« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

Competing to Win

By: Rick Santorum (Diary)  |  March 28th, 2012 at 06:06 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Of the many wounds to America’s economy over the past few years, the majority have been self-inflicted.  But that unfortunate reality notwithstanding, you can’t seriously examine our long-term national economic and jobs outlook, particularly regarding manufacturing, without addressing the China question.

I was tempted to say “the China threat,” and certainly that would be accurate on many levels.  But in the vast intersection of the world’s two largest economies, there are many opportunities as well.

As president, I would start the task of spurring economic growth – and the job creation that comes with it – by dramatically cutting America’s uncompetitive corporate tax rate in half for all companies (to 17.5%), and zeroing it out for Section 199 manufacturing activity.  Home-grown manufacturing in many ways is the foundation upon which the rest of our economy is built.  It is also the playing field that China has most successfully managed to tilt in its favor.

Their wages will probably always be lower than ours, and their environmental and social protections as well.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t work to pry open their markets and press them to play by the rules of international commerce and currency exchange.  And when they do, I believe we can compete head to head with them or anybody else.  The Chinese people work hard, there’s no doubt about that.  But so do we.

Of course, there’s more to this bilateral relationship than trade.  It certainly doesn’t help our position that we continue to create huge debt for the rest of the world to buy.  But I think our current straits are also a result of a refusal on our part to confront honestly the true nature of what remains a brutal, authoritarian and nationalistic regime.  What does China stand for?  Largely, it stands only for itself.

Our response must be more than just a corresponding selfishness.  It must be rooted in our values.  That’s a term that gets bandied about pretty loosely, so what exactly are America’s values in this context?

 1) Free enterprise.  That means globally competitive, pro-growth corporate and manufacturing tax policies.  It means eliminating stifling, job-killing regulatory behemoths like Obamacare as well as all of the other new rules the administration has dropped on the business community.  It is 20 percent more costly to do business in the U.S. than our top nine trading partners, and that’sexcluding labor costs.

I support a fairer, flatter tax code because the current system punishes individuals, small businesses, and corporations competing globally.  I will fight to simplify the tax code by moving from six to two rates and lowering personal income tax rates to 10 percent and 28 percent respectively and eliminating deductions other than those for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, retirement savings, and children.  I will also eliminate the oppressive and unfair Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and death taxes, and cut capital gains taxes by 20% to spur further economic growth and investment.

The American people are the greatest innovators in the world – this alone makes us capable of competing economically with all countries.  To the extent that government plays a role in the economy, it should be to protect the freedom to allow this innovation to blossom naturally, instead of trying to “spread the wealth around.”  We’ve seen how well that has worked over the past three years:  One in six Americans is now in poverty, one in four kids on food stamps – the president’s vision of fairness reminds me of Churchill’s definition of socialism: “An equal distribution of misery.”

2) Education reform.  Another critical element for our manufacturing and economic success is relevant and quality educational options. The federal government now administers 47 different employment and job training programs at a cost to taxpayers of $18 billion.  I will fully block grant federal job training programs and most federal education programs to the states, giving states flexibility and resources, and strongly encouraging them – and their communities – to create quality vocational education options for students that are directly tied to what manufacturers and other businesses most need to compete.

We must dramatically reform our entire education system, returning decision-making to consumers and provide them with meaningful options that meet the needs of individual students and employers rather than governments or unions.  Barely half of the young people in our 50 largest cities graduate from high school on time.  While the solutions do not lie with the federal government, this should be unacceptable for all Americans who embrace expanded opportunity and are serious about expanding opportunity and addressing poverty.  It should also be unacceptable to those who want us to compete and win globally.

By 2018 it is estimated that only 37 percent of jobs will be open to workers with only a high school diploma, and they are not going to pay well.  Better education, better skills, and a better connection to job options for all of our students will help get us back on track.  Local business and education providers should be at the forefront of this strategy.

3) Peace through strength.  This is the opposite of President Obama’s “leading from behind,” which is such a pitiful expression of policy that it has made the French look bold by comparison on the global stage.

National defense is the number one constitutional priority of the federal government.  We don’t need to be cutting a trillion dollars from our defense and troops when the Chinese are moving in the opposite direction, adding large numbers of warships, submarines, fighter jets, and offensive missile capabilities that can knock out stealth aircraft and threaten our largest warships.

At the same time, it also means living within our means.  President Obama has created record budget deficits by spending 40% more money than we actually have.  We need to cut $5 trillion in federal spending over five years, balance the budget and pass a Balanced Budget Amendment capping federal spending at 18% of GDP to reduce government and so we don’t ever get in this mess again.

We must also unleash our domestic energy resources instead of trying to strangle their development.  My plan will create energy security that strengthens our national security and decreases reliance on unreliable and adversarial nations.  We need to expand domestic innovations and energy resources.  This includes oil, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear energy.  As President, I will remove bans on drilling—both onshore and offshore—and will end federal energy subsidies, like those for Solyndra.  This will immediately increase expectations of future supply, thereby lowering prices.  It will create jobs and bring revenues to federal and state governments.

America is one of only a few nations in the world to put known large domestic supplies of oil and gas off-limits to exploration.  The result?  The Chinese, who generate less than one percent of their electricity from renewables, have purchased drilling leases from Cuba and will soon be drilling 45 miles off the coast of Florida while American workers sit on the bench and watch Chinese workers perform their jobs.

4) Standing up for liberty. When the Chinese government attempts to manipulate Internet service providers – even forcing them to provide information on domestic dissidents – it’s not just an economic issue.  It goes to the heart of the battle between freedom and tyranny.  We can’t leave these companies to simply fend for themselves in the face of this kind of oppression.  Likewise, we must stand with peaceful nations in southeast Asia, many of whom China has been attempting to intimidate by asserting ownership and control over the South China Sea.

In a nutshell, we must continue to stand for freedom and human rights, which  are hardly uniquely American values.  But they are at the core of our vision of a just society.  Certainly we help no one by relegating them to a distant second priority behind economic considerations.  Reticence on these issues does not convey the kind of strength and self-confidence that command respect in Southeast Asian cultures.  A robust human rights policy that is integral to our engagement with China will project confidence in our values that will reverberate through Burma, North Korea, Sudan, Iran and elsewhere.

We are on the right side of history, not just economically but on the value and dignity of all human life.  Ronald Reagan was able to walk and chew gum at the same time.  He stood with Soviet dissidents in prison even while he engaged and stared down to the Soviet Union.  We must likewise engage China economically while making clear that forced abortions through their one-child policy, religious repression and the torture and imprisonment of dissidents are simply not acceptable.

That might seem obvious or even pedantic, but it seems beyond the grasp of the current administration.  Just last summer, Vice President Biden went to China and announced that he would not “second guess” their one-child policy.  Not long before, President Obama held an elaborate official state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao – a tragic irony in which the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize hosted the man who was at that very moment imprisoning the winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize.

His name is Liu Xiaobo, and he is still in jail for no reason other than exercising his God-given right to speak freely.  As Americans, we believe not only in freedom of commerce but in foundational freedoms like religion and speech as well.  That is the subtext upon which we must engage China economically.  We are freedom people.

Rick Santorum, a former representative and senator from Pennsylvania, is a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.  

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    a prosperous country. The Founders understood this. After all, they started a revolution because they were tired of oppression that left them a third world country providing raw materials for British factories. The tariff made patriots of domestic manufacturers and was instrumental in making the United States the exceptional nation in all of history. Pat Buchanan’s The Great Betrayal lays this history out quite well, and the dire consequences of failing to heed the call for economic nationalism is quite starkly laid out in Charles Murray’s Coming Apart. We can’t all sit at lap tops and make a living.

    I appreciate Santorum’s proposed steps to rebuild the United States of America.

    • aesthete

      Among other things, manufacturing was *never* considered a bourgeois profession except in the US and Sweden directly after WWII — in fact, it was considered a rather degrading form of labor, which explains in part why so many who had manufacturing jobs worked to get their kids into college and into other professions. (I will note that everyone on this thread prescribing manufacturing *for others* voluntarily chose to work in other professions.)

      You, and others, have no idea whether the current market for manufacturing allows anything close to the unique post-WWII situation — where our competitors’ manufacturing centers were either smashed to rubble (West Germany, Japan), exhausted from the war effort (UK), hamstrung by terrible governments (USSR/Communist states, India, Mexico), or not yet existent (Korea). Moreover, capital improvements and artificial costs created by unions have made it so that businesses are moving away from labor-intensive manufacturing in all of the developed countries — yes, even countries like Germany have moved towards more capital-intensive manufacturing (and a shrinking of the manufacturing labor demand). There’s no proof whatsoever that even an idealized free market could bring us back to the post-WWII situation vis a vis a large middle class working in manufacturing, and quite a bit against that proposition — economists T Sowell and Jagdish Bhagwati have written much regarding this subject.

      That’s not to say that there isn’t a place for manufacturing, or that we cannot have conditions more favorable for manufacturing and labor of same — Southern states have greatly increased their manufacturing potential by modernizing their courts, enabling favorable labor conditions, and having less obtrusive state governments than the rust belt states. It strikes me as utterly bizarre that so many conservatives have wholeheartedly embraced manufacturing policy — this patrician notion that we, the educated must look to provide jobs for the hoi polloi through government policy is very wrong-headed.

      • habeumnominee

        Neither I, nor either of my parents, nor any of my grandparents have ever worked in manufacturing. You’d have to go back 3 or 4 generations to find anyone in my family tree that has done any manufacturing at all.

        I am sad to see the collapse of American manufacturing. However, I believe that this is a natural consequence of the inevitable globalization that is occurring. The American president, even if he has help from Congress, is powerless to stop globalization.

        So I agree with everything that you have said, although I appreciated GC’s insights as well.

        I think that America needs to return to the forefront of the information economy. Some ideas to help us get there would be to have public schools put computers in every classroom and de-emphasize the spelling bees, etc. I understand that “effect” and “affect” are commonly transposed words. However, spelling words like “deciduous” and “coniferous” is a waste of time for kids because the spell-checker knows how to spell those words.

        Learning how to do long-division by hand is also pointless. We have machines that do that now. The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and Europeans will eat our lunch if we don’t quickly adapt to the information age.

        • Flagstaff

          Some ideas to help us get there would be to have public schools put computers in every classroom and de-emphasize the spelling bees, etc. I understand that

        • elizaliza

          Santorum said, I kid you not:
          “I think it

      • Flagstaff

        no text

      • radicalrighty

        And under President Santorum, that sure ain’t happening either. He is as beholden to unions as the current president

  • acat

    It’s one I’ve brought up before.

    The manufacturing sector in America is doing okay. Not great, but they’re hardly down for the count.

    Manufacturing jobs, on the other hand – especially *unskilled* or *low-skill* jobs – are gone.

    Reducing the tax burden on American manufacturing will not bring these jobs back, they weren’t replaced by China or sucked south to Mexico .. they were done in – more than anything else – by cheap shop-floor automation.

    While your proposal will definitely be a shot of adrenaline, I fear you’re aiming for the leg rather than the heart by trying to bring back something that’s no longer needed… low-skill factory jobs.

    Mew

    • Scope

      you denigrate factory jobs to nothing more than knuckle dragging neandethals to work on the factory floor. You are very uppity because you work in technolody if I’m not mistaken, and you post as though any factory jobs would be filled with trash workers. I’d much prefer to see sweatshits, and baseball caps, and even tomato topsy turveys made here in the US, even if those jobs don’t pay the highest wages. I was really happy to hear today that trade schools were on the upswing. Plumbers and electricians are very valuable workers, and they are not unskilled workers. People running CNC machines on the factory floor, while not being the highest wage workers are still not unskilled.

      • acat

        I’m not talking about running a CNC machine, that’s not unskilled.

        I’m talking about single-task “take this bolt and put it in that hole, repeat” – *no* skill jobs, jobs that use humans to do simple, repetitive tasks. “Working on the line”. That kind of job is just plain *gone*, Scope. Nobody – not here, not in Mexico, not in China – is building assembly lines with that much manual work.

        Yes, I work in high tech, says so in my profile. That doesn’t make me “uppity”. I’ve also worked in fast food and construction, perhaps it’s one of those that gave me my uppityness?

        Seriously, one of the outfits I used to work for ran assembly lines in several countries… and they were fanatical about automation. Did jobs go to China? Some .. in part because shipping costs from Nebraska to China, where the finished product was being assembled, meant the U.S. plants couldn’t compete.

        Perhaps under Sen. Santorum’s proposal some of those lines may come back… but any new assembly being done in the U.S. will be done on an automated line – because there is no way for an unskilled laborer to compete with robotics – and the jobs will be maintenance and skilled labor and much fewer than the Senators’ plan promises.

        Mew

        • redmymind

          That said, I think Chinese food itself is great! Love the stuff they have out here in LA and SFO. Gave up potstickers for Lent, though!

          • acat

            Low-carb beef stir-fry

            Pound a flank steak until tender.
            Cut into bite-size pieces.
            Place in a ziploc bag with:

            1/2 cup soy sauce
            1/2 cup lime juice
            1/4 cup brown rice syrup
            1 tbsp garlic powder (or 3 cloves crushed garlic)
            1/2 tsp dried powdered ginger (or 2 tsp fresh minced ginger)

            Squish until all the flank steak bits are coated and the liquid ingredients are mixed.

            Refrigerate 24 hours (you can cut this down to 8, but .. 24 is better)

            Pour 1/4 cup sesame oil in a clean wok over medium heat.
            When oil is hot, add contents of ziploc bag.
            Stir until meat is browning a bit.

            Add:
            1-2 cups sliced mushrooms
            1-2 cups minced onions
            2 cups minced bok choi
            1 cup carrots(thin-sliced)
            2 stalks celery (thin-sliced)

            Stir until meat is completely cooked and onions are translucent.

            Serve as-is or over a (small!) bed of brown rice or rice noodles.

            Mew

          • acat

            Add a 1/2 tsp of crushed sea salt to the wok after every veg, really brings out the flavor.

            Mew

          • redmymind

            Thanks for the recipe. I think I’ll actually try it!

            What the heck? A cat that cooks authentic Chinese??? . . . Wow! And here I am ordering in, going out, or trying to defrost that frozen ready-made stuff from the supermarket!

            Wuff!!!

          • jamesm

            i can follow the recipe until that point. i thought you might like a good bird or fish instead.

          • acat

            I have no need to eat crow, but if you’d like it…

            Mew

          • snowshooze

            This sounds absolutely divine.

          • acat

            Then you have to catch a crow… I assume you’ve got a shotgun and permit?

            Mew

          • jamesm

            4:00pm PST: Senator Santorum will hold a Rally for Rick in Fairfield, CA.

