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Home Front: Culture Wars
Does someone have answers to the questions?
2009-08-12
By Martin Henrichs

I am perplexed about so many issues in the news that I can only ask questions today. Maybe someone else has the answers.

  • Why is the issue of health care being decided by government and not by the consumers, health professionals and insurance companies? Isn't government the one that can't defend our borders, win the war on poverty or control the cost of stamps? And if Medicare and Medicaid are rampant with corruption and cost overruns, what will government do to a much broader program?

  • Why are the 10 poorest cities in America the ones that always elect Democrats to public office? Is it because their solutions to problems is welfare, not work?

  • Why is it considered desirable to register every uninformed voter to cancel out the votes of informed, well-educated people?

  • What does it mean when cities with strict gun control laws, like Chicago and Washington, D.C., can't control gangs, drugs and shootings?

  • Why is global warming even an issue when the increase in worldwide temperatures during the past 100 years has been only one degree Celsius and, for the past three years, has declined?

  • Why does President Obama prefer to house terrorists in the United States rather than at Gitmo?

  • With Cash for Clunkers and $8,000 bribes to first-time home buyers, what will happen to car and home sales when these "incentives" end? (I'm waiting for my 10 grand for grandpas.)

  • Should I buy a car from a company owned by unions that caused their own bankruptcies and by a government stupid enough to invest taxpayer money to prop them up?

  • Whatever happened to the great all-American principle that when a business fails, it provides opportunity for others to step in and do a better job? Has our government become the No. 1 enabler of inefficiency?

  • Why is the stimulus package loaded with funding that obviously will not stimulate the economy, but will stimulate people to vote a certain way?

  • Why is it that public schools that spend $10,000 per pupil can't do any better educating children than private, religious schools spending $4,000 per pupil? Shouldn't more resources go to those who succeed and less to those who are proven failures?

  • Why do television network news broadcasts use the term "news"? Isn't their product just tabloid entertainment? Fortunately, we still have good news -papers that do an excellent job of informing.
Posted by:Fred

#18  Please explain how you are communicating on a device that didn't exist thirty years ago, that the early models cost 2k in early 80s dollars with a pitiful capability of that which sits before you today. Where did all the software that ran on 64k memory and two 720k floppies on small monochromatic alpha-numeric screens go and who replaced it.

Let's start with your example. Where and who extracts the value of computers/electronics/comms. As a former IC designer, I think I am qualified to say US IC design is world class and probably a world beater. With such a technological lead and high demand, the US should be exporting electronic products hand over fist. But we are NOT.

My guess there are less than 50,000 IC designers in the US (mostly foreign born too). And hundreds of thousands are employed building those chips and millions are employed building the end devices. That's over 100 jobs created by the design efforts of each designer. Just not in the US (Intel excepted). The value from these products is extracted in Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, etc.

The US trade figures bear that out, with IT and Comms trade deficit at over $60 billion last year. That's nearly 1,000,000 middle class US jobs lost. The entire technology trade deficit is even worse at over $100 billion/year. For all the billions $ invested over 60 years by the taxpayer for R&D, a miniscule amount of the total employment is in the US. An amount that doesn't recoup the public investment.

World class design, world class product ideas, and world class trade deficits and job losses.

Societies that choose static economies decay and die. That is the long history. Those able to adapt and improvise usually stay in the running. It's not the easy route but those who can ride the changes will outlast those who stop because it gives them a false sense of security over their environment.

Yes. The automobile is over 100 years old. 4 wheels, engine, steering wheel. Yet it's the largest industrial product in the world. An entire regional economy of the US was based on it's manufacture. Yet governmental leaders and bankers rigged the trade game to let other nations poach the auto market to the tune of over $100 billion/year. Formerly prosperous cities are now rusted ghost towns, returning back to primeval forest. Yet exporting cities are not decaying or dying. Is Bavaria dying? Is Tokyo or Nagoya dying? Are the Chinese automobile producers (who are gearing up to export to the USA) dying? From my perch they seem to be vibrant and growing, with high paying jobs and plenty of profit for R&D.

On the contrary, societies die when they no longer produce wealth and exhaust the wealth produced by previous generations.

You are defending a rigged trade and financial system that screws the vast majority of American workers. And that, I find, is indefensible.
Posted by: ed   2009-08-12 22:49  

#17  Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Ronald Reagan (PBUH)
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2009-08-12 22:34  

#16   Please explain how shipping the most productive jobs overseas (often to enemy nations) will not sink us into Taliban levels of poverty faster than any alternative?

Please explain how you are communicating on a device that didn't exist thirty years ago, that the early models cost 2k in early 80s dollars with a pitiful capability of that which sits before you today. Where did all the software that ran on 64k memory and two 720k floppies on small monochromatic alpha-numeric screens go and who replaced it.

