Another Conservative Platform Possibility

The Conservatives have been challenged to come up with a platform which will recapture Congress (and the Presidency).

Here's an article which presents interesting possibilities.

...a recent survey of manufacturers found that most see the stimulus as only "slightly effective" for them. This is no surprise, since the lion's share of the $800 billion is going to bolster the banks, with scraps spread out to green projects, health care and education.

The administration's priorities reflect a new political consciousness that, if not openly anti-industrial, seems to minimize manufacturing's role in the nation's long-term future.

... it is also dangerous to embrace a mindset that disdains all practical skill and areas of business not dominated by the cognitive elite.

These days this mentality appears alongside an overall contempt for the tangible economy. Very few Obama appointees have ties to the country's core productive sectors: manufacturing, agriculture, energy. Veterans of investment banking, academia or the public sector, they seem to see the economy more in terms of making media, images and trades – as opposed to actually making things.

Such an approach also reinforces the administration's surprising radicalism on the environmental front. Most industrial firms understand that precipitous moves to limit greenhouse gases and decimate domestic fossil fuels threaten America's international competitiveness.

Why should we care? Here are two good reasons:

As demographer Richard Morrill has pointed out, traditionally, regions with industrial economies have been more egalitarian than the finance-driven areas. If this anti-manufacturing trend continues, more of America will resemble New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, places sharply divided between a growing class of low-wage workers and a relative few hegemons in finance, academia and media.

Perhaps even worse, by stimulating everything but industry, the administration risks accelerating the very imbalance between production and consumption that is one key reason for the nation's economic woes

Ultimately benefitting OTHER countries, like PRChina and India.

Stupidity runs rampant, of course.

...economic conservatives have tended, if anything, to be at least equally clueless about the importance of industry. As far back as 1984 – the peak of the Reagan era – the New York Stock Exchange issued a report stating that "a strong manufacturing economy is not a requisite for a prosperous economy."

Wasn't true then, isn't true now; but it certainly has a New York City 'ring' to it, eh? Kinda like Geithner does.

So, Paul Ryan, pay attention:

American industry needs government to recognize their importance. We need incentives for improved productivity and investment, including ones for those companies employing "green" technologies. Another step would be to include accurate "carbon accounting" of goods produced elsewhere – particularly in places like China, whose production tends to generate more pollutants than those in more regulated countries like the U.S. Greening may be good, but it should not become another excuse for American de-industrialization

The article was written in hopes that Obama's boyzzzzzzz would pay attention to it and implement the suggestions above. That's not likely--leaving the field open to actual Conservatives who have an interest in the economic well-being of the USA and all its inhabitants.