9/21/2008
James Taranto on Friday pointed out the irony and humor of the latest Obama ad, which “highlights the closure of Corning Inc.’s plant in State College, Pa., and accuses Washington with Sen. John McCain’s help of selling out the workers.” Now, while it is sad that a Corning plant is closing, the fact that Obama would use THIS particular plant for his ad tells me yet again how little time his army of staff members takes to research their material before putting it on air for Americans to view.
What did this Corning plant manufacture? “Glass tubes for television sets and computer monitors.”So, Corning closed a plant that manufactured glass tubes in the new age of LCD and plasma. Unfortunately, they were probably not able to retool that plant to do other things, but blaming Washington and Senator McCain for this?
I have an idea for Senator Obama’s next ad. He should blame Washington and Senator McCain for the iPhone! After all, that utilizes that new-fangled LCD technology which helped close the corning plant AND it’s likely that this kind of technology is eventually going to cause some paper plants to close! The horror…. The horror!
One other quick thought here. What would Senator Obama do to prevent the closure and sale of a plant (all the equipment was shipped off to china) overseas; even some other plant manufacturing relevant materials? I’ve heard that his plan is to “get rid of tax breaks for companies which move overseas.”
But the corning plant wasn’t moving their plant overseas. Rather, they found a Chinese firm that was willing to buy their old equipment, so sold it to make some additional profit. But how can you force companies to stay here in the US?
What McCain has proposed, which makes sense to me, is to give tax breaks for companies who open up plants here in the US. You do that in a very simple way, lower the corporate tax rate from the current rate of 35%, which is the second highest corporate rate in the world, and make it competitive with the world market. Say about 20% or 25%.
Senator Obama doesn’t like this because it means that Washington might take less in on taxes. But it also means, in the long run, more jobs here in the US. American workers are some of the most productive in the world. We work longer hours, and get more done than the most other nations.
So, with a competitive corporate tax rate and a highly productive and plentiful work force, why wouldn’t companies want to move their plants here? So, should we follow Obama’s idea of creating an “Iron Economic Curtain,” or should we tell the world instead that we are open for business?
I know which strategy I prefer!
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