Tag Archives: Barack Obama

News

Intel CEO blames Democrats for destroying the economy

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Article from CNET News by someone who understands job creation. (H/T Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.

Otellini’s remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.”

[…]Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Here’s Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, from the same article:

The comments from Intel’s chief executive echoed statements made a day earlier by Carly Fiorina, the former HP CEO turned Republican Senate candidate.

America’s skilled-worker visa system is so badly broken and anti-immigration that “we have to start from scratch,” Fiorina said, adding that too many government policies push jobs overseas instead of making U.S. companies competitive against international rivals.

“Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the world,” and Congress has repeatedly failed to make an R&D tax credit permanent, Fiorina told the Aspen audience. It’s time to start “acknowledging the reality that companies go where they’re welcome,” she said. (The effective U.S. corporate income tax is 35 percent, far over the industrialized-nation average of 18.2 percent.)

Here’s a recent IBD article with more from Otellini, and other CEOs

First Otellini:

“I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S.,” he said. And 90% of that added cost, he said, is due to taxes and regulations that other countries don’t have.

Then other CEOs:

Earlier in the week, Illinois Tool Works CEO David Speer, whose company employs 60,000 worldwide, laid out his dilemma — and that of hundreds of other CEOs: “I could borrow $2 billion tomorrow for 3 1/2%,” Speer said. “But what am I going to do with it?”

[…]In June, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications and head of the Business Roundtable, warned of a growing anti-business slant in both Congress and the White House. Tax hikes, regulations and constant policy shifts, he said, “harm our ability … to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.”

And don’t forget the costs that Obamacare imposed on companies, causing all medical premiums to go through the roof because of the new health care mandates and taxes on things like medical devices.

Red State explains what the Obammunists should be doing:

As our government continues to make it more difficult to do business in the US, companies must increasingly look to more favorable climates abroad. If Washington really wants to spur job creation here in the US, they should repeal the health care overhaul, reduce spending, cut the corporate tax rate, give up on cap and trade, and reform litigation. Instead we have been treated to an extended experiment in government control – one that is obviously not producing new wealth, new jobs, or any real hope for the emergence of the industries of the future.

It takes a lot of courage for a CEO like Otellini to come out against the Obama administration, and the neo-Keynesian oligarchy in Washington. Taking a billion dollars from Intel to study Chinese prostitutes and to build turtle tunnels is not a good thing to do if you want to have more jobs. But the thing is – Obama thinks it is a good thing to do, because he is totally ignorant of how the economy works. So, don’t vote for him or any of his silver-spoon limousine liberal friends who were born with rich parents. Democrats don’t know how jobs are created.

News

How Obama’s bold experimentation with the economy costs jobs

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Consider this column by George Will. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

At any time, some economic conditions would be better than others, but the more certainty about conditions the better. Today, investors and employers are certain that uncertainties are multiplying.

They are uncertain about when interest rates will rise, and by how much.

They do not know how badly the economy will be burdened by the expiration, approximately 200 days from now, of the Bush tax cuts on high earners — aka investors and employers. They know the costs of Obamacare will be higher than was advertised, but not how much higher. They do not know the potential costs of cap-and-trade and other energy policies.

They do not know if “card check” — abolition of the right of secret ballot elections in unionization decisions — will pass, or how much the economy will be injured by making unions more muscular. They do not know how the functioning of the financial sector will be altered and impeded by the many new regulatory rules and agencies created by the financial reform legislation.

The economy has become dependent on government stimulation of demand, and no one knows what will happen as the stimulus spending wanes.

Investors and employers are watching all of Obama’s bold experimentation with the economy patiently, and keeping their money in their wallets. Who can afford to hire more workers when the costs of running a business or making a profit on an investment goes up and up and up? When Obama is kicked out of office in 2012, and the economy settles down, then employers and investors will breathe a sigh of relief and hiring can resume.

Commentary

Is Islam tolerant of other world religions?

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Here’s the top article right now from National Review. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple.

“Truly the pagans are unclean,” instructs the Koran’s Sura 9:28, “so let them not . . . approach the Sacred Mosque.” This injunction — and there are plenty of similar ones in Islam’s scriptures — is enforced vigorously not by jihadist terrorists but by the Saudi government. And it is enforced not because of some eccentric sense of Saudi nationalism. The only law of Saudi Arabia is sharia, the law of Islam.

[..]Saudi Arabia, the country from which 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers hailed, abides no pluralism or religious freedom. Sure, the Saudis will tell you they allow Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims to visit their country, which is awfully big of them. Still, the regime prohibits these infidels from polluting the kingdom with their Bibles, crucifixes, and Stars of David.

[…]In an Islamic country like Saudi Arabia, where they are in a position to impose sharia in full, that is exactly what they do. In other places, the degree of imposition depends on relative Islamic strength, and it increases as that strength increases. Thus, the standard Muslim position on “Palestine,” where Islamic strength is growing but not yet dominant: Muslims are to be permitted to live freely within the Jewish state, but all Jews must be purged from Palestinian territories. Again, that’s not an al-Qaeda position; it’s the mainstream Islamic view. To the extent there is a mainstream dissenting view, it is that the Jewish state should be annihilated immediately — not that the two sides should live in reciprocally tolerant harmony.

Not very tolerant!