Tom Friedman Blows Green Smoke Up Joe Taxpayer's Pantlegs

The Price of Supporting American Job Outsourcing and In-shoring

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Elitist champion of American job outsourcing/in-shoring, flat, hot, smelly and overcrowded Flat One Worlder, Tom Friedman, writes in this NY Times article entitled “The Price Is Not Right” that he doesn’t expect much from the G-20 meeting this week, and wishes “the leaders of the world's 20 top economies would commit themselves to a new standard of accounting — call it "Market to Mother Nature" accounting.”

Hmm. Does anyone hear another disastrous sales pitch in the offing? Why yes! Carbon taxation is Tom Friedman’s latest mantra!

Yours truly completely believes that solid green energy products and technologies have the potential to be better both for our environment and to stimulate our economy by providing American jobs at all levels. Certainly, no one can accuse champions like Al Gore of not being passionate about the challenges that climate change present. So why would anyone listen to Tom Friedman, who gets it wrong every time – he supported the Iraq War, he supports handing over American white collar jobs to India -- and now he is hustling yet another get Joe Taxpayer to cough up more dough scheme to once again benefit his crony insiders on our dwindling dime? Ben Smith’s blog at Politico offers a few insights here into the ehm, crony conflict of interest details in Friedman’s latest sales pitch on carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes.

To better understand the conflict of interest details, here is a background refresher on this administration’s few elites (also proponents of outsourcing or human trafficking) with beltway ties can capitalize on man-made global warming, which some investigative journalists have exposed as “a money-generating hoax,” with “Obama working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress.”

In Friedman’s latest promotion piece to further disregard the growing numbers of unemployed and underemployed taxpaying Americans who will not profit from said carbon taxes, (who have also just come off of eight disastrous Bush years of subsidizing Halliburton & Co. in their murderous war on Iraq combined with the sociopathic push to hand American white collar jobs to India) corporate welfare mouthpiece-salesman, Tom runs a fast hustle by equating the financial system “meltdown” with what he refers to as “the climate system meltdown.”

Got that? Financial meltdown = climate system meltdown.

How is that? Because Tom Friedman said so.

Two stated problems: “financial” and “climate.” Huh? Matt Taibbi wrote a terrific article here in his hilarious assessment about how this corporate welfare megaphone makes it up as he goes along… how this

“porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 114,000 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.”

After proclaiming the two stated problems, Friedman then calls in and quotes a couple of experts, at least one whose expertise just so happens to be in the lofty, flat-worldish field known as outsourcing or human trafficking. (See below).

Never mind the fact that a NY Times Op-Ed propagandist (oops journalist) like Tom Friedman also said we should just all go shopping, which really means “should all go to hell” to save the economy - despite the fact that Tom supports importing Indians to take our jobs -- and this hate-thy-neighbor, sociopathic example of what America offers for journalism is a slap in the face to every citizen in this country as Friedman channels his inner man-crush by quoting an executive from one of the biggest human traffickers, Infosys, responsible for America’s disappearing jobs:

"When the balance sheet of a company does not capture the true costs and risks of its business activities," and when that company is too big to fail, "you end up with them privatizing their gains and socializing their losses," Nandan Nilekani, the co-chairman of the Indian technology company Infosys, remarked to me.”

Splendid! Who knew that the self-appointed climate expert could learn all about the financial crisis from an Indian outsourcer?

In addition to this “financial meltdown”, expert Tom also proclaims there is a simultaneous “climate” meltdown and hints that somebody (in the U.S.) has to foot the bill for both orchestrated problems so hey, why not devise a solution to a couple of problems that were cooked up by a few elitist insiders to line their pockets with taxpayer dough and then really, really stick it to these sorry-assed American taxpayers?

Quoth the expert protagonist of American Job Killing:

…"the reason we're experiencing a simultaneous meltdown in the financial system and the climate system is because we have been mispricing risk in both arenas — producing a huge excess of both toxic assets and toxic air that now threatens the stability of the whole planet.”

And, right as rain, Frank, the kind of “toxic air” Friedman is blowing amounts to more smoke up the gre$n pants legs of a few well connected insiders chomping at the bit to make a fast return on the stated carbon problem that Tom equates with the AIG mess:

“Just as AIG sold insurance derivatives at prices that did not reflect the real costs and risks of massive defaults, oil companies, coal companies and electric utilities today are selling energy products at prices that do not reflect the real costs to the environment and real risks of disruptive climate change (so future taxpayers will end up paying the difference).”

Hey Tom, you know something about AIG, eh? Well, here is Something Worse Than AIG: IBM Seeks Federal Stimulus Money While Outsourcing Jobs From The Hudson Valley to India.

