29 August 2008

Nothing new under the sun

Watched Senator Obama’s speech last night. It was more of the envy-thy-neighbor and nothing-bad-should-ever-really-happen-to-you-but-if-it-does-there-must-always-be-a-federal-response sort of thing we always get.

There were several things I found interesting. For example, he’s going to end tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. His audience seemed to be very happy to hear that. I keep wondering what he’s going to do to companies which decide to move operations where they can manufacture at less cost, pay the higher taxes and still make a profit.

Maybe he’ll send in the troops. Think of it. Companies who move jobs overseas constitute a clear and present danger to the economic security of the United States and must be dealt with the same way we handle any other such threat.

Okay. I’m exaggerating. It wouldn’t happen. But really, what will he do if companies move those jobs in order to make the same goods at a lower cost, to pay higher taxes and still make profit? He'll use it for his re-election campaign, of course.

He’s going to make sure that everyone who wants a college education gets one. Fine. But what is he going to do to increase the number of jobs which actually require a college education? I mean, really. You get your federal-promised college education. But the number of jobs which justify that education is smaller than the number of jobs which don’t. Now you have people with college degrees flipping hamburgers.

Look dammit. It is someone’s job to make sure that if you get a college degree there is a job out there somewhere which actually requires one. And if not, then (I love this part) there’s something wrong with the economy. And the party in power better do something.

Not to worry: next week we’ll get the Marxism-Lite version of all this.

Meanwhile…

I just read this at Gateway Pundit, including the comments.

Whenever I read or hear anything about the economy in relation to elections I am reminded of this passage from Solzhenitsyn’s “World Split Apart” speech:

It is imperative to reappraise the scale of the usual human values; its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance should be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or to the availability of gasoline. Only by the voluntary nurturing in ourselves of freely accepted and serene self-restraint can mankind rise above the world stream of materialism.
Think about that italicized sentence. Now consider this: this speech was delivered in 1978. Jimmy Carter was President at the time.

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James Frank Solís
Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
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