A thread (eleven in all) from Marco Rubio on X well worth reading. In my words, not his … we are a country, not an economy. This is heresy to free-market ideologues like the Koch-bots, who believe that the “free market” is the end, NOT the means to an end … that end being a stronger, more prosperous country for ALL Americans, not just for Wall Street and Big Tech and the corporatist/globalist class.

It seems my recent articles on industrial policy in @PostOpinions and @NationalAffairs have ruffled some feathers. @JonahDispatch @veroderugy @ericboehm87 @cpgrabow

A short on how free-market fundamentalists go off the rails. 1/11

— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) April 12, 2024

Unrolled Thread

It seems my recent articles on industrial policy in @PostOpinions and @NationalAffairs have ruffled some feathers. @JonahDispatch @veroderugy @ericboehm87 @cpgrabow

A short on how free-market fundamentalists go off the rails. 1/11 

First, as a re-cap, my argument is that markets are efficient, but don’t always work in the best interests of our country – especially when adversaries like China skew global markets in their favor with theft and subsidies. That’s not good for America. 2/11  None of the critics offer a solution to this. They seem not to be bothered by America’s dependence on Communist China for everything from our medicines to the electronics we use in our missiles. They also seem to think America’s industrial base, and our workers, are basically fine. 3/11  No, really. As one of my critics put it, the “supposed” decline of American industry “is an imagined problem.” Tell that to the millions of American workers who lost their jobs after free traders let China into the WTO. 4/11  But let’s address the criticisms. How is our industrial base really doing? Output has stagnated the past decade and a half. Productivity has declined. Employment has plummeted. And America’s share of the world market for key goods, from cars to steel, has cratered. If that’s health, I’d hate to see sickness. 5/11  The critics claim industrial policy can never work. One says “if anything can go wrong, it probably will.” If that were really the case, then Neil Armstrong never would have walked on the Moon. But industrial policy worked then, just as it has in many other cases the critics refuse to acknowledge. 6/11  Can industrial policy go wrong? Of course. But doing nothing means letting nationless corporations and foreign adversaries dictate the terms of our economy. Only the federal government has the ability – and duty – to check those forces. 7/11  All the Founders understood this. The first bill they passed was a tariff. Ronald Reagan understood it, too. He hiked tariffs to stop Japan from destroying the American auto industry via subsidized export dumping. 8/11  In the end, free-market fundamentalists are a lot like progressives, because they are more subservient to ideologies (free-trade ideology on the one hand, climate-change and DEI ideology on the other) than they are to the national interest. 9/11  Deindustrialization has wreaked havoc on the working class, made us less resilient, and corrupted our culture. I welcome debate on how best to strengthen our national security and economy. 10/11 

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Last week, the Dover City Council did its part to support world Peace. I’m sorry. What I meant to say is that it posed and postured in a meaningless dance with no relevance to the business of the people of that city. Wait.

Sorry again.

Many in Dover are just as woke as those they elect, so there was meaning. Liberals in government voted to make sure liberals outside the government know they opposed whatever the hell is happening in Gaza as if that had meaning.

It was a bifurcated City Council meeting this week, part debate, part regular meeting. More than half of it was taken up by the contentious Gaza ceasefire resolution. The rest was advancing routine, non-controversial city business.

CEASEFIRE: Councilors April Richer and Robbie Warach sponsored the resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I moved to remove the ceasefire resolution from the agenda as not germane to city business, but that attempt failed for lack of a second. During public forum, eight people spoke in support of the resolution and five spoke against. Comments were civil. Council discussion of the resolution took 27 minutes. Every councilor addressed the issue. The vote to pass the resolution was 7-1 by a show of hands – not a recorded roll-call vote as is customary (see picture above). I was the only councilor to vote no. (One councilor was absent.) Dover is now an outlier on this. The only other NH city that adopted a similar resolution was Lebanon, where three of seven members abstained. Manchester voted 14-1 against taking it up. Portsmouth voted 7-2 against considering it. All other cities have refused to put it on the agenda, including Nashua, Concord, and Rochester.

I didn’t look, but I expect that Dover stands with Ukraine, supported BLM, and the seasoned criminal who overdosed on Fentanyl, Saint George Floyd. Dover knows it isn’t easy on taxpayers, being green (and doesn’t care about the cost), and in their schools and public libraries, they defend allowing kids to have access to pornography.

I’m sure they think elections aren’t rigged except when Democrats insist or that J6 was actually an insurrection despite the lack of organized military leadership and the absence of any weapons.

Dover likes pride flags more than the American flag, has a growing distrust of free speech, loves mask mandates and lockdowns, and thinks everyone should get vaccinated (and maybe still does).

And they support a ceasefire in Gaza.

It is the first time I can recall them ever resolving that Hamas should stop launching rockets into southern Israel, even though that’s not what they mean. I’m also wondering if they will resolve that the United States should stop funding wars in the Middle East. Dover-Like Liberals were very much against that sort of thing when Republicans ran the government. Perhaps they could resolve that one way to ensure a cease-fire is for American Taxpayers not to have to pay for the ordinance necessary not to cease firing.

Or not. This is Dover.

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