In which the FCC seeks to regulate the internet

This is from the Denver Post:

Whenever people start talking about regulating the Internet, it gives us pause.
Why would you want to regulate a communications and economic platform that has been such a roaring success and has had so few problems?

Well....
1)  The government is filled with Student Council-type control freaks
2)  The government has absolutely nothing to fear from the mainstream media (and yes, this includes the dreaded Fox News) but the internet has proven to be an effective means of exposing government skullduggery. 
3)  All other forms or unnecessary government regulation have created more government jobs.  This regulatory project would do the same.   
So the announcement last week by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski that the agency planned to assert authority over the Internet raises all kinds of red flags.


Hell yes, it raises red flags.  Every street in America should look like one of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution Rallies. 

But then, we are a sedate lot, and don't like to be alarmed until the wolf is at the door, or in some cases, until the wolf is blocking our view of American Idol.  You can hit the link up top to read the rest of the Denver Post piece, but you get the idea.  
Here's Harry Browne on government regulations in general and the FCC in particular:

There's absolutely no reason to have a Federal Communications Commission.

We don't need the FCC to apportion limited broadcast frequencies, because private companies will always find a way to accommodate whatever the market wants and needs.
We don't need the FCC to protect one company from infringing on another's frequency, because we already have police and courts who are supposed to protect property rights.
And we certainly don't need the FCC to protect us from people like Janet Jackson and Howard Stern, because private initiative has given us the remote control — the all-purpose self-censoring device that can keep out of our homes anything we find offensive.

I doubt that a single child's life was destroyed by the 1-second view of Janet Jackson's breast.
But I'm sure that thousands of careers, tons of good entertainment, and billions of dollars have been sacrificed to the Great God of Government Regulation.

It's time to free the airwaves.
It's time to junk the FCC.


The red flag pic came from here.  Censorship button from here.  The Dick Van Dyke show logo came from here. 

How do blondes print a Word document?

I stole this from Harper's site.  She's kinda blonde (literally, not figuratively). 

The Great Trendline Experiment

Here's a fun experiment for those who believe that government regulation is the answer to all of our ills. 
This is a U.S. Census chart showing the poverty level by age group.  It goes from sometime in the past to sometime not too long ago.  I've removed the dates. 

Can you tell when LBJ began his War On Poverty?
Can you tell when the welfare state kicked in?
When did we create the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare?   

Please remember....if the programs and institutions listed above were founded anywhere near the center 75% of the chart, doesn't that mean that poverty was going away nicely on its own before government intervened and prolonged the problem? 

You can go here and see the original chart with the dates included. 

This is an experiment recommended by Charles Murray in his classic "What It Means To Be A Libertarian". 
You can do the same thing by charting workplace accidents, removing the dates, and asking when the government created OSHA.  Your audience will be baffled. 
You can chart highway fatalities, remove the dates, and have people look in vain for the 55 miles per hour speed limit, seat belt requirements, air bag requirements, and the like. 
Ditto for air quality and the birth of the EPA. 

Your government at work.  You can't see the results, but damn, they're busy. 

Missouri SWAT team raids home, shoot two dogs in front of 7-year old, find "small amount" of marijuana: Mission Accomplished ! !

Back in March, I linked to a Radley Balko post about a nasty incident in Missouri where a SWAT team broke into a family's home, shot and killed one of their dogs, and then shot an injured their Corgi. All in front of a 7-year old.

Those Corgis, you gotta watch out for them.

Since Obama's goon squad discovered a misdemeanor-level amount of marijuana on the premises, they were able to charge the homeowner with possession and child endangerment.

In the words of Mr. Balko:

So smoking pot = “child endangerment.”

Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.
Just so we’re clear.

My take on Obama's Boys In Black went as follows:

Yeah, you can argue that the police were just doing their job. And the courts, when they convict someone of marijuana possession, they're just doing their job. So are the jailers, the social workers, the prison guards, the prison construction lobby, and the drug cartels that depend on our laws to preserve their monopoly.

When are we going to stop paying people to do this job?

We now have the Gestapo's Swat Team's video of the incident.  Imagine this is your home.  It's your yard.  That's your son, and those are your pets. 
The homeowner is named Jonathan Whitworth.  His reaction at the 2:50 mark is heartbreaking. 



