THE AUDACITY OF HOKUM - PART I: AMERICA - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

“We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people…”

What a wonderful and unifying statement, on the heels of angst over a perceived drop in civility in the national discourse. President Obama’s State of the Union Address [click hyperlink for entire text] contained both rhetoric and delivery intended to produce feelings of hope and goodwill throughout America, and it has... 

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...wrongly so. I suspect most Americans have not had the time to read between the lines:

AMERICA - OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Although we are “still bound together as one people” President Obama made it clear that some of us are still more equal than others. Most of his remarks were really addressed to his constituency among the “Haves and Have Mores” of the world doing business in America or with American wealth. This first pass at Mr. Obama’s speech will focus on his few words with direct import to the majority of Americans.

“What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.”

Although this platitude is addressed to Congress, the application should be universal across our land. Many of us cannot work – much less together, because our jobs have been exported. President Obama proposes nothing for the millions whose jobs have been outsourced to offshore facilities. In fact, he offers this bitter pill to affected Americans:

“Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown… That world has changed. …[T]he rules have been changed in the middle of the game.”

Most of us never agreed to this mid-game change in the rules. Nor to the recent bailout of some who engineered these changes. But Mr. Obama does not want to look back in his speech – only forward.

President Clinton and successive White House Pinocchios have used fast-track authority to negotiate NAFTA, WTO and other trade-related treaties – with little public discourse, and we see the direct results today. The rules will not be changed back under this President and Congress without great public pressure. In fact, the President’s proposed immediate “recovery” strategy rests upon pending approval of more trade agreements – including more with China and India – already the chief recipients of missing American jobs.

In other words, our lost jobs are not coming home unless we convince our Representatives and Senators that this must happen. And enough of those men holding the Wealth of Nations must agree to reinvest in America as well. 

The President’s plans for no-cost improvements to our already dumbed-down educational system, "green" energy development, and future US public works projects provide no immediate relief for the American labor force. Absent restoration of restrictions to offshoring of American jobs, unemployed white- and blue-collar workers have no hope in seeing new life in vacant factories and abandoned offices in the near future with so many dollars already invested and stored offshore.

In fact, the President further promises: “To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I've ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.” Less regulation - not more. At least he promises to retain American laws against Child Labor, but says nothing about Third World children working in sweatshops profiting the Multinationals. 

Instead of seeking ideas to staunch the flow of American capital and jobs to Third World countries, the President touts his proposed overseas public/private investment schemes (including $Billions of future US tax dollars in incentives, tax credits and investment in R&D to Multinationals) under recent trade agreements with India, China and South Korea (KORUS FTA). He claims that these ventures will collectively “support” 320,000 US jobs. Until those jobs too can be offshored, no doubt.

The big winners in these trade boondoggles are a handful of multinational corporations (General Electric, Boeing, e.g.) and the Friends of Timothy Geithner who will subsist on the income streams generated by these various endeavors. The big losers are the remaining American white- and blue-collar workers who must continue to scramble for an ever-decreasing number of retail and service jobs here which have not yet been outsourced.

Those on fixed incomes, relief programs and the ever-increasing number of unemployed and underemployed Americans are further faced with the burden of the President’s proposed five-year freeze on domestic spending. While those with little are told they must tighten their belts and do with even less, Mr. Obama did broach the subject of possible sacrifices to be made by the wealthiest in our midst: “…if we truly care about our deficit, we simply cannot afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break.”

How about it millionaires (and billionaires): Are you willing to trickle back down that which you have so stealthily sopped up?

Not with Mr. Obama protecting the sanctity and security of all your offshored wealth, recent wrist-slapping for some of those shorting America as in the recent UBS settlement notwithstanding. But I hope that Mr. Obama’s puppeteers and cronies will apply these words to our common plight: “What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.”

ENOUGH SMOKE AND MIRRORS, MR. PRESIDENT & CO.:

KEEP JOBS HERE/CREATE JOBS HERE/BRING JOBS HOME.

AVARICE IS THE ROOT OF ALL POLITICAL EVIL – PART I

As the years progress, many of us remember carefree days of youth with growing fondness. Broke, but happy. Carefree. Free of cares about buying and selling, owning or possessing. In love with life, with friends, with somebody special. Filled with life. For some, those years were school years. For others, later. People mattered more than what we wore, drove or did for our sub-standard livings. We were content for that moment with what we had.

