-By Warner Todd Huston
Chicago area Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. is apparently as fickle as he is uninformed about economics and the Constitution both. In March we saw him praising the Apple iPad as technology so important that he wanted to have the federal government buy one for every American student. Only a month later he was calling the iPad a destroyer of American jobs. Talk about a whiplash inducing turn around.
In March, Jackson was pleased to announce a brilliant idea to put a provision into the Constitution that gives every student an iPad and a laptop computer. After a week of ridicule, Rep. Jackson doubled down on that plan saying that the iPad had so fundamentally altered education that it should be a right.
And now, only a month later Jackson has made a complete turnaround on the iPad calling it a destroyer of American jobs.
A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine
From praise to damnation. Man, this guy is confused.
As Business Insider says, Jackson, Jr. obviously has no clue about economics. “Obviously he ignores all the wealth the iPad has created in America, and the fact that there are all kinds of other jobs that have been created around the iPad, and he ignores that just about every single technological innovation in the world has experienced a similar dynamic.”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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