How much longer are we going to put up with this? Especially when our last three presidents have affirmed that they've smoked marijuana?  Or in Obama's case, used cocaine? 

First they came for the Corgis, and I did not speak up....

Please email this post to every drug warrior you know. 

Reaction to Oil Spill

Marvel Variants has a blog

I've missed two days of posting in the last two weeks, and that's enough to have people wondering if I'm burning out.
Not the case.
If I'm burning out on anything, it's my shipping/logistics/warehousing gig at Jukt Micronics.
We're going 7 days a week until, well, until we don't have to any more.

The villain behind this Capitalistic Frenzy is my boss's boss, known to long-time readers as Marvel Variants.

Mr. Variants started cashing in on his childhood comic collecting skills years ago, and just recently got his own website, Bronze Age Marvel Variants. 

To understand what a "variant" comic book is, go here.  

You can also hit the "Marvel Variants" label at the bottom of this post to read his other appearances on these pages. 

To learn about the Big Daddy of all variants (attention: Star Wars geeks): go here. 

This post explains how the comic book mania can afflict a person. 

This comic book cover was not done by Marvel, and is not a price variant, but I think it is funny.

So do me a favor.  Hit all the links above and give Mr. Variants some traffic, help his website get a Google ranking, let him make lots of money selling comic books, and maybe he'll retire and I can get some days off. 

Please.  Hit the links.  It's for the Libertarian Bloggers ™.

Why "Kick Ass" is one of the best Libertarian movies EVER

1) The police in the movie are portrayed realistically.  They're ineffective.  (One of my truck windows was vandalized a couple of nights ago.  I didn't even bother to report it.) 
2) "Kick Ass", the male lead, gets tired of being hassled, mugged and assaulted and decides on his own to do something about it. 
3) "Hit Girl" is home schooled. 
4) The public school that Kick Ass attends is portrayed realistically.  In the opening sequence, he has to go through a gauntlet of metal detectors just to get in the door. 
5) "Red Mist" smokes some weed but maintains his ability to drive. 
6) The mandatory SUV that the villains use to pursue Kick Ass and Red Mist is a GMC.  (Government Motors Corporation)
7)  Hit Girl is a poster child for gun control.  She hits what she aims at. 
8)  If you don't think a Personal Jet Propulsion Pack (with twin Gatlin guns) is cool, well, stay home.  Watch Dancing With The Stars. 

Al Gore's carbon footprint expands again.

Let's start this post with a profanity alert.  If you're offended by Baptists cussing a lot, read no further. 

Ok, let's assume for a moment that humans cause global warming.  Not by making God angry, the way the evangelists claim that the gays and lesbians in New Orleans made God angry prior to hurricane Katrina.  Not by offending Allah, the way the Iranian mullahs claim that women exposing too much of their breasts causes earthquakes. 
Let's assume that humans cause global warming in the way that Al Gore - The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee - claims that we cause global warming: our "carbon footprints" are too big.  Our homes require too much heat and air conditioning.  We waste water. 

Next, let's assume that this article in The L.A. Times is not filled with typos.  Let's assume that the person who wrote it wasn't drunk. 

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings, reports the Montecito Journal.


The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

I have no idea how many square feet of house are required to accomodate 6 fireplaces.  I don't know why Al and Tipper need five bedrooms.  But I do have theories about Big Al's biological composition, and why nine bathrooms are a requirement.  The man is full of more shit than the latrines at Fort Pemberton. 

I believe that seatbelts could save my life if I'm in an accident.  Therefore, I wear a seatbelt.  I'm starting to believe that what I've been eating and drinking for the last 40 years could kill me.  Therefore, I'm now watching what I eat.  But if Al Gore believes that we are causing global warming, I'll kiss his ass on the courthouse steps and give him thirty minutes beforehand to draw a crowd.   His behavior does not match his rhetoric, except in the smallest symbolic gestures. 

My online friend in Korea, Cedric Katesby, recently mailed me a treasure-trove of good books.  The one I'm currently reading is called "Why People Believe Weird Things". 

I don't have a copy in front of me right now, but one of the great chapter headings goes something like this: "Smart people often believe weird things, because they're so good (smart) at defending beliefs they adopted for non-smart reasons". 

