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American Manufacturing: It’s Not Labor Costs

February 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard points to this piece at Bloomberg on what’s holding back American manufacturing.

It’s not labor costs.

My host, a NASA engineer turned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has just conducted a fascinating tour of his new clean-energy bench-scale test facility. It’s one of the Valley’s hottest clean-technology startups. And he’s already thinking of going abroad.

“Wages?” I ask.

His dark eyebrows arch as if I were clueless, then he explains the reality of running a fab — an electronics fabrication factory. “Wages have nothing to do with it. The total wage burden in a fab is 10 percent. When I move a fab to Asia, I might lose 10 percent of my product just in theft.”

I’m startled. “So what is it?”

“Everything else. Taxes, infrastructure, workforce training, permits, health care. The last company that proposed a fab on Long Island went to Taiwan because they were told that in a drought their water supply would be in the queue after the golf courses.”

Liberal Fascism and Obama’s Sparta

January 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

First, read Jonah Goldberg’s groundbreaking Liberal Fascism.  It will change how you look at political rhetoric.

Now, go over to National Review Online, where  Goldberg takes apart last week’s State of Union.  It’s eye-opening.

He said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but for Spartan exceptionalism.

It’s far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn’t want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

Read the whole thing.  (And the book.)

Save Us From the Nannies

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here’s John Stossel on Michelle Obama’s latest ($3.2 billion) plan to ‘reduce “fatty, salty, sugary foods” from public schools and replace them with mouthwatering items like “jicama,” and Rachael Ray’s “turkey tacos.”‘

As Stossel points out:

Sounds swell. Kids stripped of the freedom to make bad choices will have no choice but to shape up.

Of course, that’s an assumption based on feelings and good intentions. It’s not like there’s science behind it.

(It turns out that there’s no correlation between childhood obesity and the food served in public schools.)

Reuters: Not Just Hackery, Incompetence (and hackery)

January 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Apparently they don’t have editors at Reuters.  Or fact-checkers.  Or journalists.

The errors in this hit piece on Senator Marco Rubio are simply dumbfounding.  Matt Lewis found seven factual errors.

And we’re not just talking about minor errors.  In a piece designed to make Rubio look like he has financial problems, Reuters claims that the Senator has missed payments on his home and his student loans.  He hasn’t.  (Almost comical: They report that Rubio voted against Sonia Sotomayor.  Rubio wasn’t even in the Senate when she was confirmed.)

Powerline calls it the “Worst News Story of 2012.”

Reuters’ theme is that Rubio criticizes extravagant federal spending and deficits, but has had financial problems himself. The article is basically one false statement after another, leavened with quotes from Democratic strategists.

At Politico, Dylan Byers reports that:

Reuters is still kicking itself over an article about Republican golden boy Senator Marco Rubio that yielded five corrections yesterday and may have warranted more.

One senior staffer at Reuters described the episode to me as a “fiasco,” another as a “disgrace.”

It was so bad, in fact, that the editors and writer involved have been asked not to talk about it. (I reached out to editors David Lindsey and Eric Walsh, but have not heard back.)

Powerline also speculates on a motive:

This is, of course, battlefield preparation. Reporters know that Rubio is going to be a major player on the national scene, so they are doing what they can to protect their party by taking him down a peg.

What Newt and Rick Have Done

January 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

For more than 20 years, Republican candidates have tacitly accepted the biases of the media and popular culture.  They’ve softened their rhetoric on education, social issues, “green energy”, the social welfare state and foreign policy, becoming politically-correct caricatures of conservatism.  The tone has been almost apologetic.

No more.

Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum* have put forward a blueprint for Republicans:  When facing down the media, the establishment and the left, do not play on their turf, using their language, accepting their biases within their rigged system.

Gingrich has been blunt, direct and unapologetic.  When challenged, he has punched back.  Santorum has engaged voters with an encyclopedic knowledge of policy and political theory.

Political consultants would tell Gingrich to be “nicer” and “softer.”  They’d tell Santorum that he shouldn’t “talk over the voters heads.”  They’d want both to adopt fuzzy, dumbed-down, focus-grouped sound bites.

No more.

The lesson for Republican candidates: Talk directly to the voters, unequivocally and forcefully and with a fearless conviction that conservative philosophy is right and good and effective and honorable.

No more apologies.

 

*I have spent the past few weeks as an consultant to the Santorum campaign.

Welcome Ken Davenport

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

We’re thrilled to introduce Ken Davenport, who will be contributing to the blog here at malloryfactor.com.

(Ken’s one of those guys who should be a professional columnist, but he’s too busy starting companies, creating jobs and driving the economy.)

PJMedia.com Op-Ed on the New Hampshire Yard Signs

January 5, 2012 By 1 Comment

I have a full op-ed over at PJMedia.com today building on my “Telling Signs in New Hampshire” post from last week.

Here is a secret: If you want to predict a general election, count the number of Republican yard signs in “purple” neighborhoods.

Take a drive through an upper-middle class community in a swing state. Find the subdivision where there’s a coffee shop on the corner and an organic grocery store not too far away, ideally where the Priuses outnumber the SUV’s… but not by much. Find the block where the adults are academics, professionals, or government employees and where every household has a couple of kids in the public schools. The voter breakdown in the ideal “purple” neighborhood is about a third Republican, a third Democrat, and a third independent.

…

Now count the Republican yard signs. Signs are not polling data, and they are certainly not election returns, but a yard sign is a definitive measure of three things: Support (obviously); intensity; and –  most importantly  — a voter’s willingness to make his political opinions known to his neighbors. A yard sign — especially in a “hostile” environment — is a symbol of political courage, a sign of an impending shift in public opinion.

The early returns are in.  Read the whole thing.

Two Factors That Will Affect the Final Iowa Numbers

January 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Here’s a pretty good video explaining how caucuses work.

There are a couple of other things to keep in mind.

1. The first line of the explanation on the video is: “If you show up here tonight…”  This is the point I made the other day.

The advantage goes to the candidates whose supporters have been to caucus before and who have deep roots in their communities.  Remember, caucus sites are in churches, community centers and schools.  (There are no more living room caucuses because of ADA requirements.) [Read more...]

New Hampshire Polling

January 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Magellan Strategies:

  1. Romney 41%
  2. Paul 21%
  3. Gingrich 12%
  4. Huntsman 12%
  5. Santorum 4%
  6. Bachmann 4%
  7. Perry 3%

New Hampshire is setting up to be a big momentum state for the Romney Campaign on January 10th.  New Hampshire primary voters in the past have produced some surprise winners but currently that does not appear to be the case in 2012.

Romney’s numbers have been solid throughout.  The race is for second place… and the sub-hed in the story on Romney’s win.  The Santorum/Bachmann/Perry ideological grouping adds up to 11%, but expect some extreme volatility in slots 2-5 in the days following tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses.

Santorum’s South Carolina “Underground” Strength

January 2, 2012 By 8 Comments

I haven’t seen anyone in the national media covering this, but… Rick Santorum’s (already formidable) grassroots organization in South Carolina is just the tip of the iceberg.

Santorum has been in South Carolina a lot over the past two years.  While other candidates have rolled through the state with over-produced campaign appearances that insulate them from all but the highest-level party leadership, Santorum has been in dozens (hundreds?) of living rooms and spoken at – and hung around after – every Republican meeting, breakfast or picnic.

(Stop me when this starts to sound familiar, Iowans.) [Read more...]

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