            Location:
            Jelly Belly Candy Company
            One Jelly Belly Lane
            Fairfield, CA 94533

            Kind of early to be in California. Romney in Stockton on tuesday hmmm. This looks like the big kahuna in June. These guys are coming in early

          • clintonformccain

            like his chinese stir fries served over a bed of broccoli with garlic and chinese black vinegar in place of the rice. He made me try it. Pretty darn good. Who needs rice?

          • acat

            although it’s an interesting thought.

            Mew

          • clintonformccain

            Scalia says the government might be able to make you buy it! :)

          • acat

            Methinks it’d make good mulch…

            Mew

      • aesthete

        Revealed preferences show that most Americans would rather have well-paying jobs in comfortable working conditions.

        I’m all for people working in the fields that they want to work in, and I think that the conservative position should be to create as few barriers as possible for people to do so. This top-down view of structuring through government how America’s labor market should look is utterly anathema to conservative principles of the free market. Acat is right that the jobs which have gone wholesale to China (mostly cheap consumer goods) aren’t coming back in large quantities — not while capital improvements, and other countries with lower wages, exist. We can make conditions more favorable for high-quality and automotive manufacturing, but even these won’t provide the number, quality and extent of jobs that were abundant from the 50s-70s. The current decline in manufacturing jobs as a percentage of the labor force has to do with the status of American labor markets, other countries’ increased industrial capacity, and the status of technology — and none of those are changing anytime soon.

        • Scope

          if you aren’t already a part of one.

          “Revealed preferences show that most Americans would rather have well-paying jobs in comfortable working conditions.”

          The AFL-CIO or SEIU are more than willing to accommodate your expectations.

          You say “revealed preferences.” Where are your cites for those preference polls, or is that just your opinion? Then again, is there the first human being alive that would not “prefer more money”, and “comfortable” working conditions? Shame on you for promoting your superior attitude as to blue collar American workers. Don’t even dare come back and call misunderstanding, or a lack of reading comprehension.

          • aesthete

            and I don’t like parasitic organizations siphoning off my labor to fund political nonsense irrelevant or antithetical to myself and my goals. Areas where manufacturing is growing are non-union *and* well-paying precisely because they manufacture high-quality goods: think Boeing airplanes, instead of cheap toy soldiers.

            “Revealed preferences” are an economic concept that have nothing to do with polling — others might call it using common sense to ascertain preferences. For example, one might *say* that they enjoy exercising more than anything else in life, but if they decline to do so at every opportunity where they’re given a choice, they implicitly reveal their preference for another activity through their choices.

          • aesthete

            Neither acat, nor myself, are disparaging blue collar workers. Quite the opposite: I pointed out above that blue collar workers worked their *sses off so that their children could go to college and get the types of jobs that they would have rather worked. I respect the h*ll out of that. What I find insulting is your picturesque, patronizing, and static notion of the working class — as a group that can’t and shouldn’t aspire to more than manufactory, if that’s what they want. I’m guessing you made the conscious decision to do something other than work in the manufacturing sector, but it seems you would still like government policy to consign a large amount of Americans to working in that sector (and making lower wages, while they’re at it) to satisfy some aesthetic preference. Something tells me that you’re not going to be the first in line to work one of those assembly line jobs, and that you’re not going to recommend them to your children — after all, those jobs are for *those* sorts, not for you or your special snowflakes!

          • JSobieski

            I don’t deny that manufacturing is an important sector of the economy. However, this view of blue color workers is what Democrats used to take control over the country and dominate the politics of much of the 20th century.

            If raising taxes could make a nation more prosperous, history has failed to provide any evidence. A tariff is just a tax.

          • aesthete

            The rhetoric of a static, unchanging, noble industrialized working class besieged by lassiez-faire economics and the petit bourgeois is straight out of Soviet propaganda, and non-Maoist Marxist iconography. Sorry, but it doesn’t work like that: poverty is a phase (not a lifecycle), manufacturing is not a static generator of a certain class of job, and there are options available to the working class to get individuals out of manufacturing, if they so choose — which, thankfully, they generally do when it is to their own, and their childrens’, advantage.

            We can improve manufacturing (esp high-quality manufacturing) at the margins significantly by repealing state and federal regulations, and disentangling counterproductive labor agreements. We can’t bring back the 50s — nor should we.

          • JSobieski

            that many argue in the context of a government economic stimulus.

            People factor in what they see, but they can’t factor in what they don’t see. Of course the unseen stuff is important—otherwise we would be better off digging holes and filling them up again.

          • aesthete

            is Pareto optimizing at all times — that’s a funhouse version of what free traders say. The free trade argument is that a) repeated interactions in markets converge towards an equilibrium which is Pareto optimizing, b) that preferences and market conditions change such that the equilibrium also changes, and that c) given this, and government’s lack of ability or mechanism to anticipate these changes and adapt policy as a result, or to gather the information required to set optimal tariffs, voluntary trade as a mechanism for setting prices is a better mechanism than government policy. (If this case seems familiar to you, it’s because it’s the same case for free markets.)

            This posited causal mechanism for prosperity resulting from free trade is exactly the same as for free markets and voluntary trade in general. Not only is this case logically rigorous and internally consistent, it also has empirical evidence behind it. Every experimental economic test (including one which I helped administer within the past year at the UA) which attempts to see if stable equilibria are a result in interactions with limited information about the other person and incentives, have shown that trending towards Pareto efficient outcomes is a very common behavior within voluntary markets. Of course, there is the strong economic progress of nations with little but free, open markets to their benefit — Hong Kong has only that, and ports, as its saving grace. There has been much historical analysis of feudal systems and intra-country tariffs and fees, and same for inter-country trade: they are indistinguishable as economic phenomena, and greatly hindered the economic development for quite some time.

          • aesthete

            that it relies on, and is greatly respectful of, systems and institutions which in the aggregate improve on the human condition. Conservatives rightly surmise that “civilization” is the collection of “best practices” for humanity. Conservatives respect process-based analysis which determines the functionality of a system as a whole, and how marginal improvements can be made to it — and prefer it to ad-hoc thinking. In almost all circumstances — courts, size and scope of government — conservatives almost always tend to look at systems, processes, and decision trees to ascertain desireability and fairness, while liberals will concentrate on certain results that they favor and grope towards ad-hoc policy which they believe will produce more of these results.

            IMO, the conservative approach to viewing systems is much sounder, and explains many of the differences between the ideologies. An ad hoc approach to complex problem with limited information and few constraints will lead to many erroneous decisions: the tendency, then, is to move the focus away from the high failure rate, and towards something else — in the case of most liberals, this “something else” is usually intentions and a self-perception of being more intelligent and caring than others outside the group. Conservatives (at least, in theory) avoid this problem to a greater extent, because they have a more reasonable approach to systemic problems.

            Conservatism is at its worst when it engages in past-worship outside the context of a rigorous, process-based methodological framework — ad hoc sentimentalism, as it were. There are many things in our past which we would do well to avoid, either because they are immoral (slavery), based on previous generations of ad hoc reasoning (almost any state’s history in the world), or because they simply don’t apply in the modern world in the same way (non-interventionism). How do we determine which of the cases a particular historical trend falls under? Process-based methodologies based on shared (or at least, similar) ethical constructs about fair play and role of government.

          • civil truth

            (which is similar to “opportunity cost”?)

            What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen

            opening section

            1.1 In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

            1.2 There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

            1.3 Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.

            After which he analyzes the broken window fallacy.

          • ZootSuit

            or at least, you don’t go far enough when you write:

            The rhetoric of a static, unchanging, noble industrialized working class besieged by lassiez-faire economics and the petit bourgeois is straight out of Soviet propaganda, and non-Maoist Marxist iconography.

            It is also the rhetoric of a certain brand of conservatism today that likes to think of itself as the “one, true conservatism..”

            The truth and hilarity is that this is also the rhetoric of much of the liberal establishment, too. Although we conservatives — especially those of the “one, true conservatism” espoused by many here, including Senator Rick Santorum — would like to think that liberals are saying something different, in reality they both talk about low-skill manufacturing jobs as the backbone of America (or a least the middle class in America) that have been unfairly exported to foreign companies by greedy, unpatriotic capitalists. And more, that the return of these low-skill manufacturing jobs by means of manipulating the tax code and/or government programs is not only possible but desirable as the only means of securing the future of the American middle class and America as a whole.

            I must laugh.

            And now, a personal confession: I supported Senator Rick Santorum in the South Carolina primary and still think it might be best for him to win the GOP nomination. Not because I think Rick Santorum has a chance to win. Quite the contrary, I think the former Senator is the most likely to loss and to loss big. I think Rick Santorum as the GOP candidate would lose far more than Mitt Romney. I think he would lose far worse than John McCain in 2008. I think he would do much worse than either.

            And that is precisely the reason I think former Senator Santorum would be the best candidate not only for the nation but also for the conservative movement.

            If Mitt Romney gets the nomination and loses in the general election (which I think is likely, just far less likely than if Santorum is the nominee), then those “one, true conservative” believers will believe that the reason Romney lost is because Romney was an “elite” and that what conservatism needs is more of their populist economic liberalism. (which you rightly allude as having its intellectual origins in Marxism). Ironically, with a Romney candidacy, I fear that they would gain more strength within the conservative movement and thus, ultimately, the country would move even farther Left.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            please

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            I’ll leave you to it. I assume that all 5 of you favor zero restrictions to the US market by foreign producers? and that as far as trade policy goes, that would best for the US? Despite the policies of the Founders and the GOP thru the 1920s?

    • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

      Don’t be so defeatist meower. Your comment betrays your ignorance of The Great Betrayal. Its a great read by someone that at least is your equal in historical research and given that it was published in 1998 and basically accurately predicted what has happened over the last 14 years, well worth taking seriously.

      People have to work and make better wages for this country to prosper, no matter what the mfg GDP shows with so much work done by machines.

      We are a nation, not just consumers that happen to live in the US.

      And even lower wage mfg jobs are better than the masses making less at McDonalds, on welfare, applying for DIB or dead from suicide.

      more later in a column that is pending…while I make money on contracted for ObamaCare columns…smile…meanwhile, read The Great Betrayal and Coming Apart.

      • JSobieski

        Raisings tariffs will immediately increases prices on things that are currently made in the US. The impact of those price increases needs to be factored into your assessment.

        Similarly, the impact of other nations increasing their tariffs is something that must be factored into the equation. Everything from WIPO litigation to cascading trade wars is possible.

        The economy is not something that even smart people like Mike DeVine can manage. If managed corporatism worked, Japan would have doubled our GDP by now.

        Hong Kong has no tariffs and went from dirt poor to rich.

        I don’t see how you could be so mad at the vulture capitalism charge by Perry and then embrace a tariff. Either one believes that markets are better at allocating resources, or one doesn’t.

        Taxes should be structured to minimize market decisions, not goad markets into making certain decisions certain ways.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          Perspective and my column will address them. Good questions. I would also add that the last chapter proposes a very nuanced and gradual tariff policy tailored to specific countries. It is not a blanket call for across the board draconian tariffs immediately and the book is a real tour de force of tariff history and the failure of liberal free trade policies got the last 300 years.

          • JSobieski

            The difference between a tariff protecting US production and Solyndra is legalistic. You like manufacturing, Obama likes Solar, and others like Ethanol. Manufacturing is not inherently stupid, to tariffs are not as bad as the other two—but they aren’t good either.

            Hong Kong unilaterally eliminated tariffs and it had the best economic growth in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.

            No natural resources. No political power.

            Just rule of law and market-oriented policies.

            Some people attribute American wealth to the presence of labor unions. Other people attribute American wealth in late 19th century and early 20th century to tariffs. Neither is correct. Time for a Sowell intervention?

          • aesthete

            there is a very strong historical correlation in Russia between communism, and great industrial growth. It’s absolutely a fact that high growth in GDP corresponded to the same period as Stalinism, and that anemic growth is associated with modern Russia. This is a very strong correlation.

            Even so, the causal explanation crediting command economics with this growth is incredibly weak, which is why no one but those already favorably disposed towards Stalinism accepts this as evidence for a causal connection, least of all economists — ditto high rates of Chinese growth and state-managed “capitalism”.

            There are a number of interesting correlations in the world. It is a fallacy to assume causation without a logical causal mechanism with strong empirical evidence and/or a rigorous theoretical framework backing up said causal mechanism.

          • Flagstaff

            great leaps forward in industrial growth are most likely at the beginning of the industrialization cycle. When we move from horse-drawn plows to tractors the increase in productivity is greater than when we buy the next tractor.

            I’ve enjoyed reading all your comments here, aesthete. Too bad you can’t give O’Reilly a lesson in the economics of energy production.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          Seriously, read the book. It deals with all you broad and sweeping charges in a very detailed way. More later

          • JSobieski

            Besides, automation causes more job losses than anything else.

            China is losing manufacturing jobs to automation.

            Productivity is the key to building a wealthy middle class, not tax increases and not an avoidance of automation.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            in keeping jobs here in the USA. Check out history and the 320 page book and enlighten yourself. Clearly I was not the only one here with gaps of ignorance on this matter.

          • acat

            You say you’re not avoiding automation. That’s fine.

            What jobs is the Senator advocating the manufacturing tax cut to create, then?

            Robot repairman? That’s not unskilled .. and won’t do a lot to decrease the unemployment rate among the unskilled.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Read the book and learn delayed gratification re DeVine columns and book reviews. Playing you guys like a fiddle is so much fun…smile especially when y’all get on your know-it-all-high horses in between brokered convention and Gary Johnson dreams!

          • Lynn Otting

            the government caused the destruction of the manufacturing industry by the great free trade deals with China and Mexico, perhaps picking winners is payback for causing manufacturing to become losers under their policies……..Regardless of the reasons for their decision, they should have also realized the failures along with the benefits such actions could incur.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          Markets are distorted by government subsidies and national interests are more than simply conduits for consumers. Read the book. I read it years ago but my ears were closed due to new conservative ideology but the book shows that free trade is a philosophy of the left and us Utopian on nature. It’s very complex and the events if the past decade re shrinking if the middle class caused me to re-read the book after watching an old book notes on my computer on cspan during my now 5 month tv sabbatical

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Is the latest. The first two were being born again in Christ and the second was my conservative conversion in 2000. The latest is similar in that it replaces a utopian conceit. Pat B is also one that converted from the free trade orthodoxy. The argument is powerful and convincing. It requires that one read the book to make an informed judgment IMHO. I have and when I have time and when current events coincide I plan to write a comprehensive column making the case for abandoning the free trade orthodoxy. And btw Reagan gave verbal assent to the concept but actually used the threat of tariffs and quotas against Germany that resulted in the BMW plant being built in my hometown!

          • acat

            “If we want the farmer to be our customer, we must find a way to be his customer” — Ford, around 1934.

