I wonder what Farmington Valley residents think of Andrew Roraback’s strident opposition to the the Malloy administration’s bioscience initiative, an investment that will bring hundreds of jobs — and homeowning taxpayers to their backyard. Roraback, a Republican running for Congress to represent the Farmington Valley and the rest of the 5th District, blasted the nearly $300 million bioscience investment at the UConn Health Center yesterday when it won final approval.
Chris Keating reports that Roraback said the state ”ought to create a lot more jobs for a lot less money” when it is spending tax dollars on the Jackson Labs project:
It’s more than $3 million per scientist … We are at risk for this becoming a giveaway.
Roraback, a solid and moderate Republican, distorts the project as he panhandles for votes on the right. He knows the investment is not about 300 jobs for Jackson Labs. It is about the thousands of additional jobs and a new state industry that will be created through the investment, a partnership between universities, the state and Jackson Labs.
Everybody is outraged and disgusted by our divisive politics, from Jewish bubbies in Florida to AT’s own Rick Moran. The rest of us just think that President Obama is incompetent. “Obama doesn’t have the experience, character, or personality to be president. To put it flatly: he’s in over his head.” That’s Barry Rubin.
And if he’s not incompetent he is polarizing, writes Peter Wehner. And that from the candidate whose “core claim”
wasn’t simply that he would heal the planet; he would also heal the nation’s political breach. He would elevate the national debate. Reason would prevail over emotion… Obama would “turn the page” on the “old politics” of division and anger.
Sorry to disagree, but I am not disgusted. I don’t believe that the president is incompetent. And I don’t believe he has reneged on his promise of bringing us together. To me, everything about President Obama makes sense.
First of all, the division. Our national politics is in a space very like the 1850s just before the showdown over slavery. You remember the history. For 60 years, ever since the ratification of the Constitution, the South had refused to discuss slavery, and would stage a tantrum if anyone raised the subject. Eventually the North got fed up and organized an explicitly anti-slavery party. It was called the Republican Party.
But why was the South so intransigent when “everybody knew” that slavery was immoral? The simple answer is that business was too good. Slavery was profitable, very profitable for the South.
The same thing applies to today’s America. “Everybody knows” that the welfare state is finished, but the peculiar institution is profitable, very profitable — for liberals. Look at usgovernmentspending.com. Liberals get to spend $4 trillion a year on their favorite programs. Conservatives get $1 trillion a year for defense. Why would liberals give up on a deal like that without a fight?
Nor is the president incompetent. He is doing exactly what his liberal base wants him to do. He is doing Keynesian stimulus, taking care that most of it goes to Democrats. He is doing clean energy, regulating the environment, canceling pipelines, carrying water for unions, cutting defense. He has held off Republicans that want to cut and slash spending. He is a liberal dream.
Polarizing? Look, if you are a liberal, the problem is Republicans. We would have sweetness and light if only those bigoted, mean-spirited, racist Republicans weren’t opposing the president at every turn. What this nation, this anti-intellectual nation, needs is a national conversation on civility, led by its educated class.
In this 1850s rerun, the Republican Party is reinventing itself as the anti-liberal party. That means division, because liberals are the ruling class that has run America as a very profitable plantation for the last 70 years, and they are not going without a fight. What’s ahead for America, in consequence, is a classic Clausewitzean “decisive battle.”
President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week was about battlefield preparation. He is taking his party back to the old Progressive totem of the “moral equivalent of war.” Jonah Goldberg: “Ever since William James coined the phrase ‘the moral equivalent of war,’ liberalism has been obsessed with finding ways to mobilize civilian life with the efficiency and conformity of military life.” George Will chimes in as well: “Onward civilian soldiers, marching as to war.”
Likewise the president’s fairness argument. “Fairness” is how liberals talk to the American people. To each other, they talk about “inequality.” There is another word they like: “exploitation.” They use that one on the masses. But the words all mean the same thing. Liberals don’t like the economic results of 200 years of capitalism in which the daily income went from $3 per head per day to over $100 per day, and they don’t like the results of the 20th century which began with the rich fatter than the poor and ended with the poor fatter than the rich. Invisible hand? It’s a myth, say liberals. What we have here is exploitation:
In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [capitalism] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
There’s a harsh logic to this. Ever since Karl Marx, liberals have rebelled against the fat, sloppy way of voluntary cooperation that leaves no room for political power and civilian soldiers. So voluntary cooperation must go. Forget about humans as social animals. Think soldier ants.
The great achievement of President Obama is to present his vision so clearly: America as a progressive ant-hill.
Here’s an alternative vision. How about America as a city on a hill, a beacon, a magnet for all those who must have freedom?
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism.
It’s a dicey investment. I stongly believe CT should target 4 or 5 high tech niche markets for public private partmership with UConn and Yale and others. CT needs to reach the critical mass of expertise point that worked so well in Insurance for years. CT then becomes a destination for technology.
It’s still dicey.
Continue funding CT Innovations and fast tracking companies, providing seed money to students from the like of UConn, Yale and MIT to build a Silicon Valley North (or at least one of the most favorable economies for start ups) with all the support services including venture capital.
There’s no sure answers but sitting still is a recipe for Rust Belt decline.
Rick, what the heck makes you so sure that this Jackson Lab deal “is about the thousands of additional jobs and a new state industry that will be created through the investment, a partnership between universities, the state and Jackson Labs.”
How are you so sure that this will work? Are you simply believing what the State says, just because?
What did the State’s investment in Pfizer do for New London?
Sen. Roraback is right to ask these questions and you should, too.
There’s 2-things to consider..Number-1 is projects..Number-2 payroll../Connecticut seems a total BOOB–on projects..and if you call payola,payroll-your just kidding some-one..it most likely becomes the VOTE–or the voter–who in turn becomes the sucker..
Jobs need to be there,but there just isn’t any evidence that Connecticut has any real smarts..JUST–alot of baloney and dreams.
The issue is not simply whether the return on investment is good… and we all know that, in this instance, it isn’t. It’s whether the State should pick, then underwrite, the winners and losers. If the same investment,and all other such stimuli, were returned to every existing and prospective business in CT in the form of reduced taxes, we’d see real, sustainable and widespread growth. The market knows best. Even the small business incentives on the table put decisions best left to the free market into a political process, sure to be as tainted as all eventually become.
Sen. Roraback is right to ask these questions. Even with a multiplier of 4, the total jobs created would be 1500, or $200,000 per job. Add to that the cost in forgiven property tax and you have a long term liability. And it’s not as though our educational system is producing many technically competent employees.
If the state really wanted new technical jobs, it would create a better tax environment, better educational standards for math and science, and a labor force without crippling wages and work rules.
For a different perspective look at NY and the investment in Nanotechnology in Albany.
The strategy in 2001 was simple: Build the world’s finast academic institution concentrating on next generation nanoscience. Invest in the necessary infrastructure and offer tax breaks for private public partnerships to transition from lab to manufacture.
Now they are harvesting: it’s THE place for US Chips companies to MANUFACTURE this next decade’s cutting edge nano-technology.
Over $6 billion in new projects were announced last year in little old Albany.
http://tinyurl.com/84dqvqw
CT needs to execute in a similar manner with 4 or 5 leading edge, next generation technologies.
I’ve got my money on Willard and his Mutant Mice.
“I’ve got my money on Willard and his Mutant Mice”
Yes you do….and apparently my money also….
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