A lot of people side with The Goracle on global warming simply because he's a Democrat.  To oppose him is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.  Well, whatever floats your boat.  Yeah, we should protect the environment.  But we can safely discount Gore's claims that unless we give him money, the oceans will boil.

He.   Does.   Not.   Believe.   It. 
 
You can hit the "Al Gore" label at the bottom of this post and see that Gore doesn't believe any of this mess.  Not a word. 

He's all set to become the world's first carbon-control billionaire. 
He calls his investments "putting his money where his mouth is". 
Bullshit. 
He wants to require YOU to put YOUR money where his mouth is. 

The scale and magnitude of the scam he's trying to execute is beyond anything we've ever seen before. 
He's the most hypocritical son of a bitch that God put guts in. 

The smart people who continue to defend him should admit that they do so for non-smart reasons.

On San Francisco's city employee travel boycott

Let me get this out of the way first.....
If it weren't for the entitlement giveaways that our politicians throw out as if every day were Mardi Gras, I would favor "open borders". 
(Yeah, we would have to stop pissing off the rest of the world, which would greatly reduce the chances that someone would bring in a nuke from Toronto.  And we would have to reduce the size of government by about 90%, so the Statists would have nothing to gain by importing more Statist voters.  Probably a fantasy, but it would be nice.  The #1 predictor of whether you'll be wealthy or miserable?  The lines of latitude and longitude where you happen to be born.  That ain't right.) 

Anyway, because of the Arizona's recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, the city of San Francisco is banning travel by all of their city employees to Arizona.  Here's the San Francisco Chronicle's City Insider Blog:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally.
The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It's unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed.

I like that a lot.  I hope that Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, and Long Beach do the same thing.  And on the other hand, I hope that Phoenix, Tucson, Tempe, and Tombstone Arizona retaliate by not allowing their employees travel to anywhere in California.  Or anywhere else. 

I hope the Fort Worth, Texas, City Council doesn't allow its city employees to travel anywhere at all.  I hope that they tell all city employees to stay their asses at home and repair the potholes that are all over the East Side. 

It would be nice if the Booger Den, Mississippi, City Council declared that there would be no more travel on the government tit.  Never ever. 

Why restrict this protest to the city and town level?  I think the world would be a better place if Obama had a sit-down with Hillary and told her something like, "Mrs. Clinton, they've passed a racist, fascist, hate-filled anti-immigration law in Arizona.  And in protest, I need you to stay out of Arizona, China, Israel, Jordan, Africa, and Mexico.  Stay home."   

Would we have more money in the Treasury if we told our defense employees that they couldn't spend any more time defending, say, Germany and Japan, and that those nations were going to have to provide their own defense?  Would our boys and girls currently fighting in the Middle East Sandbox be better off it we told them to come home and get their feet back under their Mamas' kitchen tables?  Let's get them back to defending the borders, and nothing else.  That would solve any and all immigration "problems" right there.

The San Francisco Government Travel Boycott - may it spread far and wide.  

Let's subsidize Brazilians. Just to keep it fair.

We started subsidizing cotton farming sometime back in the 1930's. 
By "we", I mean you, me, everyone who pays taxes, and everyone who pays about twice what they should have to pay for t-shirts, sheets, etc. 

Here's the way the system works:  Wealthy individuals claim that they aren't making enough money by growing cotton.  They threaten to withold support for various politicians.  The politicians counter by giving them your money. 

What's really cool about the system is that since 1995, 78% of the 10.66 billion dollars in US subsidies for cotton went to only 10% of the cotton farmers.  Want to guess where these 10% fit on the income spectrum?

This has become a problem for the much-maligned World Trade Organization, the group with the thankless job of preventing these insane traditions from erupting into trade wars.  (Here's what they try to prevent: We subsidize cotton and put tariffs in place to keep out evil, foreign cotton.  African countries want access to our cotton market, but can't compete because of our government giveaway.  Africa retaliates by putting a tariff in place against American automobiles or steel, or whatever.  Next thing you know, it's 1930 all over again.) 

We now have a situation with Brazil.  Brazil wants to buy a lot of our stuff and we want to buy a lot of Brazilian stuff.  The WTO is trying to work it out.  (In an ideal world, of course, anyone restricting you from purchasing whatever from whoever would be told to go have carnal relations with himself....) 

