Thursday, March 29, 2007

Corporate America's Shotgun Wedding to Congress

"The poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape."
- P.J. O'Rourke



David Sirota has written a new op-ed in the Denver Post today entitled “The Marriage of Hypocrisy and Corruption” and to anyone following the professional middle class tech job ride to hell, Daddy Warbucks (Bill Gates) is not looking to let anyone naysay this disastrous shotgun wedding between the buxom bride (Corporate America) and the ageing, lecherous groom (Congress) that has all the makings of a failed, third world arranged marriage.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_5542197

Why is Big Money no longer even compelled to be publicly consistent? Because they don’t have to be. They’re frat boys and above the fray, or self described ‘elites’ and wannabees. What drives Washington to make deals with advocacy organizations like TechNet that work to eliminate an estimated 30-40 million white collar professional jobs from America’s upwardly mobile middle class? Because then the ruling class elite will no longer have to be challenged by their educated American peers, for even more important than driving down wages is this lust for eliminating competition from another smarter and better looking peer that is necessary to the Colonial, New Third World American Ruling Class Order that loves the subservience of the third world caste system that they are importing here to work for a fraction of the American wage. Sirota writes “Yes, Corporate America wants Congress to believe that it is worried about workers' democratic rights at the very same time it is telling shareholders (the owners of the companies) that they should have no democratic rights at all.” This op-ed comes on the heels of this week’s Wall Street Journal article entitled “Pain From Free Trade Spurs Second Thoughts” that includes an updated report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics based on former Federal reserve Board Vice Chairman and Princeton Professor Alan Blinder’s research that identifies how likely each professional American job is projected to go overseas. From that, Blinder derives his latest estimate that between 30 million and 40 million jobs are vulnerable and yet, Congress and the Corporate America are in the advanced stages of French kissing each other in this wreckless embrace to eliminate jobs by outsourcing and importing cheap foreign labor. The ruse that outsourcing would lift all boats too, is transparent and has long since been dashed on the rocks, as global unfair labor practices have hurt the lives of many in the very same third world countries it was sold to help.

The article suggests that outsourcing and H1B recruitment are counterproductive to demands for advances in fair labor practices saying “On international trade, it's the same thing. With a new Wall Street Journal poll showing that Americans are more skeptical of America's job-destroying trade policy than ever, the Financial Times recently reported that CEOs are pressuring Congress to drop any and all efforts to place basic labor standards in new trade pacts. "Top business leaders warned that placing strict rules on working conditions in bilateral trade agreements would threaten the U.S.'s ability to make pacts with emerging economies," the Times story said, quoting one CEO "saying that emerging economies could not be expected to have the same labor standards as developed and fully industrialized nations."

With this race to the bottom spearheaded by the tech lobby that is now turning to alternative energy investments along with Big Pharma and Wall Street, the transparent knowledge that our elected officials are in collusion with the robber baron or plantation society who are carving out large pieces of profit-pie on the backs of our educated middle class is dirty laundry on the corporatist agenda close line for all the world to see. Sirota needs to look no further than to the cultural elites who shape the prevailing attitudes and set the tone for increased educated middle class marginalization, because in this race to the bottom, the corrupt and greedy anti-labor polices and backroom deals between Washington and Corporate America that know no lines of distinction are now in the hands of mass media. The outcomes are ultimately defined by the character and decency that the cultural elites lend to it. But where is the collective voice of America when the invitation-only deals go down to sell out our infrastructure and labor rights?

There is no doubt that our Congress, corporate and cultural elites COULD make a real difference in positively advancing much needed alternative energy legislations and technologies should they choose amongst solutions that will not erode topsoil (ethanol) and work to reverse the eradication of 30-40 million educated American professionals. It is also obvious that an often uninformed popular culture shapes mass media and is representative of the very place where individuality goes to die… where groupthink is forced down the tubes to anyone with a computer, internet access and a television set. For it is when the greedy plantation society mentality and the sycophants who promote them own the farm that the rest of the principled country gets to read all about the exclusive, invitation-only arranged shotgun wedding the day after, once it’s all over.

And that says it all about the new third world order of the Plantation States of America: Always the bridesmaid, but never the bride.

-2Truthy

http://www.princeton.edu/~blinder/

http://users1.wsj.com/lmda/do/checkLogin?mg=evo-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB117500805386350446.html%3Fmod%3Dhome_whats_news_us


http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/16021675.htm

4 comments:

Oberon said...