            Following this, Henry plowed R&D money into using soybeans to replace various other feedstock for the manufacture of Ford products.

            The interesting thing, Gamecock, is that Ford revolutionized manufacturing by refining and expanding on the low-skill-labor assembly line.

            I will remind you that, at the time, this was regarded as a great tragedy because it replaced a master craftsman and his journeymen and apprentices – and a guarantee that a man who was hard-working and skilled at his trade could earn a good life – with a line job that paid far less.

            Short of coming up with an equally manual-labor-intensive alternative to the assembly line model, or lowering wages to where humans can again compete with machines, Santorum’s stated goal is not achievable.

            Mew

          • acat

            Truly under-appreciated, in this cat’s opinion.

            Mew

          • acat

            The latest Foxconn (Hon Hai) problem – also hits Apple – but this isn’t news. Foxconn have had safety and worker health issues for as long as I’ve followed them… so well over a decade.

            Worse, indicators are that their high profile western customers make them *more* sensitive to workers than other Chinese companies.

            Are these the jobs y’all want back?

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            you deserved that

          • acat

            Had Nathaniel’s work inflicted upon me, courtesy the public education system.

            The Hawthorne Study, on the other paw, applies more closely to your current topic.

            Once you’re done crowing, I hope you’ll return to it.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Lots of historical facts in that book

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            ok, maybe you didn’t deserve that one…I did it for fun

            Reading books is fundamental

          • demsaresatanic

            and I haven’t located your original piece. If you have the chance please post the link to the original piece. Hang in there.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            So averse are they to reading books and so arrogant are they given their offense at the suggestion that any book could contain anything that would advance their knowledge? sad

            Thanks for the support.

      • aesthete

        Go read his history of WWII, or any of his columns on immigration, and get back to me on how Buchanan’s interpretation of history.

        You don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that, as other countries re-industrialized and moved away from one-party Socialist tyranny, low-quality manufacturing would become less feasible for the US. T Sowell and several other economists (including the once-upon-a-time good free trader Paul Krugman) have predicted and explained these trends much more accurately and descriptively than Buchanan using rigorous analysis and with better explanations for the mechanisms in play. The only thing tariffs will do for low-quality manufacturing is raise the cost of those goods for the general public — since there is no chance that low-cost manufacturing will return to the US, none at all. Before China, there was Mexico — and there are plenty of countries all over the world that would pick up the slack

        You’d have to have absurdly high tariffs to make an impact on the manufacturing of cheap consumer goods, which (I wish I didn’t have to explain this to someone who has a degree in Economics) creates a dead-weight loss and an overall loss in utility, as well as being counterproductive to producing the things that people want at the prices that they want.

        GC, the thing that separates conservatives from liberals on the economy is their conceptualization of same — conservatives see the economy as a market where people buy and sell what they want — jobs proceed from these interchanges. Liberals see the market as a generator of jobs — to be tweaked and modified by the government when an arbitrary market condition related to employment and jobs is not to their liking. Suffice it to say, the former view is stronger on every level — it reflects methodologically sound ordinal utility analysis (rather than cardinal utility expressed by the other view), a philosophically coherent conceptualization of markets, and our current empirical understanding of economics. There is nothing that distinguishes free trade from any other sort of economic interaction — if you’re going to abolish free trade based on an aesthetically unappealing labor market structure, you might as well just join the Dems on economic policy.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          Having a prosperous nation requires more than an illusory free global marketplace to allocate resources best. The facts of history in the book are convincing, not polemics.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Why shouldn’t it as it was born with said liberal Utopianism . One can approximate a free market within borders and not without. Moreover as conservatives we must not devolve into allegiance to ideology. Rather let us be instructed by history that is broader than that of Hong Kong. Read the book if you haven’t . I read books not just columns and comments.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Im tough too

          • acat

            No, never saw it, never read the book, but I get the point.

            There’s sustaining innovation, and disruptive innovation.

            The printing press, the assembly line, the ability to purchase airline tickets online, the disposable television .. these were disruptive innovations.

            Gutenberg killed the production of hand-illuminated hand-copied bibles, Henry Ford killed hand-crafted one-off automobiles, AOL drove a stake through the heart of the local travel agency, Zenith died (and came back as a zombie-brand) because they had invested so much in a system of repair techs that went obsolete…

            The trouble is, the automated assembly line is – rightly so! – killing the sweatshop and the manual assembly line. The fundamentals have changed, the automated line is a disruptive technology.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            You get “it”? for shame at the shallowness…seriously

          • aesthete

            It’s pretty hard for us to refute a case that you’re intentionally obscuring by telling us to read a book which, I doubt, is so complex that it cannot be summarized for the benefit of two > 100 IQ folks with technical backgrounds…

          • acat

            Moneyball. A disruptive innovation affects baseball.

            I’ve seen disruptive innovation up close before, I don’t need to watch some hollywood hams pretend it for me.

            I don’t make a fetish out of sport, so have no real reason to read the book either.

            You may now proceed to explain, now that the disruptive innovation of automated assembly lines have obviated Henry Ford’s disruptive innovation of the line in the first place, reducing taxes on manufacturing entities increases employment enough to make a difference.

            Mew

          • Scope

            disruptive innovation is a marketing tool, not an advancement of techonology, right.

            We have been told that we will buy the new squiggly light bulbs, that are far inferior to the incandescent light bulbs. The majority of those light bulbs are made in China. We are being told that we will promote and accept the “green technologies” even though they have no place in technology advancement at all what so ever. It is a marketing ploy, that is the dream of the disruptive innovators, yet it has failed miserably, after a gazillion years of trying to advance the technology. Now we are paying the Chinese to manufacture solar panels, and wind mill parts.

            If the US was so technologically advanced, wouldn’t we be far along with the green technologies? I wonder why Chris Christie, and McDonnell are begging for wind mill manufacturers are begging for those manufacturers to open up in their states. I’m unaware of any wind mill manufacturers that have robots to manufacture those parts.

          • lapert

            You may be out of your league here. Disruptive innovation is a technical concept and management theory created by Clayton Christensen in the mid-90s. It has nothing to do with new light bulbs and a lot to do with computers, cds, hydraulic excavators, the telephone, cars, plastic, digital cameras etc.

            It attempts to explain why big breakthroughs which change markets tend to not come from incumbent leaders in the market.

          • acat

            Just because marketeers proclaimed Gore-bulbs (or curly-fry-bulbs) a “disruptive technology” doesn’t make them one. They’re hardly disruptive.

            That marketeers misuse terms is neither newsworthy, nor does it detract from the truth underneath. Does Ron Paul calling himself a Republican make him one? To be more pointed, did car companies calling new models “born again” affect your religion?

            Regarding “green” technologies, they simply aren’t. Gore-bulbs aren’t more efficient – except under certain cases – and they’re an environmental hazard. The newer LED-based lightbulbs are more efficient, but there’s some concern about the health effects of the light generated.

            This isn’t “green” or “conservative”, it’s an attempt to set up an oligarchy!

            For reference, the U.S. is much further along with “green” products than most of the world .. they just aren’t usually advertised as “green”. Instead they’re “higher efficiency” or “lower cost to operate” – if you bought a furnace or heat pump within the last 5 years, it’s probably 10%-15% more efficient than what it replaced, and the sales pitch usually involves “save money” not “save the planet”, eh?

            Mew

          • lapert

            Moneyball isn’t about disruptive innovation. I think the case is overblown (well, actually in many ways flat out wrong) but it is essentially about the power that targeted data analysis can provide.

            It’s a decent read because Lewis is a decent writer.

          • acat

            targeted data analysis disruptive?

            I don’t have any interest in baseball (unless you’ve got Cubs tickets) but .. it sure looks like the decision to use targeted data analysis changed how teams were put together… and thus is disruptive.

            Mew

          • lapert

            It was not ‘disruptive technology’ in the sense that Christensen formally applies the term, no. It actually wasn’t really all that disruptive to the baseball market at all other than the book popularized sabremetrics as a bit more than it already was – but the big money in the league is still the big money.

            The definition of disruptive innovation is that it creates a new market by applying a different set of values ultimately dominating the existing market. The use of sabremetrics in scouting wasn’t new or unique when the A’s put a heavy emphasis on it, it hasn’t proven to be the only way for small market teams to build winners (see the Marlins for example) and it hasn’t succeed in overtaking the incumbents. I think it fails on all counts.

            It really is about data analysis versus intuition in decision making.

          • acat

            I will note that I was using the term more generally.

            This is why I try to avoid sports-related metaphors.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            he knows what “it” is about…

            Many here don’t respect authentic intellectual curiosity or any suggestion that any part of conservative orthodoxy may be have been grafted on from liberal origins.

            One fact that is still a fact even if it is a book written by a man who also engages in polemics:

            The US rose from a backwater third world band of colonies to the premiere economic power in the world with tariff policies of varying degrees from its inception until the 1920s. The second bill that President Washington signed was a tariff bill. The dreamers of free trade like Adams and Jefferson converted quickly to protectionists when they became president. Tariffs were an integral part of Clay’s American system that built this nation and only Calhoun and the agrarian, backward and dependent on British trade South opposed tariffs and even there it was only because Calhoun felt the political need to protect his state and region. He had ear;ier been an opponent of the obviously pie-in-the-sky Utopian vision of free trade.

            Its all in Pat’s book. Well documented. But since there are thousands upon thousands of books, no way that a book GC recommends could be valuable to the arrogant know-it-alls at RS. No way. Don’t even suggest that they are ignorant. I don’t presume to know that much so I’m working my way thru the 1000s upon 1000s.

            But the fact of the tariff coincident with our rise for over 130 years is a fact that no book can erase.

          • aesthete

            It’s about the French Revolution. It has the merits of a) being about a subject that I find interesting and want to learn more about, b) informing me in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t have been informed, and c) not being written by a racist. I actually *like* being mostly ignorant of racist xenophobes.

            You’re acting as though the fact that the US had tariffs in its past, and arguments based on this information, are new data for acat and myself. They are not. My question is, what is the causal mechanism being posited for tariffs as the CAUSE of US prosperity, and what evidence is there for it?

            If you can’t even state what the mechanism is for prosperity associated with tariffs (and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that it’s an economic fallacy), then why should I read your book when your summary of it thus far expresses an inadequate argument I have heard in Pat’s columns and from other xenophobes?

          • acat

            I don’t believe in pure laissez-faire capitalism, either.

            No system is perfect, the best we can do is to reduce the amount of damage any one person can do … so, *some* amount of control over trade, but at the State level, not D.C. makes sense. If Detroit wants to cater to car manufacturers, then let ‘em charge a higher tax on Toyotas made outside the 50 States.

            This is all quite far from the initial point, which is manufacturing technology has changed to the point that unskilled labor working on assembly lines is not coming back.. and we wouldn’t want it back if it *could* happen.

            What, then, is the point to Santorum’s tax rate cut for manufacturing? Why not be truly radical and zero *all* corporate tax?

            Mew

          • aesthete

            Normative emotionalism about an issue says nothing.

            I didn’t start out as a free trader: I compared the level of rigor, accuracy, and detail between accounts from free traders, and anti-free traders. I quickly came to the determination that the free traders both took a much more rigorous and evidence based approached, and started out with more reasonable axioms and premises, than those in favor of managed trade. Anti-free traders have the tendency of taking unique historical circumstance in isolation and positing causal relationships without a logical mechanism for causation. Suffice it to say, this falls far short of dispositive evidence, and falls far short of the case that has been assembled over the past 200+ years in favor of free trade.

            You have yet to present a single fact of history on this thread, btw (in context or otherwise). Prove me wrong by making your case, and positing a mechanism by which tariffs/managed trade are the *cause* of prosperity (or better, Pareto optimizing). I’ll wait.

            There’s more evidence of all kinds in favor of free trade, than for almost any other conservative policy. There’s certainly more evidence, logic, and empirical data in favor of free trade than for “nation building” — when can we expect an epiphany on that issue?

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          in my first reply to ‘ski that Pat crafts a very nuanced proposed trade policy in the last chapter so that much of your response is simply arguing with a straw men. Straw men are easier to rebut.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          The main thing that separate liberals from conservatives is that we learn from actual history and they pursue illusory dreams and I stated in my first reply to ‘ski that Pat crafts a very nuanced proposed trade policy in the last chapter so that much of your response is simply arguing with a straw men. Straw men are easier to rebut.

          Many conservatives have mistakenly kept this liberal dream of free trade as part of their orthodoxy and it has been a disaster…imho

          • aesthete

            That shouldn’t be difficult, if the book was so convincing.

            “Nuance” of history, if it cannot be replicated or explained in a meaningful way, is irrelevant for the purpose of policy.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Read the book. … And my column when I finish it and publish at an opportune time for page view and thus profit maximization. Devine is like a nation, I don’t give awayy labor on the altar of an illusory free trade market.

          • aesthete

            Restating your own conclusion (several times) without any actual evidence proferred for said conclusion or causal mechanism for same…

            One can only hope that your self-hyped column will be better.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            The End of Work

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          The results would have been better for the US had we not given away our market for nothing

          • JSobieski

            If you want to take Pat over Sowell, Buckley, and Reagan, that is your choice.

            Nothing utopian about free markets.

            Just as democracy is flawed, but better than any other system, free markets are similarly flawed, but still better than any other system.

            My question for you and Patis: if you think confidence in markets is utopian, why be a Republican?

            Of course, Pat stopped being a Republican years ago.

        • JSobieski

          We might as well embrace the meme of unionization being responsible for a middle class, and government spending being a criticial component of GDP stability.

          The fundamentals of economics are either that an exchange freely entered into must benefit both parties, or markets are devoid of humanity, morality, long-term vision, etc. and thus must be controlled.

          My initial concern with the tea party movement was that it would become anti-free trade.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            man come on

        • morrigan

          >”if you

          • aesthete

            though generally speaking, the terms of our managed trade have gotten less stringent in the case of almost all of our trade agreements.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            The middle class decline perfectly coincides with the 1960s beginnings thru yesterday.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          read it twice
          I read books while you guys comment ad nauseum

      • Scope

        I’d like to see the technology that has been developed to sew that shirt collar, pass it along to add the sleeves, and then pass it on for buttons and button holes. Even with auto manufacturing, sure there are many automated steps in the production, but there are still many steps that are done by humans. Are their robots to hire for construction sites that you push a button and they wire the building being built. Are there robots that can install the plumbing in new construction.

        Unemployment is at an all time high for the youth, who really need to learn the value of going to work, making money, and then managing their money. McDonald’s is a perfect first job. Currently we have people who are highly educated working at McDonald’s, going to a second job at Wal Mart and then going to a third job at Lowes, just to earn money to feed their families in this rotten economy.