But Brazilian cotton farmers claim that our system is unfair to them.  We apparently give more to our Agri-Business Welfare Queens than Brazil does. 

So what is the Obama administration doing to correct this problem? 

To make it fair, just, and equitable, they are now subsidizing the Brazilian cotton farmers. 
I repeat:  In order to continue shoveling money to wealthy farmers in the U.S., we are now shoveling money to farmers in Brazil. 

Here's Congressman Jeff Flake on the policy:
“This proposal takes our federal farm subsidy policy from the impractical to the absurd....only in Washington could this pass for logic.”

Even Congressman Barney Frank was able to lift his nose from the trough long enough to make this comment:
“The sensible thing for us to do with the WTO finding – which, unfortunately for American cotton farmers, is clearly correct – would be to reform our own inefficient system of spending millions of dollars a year to subsidize cotton farmers, many of whom are quite wealthy.  Instead, the Obama administration apparently feels compelled to preserve our right to subsidize American cotton farmers by extending that subsidy to Brazilian cotton farmers. People looking for an illustration of the meaning of the phrase, ‘from bad to worse,’ need look no further.”

Why even bother posting this stuff?  It goes on all day, every day.
Well, 3rd-graders can understand that it's a silly policy. 
9th-graders can understand how this hurts the poorest Americans more than any other group.  (Except for, maybe, African cotton farmers.  Go here for details.) 
Hell, even Barney Frank has figured it out.  If people aren't making enough money by growing cotton, it means that too many people are growing cotton.  The same thing once happened to buggy-whip manufacturers, blacksmiths, minstrels, and chimney sweeps.   

And yet we want to trust this D.C. den of thieves with healthcare, manufacturing, shipping, finances, and 40% of our incomes.  So many of us are now involved in the giveaways, the get-backs, and the wealth transfers that it's hard to tell who is paying who - all in the hopes that we'll be in the group that gets back more than they've paid in.  

The cartoon came from here. 

Neighborhood Hope & Change lab busted

From Op-Toons:

Lorrington, Wisconsin--Police busted another hope and change lab in a Madison suburb yesterday, saying it was "one of the worst we've seen."

Law enforcement officials said unemployed youth were "sucking so hard to extract anything they could from empty hope containers, they were hyperventilating before they passed out."


Police said they were tipped off to the hope and change lab because neighbors said the kids next door were laughing nervously, slurring their speech, and walking listlessly into local coffee shops.

You can go here to read about other groups going through withdrawal. 
And go here to add Op-Toons to your favorites list. 

Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen express their concern for the planet

Here's a 30-second video of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady asking us to turn off all our lights for Earth Hour. 



Brady's wife, ultra-super-duper-model Gisele Bundchen, has been named the U.N.'s "environmental ambassador" because of her willingness to make environmentally-correct noises whenever someone pulls the string in the back of her neck.  Here's a sample quote:

On climate change, Gisele noted, "Climate change is something we can't deny? It affects all of us. At the end of the day, it's our planet ? we all have to feel accountable."

Here's a picture of the new Brady/Bundchen home. Lord have mercy.

All Prius-driving, toilet paper-recycling, cow fart-suppressing Disciples Of The Cult Of Gore just had their efforts negated.
This monster has 20,000 square feet of space, with an elevator and a freakin' lagoon.  It has a SIX CAR GARAGE. 

The new Brady/Bunchen Carbon Blaster is even worse than Al Gore's house.

It's not quite as bad as Thomas Friedman's house. 

But it is incredible. 
I'll believe that we have an environmental crisis when all the Global Warming spokesmodels start living like it is a crisis. 

Picture from the anti-Palin protest in Eugene Oregon

I don't know if everyone got the email about Eugene being a Hate Free Zone....

On devalued currency

Here's an old one dollar bill from the 1920's.  It's a "silver certificate", meaning that you could swap it for one dollar's worth of silver.  The current one dollar bills couldn't be swapped for enough silver to fill a gnat's rear end.  Our government has printed too many of them. 

See this picture of Andrew Jackson?  In 1905, a $20.00 bill could be swapped for $20.00 worth of stuff, including gold. 
If you made the foolish decision to save a $20.00 bill from that era, it will now only purchase 5% of what it could in 1905.

