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The Phony War
By David Glenn Cox
I read with interest the banner headlines this morning. “Recovery Accelerates as Company Spending Rises"
Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) -- "Evidence of a self-sustaining U.S. recovery is emerging on the factory floors of Texas Instruments Inc. The second-largest U.S. chipmaker will spend almost $1 billion this year to expand three factories and open a fourth to fill orders."
Wow, more factories and almost a billion dollars, that’s real money and not to be sneezed at. But I just can’t leave it alone, so I sniffed a little further.
“TI said the Richardson, Texas facility, which cost $320 million to build, would start shipping products by the end of next year after it begins installing chip making equipment next month. It plans to hire 250 new workers starting immediately.
"The company, which uses a mixture of third-party contract manufacturers and TI-run factories, said the facility would have the capacity to make more than $1 billion worth of analog chips per year for devices such as telephones and computers.” Reuters
So, the evidence of this self-sustaining recovery is based on 250 new jobs at Texas Instruments. But wait, they said a billion dollars and the Texas plant is less than a third of that amount.
“The Richardson factory will be the company's sixth U.S. wafer facility. It also has three wafer factories and six assembly and test facilities overseas. It opened a new assembly and test facility in the Philippines earlier this year.” Reuters
So, the rest of the billion dollars will be spent overseas. The Richardson plant was completed in 2006 but never opened. Texas Instruments plans on installing manufacturing equipment that it bought from a bankruptcy sale last year from chipmaker Qimonda AG. Nothing but the best for the boys and girls.
This is just whistling while you pass the graveyard; 250 jobs is good, no one is criticizing new jobs, just their portrayal of a drop in the ocean as being a tsunami. The economy lost 86,000 jobs in December and the four-week moving average for unemployment was 456,250, an increase of 9,500 from the previous week's revised average of 446,750.
Texas Instruments is investing one-third in America and two-thirds overseas, and let's not forget those third-party contract manufacturers. I was so excited by the news that the recovery is here that I went directly to the help wanted ads.
“Our growing roofing company is looking for two people to put flyers on doors in the metro area. You two will work as a team.
"There is no sales involved, no knocking on the doors. Simply hang the flyers we give you.
"You'll receive $50 per contract per guy.”
But what if I work for forty hours and you don’t get any contracts?
“Legally earn six figures in months!
“You can literally earn six figures in months thru network marketing with a reputable company who has been successful for greater than 20 years! You have the advantage of receiving monthly commissions, bonuses, a free website, and residual income!”
That’s why the government uses the term discouraged worker, because when you read endless bullshit such as this it is easy to become discouraged, as well as to become angry. We have US manufacturers whose executives want to live in and glory in the sunshine of the United States but also want to send the lion's share of new jobs to South Asia. Expanding three factories in the Philippines and opening one plant in Dallas with secondhand equipment doesn't sound very helpful to the economy to me.
Then I run across an article that refers to Barrack Obama as Robin Hood because the author ponders whether the President isn’t just robbing the rich to give to the poor. Ok, now I’m pissed off! The author tries to wear another man's cloak and writes as though it’s his rich friend who is upset about his taxes going up.
He gives the standard Republican argument, “Why should my taxes go up to pay for some welfare queen who sits on her… couch all day watching Oprah while I’m out busting my hump?”
Us versus them, only it’s not true, it's a phony war. It's the class war, that liberals are always accused of making, in reverse.
The defense budget of the United States in billions of dollars:
1976- $ 283.8
1980- $ 303.4
1982- $ 339.4 Reagan
1983- $ 366.7
1984- $ 381.7
1985- $ 405.4
1986- $ 426.6
1992- $ 379.5 Clinton
1993- $ 358,6
1994- $ 338.6
1995- $ 321.6
1996- $ 307.4
1997- $ 305.3
1998- $ 296.7
Strange isn’t it that the Reagan years were full of economic slowdowns and high unemployment and yet Clinton had rising employment and returned a surplus to the treasury? Let's now take a look at the Bush years.
2000- $ 311.7
2001- $ 307.8
2002- $ 328.7
2003- $ 404.9
2004- $ 455.9
2005- $ 495.3
2006- $ 535.9
2007- $ 557.4
Bush almost doubled the defense budget in eight years, and what do you suppose taking $276 billion out of the economy did and does? Meanwhile his lordship is worried about ruffians in the woods because someone might be getting $300 a month in benefits, while his knights are raiding the Treasury. Well, who’s zooming who, fella? The 2007 number doesn’t include all the little add-ons and off-budget appropriations, and we may never know the real truth of that number.
“The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a 'two-tier labor market' in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. The war in March-April 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq, and the subsequent occupation of Iraq, required major shifts in national resources to the military.” CIA Factbook
Technical skill- opening one plant in the United States with second hand equipment and expanding three overseas.
Lack of education – letting politicians get away with this kind of policy
Well, thank God we elected Mr. Hope and Change! Thank God the Democrats rule over Congress now and we can lock up this madness. Obama's budget for 2010- $ 530.8 billion plus. The Department of Homeland Security, (can’t forget them!) 2010- $159.3 billion, and then there is $33 billion for the new troops for Afghanistan. But Obama is going to freeze spending! Except for an anticipated increase next year of $18.2 billion for the Defense Department.
How much money does the administration expect to save with the spending freeze? They expect to save ten billion less than it costs to send extra troops to Afghanistan, or $23 billion, on what The White House calls “ineffective or wasteful programs.” The President thinks congratulatory pats on the back are in order all around. He's going to gut the moon missions leaving the United States without a next-generation space vehicle putting our space industry at risk of falling back to Earth while we are passed yet again by the Japanese and the Chinese.
Yet the phony war will continue. Rush Limbaugh calls aid to Haiti “Meals on wheels,” when much of the amount spent is on fixed-cost items and the total won’t equal one week of military spending in Iraq. Meg Whitman is running for Governor of California on a pledge to cut welfare benefits by two-thirds. God damned welfare check cashing, bon bon-eating, couch-sitting, Cadillac-driving sons a bitches!
In 1918 the German government was pulling up lead drainpipes to be melted down into bullets because they had exhausted their treasury. Their people were hungry and their economy was in ruins because they were stuck in a war that they could not win and did not know how to end. The Kaiser lived in a state of permanent denial; it was all just numbers and symbols and lines on map boards to him. The squalor and poverty of the troops didn’t show up on maps, until one day, out of the blue, the generals came to the Kaiser and explained that the army could no longer go on. "We must make peace or in two weeks or less the army will collapse." A deathly silence fell over the room and the Kaiser was reported to mumble, “Then it’s all been for nothing?”
Exactly, billions upon billions of dollars for absolutely nothing. Nothing for better health care. Nothing for better jobs, nothing for better schools, nothing to pay down the huge debt. It’s all been for nothing. We're left with only the illusion of military gains with the bomb and the gun that slowly, almost imperceptibly, erodes the domestic economy, until we wake up one day longing for bread and peace and asking ourselves, “Then it’s all been for nothing?”
Yes, it's all for nothing.
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