Intel is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Intel plans on investing $7 billion in building new manufacturing plants in America — and not one dime of that $7 billion nor one manufacturing plant will be in California
Does that worry the administrators of the People’s Republic of California?
California air regulators on Thursday broadened their reach into Silicon Valley, implementing rules intended to cut greenhouse gas emissions from semiconductor plants.The state Air Resources Board voted unanimously to regulate some of the most potent gases produced by the semiconductor industry, which makes chips for cell phones, computers and cars. [...]
Industry officials said the regulation will cost businesses some US$37 million at a time when the chip industry is grappling with falling global sales. They also argued that fluorinated gases already are being addressed under voluntary global agreements, although those targets are much weaker than the new California limits.
“To the extent California makes it more costly, more cumbersome, to operate here, you’re not going to attract these facilities in the future,” John Greenagel, a spokesperson at the San Jose-based Semiconductor Industry Association, said in a phone interview before Thursday’s hearing.
The reductions at semiconductor plants would account for less than 1 percent of the target California is trying to reach under the state’s 2006 global warming law, which is intended to cut greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.
Productive people can leave California to states friendlier to business, but where are the rest of you going to go if Obama’s economic-fascist budget passes intact? Make no mistake, Paul Krugman is gleeful at the demise of American exceptionalism.
If [Obama] can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course. [...]For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare [...]
This is budgeting we can believe in. [...]
[E]ven if fundamental health care reform brings costs under control, I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class. Whatever politicians may say now, there’s probably a value-added tax in our future.
Krugman, Ayers and ilk have never liked the American experiment. But how bad will the economy have to get, how draconian will the totalitarianism of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi troika have to get, before we decide to wise up and become Americans again?
Comment by The Sanity Inspector on 2/27 @ 3:28 pm #
The only way out is through.
Comment by JHoward on 2/27 @ 3:30 pm #
Which is about where we stand. Which is to say, right about now is when we stop trusting the looters running the store. The eternal question asked of power is if it’s incompetent or if it’s corrupt. The answer only shows us future intent; it says nothing about the nest effect of either.
Do we really need to see more?
A progressive friend insists all we need are The Right People and government will transform itself from a force that breaks things to one that invents productivity, rights, and property on a press out back and dispenses them to needy beneficiaries. I think that insistence is about to stop.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 2/27 @ 3:33 pm #
Has this country gone crazy?
Comment by happyfeet on 2/27 @ 3:34 pm #
I think it’s time to break shit.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 2/27 @ 3:34 pm #
Ask and ye shall receive:
http://www.rightwingnews.com/#post14618
Comment by ECM on 2/27 @ 4:03 pm #
Has this country gone crazy?
Yes.
Comment by pdbuttons on 2/27 @ 4:05 pm #
all the leaves are brown…
Comment by geoffb on 2/27 @ 4:19 pm #
Re: #1
Comment by geoffb on 2/27 @ 4:25 pm #
I leave room for the option that it is simply evil.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 2/27 @ 4:45 pm #
If you’re gonna die, die with your boots on
If you’re gonna try, well, stick around
Gonna cry, just move along
Comment by Jeffersonian on 2/27 @ 4:50 pm #
Our systems integration company is very strong in Arizona and New Mexico (not so much in California), so we’re in line to get a nice, fat chunk of that $7 billion thanks to California’s stupidity. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you dipshits throwing yourselves on the grenade for us.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/27 @ 4:53 pm #
California consider Californians to be problematic at best I think.
Comment by B Moe on 2/27 @ 4:55 pm #
Well, to put it bluntly, there is no way in hell I am paying you goons to beat the shit out of me on a wrestling mat, but I am going to try to make it up there to buy you guys a drink after.
Comment by happyfeet on 2/27 @ 4:59 pm #
Yes. Nobody better not beat up nobody cause of that does not promote comity.
Comment by router on 2/27 @ 5:01 pm #
i think californians should make california gov’t practice on sim city before they try to do something
Comment by B Moe on 2/27 @ 5:01 pm #
That was posted in the wrong thread.
Staying OT, I think I may have found the funniest thing on the internets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2BgjH_CtIA&e
Comment by router on 2/27 @ 5:02 pm #
it worked for the 3 stooges oh nevermind
Comment by Big D on 2/27 @ 5:28 pm #
What really pisses me off is that California will get away with this. They can run both citizens and businesses out of the state thereby decreasing the tax base and the feds will prop them up with “stimulus” cash.