        When welfare reform was passed, wasn’t it proven that many kicked off the welfare roles, and were forced to go and get a job, were ultimately much happier and more proud people because they actually got a life at that point?

        Thank you for recognizing that there is no shame in working in the blue collar jobs. Trade school educated workers are some of the best, and they love what they do. I know so many of those people. No, it doesn’t take any skills to pick tomatoes, or peas (LOL), but the citizens have been taught that they can have it better by collecting 99 weeks of unemployment, food stamps, and heating subsidies, because there really are jobs that no one will do. It’s beneath them.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          There is a great difference between favoring free markets within a nation and favoring it with foreigners.

          ‘ski trots out Hing Kong! Does Hong Kong have an army and navy to keep the barbarians at bay? No, we protect them and in our trade policies for at least the past 50 years, we have not insisted on reciprocity. Our domestic market is precious and the envy of the world. yet, we just give it away and with it, good paying jobs for the masses. And all us lap toppers produce nothing. All of the wealth that ends up being paid to us for typing must first be dug out of the ground etc.

          • aesthete

            More in GDP than any other nation, in fact. (We might have been surpassed by China this year, but that is up for debate.)

            We just don’t use as many people’s labor in doing so.

            Manufacturing, especially labor-intensive manufacturing (see the economic history of the Netherlands), is not a binary switch.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Things. The middle class is dying and has been for decades and it’s not all due to technology

          • aesthete

            We could impose a corvee on all Americans requiring that they work in a state-approved manufactory 2 hours a month, and get lots of “stuff”. The USSR made lots of “stuff” that way, after all.

            If that “stuff” is “stuff” that isn’t particularly valued, then it’s pretty pointless to be making that “stuff”. Generally, the way that we find out whether “stuff” is valued relative to the costs (including opportunity costs) of production, is through the voluntary market — which will reach an equilibrium based on these factors. By what basis do you determine the proper amount of “stuff” that should be produced?

            Again, the implicit usage of cardinal utility over ordinal utility is… troubling.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Teetee

          • aesthete

            or less artfully, “p*ss or get off the pot”.

            You’ve offered precisely zero evidence for your claims and added less than nothing to the conversation, while calling free-traders (which I’m going to guess comprise a majority of conservatives in general and RSers in specific) a cargo cult. That’s pretty much the definition for internet trolling. You really need to provide evidence for your claims, provide a causal mechanism or some logic for what you’re saying, or keep your insults to yourself until you’re willing to do the above.

            So… how’re you gonna determine the amount of “stuff” that ‘Murrika so needs? We’re waiting…

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Utopianism is infectious. I thank God I found the evidence in Pat’s book to partially explain the destruction of the middle class. PS I don’t type fast enough to use RS comments to produce all the evidence and I’m not a naive child to think you have any idea of any evidence that that you would agree is same that would prevent peanut gallery comments of varying lengths that pretend to be refutations.

            Moreover, as my first comment stated, this is mainly an announcement of my epiphany on free trade borne of many months of study and thought and that I planned to write a column about it in the future and to encourage fellow conservatives to read or re-read pat’s 1998 book. All of the arguments you and others have made here are dealt with in a scholarly and historical way in the book and when I do my column I will try and include all I can given the confines of column length and may do a 2-3 part series.

            What I won’t do is pretend that the comments and replies here are in any way the equivalent of a weighing of “evidence.”

            Fatal conceits among avowed conservatives abound tonight?

            And as for shutting up the rooster? Better stop the sun from arising!

            smile

            cool it boy

          • garfieldjl

            Don’t know what book people are referring to, but there is a good chance he can find it in a library.

          • aesthete

            I’m not going to read one written by a racist whose columns did not impress, unless given good reason. So far, GC has declined to give me a good reason when offered the chance to do so.

          • acat

            Gamecock is now flogging the tome in question in the comments to one of his own diaries.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            then screw you punks

          • aesthete

            You have to provide a little more than a self-professed “epiphany” with nary a fact or logical case attached — seriously, this is sounding like a cult initiation. Get over yourself.

          • acat

            Given your frequent resorting to snark, hyperbole, and general asshattery in defense of your new love of centrally managed trade, counselor, I’ll wait for you to digest a bit further.

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Read the book

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Read the book, seriously

          • acat

            Free trade is a minor role at best.

            Mew

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            It has played a major role… the problem that I see is we measure free trade against itself from a post industrial view… and since capitalism has it greatest growth in monetary policy since we moved to floating point valuation.system of currencies we no longer can tell how far we drifted.from the shoreline… so now we are more apt to look at the wrong indicators of a ‘healthy’ economy… as long as economists are looking at ratios and then moving the goal posts every 50 years we sink further into the belief that free trade in a global market is an endless ocean of market capitalization… fact is TBTF policy is code for we couldnt recapitalize so we borrowed from taxpayers just enough so we could debt deflate on the backs of the American middle class… the Fed’s balance sheet is tied directly to our bond market now which wreaks havoc on price, income, and buying power… how’s that for a tariff? Yes… that’s right… QE is a tariff on the U.S. dollar…. and interest won’t be paid to American taxpayers… it’ll be paid to the Fed reserve who hold all those notes they bought by opening up their balance sheet so we could print more money and spend it on foreign aid and entitlements and solyndra in a slow growth period.

            Sorry for the tangential nature of that comment.

          • aesthete

            interact with free(r) trade, than a critique of free trade proper.

            I’m of the considered opinion that we are currently operating under an implicit fixed exchange system of some sort, given the “impossible trinity” and consistent trade deficits… IMO that has much to do with the factors that you mention…

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            Look tariffs before 1838 were a means of raising revenues to retire debts… as opposed to income tax… which were still taboo to a free people… tariffs became politicized because it was seen as a market disruption to southern states that were not manufacture driven markets… and their market opportunities relied on high export to foreign markets… nothing has changed…

            Free traders see market opportunities in currency exports rather than our production…

            Our failure to distinguish which markets will capitalize domestically without starting a trade war that provides more income and productive capacity may provide bigger harvests..

            And where trade wars begin we end quickly with realized buying power within our very large consumer base… they may hurt us short but we will win long….

            Heck cap gains tax is really just a tariff on interest earned in a global market transaction…

            Instead of retiring debt free trade seeks to find new debt price to be exchanged… and when the global capital goes to mattress… no worries the U.S. will tariff the largest market in the world by whipping the mule off a cliff in the deleverage of toxic assets by driving up inflation… and when nobody feels safe they’ll start buying those treasury notes again right?… until they say hell with that we’ll raise our own capital in-house … and then the socialist countries will suddenly be back on the fascism track… and then we have cause for a world war to reset all those trade deficits…

            Yes… sometimes I can really paint with broad strokes… but I agree with GC fiscal conservative roots were planted in tariff sod… and the discussion may prove fruitful in addressing joblessness which is killing the middle class and destroying currency capitalism in the global market.

          • Lynn Otting

            that our manufacturing company went through years of struggling after the free trade policy with China and we finally had to close it because of the free trade policy with Mexico and China..

          • snowshooze

            I aspire to be a manufacturer, and your experience might be of great value to me.

          • jimmyg

            Downthread jamesm gave the Senator some suggestions relative to campaigning in California. He mentioned the problem with the Bay Bridge and China. I did not know anything about it so I looked it up. The following is an article from the New York Times and the building of the Bay Bridge which is being built and fabricated in China by a state owned and financed company. After reading this article I wanted to puke.
            snip
            “But California officials and executives at American Bridge said Zhenhua

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Buy less radical than many commenters here imagine because they respond to charicature of Buchanan rather than his actual proposals in his book and because they resent anyone within the conservative tent challenging their free trade cult

          • aesthete

            State-controlled industry and third world labor are double-edged swords — sure, they can make things cheap, or impose a legal system which creates virtually no labor costs, but they trend towards incentivizing low productivity. The price of third-world labor reflects the low opportunity costs of accepting said job, and the lack of opportunity or incentive to work towards increasing one’s productivity and skillset as a worker.

            China is competitive in “assembly line”-type work as described by acat above — its labor has a competitive price point for the skills needed, many of the raw materials for creation are found in China and the Pacific Rim, and there is little need for these workers to advance past where they’re at — and it’s not just China. While Mexico, Brazil, and many other underdeveloped countries are not as conveniently priced as China for those purposes, they’re relatively close — and certainly much better than the US.

            Where the US and the rest of the developed world excels, is high quality or advanced manufacturing with involved steps and capital-intensive processes. Property rights in the US are more respected, the standard of living here is quite high, and workers are conversant with technology — meaning that capital won’t be broken or stolen away with by workers or anyone else. American workers are more productive by several multiples on this count, ditto German and Swedish manufacturers.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            be the best at what you do!

          • aesthete

            we in English-speaking countries construct sentences with the intent of conveying meaning. “Strawman” for example, has both a literal and figurative meaning which does not relate to the post in any way, which was not an attack on a given position position (legitimate or otherwise), but rather a descriptive one stating the differences between high and low skill manufacturing labor markets. There I go again, expecting people to think and respond linearly…

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            try and address them all in his coming April anti-free trade and The Great Betrayal 14 years on book review column. Truly, thanks guys. One of my purposes was to generate questions and I knew I could count on you all.

          • Melody Warbington (rwm52)

            Nt

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            that they refuse to read the relatively short book with an open mind. They are know it alls. But just as I don’t call for banning liberal trolls because I am in the missionary business, so I don’t want to ban them as conservatives…but then again free trade is actually a liberal Utopianism idea…

            I am excited to finally have the scales drop off of my eyes on the stupidity of free trade much as I was when I converted to conservatism 12 years ago and no cats or thetes or skis can dampen the enthusiasm of the Rooster when knowledge is at stake.

            Me happy

          • acat

            I find it quite a disingenuous argument you’re making.

            You’re on a roll, however, so any suggestion that it wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor would likely be lost on you.

            Mew

          • acat

            you see being created by Santorum’s proposal to zero out taxes on manufacturing.

            I see quite a lot of accountants to fiddle numbers so other companies can slide into the necessary tax status, and will note that it won’t help GE much as they already pay little to no tax.

            Your anti-trade epiphany really has distracted you…

            Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Charles Murray
            The Great Betrayal factors all of that in…

          • JSobieski

            and even the working poor are wealthier when you factor technological and medical advances.

            The gap between the rich and the middle is growing, but that does not mean that the middle is shrinking. The middle is itself splitting into upper middle, middle middle, and lower middle.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            new data
            new conclusions

          • acat

            We are competing with China… and we are winning.

            Your bloviation here reminds me of “Japan, Inc” nonsense in the ’70s and ’80s.

            Mew

          • jimmyg

            It is not a choice between free trade without govt. restriction, or protectionist actions on the part of the government. Rather the actions of Pres. Reagan in the 1980′s in dealing with Japan may be a model for dealing with China.
            snip
            “But economic experts and manufacturers disagree on the potential takeaways. One school of thought points to policies enacted by the Reagan administration as evidence that action is necessary with China and other trading partners that engage in alleged unfair trade practices. “We did a lot of things, and they did have a huge impact,” says Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute and a former counselor to the commerce secretary in the Reagan administration. “Today, as you know, Japanese auto companies do a lot of production in the United States. A major reason why those Japanese companies are here is because we had these voluntary restraints.”

            In addition to voluntary restraint agreements, in 1986 Reagan negotiated a semiconductor pricing pact with Japan that prevented the Japanese from dumping product into the U.S. market.
            Clyde Prestowitz, president, Economic Strategy Institute
            Prestowitz is referring to voluntary restraint agreements President Reagan negotiated that limited the number of exports to the United States by certain industries, including the auto, steel and machine-tool sectors, from Japan and other countries. The agreements encouraged Japanese manufacturers to build plants in the United States rather than relying solely on exports.

            In the other camp are those who believe Japan provided U.S. manufacturers with a much-needed dose of competition that raised the levels of quality and innovation domestically while benefiting consumers. For the most part, they also view the potential risks of punitive measures against trading partners as outweighing the benefits. “Open trade — free trade — does not mean that every single company survives or every single industry survives,” says William Strauss, senior economist and economic adviser with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. “But what does survive is going to be world class.”"
            http://www.industryweek.com/articles/trade_wars_could_lessons_learned_from_japan_in_the_1980s_apply_to_china_today_26586.aspx?ShowAll=1

            I do not believe all is well with American manufacturing. It is obvious from the Bay Bridge example that many industries will not survive do to the structural advantages that China has as compared to the United States. Unlimited, State financed companies, combined with labor that is a miniscule part of the end product, makes for products made in China that the US cannot compete with on price.

            Japan Inc. was real, but Pres. Reagan, due to trade policies that some might describe as protectionist was able to stem exports from Japan.

          • acat

            Competing with China on labor costs is a fool’s game. Cost of living in China is sufficiently low that we literally *can’t* compete on that front… and that is the problem with Sen. Santorum’s proposal to lower taxes … it is not going to bring back unskilled labor in the manufacturing sector.

            I agree that we need some sort of realignment of trade with China .. but the Senator’s proposal is a populist sop, not a serious one.

            Mew

          • jimmyg

            nt

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            We do not have equal access to other markets NOW. So this idea of a great fear of retaliation is much overblown since their policies towards us now is what retaliation looks like!

          • JSobieski

            We also manufacture more of the high-end stuff (like robots and airplanes) than anyone else in the world.

            Conversely, China is losing manufacturing jobs to automation.

            I am big believer in the importance of manufacturing which is why I OPPOSE tariffs, unions, and all the other attempts to circumvent market forces.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            All of the old free trade advocates of the 18th and 19th C were people of the left that loathed the nation state and favored one world government. Free trade is part of their Utopian outlook.

            But would the world be better with a one world government? Of course not. See Tower of Babel…

          • aesthete

            Will wonders never cease?

          • JSobieski

            Much of the “left” in the 18th and 19th centuries were classical liberals….such as John Locke, the political philosopher heavily relied upon by the founding fathers. Bastiat was no man of the left.

            If my agreement with Friedman, Buckley, Sowell, etc. makes me a leftist, the dictionary of politics has changed radically.

            Who is arguing one world government? Who is arguing against nation states?

            Not I. There are arguments against free trade in certain circumstances, but those arguments are NOT ECONOMIC arguments.

            We embargo certain countries because they are evil, not to increase prosperity.

            We withold certain technologies from China not because it makes us more prosperous, but because it makes us more safe.

            We distort markets to provide a safety net because we are compassionate, but not to increase “aggregate demand” or other pseudo arguments from the center left. The safety net is economically inefficient, but we place the human benefit above the economic cost. That is an assessment I agree with, but we shouldn’t pretend that it helps the economy.

            There is more to life than economics. There are times when economics take a second seat to other considerations. However, in the context of economics, trade barriers are a loser.

