Great Points from Intel

I am sure that many have seen the European Union's decision to fine Intel rather severely for supposedly forcing out competition. Of course, most have also heard that Obama's team has basically laid down the gauntlet on businesses in the U.S. saying they will prosecute for what they deem unfair competition.

I rather enjoyed the responses Intel's Chairman Craig Barrett gave to Jim Goldman of CNBC regarding this whole deal.

"We are against exclusionary contracts with customers, we don't exclude competition. We compete hard, but for a government to stand up and say Intel you shouldn't compete so hard against AMD, Intel, you shouldn't be competitive, you should be nicer to your competition, I just scratch my head and say, What planet am I on?

"At a time when the world is at great competition for its economic future, at a time when we brought 3 billion new capitalists in India, China, Russia, into the free economic system, to have government regulators say, You shouldn't compete? What are they thinking?"

On America's auto industry: "It's gone. The auto industry is in the United States, it's just not in Detroit. It's in the South Eastern part of the US. More autoworkers there than ever before. They just don't work for Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. The dinosaurs are dead.
"Let's acknowledge that we threw $25, $30, $40 billion at 'em. Total waste of taxpayer money. They're gonna have to get restructured under bankruptcy. Everyone accepts that. Why we didn't do it initially is beyond comprehension. I'm willing to accept that loss in the short term if I get some more money into R&D. R&D is our future. The automotive industry is hardly the future of the 21st century.

"The government says let's bail out the farmers, let's bail out the auto industry, let's do this, let's do that. It's discouraging. I finally rationalized it on the basis that governments are elected in basically two year cycles. They have at max a two-year horizon. All the things I'm talking about: Education, R&D, the right environment to invest in innovation, are on a much longer time cycle than two years, therefore they will never get addressed.

On America's future and the Obama administration's initiatives so far:
"What we're doing to this country today is absolutely in the wrong direction. We have not decided that there is competition. We are sitting there saying, we've always been number 1, we're always gonna be number 1, the American people are resilient and they'll respond to a challenge. And we hope we're gonna be number 1.

"Hope is not a strategy. We've got to earn what [we] want. And you've got to earn it the old fashioned way. You earn it with education, you earn it with hard work, and you earn it with investment. The government has to understand that they have to support hard work, investment and education. That's our only future."

I would add that it is the government's job to protect the freedoms of all people to work hard, invest, and pursue education. The practices that have been implemented ever since the TARP programs came out have hampered these freedoms.

As I have told many, I plan on campaigning to get rid of every current lawmaker and person in the administration by the end of the next presidential election. I think we need to start over with people who truly want to protect these freedoms strictly because that is what is right, not because that will keep them in the limelight and get them paid.