Once again, dems show that to play by the rules is to be a chump.
Comment by Dan Collins on 2/27 @ 5:47 pm #
Dear California,
You’re getting a little seedy to play Cinderella, honey.
Sincerely,
Central Casting
Comment by dicentra on 2/27 @ 5:50 pm #
#5: N.O’Brain
John Hawkins is off a bit on his theory:
Their entire political philosophy is centered around making them feel good about themselves, not actually achieving anything. To a liberal, a policy that makes him feel good about himself, but that leads to millions of babies being born out of wedlock, thousands of Americans dying needlessly, of tens of millions of Americans losing their jobs is a good policy.
It’s common to hear conservative commentators talk about the “Nanny State” and the infantilization of America and how “liberals think you’re too stupid to handle firearms” and such.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. When it comes to people like Pelosi, Reid, and Obama, that ain’t it at all.
I just finished reading 1984 for the first time since high school. Near the end, after Winston Smith’s tormentor, O’Brien, has tortured him for some ungodly amount of time, he asks Winston if he knows why the Party does what it does.
Winston says that it’s because the human race is weak and needs governing.
O’Brien delivers a memorable shock and tells him not to be stupid. It’s power, he says, power not as a means but as an end. Pure, unadulterated power, and all the perqs and privileges and satisfaction that comes with exercising it.
They don’t want to disarm us because they think we’re stupid; they want to remove a threat to their power. Making people dependent on the system makes them weak and easy to control. Our prosperity makes us strong as individuals, but if the economy is demolished, we are weak.
Self-confident people are hard to control, but if we’re divided into interest groups and played off each other, we can be manipulated.
That the Welfare state is about power for the bigwigs is evidenced by their personal donation habits: Lefty politicians give little of their vast reserves to the poor but heap praise on those who are “generous” enough to extract boatloads of cash from the strong and give it to the weak. Thus ensuring that they stay weak.
Comment by John Cheshire on 2/27 @ 6:25 pm #
Well said dicentra. It is not about money, although it helps the process, it is about power.
It reminds me of this kid who lived down the street from me as a kid. We would get together during the halftime of Broncos games and play tackle football. This kid always had the nicest stuff and so he would bring his football and act like he was in charge because it was his ball. He would, without fail, throw a fit and take his ball and go home at some point…even if his team was winning. He did not care about the score he just wanted to be in charge. After a while we just brought one of our own tattered balls and declined to use his. He stopped coming around during halftime shortly after that.
Can Obama just take his ball and go home already?
Trackback by Fish Fear Me on 2/27 @ 7:00 pm #
The United States of Washington D.C….
While I scoff at the notion of the US as an empire in the world, there really is one being built right under our noses, and its imperial capital is Washington D.C. President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, combined with the……
Comment by ccoffer on 2/27 @ 7:02 pm #
Capitalism… God, how I loathe that word. It implies that leaving people to manage their own affairs is a government invention. Marx invented that word.
Fucker.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 2/27 @ 7:19 pm #
Talk to Jenny Granholm. We here in Michigan will be happy to give any semiconductor plants favorable power rates (despite the new regulations) and very favorable tax abatements for them to set up shop here. We have four seasons, great, universities, etc., etc.
Ann Arbor (UM) and East Lansing (MSU) are just short drives from the rolling hills and lakes of Livingston County. Seriously.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 2/27 @ 7:34 pm #
dicentra - yep, the desire for power. That always impacts on reality. Because with power comes paranoia, and then self-immolation. Human nature can’t be legislated or willed away.
O’Brien seems all-powerful, but he isn’t. And there is another party member maneuvering against him, and a hungry lesser seeking to remove him, and a paranoid upper seeing him as a threat.
Winston Smith made a mistake and was dealt with; O’Brien will make a mistake, or someone around him will, and the feeding frenzy will continue until they spend more time watching each other than anything else. And then they will die.
Comment by RC on 2/27 @ 10:37 pm #
Sad commentary that the next best shining hope for capitalism and personal freedom is eastern europe. We’ve totally forgotten what we were supposed to be about but at least they have a recent memory of what happens when you live under a socialist tyranny.
Comment by dicentra on 2/28 @ 12:32 am #
Because with power comes paranoia, and then self-immolation. Human nature can’t be legislated or willed away.