Societies that choose static economies decay and die. That is the long history. Those able to adapt and improvise usually stay in the running. It's not the easy route but those who can ride the changes will outlast those who stop because it gives them a false sense of security over their environment.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2009-08-12 21:03  

#15  ION CHINESE MIL FORUM > GLOBALRESEARCH.CA - THERE IS NO RECESSION: ITS A PLANNED DEMOLITION.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2009-08-12 19:26  

#14  Why is it that public schools that spend $10,000 per pupil can't do any better educating children than private, religious schools spending $4,000 per pupil? Shouldn't more resources go to those who succeed and less to those who are proven failures?

I went to a public elementary school in Ohio in the mid-1940s. The school was a 2-room school house run by two teachers. There was no principal. No were no unions. One teacher taught three of the grades in one room at the same time. The other teacher did the same. Two classes doing in-class work and one class doing spelling or math or English with the teacher. The two teachers also made sure we were all fed at lunch. Made sure we were all fed meant they prepared the meals. The also tended the fire that heated the school. They also handled recess out in the schoolyard.

I learned more during the time that I was there than most of the others schools I attended. I was very fortunate to receive this education. It set a course for learning for life. Later in life I got a Ph.D. in engineering and also taught. Somewhere in the development of our school systems we have gone very wrong.
Posted by: JohnQC   2009-08-12 17:33  

#13  "government doesn't solve problems, government just manages makes problems worse"

Fixed that for ya', P2k.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2009-08-12 13:27  

#12  "Has our government become the No. 1 enabler of inefficiency?"

Whaddaya mean "become"?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2009-08-12 13:24  

#11  Americans invent jobs and businesses for themselves -- it's what we've always done. We're the build-a-better-mousetrap people.
Posted by: trailing wife   2009-08-12 12:29  

#10  ed - to Obama and company roaving bands of SEIU and Acorn gangs is a feature - not a bug.
Posted by: CrazyFool   2009-08-12 12:13  

#9  What's the Matter with Kansas?
Posted by: swksvolFF   2009-08-12 11:50  

#8  Please explain how shipping the most productive jobs overseas (often to enemy nations) will not sink us into Taliban levels of poverty faster than any alternative?

You want roving bands of American Taliban gangs stealing, raping and destroying stuff then make sure that our young adults have no jobs that earn enough to buy a decent place to live, support a family and save money for old age. Please provide the list of jobs for our people to earn money when the industrial/agricultural/mining base is gone.
Posted by: ed   2009-08-12 10:07  

#7  Folks, no body else than only we, not even the greegy and corrupt politicians are destroying our nation, our jobs and the future of our grand children

And how is this different from the Taliban and AQ harking about returning to the glorious and righteous old days? If only we'd go back to the old industrial or, for that matter, agrarian America, all will be well again?
Posted by: Procopius2k   2009-08-12 09:42  

#6  Yes, there are answers for all the ills of our country.
The most and foremost is our inability to buy made in America irrespective of what the government policies are. For several years, we could find no merchandise; except for just a few, that are made in America. A few years ago in Boston, I saw a visiting Buddhist monk at the Target store who really wanted to have a camera. His intense desire was so clearly visible on his face that I could not stop and came to his help. I told him, please, select a camera you want and I will buy it for you if it costs less than 400 dollars because that was all I could afforded without running out of money for myself. He looked at me and I never forgot his face when the monk told me “sorry, I can not take any of the cameras, they are all made in China and non is made in America”.(He was speaking in English) I seriously doubt, even the American flags we buy here today are entirely made in USA. Folks, no body else than only we, not even the greegy and corrupt politicians are destroying our nation, our jobs and the future of our grand children. Please, wake up and stop blaming others.
Posted by: Annon   2009-08-12 08:46  

#5  Good newspapers? Well, let's see, there's the Wall Street Journal, and the . . . um, uh, well, that's pretty much it, isn't it?

Go look around IBD.

and in answer to the majority of the questions posed above - government doesn't solve problems, government just manages problems. Problems are either solved by the people or allowed to fester because the overall cost to benefit ratio is viewed as not worth the commitment or effort or the social change that would be required.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2009-08-12 08:43  

#4  I'd say the WSJ has gone into the tank too over the last five years. Now it's just USA today at a 12th grade reading level.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble   2009-08-12 07:37  

#3   Fortunately, we still have good news -papers that do an excellent job of informing.

Good newspapers? Well, let's see, there's the Wall Street Journal, and the . . . um, uh, well, that's pretty much it, isn't it?
Posted by: Mike   2009-08-12 06:28  

#2  Answer?

Total corruption.
Posted by: newc   2009-08-12 01:15  

#1  Why are the 10 poorest cities in America the ones that always elect Democrats to public office? Is it because their solutions to problems is welfare, not work?

In Chicago most of the poor live in public housing.
Wards usually encompass them and not much else. The Wardheelers come in and say: "If we see a single vote for Republicans from this complex - Everybody looses their lease and goes on the housing wait list.... Any Questions? No. I didn't think so."

Posted by: 3dc   2009-08-12 01:12  

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