Kerry, Lieberman, and High Tech
http://www.ghandchi.com/251-Kerry.htm
Senator John Kerry made his bid for the White House official today. In all his speeches, he is challenging GW Bush without having anything to say about the main failure of the current U.S. Administration, namely the disaster of Bush's economic strategy, that has not been able to stop the continuous erosion of business spending. The wrong plans have put the whole post-industrial development and new economy at risk of annihilation, with the main high tech center of Silicon Valley at a stand still, and all other high technology centers in the U.S. and rest of the world, declining day after day for three years.
The problem of Kerry is that he just wants to attack Bush Administration on the relations with the other countries. True that the U.S. should take a more global view in politics and economics and unilateralism hurts the U.S., as stated by David Bowers, chief global investment strategist of Merrill Lynch "America is more dependent on the rest of the world for capital than at any time in the past 50 years". But this is not the whole problem and the policy for creating the 21st Century infrastructure and supporting high tech is the critical topic which Kerry does not address.
Moreover when it comes to the Middle East, Kerry says nothing about supporting democracy in the Middle East. Bush Administration has been right in supporting democracy in the Middle East and returning to a policy of appeasing Islamism under the pretext of dropping ultra-nationalism, is a wrong way to look at Iran and the Middle East, which previous Democratic administrations followed, and were not able to curb Islamist terrorism. Although military action is not always needed for peace, in the Middle East, the issue is futurism versus terrorism.
Regimes like Taleban's Islamist state in Afghanistan and Saddam's Baath fascism are no longer in existence, thanks to the U.S., and that is good news in the Middle East, and although invading Iran is not a correct policy, nonetheless, supporting a secular republic in Iran, and not appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), are the right policies to pursue in the Middle East.
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Let me return to the topic of US economy again. Among the current Democratic Party candidates so far, only Democratic front runner Senator Joe Lieberman has some plans for the high tech. For example offering major tax incentives for companies developing or using high tech, rather than doing things in the old-fashioned way. Such economic proposals are very crucial for reviving the high tech and in helping the development of the post-industrial society.
Another candidate of Democratic party, Howard Dean has all the works of a candidate for a modern economy and has backers like George Soros, but when it comes to economy, all he says is about the tribulations of deficit. In reality if even the U.S. creates deficit by heavily investing in post-industrial infrastructure projects such as fiber to every home, the U.S. economy can benefit. It depends on whether the deficit is for creating a dynamic new economy or is created for subsidizing the dying smokestack industries which will just be more drain on the nation's economy.
Howard Dean speaks a lot about civil rights issues whereas Kerry takes a more conservative approach although he likes to be attacking Bush a lot without saying what the real difference is between his policies and those of GW Bush.
I hope to see both Lieberman and Dean to refine their policies on the post-industrial development in the U.S. and the rest of the world, and come out with a more aggressive high tech plan for the next four years, rather than just having some plans in the passing treating the high tech sector, as just another sector like oil and auto. The high tech is a sector of the economy which can play the role to get the world into the next stage of glacial change and requires a very strong focus and is not just another sector of economy and the decline we have seen in the last three years may continue and it can have devastating effects on U.S. and world economy, not only in the short term, but also from a historical perspective.
I wrote about the same issues at the time of previous elections, and how these issues took precedence over other topics of the election time, and today we are seeing how the wrong policies in the approach of government to the high tech in the last three years have hurt the US and world economy. I hope distractions do not happen again and the right plan for the economy takes the focus. I am sure that Lieberman will be attacked by some for being a Jewish candidate. What I think on that?
In my view, being Jewish is a big plus for Lieberman. I am not a religious person but I will be glad to see the U.S. to have a president with a non-Christian background, not that I would favor elections based on special interests and ethnicity rather than qualifications, but in my view his positions in the senate have been mostly liberal and also he has been more in tune with the post-industrial development than other candidates I have seen so far, and being a Jew should make us all happy to see that America is the land of all nations and ethnic groups and a qualified candidate is not dropped because of ethnic differences.
Sam Ghandchi, Publisher/Editor
IRANSCOPE
http://www.iranscope.com
Sept 2, 2003
Related Article:
http://www.ghandchi.com/316-KerryEng.htm