This hundred dollar bill will only do the job once done by a $5.00 bill.  The Federal Reserve system, created in the early 1900's to stabilize our currency, has succeeded in destroying 95% of our currency's value. 

And if you've got any of these, you might want to spend them now.  If current trends continue, they're going to have to print enough of them for all of us. 

This is a variation of a chain email sent to me by The Whited Mama. 

Jonah Goldberg: There are no socialists

I found a link to this Jonah Goldberg piece on the Cafe Hayek site.  Am copying a vast section of it here so I can force myself to memorize huge chunks of it:

If by "capitalist" you mean someone who cares more about his own profit than yours; if you mean someone who cares more about providing for his family than providing for yours; if you mean someone who trusts that he is a better caretaker of his own interests and desires than a bureaucrat he's never met, often in a city he's never been to: then we are all capitalists. Because, by that standard, capitalism isn't some far-off theory about the allocation of capital; it is a commonsense description of what motivates pretty much all human beings everywhere.

And that was one of the reasons why the hard socialism of the Soviet Union failed, and it is why the soft socialism of Western Europe is so anemic. At the end of the day, it is entirely natural for humans to work the system--any system--for their own betterment, whatever kind of system that may be. That's why the black-market economy of the Soviet Union might have in fact been bigger than the official socialist economy. That is why devoted socialists worked the bureaucracy to get the best homes, get their kids into the best schools, and provide their families with the best food, clothes, and amenities they could. Just like people in capitalist countries.

(And it's why Shasha and Malia Obama are going to a private academy instead of one of their Daddy's hellholes.) 
It's why labor unions demanded exemptions and "carve-outs" from Obamacare for their own health-care plans. And why very rich liberals still try their best to minimize their taxes.

The problem with socialism is socialism, because there are no socialists. Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn't true. I can design a perfect canine community in which dogs never chase squirrels or groom their nether regions in an indelicate manner. But the moment I take that idea from the drawing board to the real world, I will discover that I cannot get dogs to behave against their nature--at least not without inflicting a terrible amount of punishment. Likewise, it's easy to design a society that rewards each according to his need instead of his ability. The hard part is getting the crooked timber of humanity to yield to your vision.

And it's also why the problem with capitalism is capitalists. Some people will always abuse the system and take things too far. Some will do it out of the hubris of intellect. Some will do it out of the venality of greed.

I bring all of this up because many in Washington seem convinced that the solution to the problem with capitalists is always less capitalism. To be sure, a free-market society is in some sense a government program. The government must prosecute criminality, enforce contracts, and demand that the rules be observed. Few lovers of free markets are so laissez-faire as to want to strip the government of its role as referee.

But few should want the ref to suit up and play the game.

Why big corporations love government regulations

Remember a couple of years ago when the toys from China were found to be contaminated with lead paint?
Our Nanny State passed a bunch of regulations designed to end the lead paint menace.  All toys have to go through an expensive, time-consuming testing process prior to sale.  Used toy dealers have to do the same. 

This has put a lot of the smaller toy manufacturing companies out of business.  Many thrift stores simply don't carry used toys any longer.  Who can afford to do all that testing just to sell a used toy?

But what about Mattel, the giant toymaker who imported the poison toys in the first place?

They get a free pass.  They are, after all, Mattel.  They don't have to get independent testing on their products. 
Here's the Hot Air blog:

So let’s get this straight. Mattel buys millions of items from China that violate American product-safety laws and standards. Congress reacts by punishing the entire industry, especially those small businesses that can’t afford independent testing, especially on products that don’t really need it. Thrift stores can’t resell merchandise without testing, making their business model impossible and threatening the charities that rely on those sales. Meanwhile, the economy of scale means that this law gives Mattel a competitive advantage from their own malfeasance — and they get the waiver on independent testing?

Yesterday, we discussed crony capitalism. This is exactly what is meant. This is a perfect example of government picking winners and losers in the marketplace through legislation written to be sympathetic to big businesses, and an enforcement mechanism that favors the big players even beyond the legislation Congress passed. Mattel can push its smaller competitors out of business, or force them into buyouts, because they broke the law in the first place.

Exactly.  It's For The Children™ .
Just wait until these clowns finish regulating Wall Street. 

