The article How to Make an American Job Before It’s Too Late is written by Andy Grove.  He is one of the founders of and a long time CEO and Chairman of Intel.  You may know Intel as the maker of 80% of the computer central processing units in the world.  You may recognize the acronym CPU or the model name Pentium.

He is concerned with the deindustrialization of the US economy and the consequent loss of innovation in this country.

He puts the details and authority around some of the trends that I have been worried about for many years.

Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system — the freer, the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better.

He starts to indicate what modifications are needed when he says:

The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent- shattering economic performances over the 1970s and 1980s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.

You may think that he is just too naive to understand the perils of a planned economy.  See if this history of his changes your mind:

I fled Hungary as a young man in 1956 to come to the U.S. Growing up in the Soviet bloc, I witnessed first-hand the perils of both government overreach and a stratified population. Most Americans probably aren’t aware that there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed. It was 1932; thousands of jobless veterans were demonstrating outside the White House. Soldiers with fixed bayonets and live ammunition moved in on them, and herded them away from the White House. In America! Unemployment is corrosive. If what I’m suggesting sounds protectionist, so be it.

Ayn Rand apparently had a similar history with planned economies in her youth.  When she came to this country, she never went through the experience of building a multi-billion dollar high tech company.  She didn’t have the opportunity to learn that her obsession over the evils of a planned economy would lead her to to an extreme obsession with unfettered capitalism that is almost equally as perilous.

Here is a personal email that I got from the President.

Steven — When you and I set out on this journey three years ago, we knew that ours would be a lengthy struggle to build a new foundation for this country — one that would require squaring off against the special interests who had spent decades stacking the deck in their favor. Today, it is clear that you have shifted the odds. This morning, I signed into law a bill that represents the most sweeping reforms of Wall Street since the Great Depression, and the toughest consumer financial protections this nation has ever seen. I know that I am able to do so only because the tens of thousands of volunteers who make up the backbone of this movement overcame the most potent attack ads and the most powerful lobbying the special interests could put forward. Our special-interest opponents and their Republican allies have now set their sights on the elections in November as their best chance to overturn the historic progress we’ve made together. Organizing for America counts entirely on supporters like you to fight back — no special interests, no corporate PACs. To keep making change and to defend the change we have already won, we need you — and at least 14 other people in your area — to contribute so we have the resources necessary going into the election. Can you donate $25 today and help Organizing for America lay the groundwork for the fights ahead? Because of Wall Street reform, we will ensure that Americans applying for a credit card, a mortgage, or a student loan will never again be asked to sign their name under pages of confusing fine print. We will crack down on abusive lending practices and make sure that lenders don’t cheat the system — and create a new watchdog to enforce these consumer protections. And we will put an end to taxpayer-funded bailouts, giving us the ability to wind down any large financial institution if it should ever fail. The passage of Wall Street reform is at the forefront of the change we seek, and it will provide a foundation for a stronger and safer economy. It is a foundation built upon the progress of the Recovery Act, which has turned 22 months of job losses into six consecutive months of private-sector job growth. And it is a foundation reinforced by the historic health reform we passed this spring, which is already giving new benefits to more than 100 million Americans, ushering another 1 million Americans into coverage by next year. But today’s victory is not where our fight ends. Organizing for America and I will move forward in the months ahead on the tough fights we have yet to finish — even if cynics say we should wait until after the fall elections. This movement has never catered to the conventional wisdom of Washington. And we have fought to ensure that our progress is never held hostage by our politics. You and I did not build this movement to win one election. We did not come together to pass one single piece of legislation. We are fighting for nothing less than a new foundation for our country — and that work is not complete. As we face the challenges ahead, I am relying on you to stand with me. Please donate $25 or more today: https://donate.barackobama.com/WallStreetReformed Thank you for helping us get here, President Barack Obama

Paid for by Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee — 430 South Capitol Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for income tax purposes.

USA Today is one of the many outlets carrying this story, Storm Rages Over Ousted Black Ag Official Accused Of Racism. CNN has posted a fuller version of the section of her speech that is causing the controversy.

After having CBS News report on this story and after reading this article, I posted this comment on the USA Today site.

You mean she was Rev. Wrighted? How shocking that someone could actually mislead the public by editing videos to demonstrate the opposite of the point that the speaker was making.

If the NAACP could be snookered, is it possible that Barack Obama was snookered when even he denounced Rev. Wright? I took the time to look at many of the entire Rev. Wright videos and I can attest to the snookering of the public.

Also in the USA Today article was this statement from the person who stirred this all up:

Breitbart told CNN today that releasing the video was “not about Shirley Sherrod. … “This was about the NAACP attacking the Tea Party, and this is showing racism at an NAACP event,” he said. “I did not ask for Shirley Sherrod to be fired.” He also denied editing the video, which was posted on his BigGovernment site.

Perhaps he is unaware of the definition of editing. When you choose to use only some of the pieces of a work for publication, it is called editing.  That is what film editors, newspaper editors, and book editors do.

I coined the term being Rev. Wrighted based on what I know about that situation. I have an overview blog post Please Help Fight Propaganda that gives links to some of my other posts on Rev. Wright. I wrote a few more posts about the topic after that.  See Rev. Jeremiah Wright Speaks Again and Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola—Nature, Accident or Intentional?

