There’s lots of reason Scott Brown won Teddy Kennedy’s old Senate
seat this week — health care reform, cap-and-trade, the deficit,
exasperation with Democratic rule. But there’s one other that
shouldn’t be missed — he ran as a guy and it’s OK to be a
regular guy again.
A month ago in a column called “Put
Men Back to Work” I wrote that taking up the cause of
unemployed men should be a major campaign issue of the 2010
election. I also said I thought Sarah Palin was the only
candidate who could handle the issue because it would seem too
hard-edged coming from a man. I was wrong. Although Brown didn’t
say it in so many words, the message came through loud and clear
— ordinary guys have a place in this world outside beer
commercials.
First there was the truck. Ah, the truck. Could anything
have been more politically incorrect? It wasn’t some fuel-sipping
Honda Civic or even a gas-electric hybrid. Brown didn’t spend
time talking about gas mileage. It was just a work-a-day truck
built to get you someplace and do the job.
And wasn’t it amazing how, when President Obama arrived in
Massachusetts to try to save Martha Coakley’s neck, he couldn’t
stop talking about that truck? “I’d be careful getting on that
truck,” he said. “He parked his truck on Wall Street.” Obama
mentioned it six times in his speech at Northeastern
University.
Yet Brown had the perfect comeback. “I don’t mind when the
President came in and criticized me,” he said the night of his
celebration. “But when he starts criticizing my truck, that’s
where I draw the line.”
In fact, the whole Brown campaign had a distinct
beer-commercial flavor. A former juvenile delinquent, college
basketball player, triathlete, and 20-year Army reservist, Brown
didn’t mince words about sounding like something out of a
Budweiser ad. “I can believe I’ve just won this election but I
can’t believe I’m on the same stage with Doug Flutie,” he said on
election night. Meanwhile, Martha Coakley continually embarrassed
herself with her tone-deafness about guy things. Who is Curt
Schilling? Why is it important to stand outside Fenway Park? Only
a few months ago, she could have dismissed all this by arguing
that Schilling and the truck and whole Red Sox Nation have a
large carbon footprint. Not this time.
In truth, the comeback of men in this country is long
overdue. Almost 75 percent of the job losses in the recession
have been to men’s jobs. Women are about to pass men in the work
force. All this can be interpreted as equality and progress on
our forced march to a sexless society. Writing in Slate,
Hanna Rosin
called Brown’s victory “the angry man’s revenge
against the rise of the working woman.” But that’s doesn’t
even come close to understanding what’s going on. It’s time to
take stock of exactly why so many men are
unemployed.
Around New Year’s, the Huffington Post ran an
article listing the “10 Industries That Will GAIN The Most
Job Growth in Next Decade,” based on the latest forecast from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here they are in order:
1) Management,
scientific and technical consulting services
2) Offices of
physicians (i.e., looking up medical records)
3) Computer
systems design and related services
4) General
merchandise stores (Wal-Mart, etc.)
5) Employment
services (i.e., unemployment offices)
6) Local
government
7) Home health
care services
8) Services
for the elderly and persons with disabilities
9) Nursing
care facilities
10) Full service
restaurants
Does that sound like decline or what? At this rate we’ll
soon have an entire economy based on pushing each other around in
wheelchairs. (Note also that half these sectors get their entire
income from the government.)
Even Huffington readers were appalled:
“The alarming things indicated by the growth of employment in
these particular industries is that the USA seems to be winding
down and the private sector will be decimated. Another matter
is the obesity epidemic is very apparent and well represented.”
“Industries? What industries? Industries consist of PRODUCING,
MANUFACTURING companies!”
“With all the minimum wage jobs leading the pack on growth
industries, it is no wonder that winning the lotto is the
number one way Americans feel they can get ahead in the
future.”
“Hmmmm… they left out Debt counselor, Credit fixer, Poverty
lifestyle expert, Shack builder, Electricity hookup improviser…
Apple-seller.”
