I had the following LTE published in the Detroit News on 4/28/04:
Greed and profits not same
"The April 15 editorial, "Stop the panic over higher gasoline prices," provides good common-sense data. But what is really needed is for Americans to reject the knee-jerk reaction that businessmen are always greedy and therefore evil.
If by greed we mean the irrational pursuit of wealth, then a close look at big business will reveal that greed rarely enters the picture. Irrational businessmen don't last long (unless they're protected by government).
Greed and the common practice of maximizing profits are not the same thing."
Michael Neibel
Left out was the following sentence and half: " But to properly defend businessmen, media like the Detroit News needs to start defending the profit motive more vigorously. A good start would be to editorialize on how greed and the common...."
That's really not too bad of an edit. Perhaps I should have omitted the direct reference to the Detroit News. I'll have to try that next time.
But the problem is most of the editorials in the slightly right of center paper only focus on the practical arguement, never on the moral arguement. They never editorialize on the businessman's right to earn profits especially big ones and that's what I'm trying to get the paper to focus upon. But I will just keep on trying.
******************************************
It's funny how coincidences happen. In my last post I bemoaned the fact that President Bush is woefully inadequate at attacking bad ideas. In today's 4/28/06 TIA Daily, Robert Tracinski complains:
"House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi is asserting that she sees a "cause and effect" relationship between George Bush and Dick Cheney's oil-industry background and rising gasoline prices. That's perfect leftist thinking: the substitution of Marxist conspiracy theories for the entire science of economics. Too bad Bush is granting the legitimacy of this hare-brained approach by authorizing a "price-gouging" investigation."
The last sentence illustrates my point. Mr. Bush grants legitimacy to every "hair-brained" idea the left can throw at him. In so doing he only grants to them a moral respectability they don't deserve, especially an intellectual quark like Pelosi.
******************************************
Mr. Bush's pramatism is showing itself in an article in the 4/28/06 print edition of the Detroit Free Press titled "Rights take backseat to oil, Iran" by AP writer Tom Raum. It starts:
"Searching for energy supplies and allies against Iran, the Bush administration is reaching out to leaders who rule nations that are rich in oil and gas but accused of authoritarian rule and human rights violations."
It looks to me like Bush's "Forward Strategy of Freedom" is taking a back seat to a new strategy of finding new oil supplies and he's not getting much cooperation. If he had flattened a few Mid East nations including Iran right after 9/11 he'd be getting all kinds of cooperation now.
******************************************
On the same page of the Free Press is another article. This one by Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder is about senators wanting FEMA abolished. It includes a picture of President Bush and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin standing next to each other on ladders hammering nails into the frame of a new house being built by volunteers. (Nagin is the guy who condemned Fema and Bush for not saving New Orleans.) The picture is eerie because it makes me think Bush has Carter in him. Now that's scary.
No comments:
Post a Comment