Then we got spoiled. We wanted more.

Bling-bling blinded.

Our time and energy became devoted to pursuing whatever we could grasp within our hands. Things mattered more than people. We became consumed with thoughts of price and value, exchange and profit, debts and debtors, pride and possessions. Always upgrading. Saving for that rainy day. Taking. Buying. Consuming. Consuming more.

Creating nothing. Content to be fed and entertained. Not interested in politics unless there was potential profit in it for us and ours.

Of course, we’re not greedy in the morbid sense of our Lords and Ladies of industry. Their excesses make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa, led astray as they are by tremendous wealth and power. They have used our armed forces to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians and to take over entire nations. They are above the law.

The rest of us hope for a nice apartment, house with a yard, better car – or one that runs without being in the shop every other week. A better job. Or just a job. Even part-time. For me. My family. Maybe my BFF. Everyone else is on their own.

Over two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin said, “If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.” 

Those words could not be truer today. Throughout the nation we are sacrificing our teachers and public employees to provide funding for private contractors to continue Operation Iraqi Hostile Takeover for the next several decades. Most of have been too caught up in our own things to notice. A news story may catch our eye when we realize our world may be impacted by external events – but we are OK with allowing “somebody else” deal with “those problems.”

Then our jobs get packaged up and shipped overseas.

We ask no questions at first. A new microwave which used to cost $500 when made in the USA can be bought for $100 (or $88 at Wal-Mart) when made in China or Indonesia. Of course all those people who worked in now-defunct microwave oven factories here – and now have no work – cannot afford even a $100 microwave now. And certainly none of the sweatshop slaves can buy anything on their $1/day "wages".

But we are happy for the moment with our “great deals”.

One by one, American manufacturing and office jobs fly to countries halfway around the world – and we say nothing until our own profession is affected. We grumble and blame the wealthy and privileged for taking over the Democratic and Republican Parties and engineering this fiasco, but we did nothing to oppose them. The “haves and have mores” run the show and we are now their vassals. The new bureaucracy serves their interests, not ours. The Rule of Law which guides these chumps is the Law of the Jungle. And we are the prey.

Some folks talk of another Revolution, but that’s a bad blind alley to get trapped in unless it is at the ballot box.

No, the real solution is much more complicated. We must no longer be blinded by our own greed for the little trinkets that matter so much to us right now. Nor can we be distracted by the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

The 2010 elections are set – the “haves and have mores” have provided us with their approved candidates in all major political parties to choose from – candidates which will dangle on the ends of their puppet strings. Here and there an honest Third Party candidate will be elected to a minor seat, but mostly the Iron Heel will continue to trample on common Americans after the new shills are sworn into office.

It is time to plan for 2012.

THE MYTH OF THE MISSING MONEY

We Americans are gullible people. Trusting that no public official would lie to us, we accept Official Pronouncements. from talking heads. We the People are flat broke and must tighten our belts.

Except those of us holding all the cash.

The real culprits are the scammers who have been squeezing American labor with undocumented workers and offshore sweatshops. Both groups are willing to perform a multitude of tasks at a fraction of the wages needed by American workers to maintain their present standard of living.

The captains of industry promulgate pastries for the masses. Employees are easily axed, giving an immediate boost to the bottom line. Stock prices elevate.

Under NAFTA and GATT, multi-national and US corporations are free to exploit all manner of sub-US-living-wage workers to bolster their profits. Their fellow citizens be damned, as far as these guys are concerned. They are not our friends, nor do their shills in most Government slots represent us. We the People have a handful of faithful legislators working on our behalf.

While squandering $Trillions in fruitless land wars in Asia, the Government tells us that there is no money to ease the economic deprivations of Americans resultant from these globalist policies.

Those crossing the border illegally have been deprived of their own livelihoods via the influx of cheap US ag products and new megafarm plantations in their homelands. They seek a better life. Families are ripped apart. As many as a dozen laborers live crammed into spaces designed for single occupancy. Local zoning and law enforcement look the other way, because cheap labor fuels the upper crust economy.

Misplaced anger at the offshore workers and undocumented in our midst is fanned by popular media. Pitting US born against immigrants results in a misdirection of public ire at the pawns rather than the perps of these outrages.

Regulate Wall Street and bring those boys to account!

And all you hoarders of wealth -- it's time to kick enough down to the rest of us to get our economy going again...