Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 431 Editor's Choice: 43
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What other president has faced a calamity like 9/11?
[Read the article: It's not just Giuliani]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about Roosevelt. At Pearl Harbor we were actually attacked. As in by another nation state not a rag-tag handful of fanatics. As in with an entity that has real weapons and isn't trying to use a large aircraft as a substitute for real weapons.
What the hijackers did on 9/11 was a crime; it wasn't a military attack. And if we'd had any kind of actual leadership in Washington at the time, they wouldn't have come up with this fruitcake "war on terror" and they wouldn't have unleashed our military on a quixotic and fruitless assignment that has neither captured the masterminds behind the 9/11 crimes nor has it suppressed any terror networks. Quite to the contrary, we have seen an explosion of them.
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I can't say I really agree with you, Mr. Leonard
[Read the article: Subtracting the "IBM" from the ThinkPad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. I will agree with you that using the verb "to beat" has misleading connotations and denotations. Beyond that, I couldn't disagree with you more. The relative "market share" of a country for manufactured goods affects three important manufacturing considerations. First is infrastructure. If country A's "market share" increases, that means that some plants that previously produced this product line are being shut down and not converted to the production of some variant of the original product line in country B (read, you're no longer making semiconductor chips, you're making spatulas for McDonald's). Your ability to make chips is eroded, not merely not in use. This is a bad thing as it makes it more difficult to retain a lead or create a lead in this manufacturing sector as design and manufacturing are closely linked. And your assertion that the United States and the East Asian nations have been moving forward hand in hand is utter hogwash. The East Asian nations have been taking over the manufacture of electronic components for some time now.
Second is jobs. When country A increases it's market share, they have more jobs, country B has less. Hopefully, you realize that I'm talking about trends, not annual fluctuations in market share.
Third is design capacity. As I said, design and manufacturing go hand in hand. East Asia originally had no design capacity and could only manufacture parts in US supplied manufacturing facilities, but surprise, surprise now they do. Granted, it's not the cutting edge design but East Asia hasn't had the educational infrastructure that would produce the physicists and electrical engineers required to do the research and convert that research into designs to compete with those produced in the US.
The thing we should really be paying attention to is: what gives these other countries a competitive advantage over the US? A whole host of factors plays into this: physical and human resources, social structures and policies, governmental regulation, import export law, transportation facilities, etc etc etc. Why do they have a competitive advantage and do we want to try to erase it? The only thing I've ever heard is that they have a wage advantage and that is simply misleading.
And finally, looking at dollar value only for exports is extremely misleading. Your choice of Boeing is apt. There is an extremely short list of companies who, all by themselves, can have a material impact on the US's balance of trade. Boeing is one of them. So Boeing makes 550 aircraft this year (mostly from components made elsewhere) in the US and Nike makes 2 million tennis shoes in Malaysia. Who's likely to have the more thriving economy.
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Excellante!
[Read the article: Salon and Current TV]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As much as I love the written word, for current events, being able to see and hear the Salon staff is great. Hopefully, this would be in addition to and not in lieu of their articles. Besides, I'm sure they've got lots of time on their hands ; )
Hopefully, you can make them longer.
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Oh, no, you can thank Shrub
[Read the article: Should Bush open up the oil spigot?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, the invasion of Iraq which has made a visible dent in the supply of oil on the market place and secondly, his saber rattling at Iran (If the asshole actually invades Iran, $100 a barrel oil is likely to look cheap.)
And, unfortunately, the run up in the price of oil is more likely to increase oil exploration than it is the development of alternative energy.
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Hard Work, my ass
[Read the article: Clinton and the men, again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What hard work to get to the leadership table? Three names got to where she is by being the presidential spousal unit. Zero to US Senator in 8 years. While New Yorkers have demonstrated that they'll elect anybody who has a big name (as, for example, they did with Bobby Kennedy) even if the big name doesn't really live in New York, does anybody really think that they would have elected her if she'd only been the small town lawyer wife of the former governor of Arkansas? Most people who end up in the US Congress either make a name for themselves in local politics and go into the House of Representatives (and maybe up from there) or make a name for themselves in the state legislature and go from there. Has three names done any of that? I don't think so.
To be fair, three names isn't the only politician for whom "hard work" means figuring out the right people to know or getting access to large piles of cash. Shrub is, like, a total loser. He couldn't cut it in business but he could cut it in politics where, apparently, skill at governance is less important than skill at schmoozing. So he took Daddy's money and political connections and went from zero to Texas governor. Then he was packaged by political operatives and sold to the electorate who appears to be more interested in the packaging than the product. Look at where that got us.
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More importantly
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What if she turns out to be just another political hack who couldn't lead her way out of a Liz Claiborne store? (The way I'd describe three names) That wouldn't be good for the female sex's image. And we know what that's like. The Current Occupant still hasn't figured out how to get out of The Gap.