Then, Friedman continues to profess that if products are “mispriced” and do not reflect “the real costs and risks” associated with their usage, people go to excess. “And that is what happened in the financial marketplace and in the energy/environmental marketplace during the credit bubble."

Bubbles? Oh really, Tom? You want to start talking bubbles? How about the dot.com bubble where your pals assigned themselves boatloads of tech stock options in all kinds of dogs of startups and made a clean sweep at the trough? Think the same thing can’t happen all over again with the same Chicago Climate Exchange cronies promoting a public rip-off funded by Obama before he was even POTUS?

Even as man-made global warming is being exposed as a money-generating hoax, many investigative journalists report that Obama is working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress, and who better than Friedman to wind up throwing out this corporate sales pitch? While our nation’s “financial” problem can be tempered by employing our own citizens so they can start spending again, Obama his Economic Advisors have pledged to keep handing over American jobs to India anyway, and no amount of carbon taxation is going to stop the bleeding of our jobs which is eroding our economy and our society. But guys like Friedman don’t care about human beings, only human trafficking.
And does Friedman actually expect anyone to believe that by taxing carbon offenders, they won’t find loopholes, i.e., more business as usual?

“Our biggest financial-services companies, some of which came to be seen as too big to fail, engaged in complex financial trading schemes that did not adequately price in the costs and risks of a market reversal. And our biggest energy companies, utilities and auto companies became dependent on cheap hydrocarbons that spin off climate-changing greenhouse gases, and we clearly have not forced them, through a carbon tax, to price in the true risks and costs to society from these climate-changing fuels.”

Re: above – large and small corporations know how to work tax cuts and loopholes, so carbon taxing is still “taxing” a bunch of lawyered-up insiders who will exploit those loopholes, the same way that Friedman’s outsourcing pals exploit human beings in the form of labor. Read Citizen Carrie’s post here about Wachovia employees being forced to train their foreign replacements.

Case in point: Forget the word “carbon” for a moment, and take the case of an outsourcing shop “headquartered” in North Carolina, Synechron, that specializes in the outsourcing or human trafficking of cheap, imported labor to the U.S. from India to take jobs away from Americans.

Rather than Tom taking his puffed up journalistic backside down to North Carolina to interview the fired locals from Wachovia who have lost their jobs because of the legalized, Indian cheap labor lobby that Friedman triumphs, he instead is content to dispense quotes from officials at companies like Infosys who are complicit in this war on America’s white collar middle class.
Friedman goes on to proclaim that we need new banking regulations that reins in the leverage and speculative trading that big banks and insurance companies can undertake. Fair enough. But THEN he displays his salesy, bag-of burning rats in a meth lab, pseudo analysis here:

“And this is ALSO why we need a tax on carbon — so we and our power utilities don't become permanently addicted to cheap coal that makes for lower electricity prices today but spits out toxic greenhouse gases that have to be paid for by future generations tomorrow.”

Huh? Coal is bad. Check. Let’s tax all those American hillbillies who rely on coal to heat their dreadful shanties. Check. Let’s tax Utility companies that don’t do business with businessman Al Gore’s portfolio companies. Check. Let’s tax every effing body in this country, while we’re at it – to subsidize all of that other gre$n stuff that Gore’s VC firm is pushing. Check!

And just when I thought I would never, ever agree with anything this guy has to say, Friedman ejects this gem:

“This capitalist engine doesn't need to be discarded; it needs some fixes. For starters, we need to get back to basics — accountable lending, prudent saving, reasonable leverage and, most important, more engineering of goods than just financial products.”

Yay, Tom! I couldn’t agree with you more. I also want to see our capitalist system restored with some good, old-fashioned, non-sociopathic regulation and a stop to selling American jobs to India to end this human trafficking once and for all.

But wait…he resorts AGAIN to more pap by quoting a tank of hot air, finding another ‘expert’ on this mind-blowing, newly plucked from the nether region, stealth term called “destructive creation”:

“Some of our biggest financial firms got away from their original purpose — to fund innovation and to finance the process of "creative destruction," whereby new technologies that improve people's lives replace old ones, said Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati, in an interview in The American Interest. Instead, he added, too many banks got involved in exotic and incomprehensible financial innovations — to simply make money out of money — which ended up as "destructive creation."

Gee whillackers, Mr. Hooper... By now, just about every Joe Blow on the street knows that “to simply make money out of money” has kind of put us in deep doo-doo, but I suppose Tom needed to quote an expert anyway…

“Destructive creation”, indeed. For this complicated, exotic term, to guys like Tom, in the end, translates to ‘kill American jobs by handing them to Indians AND get American taxpayers to support us greedy elites in every scheme we can pull out of our patooties and get these deplorable American plebes to subsidize.’

