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Insane Arguments Abound to Assail President Bush

by John F. Tamburo, Editor in Chief, Publisher
Originally Posted: 1/21/2005 12:09:50 PM

Recently, I have been cruising around the internet to see the latest vitriol that spews from the mouth of the extreme left.  I just knew that something would come up that would be noteworthy of an article.  I did not expect to hit the mother lode of conspiracy theories on message boards devoted to non-political things like soap operas and cooking, but I did.  These theories completely astound me, not in their audacity, but in their total divorce from reality or any scientific analysis.  Here are a few:

• Social Security privatization is a license for stockbrokers to steal money directly from private investment accounts without the possibility or likelihood of prosecution
• President Bush will default on the national debt; some say he plans to default
• The weak dollar is allowing foreigners to come in and buy up America at discount rates
• The American dollar is worth so little that there is no venture capital in this country, and the Social Security reform is an "amoral" plot to provide venture capital
• The Chinese hold the majority of our national debt
• We cannot make war against China no matter what they do, because they manufacture all of the spare parts for our military
• Unemployment is dropping only because the destitute people are no longer eligible for benefits and not counted as unemployed
• There are no good paying jobs; they are all being outsourced
• President Bush is planning to outsource the entire Internal Revenue Service

I am toying with a point by point refutation of these insane notions.  Some, like the notion of outsourcing the IRS, are so radically insane that no cogent response can be formed.  Some, like the notion that the Chinese hold the majority of our national debt, can be refuted by going to the Treasury facts.  China, including Hong Kong, holds only $177 billion of the $7.61 trillion debt.  Hardly a majority.  Tax revenues are rising; there is no risk of default.

As for venture capital, Social Security Private accounts would never be used in such a super-high-risk manner.  Remember that three of four new ventures fail.  The Congress will establish safeguards to protect the people from that, and brokers will not have access to draw money from your private account!  Congress is looking at mutual funds and not speculative stock portfolios.  As for the availability of Venture Capital, that dried up not because of President Bush, but because of the irrational exuberance of the Clinton tech-stock bubble.  People could go out and get $5 million in seed money for any little stupid idea, without having to show that it would make money.  One idea was to have internet-ordered go-fors in New York, to bring you a comb or Tampax or a sandwich on the theory that quantity would overcome cost concerns.  Why?  Who thought this out?  That’s gone.  The entire concept of Internet advertising as a business model was overrated, it took Google’s AdWords cost-per-click model to make sense of the lunacy.  Aside from Yahoo, eBay, Google and Amazon (and even Amazon was dicey for a while), the internet bubble was the most unwise investment boom since the Great Depression.

This boom artifically inflated employment, because these no-future businesses hired all comers.  The economy boomed producing infrastructure and equipment to service these worthless businesses.  When these worthless businesses inevitably folded, there was a domino effect as tech industries tried to sell off inventory that was losing value as it sat on the shelf because of Moore’s law.  It took all of President Bush’s effort to deal with that collapse, and then the evil terrorists blew up a chunk of Manhattan as he tried to scoop up Clinton’s "information superhighway" dung.

Now, companies still need to cut costs, and information technology has taken the hit.  There is a substantial amount of outsourcing.  However, it is not the entirety by any means. The economy is not information technology by itself. The economy is not at the mercy of foreigners.  New technologies promise our continued economic leadership.  Airbus has misstepped with its A380 superjumbo jet, a gigantic four-engine fuel hog that is so big it will need two airport gates (and their gate rental and access fees) to load and unload.  Boeing is producing the 7E7, which has abandoned aluminum for carbon fiber composites that will strengthen the plane while cutting its fuel consumption.  Which will cash-strapped airlines be more likely to purchase?  If you can cut $2000 in fuel off the cost of each flight, that is enough to make a money-losing flight into a profit center.  Kudos to Boeing!

There are good jobs out there.  Are there high-paying sit-on-your-butt cushy jobs like the old tech-bubble semi-jobs out there?  Nope.  You will be expected to work for a living.

Again, to the conspiracy theorists who came up with the socialist talking points listed above, I am tempted to yell "Shame!"  But I pity you.  You have no confidence in your own God-given abilities; and you think that the government is there to give you everything that you need in life without your having to do anything for it.  That’s not the way things are to work.  If you care to work and struggle at it, this country will reward you.  Ask Gates, Buffet, Trump and others.  These people worked their butts off to make their fortunes.  Try to live your own lives instead of ruining those of the people who care to work hard.