Now is all this happening because men no longer have
ambition? Because they lack training? Because this country no
longer has any need for blue-collar workers?
If you think so, try pondering this. One of the biggest
concerns about starting a new generation of nuclear reactors in
this country is that we no longer have enough skilled
welders. Westinghouse and American Welding Society
have started up special schools in anticipation that some day
nuclear construction may revive. Here’s another tidbit: The
giant, three-story, 500-ton steel vessels that form the core of
the new reactors? We can’t make them in this country. American
steel mills are far behind the curve. The only place they’re
being manufactured right now is Japan Steel Works, but China,
Russia, India, England and France are all building new mills for
their own nuclear renaissance.
It’s like this across every sector of the economy that
doesn’t involve 1’s and 0’s or taking care of the sick and
elderly. From logging to chemical manufacturing to
power plant construction, everything has been cut to the ground
by environmental opposition. As David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy,
says, “We don’t manufacture anything in this country
anymore.”
“Project — No
Project,” is a great new website sponsored by the Chamber of
Commerce, cataloguing the hundreds of projects around the country
that are being delayed by environmental groups. In California,
even the Green Path North Renewable Energy Transmission Line,
designed specifically to carry power from windmills and solar
collectors from the eastern desert to Los Angeles, has been held
up for four years. Those opposing it are the Sierra Club, the
Center for Biological Diversity, the California Desert Coalition,
the Redlands Conservancy, Friends of Big Morongo Canyon Preserve,
and just about every municipal government in its path. Electrical
engineers tell us we already have a Third World grid. Soon we’re
going to have a Third World electrical generating structure as
well.
All this reverberates throughout the economy. Because we
haven’t built nuclear plants, for example, we now rely on natural
gas for 20 percent of our electricity. But burning natural gas in
utility boilers is a complete waste of a resource. Natural gas’s
best use is for home heating and cooking and as a feedstock for
the chemical and fertilizer manufacturers. Yet gas is the only
kind of conventional electric generation environmentalists will
allow. Because of this new demand, natural gas prices quintupled
after 2000. As a result, more than 100,000 jobs in the chemical
industry moved abroad. Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow
Chemical, told Congress in 2003 that his company was shifting its
“center of gravity” to Europe and the Middle East to be near gas
supplies. “Dozens of plants across the country have closed their
doors and gone away,” he testified. “They’re never coming
back.”
Now the forced march to Renewable Utopia — driven entirely
by subsidies and mandates — is pushing us further down this
road. California, which is ten years ahead on the country on this
downhill roll, gets 40 percent of its electricity from natural
gas, twice the national average. Industry has fled the Golden
State, leaving it with a $40 billion budget deficit. One of the
major reasons is the price of electricity. Natural gas is
generally the most expensive way to produce electricity and
renewables are even costlier.
Yet world-renowned environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
is now pushing for a “solar-natural gas alliance” to push prices
up even further. In October, Reuters
reported:
The solar power sector and the natural gas industry need to
build an alliance to get more government support and take over
the energy sector from incumbents like Big Oil and King Coal,
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said on Wednesday [before the Solar
Power International Conference in Anaheim.]
He said the team-up makes sense because power from natural gas
can help balance out solar and wind-generated electricity on
the grid, eliminating the problem of inconsistency on sunny
days, for instance.
The gas industry is now quoting Kennedy in its
advertisements. Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Russia
is building a whole new generation of nuclear reactors so it can
sell its abundant gas supplies to Europe.
The only way to avoid this wheelchair economy is to put men
back to work. We need to build things, make things, and do things
again in this country. Nuclear power plants are the place to
start. A few more hardy Senators and Congressmen like Scott Brown
and we’ll be on our way.
Oh, and Mr. Senator, could I mention one more thing? Please
don’t let all those beautiful women in Washington turn your head
so you end up the next John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Tiger Woods
— or for that matter, John F. Kennedy. Show them that real men
have integrity, too.