In the context of the novel, the Party was invincible. It was portrayed as a giant organism with individuals as the cells, which may be sloughed off or may become diseased from time to time, but the organism lives on.
So Orwell didn’t seem to think that totalitarianism would fail, but he didn’t count on the ennui and impotence that would overtake the leadership of the party. Maintaining that much power for that long is too draining. The USSR basically ran down and wore out. Entropy.
The healthy, energetic body of our free society will be destroyed by cancer within. You’re going along, feeling fine, and then suddenly the doctor says you have a
credit crisistumor and your life falls apart in that second. It’s all downhill from there.Comment by bour3 on 2/28 @ 12:33 am #
But how bad will the economy have to get, how draconian will the totalitarianism of [these things] have to get, before we decide to wise up and become Americans again?
I do not know the answer to these probing questions, but I have noticed the political pendulum in this country swings reliably from left to right to left to right again. I do expect, as a result of my astute observation of these things over time, because of the severity of this particular swing, this cycle will most likely be a short one. Be of good cheer. Americans do learn their lessons well, especially the lessons learned through mistakes. Some mistakes must be re-learned by new generations.
* ducks *
Comment by Topsecretk9 on 2/28 @ 12:34 am #
Whenever I think of Krugman I remember this is the dude that was duped by a hoax email produced by Jason Leopold about Enron even after Salon wrote the apology/retraction AND that Krugman was on the Enron payroll.
Comment by pdbuttons on 2/28 @ 12:39 am #
whenever i think of krugman i think girly- man who stutters and shifts in his seat
will not look u in the eye
let’s bring back a word
pussy!
Comment by bour3 on 2/28 @ 12:54 am #
Whenever I think of Krugman, I imagine stepping into a six foot pit so that we’re at eye level, and punching him, POW!, right in the face.
Comment by Mark A. Flacy on 2/28 @ 1:29 am #
And Ann Arbor has the annual hash bash. Can’t forget that.
Comment by thor on 2/28 @ 6:07 am #
Ooops, I hate to pop Duuuh-Dar’s r-wingy winky-winky proffer, but the last line in her linked article sorta does that by itself.
Intel is expanding its existing fabs, it was never considering building a new fab.
BTW, lowering the thermal footprint is all the rage nowadays, Duuuh-Dar, because the core expense of data centers is not hardware, it’s the monthly electric bill that comes with running the hardware. Green isn’t mean, loser, it’s the profit-green that’s the end game.
Comment by JHoward on 2/28 @ 7:52 am #
That’s cute and all, hor, but I think the point was that Intel has plants elsewhere quite possibly because of California’s foolishness.
Indeed, Intel’s D1D over the border in Oregon is converting to 32nm transistors now, D1C in Oregon will Q4 of this year, and Fab32 in Arizona and Fab11X in New Mexico will next year.
Intel also plans 22nm and 16nm production out through 2013. What’s interesting about that is that in 2005 Intel found beating their 5 atom-thick SiO2 gate at 65nm required switching them to Hafnium. So yeah, converting to anything smaller than 65nm is no mean feat.
California does indeed get none of that nearly $8B and appears to be relishing the environment that kept it out of Intel manufacturing prior. Point stands.
Comment by thor on 2/28 @ 8:09 am #
You’re all frilly panty poot, j-hor, and projecting a non-existent narrative, as usual.
Comment by JHoward on 2/28 @ 8:27 am #
Philistine, heal thyself. Recall that Saint Celene never approved of self-patting intellectual doorstops such as yourself.
Comment by Rusty on 2/28 @ 9:22 am #
Intel is expanding its existing fabs, it was never considering building a new fab.
But not in California, which was darleens point.
Chip speed is a function of how fast electrons can pass therough a media. Silicon, copper, gold, carbon, each subsequent innovation incrasing speed, thus lowering the the heat generated. Maxwels law in realtime.
Comment by JHoward on 2/28 @ 11:46 am #
Evergreen elbow junctions too, meya, and adding to proliferating remote sanguine will eternalize the erstwhile Saducceecal hose-gap. Hee!
Comment by Jeffersonian on 2/28 @ 1:49 pm #
BTW, lowering the thermal footprint is all the rage nowadays, Duuuh-Dar, because the core expense of data centers is not hardware, it’s the monthly electric bill that comes with running the hardware.
Intel isn’t building/expanding data centers, but manufacturing facilities. Yet even if they were doing the data center thing, Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico have industrial electrical rates that are about half of California’s.