.......i like your blog.

2Truthy said...

Oberon,

Thankyou. But may I make a suggestion? Looking at your headshot, I would strongly recommend you find a new photographer or hairdresser or both. Anyway...

It's coincidental that you, the Largest of Uranus's satellites, should write this during 2Truthy's unofficial annual Asshole Marathon Week.

In the fictional world of Disney's TV series named 'Gargoyles', the name Oberon was given to the third race of beings! Are you the parent or one of the kids who should be asleep by now?
-2Truthy

2Truthy said...

Yo llamajockey,

Hooray for Lou Dobbs! He is the only one really running with this issue.

But the collective bargaining power of labor organization at the low end (uneducated)is much stronger to address unfair trade and immigration policies than at the middle-upper middle to address the tens of millions of professional jobs that corporate America wants to downgrade by allowing an 'unlimited' H1B visa cap. Gates and the tech lobby are united not only amongst their elite corporate ruling class but with many Democratic members, including Boxer and Pelosi, too. You must not live in SV to fully get the full effect of the power and the third world ruling class 'zeitgeist'. Plus, there will always be other Jack Abramoffs. Right now, the poltics of immigration are media focused at the low end - on the poor Mexicans who these assholes want to build an actual fence across an invisible line, on land. Talk about a bunch of sickos. I don't care about immigration from Mexico; it's a goddamn border and we have dealt with since the Alamo
-I think. You get the point. But coporations don't care about this and are using low end immigration as a smokescreen in the media to end run the SKIL Bill and Fast Track and any bill that will screw the middle class out of jobs with plenty of Democratic legislators behind it as they too, will profit.
All about $$$, and the power behind it. Still think the People run the show? -t.t.

Anonymous said...

llamaj,

Thanks for pointing out David Sirota's voice, who I admire. He is an extraordinary writer and journalist with great promise. I also read his article this morning and of course he and Dobbs are right on this.

When I say "poor Mexicans", I am of course NOT referring to Mexico's ruling class elite who fucked up everything but to the majority trying to border cross when it is a life or death situation for many without work, food and shelter. My NON-ELITIST position is that I believe that we need to develop and enforce sensible policies and laws to restrict border immigration that are humane to the Mexican immigrants and productive for our society.

At the risk of sounding like a second grader (which often comes quite naturally,BTW) -- let me be clear: If we have Americans who can do a job, we don't need to import people from other countries to take work away from them. For the millions of immigrants who got here illegally and are now working - many with families --what do you propose we do with them? Nancy Pelosi has a bunch of illegal Mexicans working in her Napa vineyard, for example, and I'll bet they are paid a whole lot less than the neighbors' kids or other adults who would stomp on the grapes for 3-4 times as much and they desperately WANT to be here, as this place is nirvana compared to the blight they came from. Think Pelosi wants to send them back? This is a tough issue about the existing people here and what the country can do to fix the problem now. Do we round them all up and ship them back, ala jackboots style?

The real key is to STOP present and future demand for this race to the bottom -- for cheap labor sought by corporations who promote the practice. I don't have the numbers on how many blue collar jobs they are taking away from Americans, but the numbers are significant in the middle/upper middle class, predominantly in the tech sector which you are most aware of... I don't think I need to outline my stand on H1B and outsourcing from India and China, other than to say the few Democrats in Congress who actually are against it better get their act together, because there are millions of guys like you who are paying attention to the candidates rhetoric on H1B and outsourcing come 2008. BTW, which Dem candidate has the balls to talk about saying no to the tech lobby? Can you tell me? I have not heard anything from any one of them.

And now that the Repubs got Tancredo (anti-illegal immigration suuporter), the immigration issue just might be their hot ticket back into the WH come 2008 if Boxer and Pelosi & Friends don't work to kill that godamn Skill Bill and Fast Track, etc.

Two words, llamaj --

Tech. Lobby.

Just remember that the tech lobby is bipartisan (Big Money is their party) and they are all over Congress like a pack of slicked back skunks at the waterhole insisting on 'INFINITE H1b'S'. You don't read about 'em-- they just suddenly appear, not unlike farts in church, with their agenda to replace millions of guys like you with cheap foreign workers. Sirota and Dobbs, too, have their work cut out for them:) -t.t.