            If you want to argue for tariffs as a form of welfare, there is good data out there to suggest that it would be better to raise taxes more broadly, pay people for some kind of government organized workfare and leave it at that. The costs of steel tariffs to the auto industry or metal hanger tariffs to the dry cleaning industry far outweigh the relatively puny number of jobs saved. There is no economic argument for tariffs except a flawed game theory argument that the other side may buckle to avoid a trade war.

            All of this world government, utopianism-crap, etc. is arguing with straw men. Nothing I am saying is contrary to a world of nation states. Nor have I ever claimed that markets were some form of diety.

            Just as democracy is merely the least worst option, so is freedom. Free markets, free trade, and free citizens.

            Attempting to paint my position as pro-one world government is laughable.

          • civil truth

            Excellent summary. Unfortunately, Mike seems to want to play the teaser until he writes his long-promised diary.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Some classic liberals were co-opted by that Utopian extract. This isn’t about the reps of theorists though. This is about how the US became great using the tariff and how we sold our seed corn via free trade as a tool in the Cold War and afterward as a sell out to consumerism and international corps that get the American market for nothing in return.

          • aesthete

            Man, Mike, when did your last name become Moore?

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Not all of life can be settled in comments and amens from the peanut gallery. I have discovered new data that challenges the conventional conservative wisdom and am sharing my intellectual discovery with supposed RS friends. But just like Pat, am ostracized by the establishment that has sold out to the Utopianism of 5 cents off a Jos A Bank shirt.

          • acat

            Who decides when to raise and lower tariffs?

            At what level is this decision made?

            Mew

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            At its most effective period.. it took a 2/3s congressional approval… then reduced to requiring a simple majority… by the time FDR was seeking and end to tariffs executive orders were effective.

          • acat

            I’d not mind Congress voting on tariffs .. but the “imperial executive” has gotten powerful enough …

            Imagine the outcry if Bush had raised tariffs to protect any fledgling startup U.S. industry, eh?

            Mew

          • acat

            Mew

          • aesthete

            Well-stated.

            “Liberals” in the context of 18th and 19th century Anglo politics were *classical* liberals, whose analysis forms the bulk of modern American conservatism (which is really just a callback to radical Whiggism). Conservatives of the day were broadly supportive of state religion, the authority of the monarch, the enclosure system, and many other positions which modern-day conservatives wouldn’t uphold.

            Socialists of the day, particularly Karl Marx, were almost all very critical of free trade: while most of them supported trade between socialist nations, almost none of them supported free trade for all in theory, and certainly not in practice!

            Even assuming that every single free-trader in the 18th and 19th century was a leftist one-worlder (which is untrue), GC is essentially telling us to commit a logical fallacy by having us examine the messenger rather than the message. If that’s the case, then methinks that there are some things in Pat’s history and ideology that are worth discussing…

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            your ignorance, as was mine before I re-read the book, is bliss

          • civil truth

            But if your portion of the universes locates Bastiat, who is one of the icons of the Austrian School, on the left, you’ve gone too far away from earth. :-)

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            And yes, The Great Betrayal deals with Bastiat. BTW, have you read the book?

          • civil truth

            As I alluded to earlier, it’s is really hard sell to get me to read a book by an isolationist, anti-Semitic nativist whose progenitors in the Republican Party helped drive the Jewish community into the arms of the Democratic Party last century. But perhaps you’ll write your article rather than teasing everyone here.

          • Dave_A

            It’s a rung on the ladder…

            The ideal economic activity, the greatest achievement, is to sell a product with no physical inputs in return for real physical money – eg, to get paid for nothing more than your thoughts & time.

            That’s where the US is now – that’s our future.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            most of whom will never be able to make a middle class living shuffling paper.

            Our future may be as you say. If so, its a bleak one.

          • ehosterman

            You don’t have an economy if you don’t make things. Remember that money is nothing but a medium of exchange. It exists for only one real purpose, buying things. You can’t eat your thoughts or time and your thoughts and time won’t shelter you from the weather. In fact, your thoughts and time are pretty worthless, unless you can help someone make something work better or run better. You might argue entertainment, but again that only is worth something if the producers of goods have peoples basic needs met.

          • Dave_A

            The evolution of economic systems starts with hunter-gatherer & subsistence farming, moves up through commercial agriculture to industrialization, then post-industrial society.

            The reason? First, the world is more developed today – countries that were in the agricultural ‘stages’ in 1950 are in the early-to-mid industrial stages now… This means that ‘making things’ is now a skill the majority of the healthy adult population of the WORLD has, but much of the world still can’t afford these products even if they can make them – that makes ‘making stuff’ a rather worthless skill economically (huge supply relative to demand).

            Second, the US standard of living has moved so high, that Americans simply cannot afford to work for the ‘market rate’ for unskilled manufacturing labor (which is generally measured in single-digit dollars-per-day, not double-digit dollars-per-hour as an American worker requires).

            Now, there are some economic activities – including some forms of manufacturing – that have a far more limited skillset and thus a far more expensive pay-scale. That’s why, for example, most of the world doesn’t make airliners but we in the USA do (that’s changing though – both in terms of wider global competition for regional jets, and the fact that Boeing’s latest aircraft is assembled in the US from parts made world-wide)….

            The one thing that first-world-ers like Americans ARE generally paid a premium for, is our ideas, methods & such. And this IS where the future of the US economy lies, if we can just abandon tariffs & obscene corporate taxes, to realize it.

            With the economy ‘globalized’, companies don’t have to locate ALL of their activities in one place. They can have their headquarters, management, R&D and such in the US – but the product is made in China, Vietnam, or (insert 3rd-world industrial nation here).

            What we have to do, is make the US the best place to *run* a business from. And that involves freeing our markets further, not tampering with them to ‘protect’ a small group of workers who’s skill set is stuck in the 50s.

          • JSobieski

            Manufacturing has encountered a less dramatic drop in employees while having a similar INCREASE in production.

            The US is the leading manufacturer in the world. We manufacture the things that foreign manufacturers use to manufacture the things that American consumers buy.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          I tremble at how ignorant we all are

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            However I must assume that part of the epiphany here requires an acknowledgment that some vertical markets that will always be with us should be targeted by leveraging our buying power by growing that market domestically and then wardening off competition by protectionism?

            Why not just subsidize those vertical markets and avoid trade wars and price hikes…?

            I see no problem with Sen. Santorum’s proposal as long as your with a manufacturing company that has undergone technological enhancements and still requires a labor force for finishing or completion… yes… in those instances supply and demand principles work… so long as the product is something that will be endless with market opportunity…

            I understand acat’s point regarding disruptive innovation.. that type of market changer can’t be predictive nor can it be protected… ticket to entry under tariffs would seem to me to stifle that sort of innovation …

            Am I just way off here and showing my ignorance?

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            I had been deaf to Pat’s arguments that he first made in 1998. But then after reading Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and realizing what bad shape the American middle class is in NOW, it caused me to think about how Pat B said this had been happing over the past few decades. I found his booknotes appearance on Cspan and then went and read the book a few weeks ago.

            It has the history of the tariff in world history and US history and there is no doubt that great nations use the tariff to amass an industrial base and maintain it but that we squandered ours away after 1950. It also shows the intellectual history of free trade as being decidedly of the Left and that it was the GOP and the tariff from 1861-1920s that built the greatest econ power on Earth partly with the tariff.

            The Founders were all for the tariff, except for Adams and Jefferson, and they were converted when the reality of the Presidency kicked in.

            I was ignorant before I wasn’t!…still learning after all these years and since my conservative epiphany in 2000 I was always confused about how one could buy into free international trade and be a non-ideological conservative. Turns out my fears were well founded.

          • Ausonius

            take a look at 19th and early 20th Century England.

            I once had a professor of HIstory state the result in one sentence: “England free-traded itself into mediocrity.”

            Coupled with labor abuses by moron capitalists, the complete anti-tariff free-trade philosophy led to the rise of labor unions and concomitant philosophies of Socialism and Communism.

          • aesthete

            How, exactly, were the UK and “moron capitalists” responsible for a decline of the UK in the 19th and 20th centuries?

            The early 20th century in particular was dominated by WWII, a war which was preceded and followed by economic tariffs. That makes the choice of period rather… odd.

          • Ausonius

            The British interpreted free trade from an imperial base and tried to balance the idea with tariffs at home: for them free trade meant they should be able to flood their colonies and the world with manufactured goods – produced under modern-day Chinese-style conditions – while still using tariffs.

            When the German steel-making industry surpassed (and rather easily) the British companies after German unification in 1871, you have the seeds of future conflicts, as the English insist on free trade yet do not give up their hypocritical tariff policies on basic items.

            Friedrich List in the first half of the 19th century analyzed the British policy quite accurately as hypocritical, and yet seemed to urge that the Germans should follow English practice rather than English free-trade theory, in the assumption that the Germans could outplay the English at their own game!

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            that while I *DO* agree with you that ‘international free-trade’ does create a wider chasm between the lower-mid middle class and upper middle class(and while upper middle class is getting pinched by imbalanced trade opportunities in specific markets)… I believe that it’s nigh impossible to implement an effective tariff that ties purchasing power to productive capacity…and control the outcome with any economic lever if it backfires… because although there are specific markets that could absorb tariffs without seeing inflated prices, primarily capital/monetary/assets (with realized valuation)…outside of those markets, price hikes are the downside of a tariff… and can be just as detrimental to the middle class consumer in the U.S. as it is for their foreign counterparts…

            Even the financial markets where most ‘international free trade’ opportunities lay, setting a tariff on products that leverage foreign buying power, may still punish upper middle class investors…and certainly would punish 401(k) holders that rely on fund management portfolios… because capital moves in mysterious ways… and there is likely a correction that would take place that would further deflate the U.S. dollar… I think it would be hard to pinpoint an effective tariff on capital and monetary supply markets. (it was designed this way…)

            The period in U.S. history that you point to is a different period all together… going back to that for answers in today’s world is regressive… (we’re no longer on a gold standard, and there really is NO standard that can be made to get us back to tying buying power to productive capacity)…making a moral argument regarding how we got from there to here, is one thing… going back to the ‘simplified’ moral system of old is quite another… a big reset is about the only option to get back there in my ‘ignorant’ opinion (I’m not being facetious, I’m quite curious what will be revealed in your coming article — I say ‘ignorant’ because I dare say few prognosticators on earth would be prepared for that ripple effect)… that presumed reset is something I certainly wouldn’t wish on the middle class at all… It would be more severe than the Great Depression ever was.

            I am pointing to Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and the unintended consequences of a good idea that gets ruined by congress… as an example…

            Unlike the average liberal-economist, I agree with Milton Friedman that the contributory effects of that act were correlative, but likely negligible in the scheme of a)the 1929 crash (some claim talk of the act caused the crash) or b) that the decline in GNP or the minor increase in “free and dutiable rates” that supposedly prolonged the Great Depression… Hoover was warned about the potential impacts of signing it into law, his original intent was to raise tariff rates on agriculture, and lower rates on industrial goods, what we ended up with was a whole lot of “horse trading” in Congress, and they just raised tariffs on all exports… which in the end caused some ‘retaliation’ that worked more towards making the arguments of getting off the gold standard and lowering tariffs to the ending of laissez-faire principles while moving us towards the Keynesian model… than it ever actually effected short-term gains in payroll, contracts, and production in-house.

            Reed Smoot [sidenote: Mormon Apostle - which to a Moromon is to say Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ (his prophetic-gospel-centric warnings are weightier that his political-secular warnings...)] stated in his memoirs:

            “The world is paying for its ruthless destruction of life and property in the World War and for its failure to adjust purchasing power to productive capacity during the industrial revolution of the decade following the war.”

            Remember when I posted this:
            Compromise has failed in the U.S. Congress

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            at those that have not read The Great Betrayal and generally, I do not see the word ignorant as offensive. We are ALL ignorant of much.

            Substance: I think history shows that we can and did, for many decades, implement an effective tariff policy and I think that Buchanan’s book contains persuasive evidence of this.

            I agree, AND SO DOES PAT B IN THAT BOOK, WHICH FACT I STATED EARLY ON, TO NO EFFECT HERE, BUT WHAT ELSE IS NEW WHEN ONE DEALS WITH BLOGGERS WITH LOW SELF ESTEEM (I feel a bit mean tonight, based on how I have been treated here, not by you, but by ones that I have been so respectful to over the years…)

            Yes, Pat and GC agree that righting the trade policy of the US would have to be nuanced in the transition and in the implementation and maintenance.

            But of course we have some tariffs now and most policies of other nations NOW resemble what one would call “retaliation”. Access to our market is tied for first in the world for the MAJOR FACTOR in trade. We ought to use that.

            But its more fun for commenters here to ignore how one narrowly defines their position and wants to have a constructive discussion, the commenters are like religious zealots that ignore MY OWN GD WORDS! and one gets tired of that.

            You make great points as usual. and more later but I have essentially accomplished my goal with this tease of my recent epiphany and pending detailed column. Back to the other life…Final Four

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            I know you didn’t mean ignorant in any pejorative manner… if you and PatB are proposing tariffs as a transitional policy pivot in recognition of the doomsday events.and are ready to scrap any hope of growing the global opportunities to new highs… then I am with you… tariffs are one step to empowering the many in the U.S. while batoning down the hatches for what I would presume would be grounds for weakened socialist countries to go fascist

          • aesthete

            No one started out as hostile until you started calling folks cultists for no good reason.

            I’m sorry that you have to look back to high school, rather than the intellectual strength of your argument, for self-validation — but that’s not my fault. It’s not uncommon to be asked to explain an idea in condensed form: in specific, the question I’m asking is *how* tariffs work to promote prosperity on a conceptual level, and what proof or logic there is for this posited mechanism. A correlation is necessary, but not sufficient, evidence for a causal relationship, as anyone who’s taken even basic statistics knows.

            Barring an explanation, I’ll assume that either you didn’t understand the book you were reading, or that the book itself doesn’t go into explaining said mechanisms.

          • http://www.thestandardcandle.com Justin Spagnolo

            Pat B aside the discussion around the merits of tariffs as a core philosophical point of order for fiscal conservatism are worthy of discussion… maybe not along side Sen. Santorum’s diary… because its a threadjack in a literal sense… but if GC says he’s writing a piece I think we can reserve judgment until a time when he’s been given an opportunity to construct his arguments linearly… being totally anti-tariff requires an acknowledgement that FED is capable of manipulating currency in more subtle ways than China could ever dream of doing… the reality is The FED’s policies on tight money loose credit is exactly what tariffs would fight… the economic professors like to point at Smooth Hawley… and say see its anti free market… its not free trade in a globalized world steal wealth through inflationary means… there is a reason we were pushed out of the gold standard… not saying we should go back… but a standard is useful in a true free market due to real valuation and not fractional reserve gambling casinos that create bubbles… and attempt to manipulate cycles for other nations as well as our own… at this point we are so entrenched I don’t see a way out without a major stop… which globalization seems to be heading towards at an accelerated pace…

          • demsaresatanic

            free-trade always looks great in the short-term but there are long-term national security issues to consider as well.

