Tag Archives: Kennedy

Outsourcing – A Communist Plot? Remember Khrushchev?

Image of DEC VAX chip, showing Cryllic inscription "When you care enough to steal the best."

CVAX ... When you care enough to steal the very best

Mark Landler and Edward Wong, covering Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s trip to the US, in the New York Times, Feb 14, With Edge, U.S. Greets China’s Heir Apparent, wrote,

“On the list of American concerns, Mr. Biden said, were China’s artificially depressed currency and conditions imposed by the Chinese that require foreign companies to turn over technology in return for doing business in China. He raised the issue of jailed Chinese dissidents and … Syria”

In Inflaming Trademark Dispute, Second City in China Halts Sales of the iPad, published in the NY Times, Feb. 14, 2012, Michael Wines wrote:

“The authorities in a second Chinese city have begun seizing iPads from local retailers in an escalating trademark dispute between Apple and Proview Technology. … The seizures follow a ruling in December in which a court in Shenzhen dismissed Apple’s contention that it owned the iPad name in China. … Proview has also made a filing with the General Administration of Customs in China putting Apple on notice that the company could seek to block the export of iPads, should Proview’s ownership claims be upheld. … the seizures and the filing are warnings by Proview of the havoc it could wreak unless Apple agrees to pay a large fee to settle the trademark fight. … Paradoxically, China’s intellectual property laws are so sweeping that they allow the government to ban the worldwide sale of any made-in-China product that is found to violate a Chinese patent, trademark or other protection.”

Remember back during the cold war, when Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev said “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” ( various quotes by Kruschev).

And later when the American computer company DEC, in response to reverse engineering of VAX computers by Soviet computer scientists inscribed, in Russian,“CVAX, … When you care enough to steal the very best” on the CVAX microprocessors. (Links: TRAILING EDGE.com, CNET, FSU.edu.)

Suppose Khrushchev had called John Kennedy, on the occasion of John Glenn’s orbit in the Friendship 7, February 20, 1962,  here, or Leonid Brezhnev had called Richard Nixon, after Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned from the moon in Apollo 11, July 24, 1969, Apollo 11, or Mikhail Gorbachev had answered Ronald Reagan’s call to “tear down this wall,” and said

“Mister President, I have business proposition for you: Let us to build your consumer goods. We have factories with skilled laborers. Our workers are like children, so eager to please. (Ok, they are children.) We can more or less match your quality control. We can deliver on time. And we do this for pennies on the dollar – pennie!

“All we ask is you give us designs for the products, and computer software source code for computers and telecommunications de-wices we assemble. It will be great Soviet / American partnership.”

Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan would have said

“Give you our designs? Our software? That’s our intellectual property? Are you nuts? That would be crazy!”

Premiers Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev might have answered,

“But our labor costs are much lower than yours. We have workers in factories, happy workers in the ‘Worker’s Paradise.’ Why. workers in our factories in Siberia work 7 days a week. And for little more than food and water. Go on strike? Never! (If they did we would shoot them.) You won’t have to pay them union scale or retirement benefits.”

Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan would still have said

“Give you our designs? Our software? Our intellectual property? So you can use children and slave labor to build our consumer goods? That would destroy our middle class. That would be nuts.”

And they would have been right.

So how exactly are the Chinese communists different from the Soviet communists?

We wouldn’t outsource to the Soviet Union. Why are we outsourcing to China?

Reagan's Beliefs, America's Folly

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko

Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in the film "Wall St."

Cynicism is fashionable.  But Gordon Gekko Was Wrong! Greed is Not Good!

Presidents, whether Republican or Democratic, always speak about Service, and when talking about wars,  they speak of Sacrifice, and The Ultimate Sacrifice.  Many approach their role from that perspective as well. George H. W. Bush, for example, approached politics from the traditional Conservative perspective of service. He also tried to spur volunteerism – the 1000 points of light.

But Reagan believed in Hoover’s fallacy, in the rugged individualist riding off into the sunset.  What he didn’t understand is that those iconoclastic rugged individualists ride horses descended from wild beasts tamed thousands of years ago. Their horseshoes are made by blacksmiths. Their guns are made in factories. Their boots, clothes, and other gear are made in other workshops or factories. These rugged individualist, giants as they might be, stand on the shoulders of others.

You don’t teach kids to swim by pushing them off a pier. They don’t  need flotation devices in 15 cm of water, either. What they need is someone to show them how, in waist deep water, and to say, “This is how it’s done. Why don’t you try? And don’t worry, I’ll make sure you don’t drown.”

The code of the Good Samaritan was simple: “Help when help is needed.”

Indeed, this is the common thread of 3000 years of human moral thinking, beginning with Abraham, Moses and Jesus in the West; Confucius and the Budda in the East. Continue reading →

25 Dead in W. Virginia Coal Mine Accident

Police, Emergency, and Concerned Citizens

Police, Emergency, and Concerned Citizens

Monday, April 4, 2010, in West Virginia, at least 25 coal miners were killed and another four remain unaccounted for in a methane gas explosion in a coal mine owned by Massey Energy. As reported in the NY Times, “In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch due to dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. … the disaster has raised new questions about Massey’s attention to safety under the leadership of its pugnacious chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, and also why stricter federal laws, put into effect after a mining disaster in 2006, failed to prevent another tragedy.”

Is this a pattern of behavior? Does it establish a callous attitude or criminal intent?

In January, Charleston, W. Virginia, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. debated Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

Kennedy argued again and again that the coal industry is indirectly subsidized by society. “Every single waterway in our country is contaminated with mercury,” and 70 percent of it is from coal-burning power plants, he said. (click here).  Kennedy concluded by pointing out Massey’s own reports of 12,900 violations of the federal Clean Water Act in a single year, and asked, “Is it possible to do mountaintop removal mining without violating the Clean Water Act?” (here). Blankenship shrugged and responded that complying with regulations is too expensive.

We need to do is transform the coal industry into a wind and solar industry.