
They’ll just dismiss Nocera and you (and all of us) as anti-worker, anti-living wage, anti-”fair share”, and of course, “racist”.
I watched “Real Time” last night on HBO. There was a heated debate on Obama. Mario Batali was on as a guest and he made a simple comment that I think will prove to be true. I’m paraphrasing, but it went basically that a few months before the election Obama’s just going to release some images of Bin Laden being tossed off a boat or something like that, and the country will get all lovey-dovey again and vote him in for a second term.
I don’t underestimate his power for making good speeches and the public with our “guppy-like” attention span falling for it yet again. Wasn’t his approval on the speech something like 90%?
Racist is the call for sure, today there are calls of racism by Jan Brewer for shaking her finger in the face of the biggest fraud to ever reach the Oval office. An ensuing debate between a non-racism speaker and a believer that it was in fact a racist action followed the news story. The believer based her words on what she herself believed Jan Brewer was thinking. But that is the state of the division in this country. I do not find the action racist and as close to her face as the fake was, she might have been lecturing him about the benefits of breath mints.
Back to topic his approval was high most likely like those they polled for reaction to the speech. He is a powerful speaker but so is the devil. I can only hope it is my vote that puts the GOP over the top…muahahahahahahaha!
Can we say eviction notice?????
I found this would like your thoughts on this article.
“The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba, wrote an opinion piece on a Cuban website, following a Republican Party presidential candidates’ debate in Florida, in which he argued that the “selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is – and I mean this seriously – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”
When Marxists are complaining that your party’s candidates are disconnected from today’s global realities, it’s generally not a good sign. But they’re not alone.
There is today an enormous gap between the way many CEOs in America – not Wall Street-types, but the people who lead premier companies that make things and create real jobs – look at the world and how the average congressman, senator or president looks at the world. They are literally looking at two different worlds – and this applies to both parties.
Consider the meeting that The New York Times reported on from last February between President Barack Obama and the Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October. The president, understandably, asked Jobs why almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were made overseas. Obama inquired, couldn’t that work come back home? “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” Jobs replied.
Politicians see the world as blocs of voters living in specific geographies – and they see their job as maximizing the economic benefits for the voters in their geography. Many CEOs, though, increasingly see the world as a place where their products can be made anywhere through global supply chains (often assembled with nonunion-protected labor) and sold everywhere.
These CEOs rarely talk about “outsourcing” these days. Their world is now so integrated that there is no “out” and no “in” anymore.
Victor Fung, the chairman of Li & Fung, one of Hong Kong’s oldest textile manufacturers, remarked to me last year that for many years his company operated on the rule: “You sourced in Asia, and you sold in America and Europe.” Now, said Fung, the rule is: “ ’Source everywhere, manufacture everywhere, sell everywhere.’ The whole notion of an ‘export’ is really disappearing.”
Added Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc.: “I always remind people that 96 percent of our potential new customers today live outside of America.” That’s the rest of the world. And if companies like Dell want to sell to them, he added, it needs to design and manufacture some parts of its products in their countries.
This is the world we are living in. It is not going away. But America can thrive in this world, explained Yossi Sheffi, the MIT logistics expert, if it empowers “as many of our workers as possible to participate” in different links of these global supply chains – either imagining products, designing products, marketing products, orchestrating the supply chain for products, manufacturing high-end products and retailing products. If we get our share, we’ll do fine.
And here’s the good news: We have a huge natural advantage to compete in this kind of world, if we just get our act together.
In a world where the biggest returns go to those who imagine and design a product, there is no higher imagination-enabling society than America. In a world where talent is the most important competitive advantage, there is no country that historically welcomed talented immigrants more than America. In a world in which protection for intellectual property and secure capital markets is highly prized by innovators and investors alike, there is no country safer than America.
If only – if only – we could come together on a national strategy to enhance and expand all of our natural advantages: more immigration, most post-secondary education, better infrastructure, more government research, smart incentives for spurring millions of startups – and a long-term plan to really fix our long-term debt problems – nobody could touch us. We’re that close.”
By Thomas L. Friedman, NEW YORK TIMES
Published 06:07 p.m., Sunday, January 29, 2012
I think his points are very good — integrated economies are here to stay, and American companies are not going to be competitive unless they participate in the global trade for resources, including human capital. Holding on to past glories is suicidal. Just ask Eastman Kodak.
Great find! I agree wholeheartedly with that article. When I was in investment advising one of the first things we were taught was that 93% of the economy (and opportunities) existed outside the U.S. and not to simply keep our focus here (Canada & USA).
How is America supposed to access thoe markets – even cost-wise – if they don’t produce outside of the artificially-inflated, 1st world wages combined with uncompetitive tax rates that we have here?
The manufacturing era of old is long gone. That doesn’t mean we can’t have any manufacturing here, but we need to allow business owners their right to evaluate risk/return, and investors the same right as well. We can still benefit from “outsourcing” or “offshoring” – every $100 we put into a mutual fund that invests in global companies benefits us here at home.
On a personal note, i also think we shouldn’t be rewarding workers who think by their birthplace or length of time with a company alone they’re immune from any competition for their job. The lesson for them is the same as the lesson for the country – get smarter or get forgotten.
Reblogged this on Boudica BPI Weblog and commented:
Obama is destroying the very foundations of our nation and our way of life.
Bob A.
[...] on January 31, 2012 | Leave a comment Thanks to Basharr over at Mastersen’s Musings for bringing this article to my [...]
I too had to agree that our biggest opportunities lay in world markets. We need leadership in this country that understands that.