By now, it is plain to see that Thomas L. Friedman is every corporate welfare queen’s biggest proponent of the Cash Cow of Indian Outsourcing and mega-propagandist in this war on America’s educated middle class destructively created by them.

-2Truthy

Tom Friedman: 9/11 Is Over (And We Wish Your Column Was, Too)

-Tom Friedman Boring The Hell Out Of Brandeis College Students-

Will Somebody Clip His Mouse Ears?

Sunday’s NY Times Op-Ed featured an article entitled "9/11 Is Over" by Billionaire Blowhard Tom Friedman asked the following question: “If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?”

This is an article that that puts the insufferable Friedman in league with George W. Bush as both have no problem insulting us and are embarrassing and a disgrace to our national character.



Tom Friedman wants the rest of us to know that 9/11 (in case we didn’t know) is over and suggests that we better start smiling and hit the kool-aid stand while his corporatist cronies keep driving down our wages and selling off our white collar jobs to the third world. Since many of our corporations continue to outsource jobs and move their companies out of the country, exploiting cheap, third world labor abroad has never been “sexier”. Oh- and don’t worry about where all of that profit goes – although I’ll take a stab here and say not to the Minneapolis Department of Public Works and those guys who are supposed to fix the roads and bridges but somehow, there's no money for it…No, those profits go straight into the pockets of all those Beltway enabling Mousketeers, a few hedge fund managers, executives and needy billionaire blowhards like Friedman. Check.

Once again, Jolly old billionaire Tom would have us believe that if it weren’t for the damned, needy plebes, visitors and businessmen would be breaking the doors down to visit the United States (even WITH its shitty LaGuardia airport, as Tom points out) when it is precisely because of the corrupt and greedy NAFTA and labor policies his Beltway and corporatist cronies have architected that have brought shame on the national character which once attracted people here from all around the world.

How can America be a shining beacon of “hope” to international populations when they clearly see that our government kicks its own citizens to the curb by exporting our jobs so that a few wealthy elites can profit? When international communities see how the United States denies healthcare even to its middle class and its poorest children while it continues its gluttonous love affair with a Military Industrial Complex intent on sacrificing peace and prosperity at home for private corporatist personal gain?

Grandiose columnists like Friedman -- insulated from over forty-five million educated, middle class citizens who are struggling with plummeting wages, disappearing jobs and no access to healthcare have insulated themselves from America's devolution into the third world.

In the article, Friedman takes a stab at Rudy Giuliani by telling us how stupid we are to think about 9/11 as he proceeds to blame our citizens for the fact that foreign tourists don't want to visit anymore… because we 'think' about 9/11. He attempts to rub it in by admonishing us: "Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints ” and then - get this --- blame the rest of us for poor, poor, citizen Microsoft being forced to move to the next big town over (Vancouver) in Canada because Gates can readily hire more cheap labor from India there and continue to drive down wages here for software professionals.

What hypocrite Friedman neglects to tell us is that while the economy is performing for Wall Street, Main Street is tanking faster than you can sing "Now it’s time to say goodbye to all our family…" By citing a travel study that concluded that “the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad,” Friedman turns the truth upside down by actually blaming the economic fallout of NAFTA policies that are responsible for making wealthy elites like himself get wealthier on the rest of us while the economy tanks. Nor did he mention anything in support of increasing taxes on his wealthy stock portfolio or for toughening tax codes that aid his corporate friends who make digital fingerprint technologies which he must have a few shares of by now.


War on the Middle Class. For billionaire columnists like Tom Friedman, being propped up like an overstuffed Disneyland mouse and serving as the NY Times Mainstream Musketeer allows him easy access to America's wealthy corporate "thought leaders" and Washington D.C. based think tanks who purport myths such as the Great Labor Shortage Lie and then invent said mythical statistics in support coordinated efforts between corporate America and colluding Beltway pols to fight the middle class here so that they don't have to fight the third world over there.

D.C. based New America Foundation, with a who's who Fortune 500 cast for its board of directors sums this commitment to pick the pockets of America's middle class by deporting their jobs to "build a large and sustainable global middle class":

" New America identifies and promotes the main elements of a new international economic strategy that enables emerging economies to evolve into successful, middle-class societies. " NEF even has its own Global Middle Class Program link here.
So WTF is Friedman telling us when he says "If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?"

This Race to the Bottom column by Friedman is yet another reminder of how insulated he and his band of corporate elites really are from the rest of us and how much we need to cover our eyes and ears when insufferable elites like him pretend to speak for the good of our citizens while they insult us. Yes, Tom. 9/11 is over. And we wish your column was, too.