You can also search this site for everything about Wright.  A few of them are about topics other than Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The Presidents remarks about  Pushing For Up-Or-Down Vote On Help For Our Laid Off Friends & Neighbors are posted on the White House web site.

According to the Los Angeles Times article Obama pushes GOP to extend unemployment benefits:

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio fired back. In a prepared statement, Boehner said: “The president knows that Republicans support extending unemployment insurance, and doing it in a fiscally responsible way by cutting spending elsewhere in the $3-trillion federal budget.”

That has to be the dumbest idea the Republicans have ever had, and there is stiff competition for that honor. Republicans want to take some spending out of the budget that would have been used to hire people to do some useful work so that you can pay people for being unemployed.  I thought Republicans generally don’t favor disincentives to work.

Maybe even more stupid is the failure of any Democrat to harp on the Republican stupidity.

The article Obama’s Done A Lot, But Gets Little Credit For It; Why? appeared on the McClatchy web site.  I posted the following comment on their web site:

It is rather amazing that this story looks all around for explanations but some how missed looking in the mirror.

What role has the media played? What role has Faux Noise played?

How hard has the media worked to counter the obvious fantasy land that the Republican propaganda machine has tried to create. All they seem to do is give us stories of “he said, she said”. They never do any work to look at the objective truth about what “he said, or she said”..

Then the media wonder why they are losing their readers and viewers. Faux Noise claims to be expanding. Is that because they are not bland? They may be 100% wrong, but they are not bland. They are not too afraid to offend, so they can take a strong stand even if it is all a lie. Have the other media outlets tried a counter attack using the truth?

The article Thad Allen Tells BP Seabed “Seeping” and Demands More Monitoring says:

Adm. Thad Allen released a letter to BP Chief Managing Director Bob Dudley  tonight in which he demands that BP provide more monitoring information, citing “a detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head.”

I guess Murphy’s Law that Everything that could go wrong will go wrong has not been overturned by any District Court or Supreme Court in this country.

It seems odd that Thad Allen should have to send a letter to BP.  You’d think he could call the head of BP, get him out of bed, and demand answers.

You’ve got to listen to the  Interview With Gulf Oil Disaster Whistleblower & BP Nemesis, Kindra Arnesen.

According to OpEdNews:

Kindra Arnesen, outspoken critic of BP from Venice, Louisiana and advocate for the fishermen of the Gulf Coast and their families, indeed for all families in trouble from the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, was interviewed live on Hard Tail News of Freedomizer Radio by regular host “Doc” on July 15th. The topics include the new cap, BP coverups and double-crosses, toxic rain, oil plumes and hurricane impacts on the oil disaster.

If you believe half of what you hear in this interview, you will be shocked.  Because the video/audio comes from YouTube, it is broken up into 5 segments of about 10 minutes each.  Some of what you hear, you will not believe because it sounds too conspiratorial.  The part that you will find believable is bad enough.

The actual title of the article by Dr. Tom Termotto is Pressure At The Wellhead And What It Really Means.

The article raises a number of issues that arise from the BP oil well situation that you would not think of based on your experience of day-to-day circumstances with normal pressures and velocities of flows you see every day. The consequences of these issues may not be readily apparent for quite some time after things appear to have returned to normal.

It all makes sense.  However, you will have to judge for yourself whether you think Dr. Tom Termotto has the qualifications to be writing about this subject.  In the article are various links that you can follow to help you decide.  Of course there are links to other related articles that will tell you even more.

The above lecture, whose full title is The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class: Higher Risks, Lower Rewards and A Shrinking Safety Net, is by Dr. Elizabeth Warren.

According to an email I received, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is advising the White House not to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a watchdog agency she invented!

After viewing this lecture, you tell me if you would want someone like this in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

So what are you going to do about it? You could always sign a petition at boldprogressives.org.

In the Boston Globe article Brown’s jobless bill wins little support: Gets scant notice, even from GOP, Scott Brown is quoted as asking

“Why is it that I’m always the one that has to vote with the Democrats?” Brown lamented. “Bipartisanship is a two-way street, you know? Why can’t they also work together to pay for these things within the budget, within the monies that we already have? Why is it that we always have to add to the deficit?”

Why can’t Scott Brown understand economics?

You balance the budget when the economy is doing well. Stimulating the economy requires running a deficit.

Unemployment benefits are necessary to sustaining the people who receive them. Doing it by cutting somewhere else defeats the stimulative effect of paying these benefits.

Why can’t Scott Brown see that there are two reasons for extending unemployment benefits? Rather than rhetorically wondering why nobody will vote for his proposal, he ought to seriously look for answers to this question. There are plenty available. How about the other negative things he has in his bill? Might those be reasons for not voting for it in preference for the Democratic bill?

The article also mentions that:

In addition to the $35 billion in unspent money that he would divert from the overall $787 billion stimulus program, Brown would freeze food stamp increases and change Medicaid pricing for certain types of prescription drugs, providing $50.9 billion for the unemployment extension as well as summer jobs and a boost in Medicaid funding for states.

Do you suppose this has anything to do with the lack of support for his idea?