        • acat

          Not that I expect you’ll give me one, but I’ve stated – plainly, above, in reply to you – that I have no problem with blue collar work.

          You continue to mis-state my position, i.e. “lying”, and it’s generally considered rude.

          Mew

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            tsmile

          • Scope

            for anything I said or implied. I disagree with you on many issues, and that is well known around these parts. I never called you a “liar.” If posting a position that is in conflict with your position is considered “lying” then you can demand that most posters here apologize to you, simply because they are not on the same page as you. You need to step back, go cook a steak, and chill. Besides, there are an awful lot of people being called out for their opinions, and some demanding apologies, as though an apology means anything any more. Seems the calls for apologies have become a dime a dozen.

          • acat

            If so, then we do not have a problem.

            Mew

          • acat

            (nothing further)

      • JSobieski

        Reagan also made a point about that phrase.

      • Dave_A

        Tariffs distort not only the market conditions companies compete in & the price of consumer goods, but the labor and skill-training markets as well.

        By forestalling the ‘economic reckoning’ of further development away from unskilled labor intensive manufacturing, tariffs create an artificially large pool of unskilled workers, and artificially reduce economic demand for skill-training.

        The effect is monumental, economy-wide, and almost entirely negative.

        Yes, a small number of firms and a small percentage of the workforce benefits. However, everyone else pays for it & suffers as a result. Even in ways most don’t think of…

        For example, there are some jobs (construction, oil & gas drilling & extraction) that require unskilled labor with no ‘change’ in sight. By increasing the availability & prevailing wage of unskilled manufacturing, this also forces these jobs to pay more, and increases the price of their products as a result.

        The best, most efficient course, is to abolish ALL tariffs, and let jobs go where they may. In the end, our economy is stronger for it.

        • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

          History refutes your blanket objections and Pat addresses all this in The Great Betrayal. It would do us all good here at Redstate to re-examine this issue because the free trade religion is a stark exception to the usually non-ideological application of conservatism..

          We all desire to have a simple rule to apply, but the nation state is a fact of life and does not respond as desired to simply pie in the sky imaginings of “free’ markets (ask Lockheed about Euro subsidies of Airbus etc) and even Adam Smith recognized the need for different rule in foreign trade than when trying to foster a free market within the borders of one’s own country.

          • JSobieski

            If you want, I will compile a list of pro-free trade books and articles, and we can just demand that the other person look things up.

            Or, we could actually discuss the issues rather than arguing by authority.

            The Airbus folks would argue that Boeing and Lockeed get a de facto subsidy from the US government in the form of military R&D. There is quite a bit of truth to that.

            Nobody is arguing that the market is perfect, any more than Republicans argue an internal free marlet is perfect or fair when arguing with democrats.

            Free trade is like democracy… it is the least worst option.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            I write columns that are deeply researched and I tease them here for economic purposes. More later

          • morrigan

            We don’t have free trade now.

            The trade which takes place within the borders of the United States comes close to the ideal of free trade, but trade between countries is never free trade.

          • JSobieski

            I would put forth the conclusion that free trade occurs neither intra-nation nor inter-nation.

            Free trade has always, is, and always will be about a continuoum. Just as there is no perfected form of self government there is no perfected implementation of free markets.

            So now that those common sense caveats are dealt with—do you support raising taxes for the purposes of chosing winners and losers?

            Raise steel tariffs, and you make auto workers losers. Raise auto tariffs, and you make people who prefer foreign cars losers.

            From an economic standpoint, one either embraceses the idea that a freely entered into exchange betters both parties, or one begins the dance of state intervention that never ends at a national boundary.

            We don’t have free trade now. Would you prefer that it be closer to free or further?

          • aesthete

            Paul Kurgman told me so:

            “Free trade has ruined America’s famous manufacturing base. We are now forced to sit in air-conditioned offices while the Chinese get to work in steel mills. For 35 or 40 hours per week, we have to suffer in ergonomically-incorrect office furniture (thank you, greedy furniture manufacturers) while fortunate Sri Lankans receive a healthy lifestyle by working day and night in sweatshops. Are there even any sweatshops left in the United States? And foreign agriculture has destroyed the family farm. (Source: Ben & Jerry

          • aesthete
          • morrigan

            We should probably take this whole discussion to a different thread, one dedicated to this topic.

            Here I will recommend to you “The Conservative case Against Free Trade”, available free on Amazon to Prime members.

            >”Nobody is arguing that the market is perfect,”

            Some people are arguing that it is “free” when it patently is not.

          • JSobieski

            The Republican response has been, “you are correct, but it is better to move directionally towards a free market than the opposite”

            If you want to start to raise taxes to benefit certain industries and certain workers, you won’t like the place that you end up.

            Rule #1: Perfection is not for this world
            Rule #2: Rule #1 should not deter against directionally correct action

            I am not starting some kind of political movement to reduce all tariffs to zero.

            I am arguing against the proposition that tariffs should be raised in order to help save manufacturing jobs.

          • morrigan

            And you yourself implicitly admit the charge, you just deflect it with “it is better to move directionally towards a free market than the opposite

          • JSobieski

            and that includes low tariffs.

            I do want the government to stop that stuff.

            I actually do subscribe to conservative principles.

            Lower tax rates. As few credits, exceptions, etc. as possible.

            You sound like someone who is happy with the SQ. No wonder you are not at all troubled with Romney as the nominee.

          • aesthete

            I’m not sure what you’d be doing on a site for political activism, since that’s all we’re ever going to get.

          • JSobieski

            Taxes to pay for defense, prevent SS from going bankrupt, etc. are justifiable.

            Taxes to help industry A, american citizen B, etc. are to be avoided.

            I acknowledge that we are riddled with such things, but I fail to see how advocating for MORE of that junk is a good thing or a conservative thing.

        • morrigan

          One of the enumerated powers granted to the federal government in the constitution is to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises”.

          For almost the entirety of this countries history it employed tariffs, and its economy was the better for it.

          • acat

            that the power to raise and lower tariffs is constitutional, and can be a tool in the conservative toolbox.

            I watched the collapse of the Gary, IN steel industry, y’see .. and while some tariffs were needed to prevent true “dumping”, the rise of Nucor Steel serves as a counterpoint – there were inefficiencies that the major steel companies and union workers of the time refused to look at. Excessive tariffs, in that case, allowed their stagnation to continue, to the detriment of the country.

            The assertion that tariffs *are* conservative is incorrect; more accurate to say that they are constitutional and can be used in conservative ways.

            Mew

          • Dave_A

            Both industries became so addicted to government protection that it killed their economic viability in the end.

            And I say ‘economic viability’ because we all know the only reason that GM & Chrysler are still in business is because of yet more govt special protection.

            Had these companies been exposed to international competition from the start, they would have been forced to become BETTER car companies or go out of business.

            Instead, they were allowed to deteriorate steadily because of government protection and ‘buy-union/buy-American’ jingoisim – to the point where their international competition overcame the tariff barriers & was able to bring competition to the US in spite of them – quite successfully, too.

            The steel industry? Vertically integrated, inflexible companies, suffering from the SAME problems as the car industry, failed, and unlike the auto industry, the govt didn’t bend the law to enact a bailout.

          • acat

            There were quite a few more problems with the auto industry beyond just protectionism … the oil shocks of 1973 and 1976 for example … but a less protectionist stance at an earlier point in time may have helped the Detroit 3 to navigate the change more smoothly.

            Mew

          • morrigan

            “A free people

          • acat

            You said “tariffs are conservative”. I disagreed.

            You are now citing historical opinions – not a one of which I disagree with – to defend the selective use of tariffs… rather than to prove tariffs are, inherently, conservative.

            Either your initial statement was in error – and your moving of the goal posts indicates you know it – or you are arguing by appeal to long-dead authority.

            Mew

          • morrigan

            Unless you have have a definition of “conservative” which excludes the opinions of such “long dead authority” as the Founders, I don’t see where you are going with this.

            >”You are now citing historical opinions

          • aesthete

            since many Founding Fathers supported the practice.

          • morrigan

            .. it is probably a sign that you’re reasoned yourself into a stupid position.

          • aesthete

            maybe you should stop regardless of how conservative you think you sound.

            Arguments of the form “if p, then q — q, therefore p” are affirmations of the consequent — a logical fallacy.

          • jakeofalltrades
          • acat

            These things are tools, they aren’t “conservative” or “liberal”, they can be used for many purposes, some we would consider good, some we would consider poor.

            Tariffs are also tools. Tariffs are constitutionally allowed, they’ve got a long history, and they can – like any tool – be used for the benefit of the country as a whole, or for the benefit of a vocal minority.

            The former would be a conservative use – and, indeed, protecting the fledgling manufacturing industry in 1789 was a common good – but the use to protect the UAW and the Detroit 3 in the 1960s and 1970s was sheer folly… and was not beneficial, eh?

            Again, I am not a free-trade acolyte, but I do disagree with your statement that the tool itself is in line with the conservative ideology.. tariffs can run afoul of the small-government subset of conservative ideology very easily.

            “What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA” is just another iteration of “Too Big To Fail” .. it was wrong then, it’s wrong now.

            Mew

          • morrigan

            >”There is certainly a debate to be had about the economic ramifications of specific tariffs on specific goods or against specific countries. But that the Founders and Americans for hundreds of years afterwards considered it right and proper to foster American industry? That is simply not open to debate. ”

            That was me, since you seem to have missed it.

            >”Tariffs are constitutionally allowed, they

          • acat

            Your statement was “Tariffs are conservative”. Tariffs are a tool, they are not an ideological construct.

            If you are no longer defending that statement, then we are not at odds.

            Mew

          • Dave_A

            Tariffs are the government explicitly ‘picking winners & losers’ based on an absurd non-economic criteria (geographic location of the company).

            They also have a profoundly NEGATIVE impact on the MAJORITY of Americans, by raising prices for goods & services, and weakening companies by making them addicted to government help.

            There is NOTHING good about tariffs. Nothing at all.

            And we were NOT economically better off in the bad-old-days of the tariff based tax system. Not even close. People had less, the standard of living & mortality rates were worse.

            Today’s ‘urban poor’ live like the middle class of the old days.

          • JSobieski

            Doesn’t make it wise.
            Doesn’t make it conservative.

        • jakeofalltrades

          but they also lower standard of living because they raise the price of everything so subject.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Its a fact of life and wishing that everyone would just do right doesn’t make it so and even if they did, there would still be winners and losers and rather than let a one world free trade allocate resources, I’m for making sure America stays superior even if capital is technically “mis-allocated”.

          • aesthete

            “there would still be winners and losers”

            Really? Is that how voluntary trade works?

          • JSobieski

            If only it were that easy. LOL

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            and we became the exceptional nation with tariffs. Its just a historical fact. And the only real perfect allocation of resources was by God in Eden Eve bit the apple and its been damage control ever since. a bitch I know

  • jc230

    Rick, people are posting in direct response to your thoughts put forward. I’m wondering when you and Newt will step up and announce you’te no longer running for POTUS? I predict from this moment forward your delegate numbers will drop significantly. The political strategy to go negative is a distraction, which “all” candidates as yourself have done. Forget the temptation to suggest Mitt lobbed the first negative bomb, you all have responsibility. I’m looking forward to a united GOP going after the main problem, an Obama second term. I’m hoping with every cell of my being this is prevented, and a difinitive landslide that will underscore the American people’s sentiments.

    • garfieldjl

      Santorum has about a 50/50 chance of beating Obama.

      Gingrich probably at least a 70% chance (I really don’t care what the polls say), with the way Obama is running this country into the ground it would be easy for a Chihuahua to beat Obama, unfortunately it would be easy for a Chihuahua to beat Romney in the general too.

      Romney is the only candidate that Obama would easily clobber.

    • honoraryintern

      …demanding such, is pointless. Your predictions carry equal weight.

      Rick is earning the unified support of conservatives. Strangely we are only ~60% of the party voters. I believe that still makes a majority!?

      Romneycare is just as intrusive as O’care. We have all had a 3 day lesson at the SC as to just how big an attack on our freedoms this consumption of 1/7th of the American economy is. You would have the instigator as our candidate and expect a landslide?

      • morrigan

        In the state where Rick did best (where did this annoying habit of calling the candidates by their first names come from?) which was Louisiana, he managed 51% of the votes of self-identified conservatives.

        That sure does not look like “unified support” to me.

  • dajeeps

    And they all seem to have come from one place – the bureaucratic nightmare in DC, from the Fed to the EPA, from the Department of Energy to DoT, Fannie/Freddie, HUD, FDIC, DHS, FDA, SEC, and almost everything else in between. All of them were sold to us as a way to make our market system stronger, keep people safe, etc… and the overall effects are staggeringly opposite. Combine them with state and local bureaucracies and we come to one seriously over burdened society.

    This isn’t the kind of problem that we can just nibble around the edges at and bring about the kind of improvements in economic activity we have all be dreaming about for the last 3 years. We need big, bold solutions and serious reform in the area of centralized economic planning, turning the majority of those functions that make sense to be regulated locally over to the states. We need to liberalize energy markets so the citizens can solve their own problems, thus solving the national problems, which also means refocusing the EPA on interstate regulatory activities that are narrow and defined. And we need to abolish the gasoline tax so that government isn’t tempted to maintain barriers to alternative fuels for cars, like natural gas, making us slaves to gasoline forever.

    • Dave_A

      Since there aren’t any better ways to manage a currency than the FED as constructed, and like it or not the American People have voted for the policy of perpetual inflation and hyper-low funds-rates every time they swipe a credit card or take out a car loan…

      Also, what’s your alternative to a fuel-tax for funding roads (a Constitutionally-enumerated federal power)? The argument that the gasoline tax ‘diverts’ us from other fuels ignores that we currently both tax and don’t tax 3 fuels (gasoline, gasohol, and diesel) depending on on-road or off-road usage. Further, we tax aviation gasoline and jet-fuel differently than motor gasoline.

      All that we’d have to do, if natural gas or an alternative fuel other than electricity became popular, is tax it at point-of-sale just like every other fuel we currently tax.

      EPA has a legitimate role in clean air & water, but they need to be tied to a cost-benefit analysis & kept focused on preventing known-present pollution not avoiding ‘potential future speculative calamities’ like ‘global warming’.

