The Virus Chronicles (continued)

We Need an Industrial Policy

There are two great Republican curses. The first is — “That's socialism.” The second is — “That smacks of industrial policy, picking winners and losers.” There used to be a third, but “LIBERAL” has lost its meaning. The Republican Party, which has had a strong hand in all national policy since 1981, has ensured the United States has no industrial policy, or so it would like you to think. In fact we do have one, it's just a very bad one, unless you're agribusiness, a corn farmer, or any of a handful of favored industries. But as far as a policy that benefits the country and its citizens as a whole, one could say that we have a negative industrial policy, or one that benefits The Peoples Republic of China to our detriment. In the last forty years the American way of lawmaking has gone through a transition. During our last collaborative era, we created environmental and workplace safety laws, to the resistance, rather than in collaboration with industry, then informed industry that they'd better conform. We sent what amounted to OSHA and EPA thugs on surprise inspections (my father's shop experienced them). Our industries moved to better pastures in other countries such as China and Mexico. There they could avoid those pesky laws. That was our industrial policy — drive 'em out to clean up the environment. Corporate leadership doesn't care — they still profit.

The Democratic Party would be no better. Their idea of an industrial policy would be racial balance in the board room. We know this from their legislative initiatives. And one of the great hallmarks of the ill fated Hillary Care initiative, for those silly enough to have read the thing, was mandated racial balance in medical schools. Yipee! When it comes to the good of the country, I'd say their hearts are only halfway up their asses.

The right answer is that the country needs secure supply chains. It should be a lesson learned the hard way.

It's time to for our national leadership to care; our international supply chains are too fragile, and they lead right through our enemy, which has professed a desire to supplant the United States (see The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury). Our supply chains don't lead through our enemy because he has captured them through stealth. They lead through him because we have put them there just to save money, and in the process we are giving away our intellectual property as well. It is our national sin of self destruction.

Don't let the touchy feely internationalists kid you. The Chinese are not panda bears. They are racists, irredentists, and international criminals. It's time for a change, and the fools currently running the US government don't have the intelligence or the attention span to make that change. I'm not sure that the financiers have the desire. They would rather feed off the dying corpse of their country.