Because, America

[urbanoid]

Found it:

Quote

DEI killed the CHIPS Act

DEI — the identity-obsessed dogma that goes by “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — has now trained Google’s new AI to refuse to draw white people. What’s even more alarming is that it’s also infected the supply chain that makes the chips powering everything from AI to missiles, endangering national security.

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.

This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.

The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.”

The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”

The department does not call speed critical, even though the impetus for the CHIPS Act is that 90 percent of the world’s advanced microchips are made in Taiwan, which China is preparing to annex by 2027, maybe even 2025.

Handouts abound. There’s plenty for the left—requirements that chipmakers submit detailed plans to educate, employ, and train lots of women and people of color, as well as “justice-involved individuals,” more commonly known as ex-cons. There’s plenty for the right—veterans and members of rural communities find their way into the typical DEI definition of minorities. There’s even plenty for the planet: Arizona Democrats just bragged they’ve won $15 million in CHIPS funding for an ASU project fighting climate change.

That project is going better for Arizona than the actual chips part of the CHIPS Act. Because equity is so critical, the makers of humanity’s most complex technology must rely on local labor and apprentices from all those underrepresented groups, as TSMC discovered to its dismay.

Tired of delays at its first fab, the company flew in 500 employees from Taiwan. This angered local workers, since the implication was that they weren’t skilled enough. With CHIPS grants at risk, TSMC caved in December, agreeing to rely on those workers and invest more in training them. A month later, it postponed its second Arizona fab.

Now TSMC has revealed plans to build a second fab in Japan. Its first, which broke ground in 2021, is about to begin production. TSMC has learned that when the Japanese promise money, they actually give it, and they allow it to use competent workers. TSMC is also sampling Germany’s chip subsidies, as is Intel.

Intel is also building fabs in Poland and Israel, which means it would rather risk Russian aggression and Hamas rockets over dealing with America’s DEI regime. Samsung is pivoting toward making its South Korean homeland the semiconductor superpower after Taiwan falls.

In short, the world’s best chipmakers are tired of being pawns in the CHIPS Act’s political games. They’ve quietly given up on America. Intel must know the coming grants are election-year stunts — mere statements of intent that will not be followed up. Even after due diligence and final agreements, the funds will only be released in dribs and drabs as recipients prove they’re jumping through the appropriate hoops.

For instance, chipmakers have to make sure they hire plenty of female construction workers, even though less than 10 percent of U.S. construction workers are women. They also have to ensure childcare for the female construction workers and engineers who don’t exist yet. They have to remove degree requirements and set “diverse hiring slate policies,” which sounds like code for quotas. They must create plans to do all this with “close and ongoing coordination with on-the-ground stakeholders.”

No wonder Intel politely postponed its Columbus fab and started planning one in Ireland. Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was launching a CHIPS-funded training program for historically black colleges.

Now the secretary is calling for a second CHIPS Act. Before that, let’s make the one we have usable. There’s an easy fix. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is already trying to pass a bill exempting CHIPS funding from the multiyear environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act. The same need for speed calls for adding in a veto of the Commerce Department’s diversity tag-alongs. All Congress has to do is insist it meant what it said in the CHIPS Act and no more: giving poor people opportunities isn’t a free pass to enact all of DEI’s pet causes, and especially not to make national security wait on them. What Congress didn’t give, Congress should be willing to take away.

This is the stuff declining empires are made of. As America pursues national security by building a diverse workforce, China does it by building warships.

The CHIPS Act’s current identity as a jobs program for favored minorities means companies are forced to recruit heavily from every population except white and Asian men already trained in the field. It’s like fishing in all the places you aren’t getting bites.

Instead of solving the problem, the people in charge are trying to cover the problem up just long enough to win reelection. Don’t be fooled by the Biden administration’s upcoming weekend-at-Bernie’s act — the CHIPS Act is dead.

Matt Cole is CEO and Chief Investment Officer for Strive Asset Management, an Ohio-based firm with over $1 billion in assets under management, where Chris Nicholson is head of research.

https://thehill.com/opinion/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/

[JWB]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A U.S. Secret Service agent was robbed at gunpoint as President Joe Biden was visiting Los Angeles for a fundraising event over the weekend, officials said.

https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-secret-service-robbery-77471a51c61dda672a42a35b85746515

[JWB]

 

[NickM]

18 minutes ago, JWB said:

 

In Oakland!? Just hoodrats being hoodrats 

[Harold Jones]

Hey I'm from Oakland. Granted dad got transferred to Great Lakes NAS when I was 5 but still...

[Ivanhoe]

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/local/2024/06/20/ricky-thompson-iii-round-rock-juneteenth-shooting-update-arrest-old-settlers-park-aggravated-assault/74154345007/

Quote

A 17-year-old was arrested in connection with the shooting that killed two women and injured 14 others at a Juneteenth festival Saturday, the Round Rock Police Department announced Thursday.

Round Rock isn't the hood, it is an upper-middle class suburb.

The arrestee is from Manor TX, which also isn't the hood.

[lucklucky]

What is going in USA and telecom market still with carrier locked phones?

Probably no one in the world does that anymore. 