      And Homeland Security? That was a blockbuster of a budget-cutting opportunity poorly handled – we do not need an entire alphabet-soup of badge-and-gun carrying federal agents. The formation of DHS was the ‘golden opportunity’ to fold most federal law enforcement into one big agency (with cost-savings from eliminating non-field-agent positions, eg middle management)…. Everybody but USMS, FBI, CBP, ICE and USSS gets put under FBI. FBI, ICE, and CBP fall under DHS, DOJ keeps USMS as their personal ‘long-arm of the law’, and USSS stays where they are. A bunch of ‘assistant director’ types get sent packing, govt saves money. A whole bunch of turf wars go away, and the newly enhanced FBI can get down to the business of internal security (while CIA and DoD take care of external security)…. We all win….

      • snowshooze

        Note: JFK

        • acat

          To your account, that is.

          Mew

  • snowshooze

    Guess what. They call their own shots. How you figger you are gonna pull that one off?
    Forget it. It ain’t-a-gonna happen. Do not delude yourself further.
    Look, I like you, kid.
    Some day, when you grow up…..
    This must be why I flipped $25.00 to the lizard last night.
    You and me, we should have a discussion.

    So far as trust and honor goes, you have my vote.
    But that ain’t the whole bag.
    Their are strategic considerations, such as do you even have a clue?
    That is where you are blowing it.
    That is my unvarnished truth to you.
    Aside of that, I am pleased and honored by your participation and posting in the RedState community.
    Please accept my comments as constructive criticism. I cannot afford to be otherwise than absolutely honest with you.

  • jamesm

    1) Hold lots of rallies
    2) Come to the Silicon Valley and talk manufacturing
    3) Pick a fight with the liberals over here. Go after Pelosi
    4) Meet with the Central Valley farmers. Discuss water rights
    5) Campare Romney to Schwarznegger..RINO
    6) Target individual congressional districts
    7) Talk about the Bay Bridge boondoggle and the outsourcing of this to China
    8) Challenge local republicans to go after the liberals over here
    9) Appear on mornng radio show i.e KSFO
    10) Challenge Romney to a debate in the state
    11) Energize the evangelicals in the state.
    12) Yard signs and bumper stickers

    more later

    • demsaresatanic

      see the “more later.”

      • jamesm

        13) Get as much free media in the Los Angeles Basin
        14) Give to Telemundo and Univision. Talk about the family
        15) Meet with the vietnamese community (i.e. San Jose) and Korean community (i.e Los Angeles)
        16) Go to Pacific Grove and Carmel. Meet with Clint Eastwood
        17) Spend lots of time here. (It is a must)
        18) Hold a rally at or near the State Capitol and go after SEIU
        19) Campaign in San Diego and give interview at the Naval Base
        20) Go to the Border and talk immigration
        21) Talk about taxes. (Californians are taxed to death)
        22) Ask all Californians to rally around your campaign. Get lots of foot soldiers
        23) Campaign in Northern California near the Oregon border, This will help in both states.
        24) Really go after the liberals over here. Conservatives cannot stand their policies in this state.
        25) Forget Romney. Go after Pelosi again and again. Dont stop
        26) Become highly visible..most Californians are not really paying much attention yet

        • jamesm

          14) Give interviews to Telemundo,,,,

          • snowshooze

            Don’t hurt yourself.

  • garfieldjl

    http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/03/29/we_now_return_to_the_gop_primary

    I’ll let people read through that.

    • jamesm

      RUSH: “Well, it’s not as easy as that. I know it appears that way, but right now the only way… I’m gonna put this in perspective for you, and I’m still nonpartisan in this. The other two are gonna have quit. They’re gonna have to resign. Otherwise Romney is gonna have trouble getting to 1144 delegates if they stay in. The only way he can get there prior to convention is if they pull out.”

      • acat

        He just has to *have* them before the convention.

        He could cut a deal with any other candidate for their delegates.

        Santorum’s a young guy with broad SoCon and ValuesVoters appeal… will he trade for a cabinet post?

        Ron Paul’s an antique, but he has this son .. think he’d trade for Treasury Secretary Rand Paul?

        Think Newt Gingrich would trade for a 12×12 In-n-Out burger?

        Mew

        • jamesm

          is going to happen. It just isn’t sewn up yet. Santorum says he can win it at the convention. Can he? I don’t know but it sure feels like a wake. Seems like Santorum needs a game changer. It hasn’t happened yet. I think this goes past the primaries and maybe to the convention. But then again it has been a strange primary season. Newt will hang in for pizza and cocktails at the convention.

        • Dave_A

          The one that helps Romney with the base, and helps Santorum get just that much closer to having his name at the top of a GOP Presidential ticket…

          Is Santorum as VP in exchange for the support of his delegates at the convention.

          As things go, it looks like Mitt will show up with the most votes & most delegates, so he’ll probably stay top-of-ticket, too…

          • acat

            Veep Santorum would be … I was going to say double-edged sword, but there are more edges than that… more of a tetsubo.

            On one paw, Santorum does help bring out the ValuesVoters* … but on the other paw, the Social-Conservatives* will likely show up for Romney anyway – they showed up for McCain after all.

            On the third paw, Romney/Santorum are both non-evangelical northeasterners with dubious records. Usually the ticket tries to balance geography, ideology, and experience …

            If we assume Romney is the nominee, I suppose he’ll be asking the same question I was asking a while ago (never got a serious answer to it) – does Santorum as veep add enough ValuesVoters* to the Social-Conservatives* to offset the cost among social-moderates and libertarian-leaners?

            Mew

            * One of these things is not like the other…

          • steve962

            IMHO, Santorum doesn’t belong in politics, period. He certainly doesn’t belong as either the Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate, and I’m actually appalled he’s made it this far.

            I could vote for Romney, or even maybe Gingrich, although I’m fairly unhappy with either choice – and the VP pick could be the tipping point from “unhappy” to “unacceptable”. If Santorum is the candidate or the VP pick, though, it’s a deal breaker, period.

            I think the answer to your question about winning more ValuesVoters than he loses moderates and libertarians is a Not Very Likely.

      • morrigan

        Rush is one of the few prominent Republicans who has been firmly in the anti-Romney camp.

        And his analysis is way, way off. Gingrich is polling worse than Ron Paul in the upcoming states! He’s not gong to win more than a handful of additional delegates even if he stays in right to the end.

        Santorums poll numbers are crumbling. He’s dropped behind Romney in Wisconsin (even before Ryan’s endorsement) and he is now tied with Romney in his home state of Pennsylvania.

        Short of a bolt of lightening taking out Romney, this race is effectively over.

        On a separate note, I think that Republican rooting for a brokered convention are insane. Nobody has even been able to suggest a plausible scenario in which a brokered convention has a happy ending. Rush needs to slap himself in the face a few times and snap put of it.

  • mikeymike143

    santorum can still pull this out

  • JSobieski

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI0DLdLwovU

    • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

      he did buy into the free trade rhetoric.

      • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

        tariffs, quotas, trade restrictions by the US?

        If not, then the seeming disagreements are quite substantially reduced. But the book deals with most all of your objections and attempted minimizations of the impact of our trade policy to our current weakened position; the role of the tariff in our rise to power; and the source of true free trade advocacy as being from the left. Yes, some of our conservative gurus bought into some of the free trade stuff but Pat also shows that Adam Smith did not and even Milton Friedman did not take an absolutist position at all times. But hey, none of the above or Bastiat are God.

        The US should not unilaterally disarm on trade. We have a market the world needs more than we need them and tariffs and quotas can be effectively used to enhance US jobs and prosperity and I will try and make the case for it overall when I do the book review at an opportune time soon when such issues are in the news and I can capitalize with a column that ties several issues, history and current events together. That is my specialty in the paid journalism world.

        I appreciate all of your comments and will address the most substantive ones in the column as Pat has in the book. I continue my intellectual journey to learn. That journey led me to leave the Dem party for conservatism and the GOP in 2000. The journey continues and the events of the past 12 years eventually led me to Pat’s1998 book for a re-read and it seems to me that it and Murray’s Coming Apart have forged a more mature conservatism about appropriate government policy to maintain and/or restore the nation I love to superiority with a prosperous middle class and military a that can protect it.

        Pat’s book is chock full of supportive data and would encourage all fellow conservatives to read The Great Betrayal. If you are prejudiced against Pat B for other reasons, I would suggest that you get over it and see if I’m not right that this book is a tour de force re tariff policy. He too was a blind free trader until the 90s. Data turned him and now in 2012, the gamecock.

        God bless and back to the intellectual journey and away from intellectual snobs, know-it-alls and shallow non-readers?…smile

        Yes, the passive-aggressive continues. Its called being bold and nice…especially to people that truly are social misfits. I pray for you guys.

        I was QB for the HS football team, dated the head cheerleader and made good grades…and yes, I got taken to the cleaners by a good lookin chick in the last divorce!

        PSS I admit that I don’t know it all, but I am a Phi beta Kappa econ major and I’ve read The Great Betrayal…you ignorant sluts…

        • jamesm

          Just popped in from lunch. Haven’t read all your comments but I definetely support tarriffs against predatory nations. Should have slapped them on years ago. Free trade is good if countries are free traders. If not then you fine them (Tariffs) Who cares if they whine. Americans are a decent people but are trade policies are plain idiocy.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            Go Wildcats!

        • civil truth

          I have that problem intermittently, and I think that when you have multiple windows open, the tracking feature doesn’t lock in to the comment so that nothing tracks thereafter.

          I keep forgetting for myself, but try commenting when you only have one window open. Otherwise I think things can get weird.

          But there is some kind of software bug with regard to comment tracking.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            many times over the past several days and have had many replies to my comments, but all my comments on my profile have a (0) next to them, which are inaccurate. No biggie…and was kind of just tossing it out there as an add-on excuse to exit the back and forth as my work is done here re research for the pending column; driving traffic to Santorum’s diary; revealing that many conservatives also suffer from Utopian ideations; obtaining admissions that many actually do favor SOME tariffs; revealing an anti-intellectualism among some here; revealing bigotry coupled with the former that eschew factual data because of bigotry of the source; and generally just trying to disabuse people of the notion that commenting on RS in no way compares to serious intellectual work to read many books and research before writing columns and books. I loathe shallowness and intellectual laziness. Thank you for not being one of those. But I am here on a mission to help the sick, so I tarry on…on my terms and on my schedule and not due to bullying dare me crap for commenters. smile…yes, I too am an ass…feels right and these punks deserve me…and NEED me.

        • aesthete

          Seriously, people who aren’t in a cult don’t respond this emotionally to relatively benign requests for proof of causation.

          Neither do non-utopians.

          Trade barriers have several functionalities. Increasing economic efficiency isn’t one of them.

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            smile

          • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

            conservative? He did…and as a tease for next week…will Rush endorse Mitt on Monday?

          • Flagstaff

            but it seemed like he was saying (after a female caller more-or-less called Romney demonic), that he didn’t understand the animus towards Romney. It’s pretty clear he prefers not-Romney, but for reasons other than “Romney bad!” He came as close as he ever has to defending Romney’s character.

            I guess he may think it’s counterproductive for any of us to be trashing Romney’s morals or ethics. I don’t think Rush will endorse anybody.

  • alliek

    We need to stick together and really do all we can to get Rick Santorum to the convention! We met him last night in Alamo,Ca. and honestly people should withhold judgement until they meet him. He is so authentic, so genuine! He walks in the room and talks to everyone! He looks you in the eye and is very personable! I liked him before meeting him but now I am so convinced we can win with him! Romney and Obama and all the libs should be afraid of him because he has a quality that they all lack and that would be authenticity! When the American people learn who he is and where he came from and what he stands for they will vote for him! There is a hunger out there to be the people God intended us to be, the kind of people the pilgrims, puritans were! To have a dauntless faith in God and our country. To be courageous against all odds, that is who Rick Santorum is, I am convinced of this! I would plead will all people of faith, vote your conscience not who you think can beat Obama! If we do our part, God will do his. Have faith in a mighty God, who always uses small numbers to make big changes!

    • habeumnominee

      Look, Marco Rubio has endorsed Romney. Jeb Bush has endorsed Romney. Paul Ryan has endorsed Romney. Jim Demint has said that it is time to coalesce around Romney.

      I think that Santorum should tone down the rhetoric and ask himself how he can best serve his country. If he looks in the mirror and asks himself that question, he will step aside and endorse Mitt Romney. Then he will campaign passionately for Romney so that we can get these turds out of the White House.

  • alliek

    I’m sick of hearing about all the “establishment” repubs going for Romney! Big deal! They helped create the mess were in! Obama’s folks will slaughter Romney! Haven’t you all figured out the 1% “occupy” movement was created because Obama’s people knew Romney would be are nominee! They will protest him like no other! They will hammer him about his four story house he’s building with the elevator for his cars! They will replay his comments how he doesn’t want to help the poor people. Or that he has money in the Cayman islands. Folks he has an image problem, wealth doesn’t bother you or me but a lot of folks who are hurting right now he is going to seem so out of touch! No one tried to push Romney or Huckabee out last time around, that I can remember, so why the big push this year? i guess you have to play by the establishment rules and believe in what the polls tell you to believe in and not hold strong convictions! That’s not me, that’s not Santorum and it surely isn’t the thousands of god fearing people who are supporting him!

    • morrigan

      and endorsed Romney, you’d still be saying “I could care less about establishment republicans endorsing Romney”.

      For a lot of the more hard-core anti-Romneyites, the very fact that they are losing proves that they are right, in some sort of strange martyrdom fashion.

      >”i guess you have to play by the establishment rules and believe in what the polls tell you to believe in and not hold strong convictions! ”

      You really think that Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan and Pat Toomey and Jim DeMint do not “hold strong convictions”?

      • acat

        I’d vote for this guy!

        Mew

        • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

          I wasn’t sure about the impact on term limits…

        • jakeofalltrades

          A dead Reagan is better kept in the Oval Office than a live Obama!

          • acat

            B’sides, Zombie Reagan has to win the nomination first….

            Mew

          • habeumnominee

            He’s going all in for Romney. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Ron Paul have pledged to step aside in favor of Zombie Reagan’s chosen nominee. Cue the Lee Greenwood music.

      • garfieldjl

        I mean let’s be clear here, the Reagan family (with the exception to the one that decided to become a liberal), all got behind Newt Gingrich fairly early in this.

  • redstateneck

    Senator Santorum, you have run and lost. Romney has the exact same percentage of total votes as McCain did in 2008 at this time. Romney graciously exited. That’s how its done in the GOP. You’ve done well. You’ve been vetted for next as needed. Please now graciously leave.

    Newt has had his sugar daddy say the gravy train is over. He’s reduced his campaign staff to folks provided by his book publisher and his speaking engagement secretary.

