Gaslighting and Misapprehension

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The People’s Republic of China’s solar panel production industry is running into a glut problem that is seriously depressing prices, to the point that in the current shakeout, many of the PRC-domiciled companies may not survive.

One place where panel prices remain elevated is the United States (thank you, Federal regulations and continued dependence on overseas component supplies), and one PRC-domiciled company that’s likely to survive is LONGi Green Energy Technology Co, Ltd, headquartered in Xi’an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi. In an effort to get around US strictures on PRC companies, LONGi has become a 49% owner of the joint venture (with Invenergy, headquartered in Chicago) of Illuminate USA, and the venture has opened a factory in Pataskala, OH.

The good folks of Pataskala are concerned about LONGi’s connections with the Chinese Communist Party, and Congresswoman Carol Miller (R, WV) has proposed more general legislation that would seek to prevent PRC companies from getting clean-energy subsidies.

Naturally, Zhong Baoshen, LONGi’s Chairman, objects, and herein lies the gaslighting. He insists that LONGi is a private company, and he then tries to distract by pointing out that Illuminate USA is a private company.

That fact is, there is no such thing as a private company in the PRC. Under that nation’s 2017 National Intelligence law, all PRC-domiciled companies are at the beck of the government’s intelligence community to use all of a company’s resources to conduct espionage whenever and targeting whatever the intelligence community decides it wants.

That leads to the misapprehension: too many entities—private companies in the US, politicians at all of the several US governmental hierarchies—actually believe that blandishment that private PRC companies really are private and have no connection whatsoever with any arm of the PRC government.

A Union Win and a Business Loss

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The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union ratified the contract its managers lately extracted from Boeing.

The union got

• 38% wage increase over the next four years for its members
• $12,000 ratification payment for each of its members
• guaranteed annual bonuses for each member ranging from a minimum of 4% to as high as 6% (the guaranteed nature defeats the purpose of bonuses, and converts the payments to an annual Christmas present)
• 401(k) Boeing match of 100% of each member’s first 8% of pay plus an automatic 4% Boeing contribution
• requirement for Boeing to build its next airplane in the union shops of the Seattle area

What did Boeing get in return? The company gets to restart its commercial aircraft production in the Seattle area, and so to survive.

That’s one outcome of the legalized extortion that is union strikes.

Noncitizens Vote in Local Elections?

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Santa Ana, CA, has a referendum, Measure DD, that would allow noncitizens to vote for a variety of city offices, including mayor. One argument in favor of that is

noncitizen residents (including longtime green-card holders) pay local taxes and send their children to local schools, they should get a voice in city government. “About 1/4 of Santa Ana residents currently don’t have a say in city elections just because of their immigration status,” proponents argue. “Many have lived here for decades and contribute greatly to the local economy.”

Yeah, and? Nothing is preventing those green-card holders and other city residents present legally from changing their immigration status and working to become citizens. If they don’t care enough to do the work, they don’t need to become citizens, but they also show themselves not to care enough to vote. The work they do on the job and the taxes they pay are nice, but those are benefits and obligations of being here legally, and nothing more.

Another problem with this sort of move—not universally common, but present in the vast majority of such initiatives—is that such franchise-granting efforts make no distinction between immigrants and illegal aliens. Those who came here illegally have already shown their disdain for American law, regardless of their claimed motive for coming in illegally, and so are unfit to vote for representatives who will be impacting American law, including local ordinances. That they might work and contribute to the local economy is wholly irrelevant to their intrinsic lawlessness.

Then, too, as the WSJ asks,

[W]hat’s the limiting principle? If noncitizens paying taxes to Santa Ana deserve to vote for mayor, why don’t noncitizens paying taxes to California deserve to vote for Governor?

And on up to include our Federal government.

I’m writing this on Election Day, so I have no idea whether Measure DD will pass. Pass or not, though, my point remains: noncitizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If immigrants want to vote, they need to become citizens. Illegal aliens shouldn’t have the vote under any circumstances; they should be sent back. And: the lack of a limiting principle in such franchise-granting efforts remains and dangerously so.

An “Apology”

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Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said on The View a few days ago that

Donald Trump, you never see him around strong, intelligent women. Ever. It’s just that simple. They’re intimidating to him. He doesn’t like to be challenged by them and, you know, Nikki Haley will call him on his nonsense with reproductive rights and how he sees and treats and talks about women. I mean, he just can’t have her around.

Cuban spoke from his heart when he said that.

Some of those not strong or intelligent women around Trump are Nikki Haley (yes, that Nikki Haley), former Trump ambassador to the UN; Arkansas Governor Sara Huckabee Sanders (R), his former Press Secretary; Kellyanne Conway, his 2016 campaign manager; Kayleigh McEneny, his last Press Secretary; Senator Marsha Blackburn (R,TN); Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY); and on through the millions of American women of all stripes, single mothers to business owners and executives, who support him in the hustings.

Now that he’s catching boatloads of flak for his smear, he’s claiming to apologize.

When I said this during the interview, I didn’t get it out exactly the way I thought I did. So I apologize to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response[.]

Now speaking only after widespread opprobrium. How is it possible to take his words of apology as anything other than insincere political CYA?

This is the level of integrity flowing from the Left in these final days of the election, and the level of outright contempt the Left has for us average Americans and in particular for ordinary American women.