Tom Friedman's Flatlined, Flat World Sucks and We're Not Gonna Take it Anymore

America for Sale: And what We Can do about it

Hey Tom, how’s that whole “world is flat” thing working out?

Not so good…Former billionaire Tom Friedman has watched his net worth plummet from $3.6 billion to less than $24 million, and now he wants all Americans to fuel up those outdated SUV’s and go spend borrowed money from China that they don’t really have on inferior goods they don’t really need in any flat, hot, smelly, and overcrowded shopping center they can find “to go shopping to save the economy.”


Flatworlder Thomas “The World is All about Me and other Elitists Only” Friedman’s world is flat broke now, and his fall from the billionaire’s club is a testament to the greed induced downside of the free-market fundamentalism he's been preaching for so long. While he has raked in millions of dollars in “best sellers” and commanded up to $50,000 in speaking engagement fees to stomp an insider cronyism profits over people message to gullible American audiences for far too long, has he reaped what he has sown? As Vanity Fair’s Peter Newcomb reports:

“But based on the bad news coming out of shopping-mall owner General Growth Properties [GGP], it is no wonder Friedman is feeling crankier than usual. That’s because author’s wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple—who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland—have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.”

Going shopping is, of course fine – providing one has a good paying job to afford the nation’s former pastime. But the hidden little secret that best-selling authors like Friedman won’t tell you is that for over the past eighteen years, corporate America and the beltway have been busy selling off American white collar jobs to Indian citizens willing to work here for a fraction of the pay, eliminating job opportunities for American citizens and lowering wages in the process. Guess who might think this wholesale sell out of the educated white collar workforce is just swell? President-elect Barack Obama. The Great American white collar labor shortage myth has been propped up by elitist corporate greedsters who view Americans as objects of “trade” to eliminate employment opportunities for local citizens in favor of importing cheap labor.

Today Citigroup announced another cut of 53,000 jobs in addition to the recent 23,000 jobs this year with rival JP Morgan set to slash thousands more jobs. As Obama says, “we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” so why would he want to see this country’s citizens replaced by foreign workers? Progressives need to embrace the myth of the Great American Labor Shortage and take the president-elect to task on one of the two most critical issues affecting the welfare of our citizens: jobs and access to quality healthcare.

Where are our ethics? Is the soul and spirit of the “progressive” movement one of elitist groupthink that blindly aspires to be just like the sociopathic corporate executives who pine for imported cheap labor in order to ensure profits for themselves and their cronies? Progressives need to unite against this war on America’s educated middle class and demand a stop to the legalized importation of cheap labor to take American jobs. True progressives need to demand a stop to legalized corporate welfare policies that enrich executives of insurance companies and corporations whose mantra is profits over people.

We don’t need to keep shopping for any more cheap crap. We need to start making stuff here again, and to start valuing our own neighbors to put the spirit of community back into our own communities first. How abundant are the destructive, inhumane forces of so called “free-trade” labor agreements when they seek to destroy employment opportunities at home in exchange for lucrative labor deals that only serve elites of our country and those of third world nations? As countries across the globe struggle with their own deteriorating economies, the only thing we have left in our own is our collective goodwill. I don’t doubt the lack of integrity in people across this country, but I have my reservations about the controlled direction our media are taking to silence the message as they gatekeep a few One World information elites who feed them.

As China’s President Hu Jintao said last week: “Beijing's priority is to "put our own house in order" and ensure domestic stability. Will America’s President-elect, Barack Obama change to put the welfare of Americans first or will he follow through with his allegiance to corporate welfare practices first? Will Obama quit “shushing baby boomers and stop telling them to “get over themselves” and start putting us first?

After eight years of criminal lies and neglect, now wouldn’t that be something?

-2Truthy

Crossposted at BlondeSense