Massachusetts senatorial candidate and all around phoney, Elizabeth Warren released a new ad the other day admiring the way the Chinese spend 9% of their GDP on roads and bridges.<\/p>\n
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For those of you who may not follow Massachusetts politics, Elizabeth Warren is running against Scott Brown for what was known as the \u201cKennedy Senate Seat.\u201d Ms. Warren was the one who first came up with the \u201cYou didn\u2019t build it<\/a>\u201d meme that Der Fubar used a few weeks ago at a campaign stop. While the SCoaMF has been trying to walk back that regrettable instance of truth telling, Warren has doubled down on it. She has released a new campaign ad praising the People\u2019s Republic of China for their work on their roads and bridges.<\/p>\n Here are the details from the New York Sun<\/a>:<\/p>\n Elizabeth Warren Praising Communist China as a Model for America<\/p>\n Massachusetts residents who tuned in to the Olympics opening ceremony saw a new 30-second campaign commercial from the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, that said America should be more like Communist China.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve got bridges and roads in need of repair and thousands of people in need of work. Why aren\u2019t we rebuilding America?\u201d asks Ms. Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School who served in the Obama administration. \u201cOur competitors are putting people to work, building a future. China invests 9% of its GDP in infrastructure. America? We\u2019re at just 2.4%. We can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n The ad juxtaposes robust Chinese cranes and dump trucks with decaying American bridges and idle but sympathetic-looking American workers wearing hard-hats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Where should I start? How about with a little due diligence? First, I am married to a Chinese citizen and legal immigrant. I have been to China and I have traveled on some of their roads. They are in good shape and appear to be well made. (I\u2019m not a civil engineer) However, there is one major difference here. China is building new infrastructure, not repairing current infrastructure. Why is that? Because they didn\u2019t have any infrastructure in the first place. Here\u2019s a bit more from the story.<\/p>\n Professor Warren\u2019s approach is so flawed that it\u2019s amazing that her campaign would spend the money on putting it into a prime-time Olympics commercial that was presumably designed not to alienate people but rather to get them to vote for her. You really have to see it to believe it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Allow me to show it to you.<\/p>\n [youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pFbBDilOizA&[\/youtube]<\/p>\n Oh brother. Once again, Fauxahontas ((Fauxcahontas Warren<\/a>)) got it wrong.<\/p>\n The first problem is mathematical. U.S. gross domestic product is about $15 trillion a year. Increasing infrastructure \u201cinvestment\u201d to the 9% Chinese level that Ms. Warren cites would mean an additional $1 trillion a year in government spending. That\u2019s an immense spending increase. To put it in context, the entire federal government spent about $3.6 trillion in 2011, on revenues of about $2.3 trillion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s another issue as well. Working on major construction sites, such as roads & bridges is NOT unskilled, shovel ready work. These jobs involve heavy machinery and skills you take years to learn. You can\u2019t just higher a million people and send them out to work on the roadways. They won\u2019t know what to do. And then there\u2019s the costs.<\/p>\n Where would this money come from? Not tax increases, right? Ms. Warren has already reportedly promised nearly a trillion dollar tax increase, spread over ten years, by raising the estate tax, imposing the Buffett Rule, and letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning $250,000 a year or more. But that money, she has said, would go toward deficit reduction. If Ms. Warren really wants to spend $1 trillion a year more on infrastructure, she\u2019d need to eliminate all national defense spending ($705 billion) or all Social Security spending ($730 billion) and then find another more than quarter trillion dollars. Or else she\u2019d have to go on the biggest borrowing or taxing binge in American history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fauxahontas is a Liberal Democrat. Of COURSE she\u2019s going to propose massive tax increases, borrowing and spending. Being a Progressive Liberal Democrat is never having to be fiscally responsible.<\/p>\n China is able to spend so much on infrastructure because it\u2019s an un-free country. It lacks the rule of law that lets American community groups wage legal and political battles against big government projects. Ms. Warren may protest that when she\u2019s talking about \u201cinfrastructure\u201d she mainly means maintaining existing roads and bridges, not building brand new projects that flatten urban neighborhoods or destroy scenic rivers. But that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening in China.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n China is moving from a third world nation to a first world nation economically. That means they have to do a lot of building. They aren\u2019t going to let things like environmental impact statements or the fact that people might be living someplace they want to build stand in their way. Here you can file a lawsuit to slow or stop a project.<\/p>\n One of the ironies here is that some of the lawyers opposing big proposed American infrastructure projects on environmental or eminent domain or racial discrimination grounds were trained by Ms. Warren and her colleagues at Harvard Law School and at other similar institutions like the University of Chicago, where Barack Obama taught after attending Harvard Law School.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And the primary reason they do these suits is to basically wreck the economy and destroy the United States in it\u2019s current form. (A free constitutional republic that utilizes the free enterprise system)<\/p>\n Such opposition, sometimes spurious, can succeed in delaying and raising the cost of private development projects even if the opponents ultimately do not prevail in court or in the political process. Free-market fans tend to like the eminent domain suits and dislike the ones about snail darters, and it is a distinction worth maintaining.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A case in point is the destruction of the farming industry due to a 2\u201d fish called the Delta Smelt.<\/p>\n Responding to a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, the Bush administration, in December 2008, agreed to divert more than 150 billion gallons of water this year from the fertile Central Valley to the San Joaquin Delta in an effort to protect the endangered Delta smelt ((Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow<\/a>)).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That disaster cost thousands of jobs and destroyed some of the most productive farmland in the country. This isn\u2019t a problem in China. If it\u2019s a choice between building a new bridge and a fish, the bridge will win.<\/p>\n