What to do with your new Tim Geithner currency:

As you probably know, the Secretary Of The Treasury gets to put his name on all the new currency.
As you probably know, the Secretary Of The Treasury went out of his way to avoid paying his taxes, despite his advocacy of lots and lots of new taxes. 
Go here to order your Tim Geithner "Tax Cheat" stamp. 
Yeah, it's supposed to be a crime to deface currency.  It's also a crime to be a tax cheat. 
Call it Civil Disobedience.  A consciousness-raising event. 

And surprise, surprise, the guy who is selling the "Tax Cheat" stamps is now the victim of an audit from Geithner's Goon Squad.  Go here to contribute to his defense fund. 

John Stossel on Myths About Capitalism

If you didn't catch John Stossel last night, there's still time.  Fox Business channel reruns each feature about 4 times.
Last night was about American myths.  Here's Michael Medved on myth #4:

Myth No. 4: The current downturn means the death of capitalism.

"Capitalism is alive and well," Medved said.
"I'm also bugged when people argue that today's problems prove that capitalism "failed." What failed? We had a correction. A bubble popped. But from 1982 to now, the Dow rose from 800 to 11,000. Had it happened without the bubble, we'd say this is one of the great boom periods.
Medved added: "This is one of the biggest lies — the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering. ... Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector."

On a related note, here are some stats from The Austrian Economists site:

% Households with:	Poor 1984	Poor  1994	Poor 2003	Poor 2005	All 1971	All 2005
Washing machine	58.2	71.7	67.0	68.7	71.3	84.0
Clothes dryer	35.6	50.2	58.5	61.2	44.5	81.2
Dishwasher	13.6	19.6	33.9	36.7	18.8	64.0
Refrigerator	95.8	97.9	98.2	98.5	83.3	99.3
Freezer	29.2	28.6	25.4	25.1	32.2	36.6
Stove	95.2	97.7	97.1	97.0	87.0	98.8
Microwave	12.5	60.0	88.7	91.2	1.0	96.4
Color TV	70.3	92.5	96.8	97.4	43.3	98.9
VCR	3.4	59.7	75.4	83.6	0.0	92.2
Personal computer	2.9	7.4	36.0	42.4	0.0	67.1
Telephone	71.0	76.7	87.3	79.8	93.0	90.6
Air conditioner	42.5	49.6	77.7	78.8	31.8	85.7
Cellular Telephone			34.7	48.3	0.0	71.3
One or more cars	64.1	71.8	72.8 (2001)		79.5

Ah, the failures of free market capitalism....
Remember to watch John Stossel.

Picture worth at least a thousand words

Dr. Ralph sent this to me from Pundit Kitchen. 

The Texas Trade Surplus

From a Slate.com essay on why Texas is doing so much better than the rest of the nation:

....(Texas) surpassed California several years ago as the nation's largest exporting state. Manufactured goods like electronics, chemicals, and machinery account for a bigger chunk of Texas' exports than petroleum does. In the first two months of 2010, exports of stuff made in Texas rose 24.3 percent, to $29 billion, from 2009.

That's about 10 percent of the nation's total exports. There are more than 700,000 Texan jobs geared to manufacturing goods for export, according to Patrick Jankowski, vice president of research at the Greater Houston Partnership. "A lot of it is capital goods that the Asian, Latin American, and African [countries] are using to build their economies."

So....should these Asian, Latin American, and African countries worry about their trade deficit with Texas? 
Heck no. 

What matters is how much "stuff" you swap, and who you're swapping with doesn't matter.  It's all about trades per hour.   
Should Fort Worth residents worry about their trade deficits with cities on the other side of Highway 360 ?
Should Texas residents worry about their trade deficits with states on the other side of the Red River?
How about countries on the other side of the Rio Grande? 
Or the Pacific? 

The lines of latitude and longitude of the factory simply...do....not....matter.  The more you restrict trade, the fewer options your manufacturers have for sourcing raw materials and for exporting finished products. 
Penalizing trade serves no purpose but to negate the gains provided to society by technology, labor, ingenuity, determination and progress. 
If Target or J.C. Penney has a sale on items that you want to purchase, would you avoid those stores because the low prices aren't fair to Wal-Mart?