One of the least of the regular columnists at the ever shrinking Denver Post, David Sirota, who took over the looney lefty slot from Paul Campos, had an
article Saturday mildly critical of the Obama Administration for not protecting local manufacturers with tariffs. At least that's what I think he means. You have to translate from time to time. He starts:
A sovereign nation investing its wealth in its domestic economy seems like a no- brainer, especially during a global recession.
Translation: Government taxing and spending is a good idea, especially now.
It's not a good idea to spend money trying to prop up, economically, wind generators, which cost a ton, add nothing to the grid, and wouldn't exist at all unless supported by taxpayers, because the wind generators have a relatively short lifespan and are intermittently working.
Germany, Denmark and
Spain know this now. Sirota doesn't appear to know this but it's really not the focus of his piece.
...Businessweek in 2008 warned that in an America with few domestic purchasing mandates, any economic stimulus — whether spending or tax cuts — would likely "leak" abroad, thus "reducing its impact on jobs here."
Translation: Unless we protect or expand the requirement of more wasteful government spending on useless windmills, the taxpayer money we are wasting will be wasted on Chinese factories rather than, for example,
factories in Massachusetts. Too late there, I guess.
Students of real history know that protectionism (anyone? anyone? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act) will only make the global recession worse, just as it did during the Great Depression. The President (God bless him) and the Republicans have opposed protectionism for sound economic reasons--so that the other nations don't retaliate and international trade grind to a halt. Sirota apparently doesn't know history or believes that anti-protectionism can't have any reason to exist but greed, international greed, and corruption. What a bleak point of view.
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
Labels: David Sirota; Democrats Disconten; Protectionism
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 7:17 AM