[rmgill]

Rent seeking and bought and paid for regulators. 

[lucklucky]

Ok, i am surprised that US don't seem to have a strong consumer organisation.

[bojan]

"consumer organisation"? That would be "anti-capitalism".

Edited June 28, 2024 by bojan

[urbanoid]

Literally bolshevism, I'd say.

[bojan]

What is next those godless commies are going to propose? Abolish HoA? 

[lucklucky]

4 minutes ago, bojan said:

"consumer organisation"? That would be "anti-capitalism".

Most consumer organisations are pro market.  Instead Socialism and monopolists/cartel Capitalists are united in their desire to destroy markets.

[sunday]

Just now, bojan said:

What is next those godless commies are going to propose? Abolish HoA? 

HOAs are the new Soviets, comrade.

[bojan]

38 minutes ago, lucklucky said:

Most consumer organisations are pro market.  Instead Socialism and monopolists/cartel Capitalists are united in their desire to destroy markets.

What they are in reality does not really matter, what is a widely accepted, corporation pushed narrative matters way more. Look at absolutely idiotic and self destructive YT policy about inserting commercials in the videos and amount of people defending it because "they are private company, they can do whatever they want". As with everything else, ultimately people get more-less what they deserve.  

38 minutes ago, sunday said:

HOAs are the new Soviets, comrade.

Even worst communist governments or even worst local communist apparatchiks never bothered with enforcing what color was your fence or what type of grass you had in your yard. Even with "issued" flats you were free to redecorate those however you wanted, as long it was not real destruction of property.

Edited June 28, 2024 by bojan

[Ivanhoe]

38 minutes ago, bojan said:

"consumer organisation"? That would be "anti-corporatism".

FIFY

At the federal level, there are: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Trade Commission, dozens of other agencies.

 

 

[Ivanhoe]

35 minutes ago, sunday said:

HOAs are the new Soviets, comrade.

The running joke in the US goes along the lines of "If you ever wonder what happened with the Nazis after WWII, they formed HOAs."

[sunday]

28 minutes ago, bojan said:

Even worst communist governments or even worst local communist apparatchiks never bothered with enforcing what color was your fence or what type of grass you had in your yard. Even with "issued" flats you were free to redecorate those however you wanted, as long it was not real destruction of property.

Of course, Tovarishch - old Soviets were still pollute by the evils of Patriarchy, full of cis-people unable to tell Sky Blue from Cerulean. New Soviets, with a fresh influx of feminine, and (more or less) similar, blood are more color tone-, and aesthetics-conscious.

 

[lucklucky]

54 minutes ago, bojan said:

Even worst communist governments or even worst local communist apparatchiks never bothered with enforcing what color was your fence or what type of grass you had in your yard. Even with "issued" flats you were free to redecorate those however you wanted, as long it was not real destruction of property.

That depends if you were in good side, invisible or bad side of them.

I quite remember reading about prosecution of bourgeoise hair cuts...

[bojan]

Quote

...I quite remember reading about prosecution of bourgeoise hair cuts...

You mean "dress codes" for schools and universities that forbade long hair among males and pants among females... Oh wait, that was in the "west"...  (and parts of the "east" also).

Most such "dislikes" were based on reasons other than "communism/capitalism", on both east and west, most often social conservatisms. They were effectively unenforceable in the eastern Europe, unlike HoA rules in the US and none really cared other than old people who saw it as a sign of society decay...

 

Edited June 28, 2024 by bojan

[rmgill]

As a rule, we don’t send people to gulags in Alaska for HOA rules violations. 

[sunday]

No, but perhaps people would go willingly to build a house in the boonies to avoid HOAs.

More comfortable than the average isba, too: https://meadowlarkloghomes.com/

Edited June 29, 2024 by sunday

[Ivanhoe]

 

[urbanoid]

 

[Rick]

Another reason among many why the Federal government needs to drastically shrink and why Trump needs to win!

From the web sight  https://www.mrlandlord.com/landlordforum

Today's headline: Hoarding concerns rise as America ages
"The rise in hoarding disorder as America ages requires a national response, a new Senate report shared first with Axios says. Why it matters: The prevalence and severity of hoarding disorder increases with age — and the U.S. population is growing older, making this a crucial moment for policymakers to address the condition....(health & safety issues, complex mental "disorder", occupational therapy not covered by insurance...)
The bottom line: America's aging boom "will require the federal government to address issues that it has not previously prioritized," the report says. Hoarding disorder is one of them."

Knock knock, knock! Senior answers the door, "Step aside - Hoarding Police!"
Then they go through all your stuff and they decide what needs to go and what you get to keep (weapons, tools, etc.)  (For your safety - after all, they decided you have a mental disorder.) A truck with city employees (unionized) comes and picks up whatever the hoarding police want. City sells the stuff and keeps the money(to cover partial costs). City bills senior for the pickup and all associated costs and adds it to the property tax bill. If senior resists or protests, they are fined hundreds per day and possibly jailed for obstruction by the city and that is also added to the property tax. A short time later, city forecloses and takes the house for unpaid property tax.
Think it can't or won't happen?

Edited July 6, 2024 by Rick