    Just because Fox won’t give you a show doesn’t mean you should stay in anymore. The plurality of the party has shown support for Romney. Go out on a high note. Wisconsin ain’t gonna help and neither is the precious keystone state. Go back to Stubenville, Ohio and lick your wounds. Its a covenant community for you’uns.

  • alliek

    Good luck Romney on the whole campaign against Obama! Just remember the whole Occupy movement was created by the democrats believing you would be the nominee! So you know the statement you made how the poor people don’t need help, or you know lots of race car and football team owners, your wife has a couple of caddies, the four story house overlooking the ocean in California with the elevator for all your cars, taking apart businesses, money in the Cayman islands, Goldman Sachs, all that will be used against you and I’m sure you will have the dirty “occupiers” camping in front of your homes and everywhere you go! Thanks again establishment republicans for another mess, another election lost because you don’t have the backbone, the fortitude or the character to elect someone with strong moral convictions, who doesn’t look to the polls to figure out his beliefs, he looks to God!

    • rabun1016

      Friend, the candidate you are describing is not running. Nina Totenberg could not distort the facts as well as you have. And, few of us business guys, who feed mouths and families, are anything but ‘establishment Republicans’, despite Santorum’s and Newt’s self serving slams. We rarely pay attention to races, we are nimble pragmatists as all business guys have to be, but it has gotten to the point where we need the White House back for the sake of the country before regulations put every business on natural gas and wind power. Most of us know how hard it is to make a buck in business and have some respect for Romney’s judgments on business issues. You don’t need to like him, but if he is not elected, it will be due to people like you, not people like me.

      • alliek

        First off, we are small business owners, who are in an industry that has been hit the hardest! By the grace of God we are still in business, unlike so many of our friends who have had to dissolve their companies. We know all about regulations and union bullying to the point of harassment in some cases. Romney is a liberal and you all are sadly mistaken if you think he is going to make the “hard” choices when it comes to reining in the epa and all the regulations that are killing small businesses. Romney relies on poll numbers, not convictions to decide where to stand on issues. That is indisputable and troublesome to me and many other conservatives! Romney won’t be elected and it will have nothing to do with people like me but will lie squarely with the inside the beltway folks who have been pushing this guy on us from the beginning! The one thing worse than the economy is the breakdown of the family. When the family is broken society is broken and the economy suffers. Rick Santorum understands this and will not be destructive to the family like Romney was in Massachusetts!

  • redstateneck

    You ideologues and non-financial loud mouth necks need to get back to work and let the people who have put time and money into this thing do their thing. They don’t need you fanatics who think that you have cornered the market on conservatism. There is no right wing conspiracy because wrestling is on to often for them to get organized.

  • redstateneck

    Mitt is not in debt to the evangelicals, the necks, or the Illinois nazi party. He’s in debt to the sane, educated republicans. You class warfare smells of the communist.

  • alliek

    If the above comments are referring to mine, you are completely mistaken! I live very well in Silicon Valley! I have no problem with people making money, lot’s of money! Have you been living under a rock for the past several months or are you just naive? Obama, SEIU, dems, libs, occupiers and the so called 99% will go after Romney so hard because of his wealth. I could care less about his wealth, good for him! Do you not see the narrative being played out all around you? With the help of the media they can paint Romney into being the big, mean, uncaring rich guy and they will use his own words against him! That’s not even including that he supported Obamacare by giving Obama the blueprint and encouraging him to have personal mandates. He doesn’t owe evangelicals anything and we don’t owe him anything! It works both ways!

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    All I think is “Wow, some people are left of Al Gore on this.”

    • aesthete

      stumping for them on the basis of *economic* optimality.

      That’s just incredible.

    • jakeofalltrades

      is to punish other countries for their tariffs under the WTO framework, wherein they must be specifically authorized by a WTO court.

      Within the WTO framework, this results in global tariffs falling over time. The punitive counter-tariffs can be – and are – targeted to the most vulnerable and/or politically-powerful industries in the offending nation, thus becoming an effective deterrent to trade barriers.

      A return to mercantilism, on the other hand, is nothing more than robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

      • morrigan

        You think we left mercantilism?

        • jakeofalltrades

          I have to say that we were the first to leave it, if not the only one.

          • morrigan

            I think the word means something different from what you think it does. Or at least, something a lot broader.

            It’s not an interchangeable term for tariffs, though plenty of mercantilist countries have used tariffs as part of their overall economic program. Countries like the 19th century US.

          • jakeofalltrades

            I conflate the two notions.

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    If he’s willing to throw his current take of the vote in with you it narrows the lead Romney has and would take more momentum out of Romney’s campaign.

    I’d like to see Gingrich show the judgement that he knows he cannot win at this point and the humility to throw his support behind what I see as the only viable alternative to Romney.

    • rabun1016

      Unfortunately, the only viable alternative to Romney appears not a viable alternative to Obama.

  • snowshooze

    Look at my previous comments.

  • kowalski

    For the post talking about what is really the biggest problem right now facing most Americans – the economy. It’s the economy and the economy and the economy again. They’re worried about their economic futures, they’re worried about their ability to send their children to college and get jobs that will allow them to maintain their standard of living. They’re worried about being able to own a home. They’re worried about their ability to afford the cost of living in the United States. They’re worried about their parents having to go back to work to send money to their *children* so they can keep their homes.

    The other day a woman showed up at my door looking for an apartment to rent. Unfortunately I don’t have anything for her, but her story was heartbreaking: along with her husband and their two children, they’ve lived for so long after being forced to move back in with their parents when the economy collapsed that family is disintegrating and they need to get out, even if it’s into a tiny place. They can’t stand to be in the house together any longer and it’s tearing their family apart. That’s how bad it has really been on Main Street America.

    Businesses are worried deeply about taxes and regulation. The uncertainty surrounding both are causing people everywhere to sit on their hands instead of moving forward vigorously with new initiatives. I could personally get credit to purchase new capital equipment right now but I dare not do it. People are deathly afraid of taking on new debt obligations because they have no idea whether their companies will be able to service them and make money. The uncertainty surrounding new federal regulations is causing everyone to hesitate – and a lot more. It’s causing them to make bad choices, even destructive choices. It has to stop.

    If you wanted to try to persuade me to think twice about you instead of Romney, this was the best thing you could have done, and you did. I’m not going to be cynical about it, I want to be fair minded about our alternatives.

    • kowalski

      Senator Santorum, while I have your attention here I’d like to reprise a link to an essay that I thought was one of the most prescient and still one of the most comprehensive essays about our economy, from early 2008.

      Economy Recovery Plan – By Philip Greenspun

      http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/economic-recovery

      Here in my neck of the woods, we’re not throwing in the towel. We’ve had to accept a lot more limited horizons than we thought we would back in 2006-2007 but we’re still here and we’re ready to move forward. We need some sound economic polices and a few quarters of sustained growth to get back on our feet. Hopefully some of Greenspun’s ideas will resonate with you – he’s a very bright person and he tells it like it is.

      • kowalski

        Early 2009, just after the housing bubble started to pop. If you drive through my town the aftermath still hasn’t abated. People are losing their homes all the time. It seems like half the town is up for sale. That profoundly effects everyone.

        If you took a day on the campaign trail to go spend some time in a town like mine and talk with ordinary people you’d understand why they’re not worried about social issues anywhere near as much as they’re concerned with where they’re going to live next month.

        We don’t need to *promise* the things Greenspun is talking about in that essay — we need to DO them. It’s been three years since he published it and there hasn’t been a sign of relief or a signal that anyone has understood it, but his advice is sounder than anyone else’s that I’ve heard. He has the benefit of being an Engineer who wants to solve problems, not a Wonk who wants to justify them or a Politician who wants to sell solutions to damage their opponent.

        I hope some of our politicians are smart enough to realize that we’re reaching the limit of politics as usual here in the United States and that we need to start agreeing on ideas that we know will work, without turning the country into a federally-run and federally-controlled travesty of itself.

    • kowalski

      Is mirrored by my prospective clients’ ability to afford my services without worrying about their ROI. In 2007 the things I do (I’m in the printing and mailing business) and even in 2012 would be affordable if the rest of the economy wasn’t in the pits. But I’m trying to court clients and sell them on work, and they don’t know whether they’re even going to be able to recoup the costs. The insecurity out here in the real world is so severe it’s almost impenetrable. How can you sell a project to a business that is looking at an economy where they can barely recoup their costs in advertising?

      Everyone goes broke. The towns lose their tax bases, the states do likewise, and everyone gets poorer. Things need to really change, Senator and I’m glad you’re taking notice of that now.

  • rabun1016

    Agree with all Kowalski has said regarding the economy and the severe malaise affecting consumer and business confidence.
    It all doesn’t make any difference though unless we can take back the White House. Because of that, I would like to see a little less from Santorum, unless he wants to work as a badly needed political advisor to Romney. If Santorum and Newt were running Romney’s campaign, we would be a great position.

  • trutexan

    and most of my classmates weren’t either. I come from a regular middle-class area that was mostly blue collar types. It wasn’t that I couldn’t go to college, but rather I didn

  • Pingback: gsdfghsdkflhgksdfl

  • Pingback: Magnetic Tags Remover

  • Pingback: wholesale nike air jordans

  • Pingback: Watch And If We All Lived Together online

  • Pingback: sexy lady

  • Pingback: How to fight

  • Pingback: diet

  • Pingback: Better sex

  • Pingback: jak szybko schudnac

  • Pingback: diablo 3 gold

  • Pingback: Make money online

  • Pingback: yoga from home

  • Pingback: ACN Scam

  • Pingback: Handmade

  • Pingback: phen375 pills

  • Pingback: Marketing Digital

  • Pingback: adult webcam

  • Pingback: cheap viagra

  • Pingback: Isabel Marant bottes

  • Pingback: marble polishing

  • Pingback: Download Autocad Softwares

  • Pingback: Nikon 1 V2

  • Pingback: make money fast online

  • Pingback: How To Make A Youtube Video

  • Pingback: free article spinning

  • Pingback: Bass Guitar

  • Pingback: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVoJ_jEB6ZE

  • Pingback: Camere foto profesionale

  • Pingback: Chilli Seeds

  • Pingback: Fusevision.com.sg seo content

  • Pingback: learn more here

  • Pingback: animal print rugs

  • Pingback: Extreme weight loss diet

  • Pingback: knockoff goyard saint louis

  • Pingback: uslugi budowlane

  • Pingback: dig this

  • Pingback: KSL Squaw

  • Pingback: paleo recipe book Review

  • Pingback: weblink

  • Pingback: Universitas Terbaik

  • Pingback: online classifieds

  • Pingback: cardio workouts

  • Pingback: leappad

  • Pingback: nikon d3200

  • Pingback: mastercard casino

  • Pingback: swissdent

  • Pingback: Make money Youtube video

  • Pingback: warrior forum google sniper

  • Pingback: toradol injections

  • Pingback: ugg pas cher

  • Pingback: Find Out More

  • Pingback: http://pond5promocode.weebly.com/

  • Pingback: I thought about this

  • Pingback: sushi catering boston

  • Pingback: seo fabrikasi

  • Pingback: Cindi Deatley

  • Pingback: stables

  • Pingback: real estate in dubai

  • Pingback: click here

  • Pingback: Read more about web design

  • Pingback: Clicking Here

  • Pingback: legal steroids

  • Pingback: best supplements for muscle gain

  • Pingback: electronics

  • Pingback: spybubble

  • Pingback: web design barrow

  • Pingback: buy synthol

  • Pingback: web design barrow

  • Pingback: directory media

  • Pingback: laptop tips

  • Pingback: rv warranty

  • Pingback: astral

  • Pingback: Pain in left side

  • Pingback: estate agents glasgow

  • Pingback: free webcams

  • Pingback: check out this

  • Pingback: pure green coffee extracts

  • Pingback: Indianapolis homes for sale

  • Pingback: spss help

  • Pingback: escorts leeds.

  • Pingback: escorts leeds.

  • Pingback: rv warranty

  • Pingback: over at this website

  • Pingback: why supply chain management

  • Pingback: Go Here

  • Pingback: steam showers

  • Pingback: people search

  • Pingback: people search,

  • Pingback: Tycoon World war Warcraft Gold Addon Review

  • Pingback: rv warranty

  • Pingback: Best Credit Repair

  • Pingback: swissdent

  • Pingback: jeux

  • Pingback: jeuxjeux

  • Pingback: junk car milwaukee

  • Pingback: PPI Claims

  • Pingback: PPI Claims

  • Pingback: PPI Claim

  • Pingback: PPI Claim

  • Pingback: mortgage help

  • Pingback: toronto plumbing

  • Pingback: tartamudez tratamiento psicologico

  • Pingback: PlanetSide 2

  • Pingback: listen to this podcast

  • Pingback: Capital One

  • Pingback: PPI Claim

  • Pingback: PPI Claims

  • Pingback: Fuck you

  • Pingback: Fuck you.

  • Pingback: velkoborsky

  • Pingback: Make Money Youtube

  • Pingback: Orlando Web Design Company

  • Pingback: get tumblr followers

  • Pingback: garage doors melbourne.

  • Pingback: garage doors perth.

  • Pingback: gryphon garage doors.

  • Pingback: the stables towneley park,

  • Pingback: casino

  • Pingback: sushi catering Somerville ma

  • Pingback: lecteur datamatrix

  • Pingback: amarillo tree

  • Pingback: amarillo tree.

  • Pingback: viagra

  • Pingback: amarillo tree

  • Pingback: haccp zachodniopomorskie

  • Pingback: porn

  • Pingback: ipage affiliate

  • Pingback: porn

  • Pingback: "???"

  • Pingback: Dumpster Rental

  • Pingback: buy real instagram followers

  • Pingback: Cucciolo Rottweiler

  • Pingback: mls inmobiliarias

  • Pingback: Dumpster Rentals

  • Pingback: mold testing

  • Pingback: free annual credit report gov

  • Pingback: startoptions

  • Pingback: startoption

  • Pingback: target baby registry discount

  • Pingback: land of nod coupon codes

  • Pingback: annual free credit report

  • Pingback: logo quiz game

  • Pingback: cheap cell phone service

  • Pingback: how to make money

  • Pingback: Organo Gold Scam

  • Pingback: check it out

  • Pingback: cheapest car insurance quotes

  • Pingback: pirater facebook

  • Pingback: pirater facebook

  • Pingback: pc dial

  • Pingback: eames dsw

  • Pingback: female hair loss treatment

  • Pingback: Music Business Report

  • Pingback: where to buy zynga poker chips

  • Pingback: buy my car scam

  • Pingback: Marketing a Medical Practice

  • Pingback: natural depersonalization treatment

  • Pingback: Medical Practice Marketing

  • Pingback: craft making

  • Pingback: click here

  • Pingback: custom logo design

  • Pingback: HQ offices in New York