-2Truthy

Tom Friedman's Neo-Frat Boy Hot, Smelly, Overcrowded World

Thou Smell of Mountain Goat
Henry –V
William Shakespeare

Why does billionaire, neo-liberal apologist Tom Friedman hate educated Americans?
And why would any self-respecting plebian blow one red cent on two of his despicable books about a hot, smelly and overcrowded, flat world when he also supported the Iraq war?

During this presidential election season when msm avoid discussing issues by instead expanding their bipartisan nostrils deeply into the candidates’ personal issues such as who their pastors are and what they shoot for dinner, this has nothing to do with the increasing millions of people in this country who are losing their jobs, homes, access to healthcare, constitutional protections and civil liberties.

Today, the tech lobby’s corporate propaganda tool extraordinaire, billionaire Tom Friedman, continues his role in the American white collar cleansing program in today’s article where he weighs in on the current financial meltdown, declaring that “the strong eating the weak” is “good” which is, of course, code for at least on one level -- for let them eat cake. It is no secret that Tom Freidman’s flat world ethics champions handing off every last American white collar job to third world workers to drive down wages here at home. With jobs and resources dwindling, when will Democrats finally demand a stop to importing more cheap labor when there are not enough white collar jobs for our own citizens?

In this article, Friedman doesn’t hold back his unconscionable disdain for the educated American white collar STEM professional, leaving little doubt that he and his inner circle cabal of elites are still popping champagne corks over their wild bubble success in ramming through the Great Labor Shortage Myth scam down the public’s collective throat. Since 1992, Friedman’s tech lobby pals have succeeded in kicking millions of the parents of our next generation of our “math geniuses” he derides to the curb by outsourcing/insourcing American jobs to cheap foreign workers. For people like Tom Friedman, there is no neighborhood here -- or at least not one that he would climb down from the mountain to associate with. True to this emerging, have-have-not society sociopathic, neo-frat boy/plantation master/feudal lord form, Friedman insults America’s “math geniuses” by suggesting that this current U.S. financial mess serves as a call for them to work in an engineering field that has been sold off to the third world, enabling plummeting wages here at home:

“Maybe then more of our next generation of math geniuses will think about going into engineering the next great global industry — energy technology — rather than engineering derivatives.”

How can American children who have witnessed the professional white collar cleansing of their STEM parents be induced into studying technology in college when their parents can no longer afford the tuitions after being replaced by third world workers whom the greedy Friedman so wildly supports?

This weeks excellent Wash Tech article entitled High Schools and IT Careers offers several accounts by American high school students all across the country on why the issue of “outsourcing, lack of loyalty in "employing local", and a saturated IT market are all at play as students share why they are choosing to pick or leave IT for good.”

In sum, Friedman is no “man of the people” but a grand provocateur of all things caste system and feudal lord. But the subliminal pitch of Friedman’s article is for government to “police” risk-taking to push for government to shift from oil subsidies to unproven, alternative energy technologies that one would bet he’s got a hefty stake in:

Government’s job is to “police that fine line between the necessary risk-taking that drives an innovation economy and crazy gambling with other people's savings in ways that threaten us all. We need to make sure that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — and doesn't come to Main Street.” We need to get back to” investing in our future and not just betting on it.”

"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas"? Give me a break...this is of course, also code for don't let the plebes know who we, the chosen ones, are all screwing and gluing to rearrange the chairs on this hot, smelly, and overcrowded Titanic while we ride on top like rajas on elephants in this race to the bottom.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy

Tom Friedman Trashes Cap n' Trade, Then Promotes it

Tom Friedman Trashes Cap n' Trade, Then Promotes it

Two commendable articles by former billionaire turned millionaire Tom Friedman – yes, that Tom Friedman – he of Hot, Smelly, Flat, Overcrowded, One World fame – are on the LWOH menu today, as yours truly does an about face and lavishes actual praise (mostly) on the notorious NY Times columnist and author who has, up until these two recent, uncharacteristically substantive and amusing articles, fully lived up to his reputation as “Mr. Fingernails on the Blackborad” for his unabashed, condescending, arrogant and hubris soaked elitist-evangelism of all things globo-corporate. (After all, no one could ever accuse the carbon-market enthusiast of outing his offshoring/inshoring loving corporate pals for living large at the expense of a growing body of unemployed, white collar Americans.)

Jay Yarrow's April 8, 2009 article entitled Tom Friedman Trashes Cap And Trade at the Business Insider references Friedman's intelligent preference for a carbon tax instead of this “Rube Goldberg contraption” of a cap and trade bill that Congress recently passed that “stinks.” He correctly explains that “most people” will understand a carbon tax but may not know what the hell “cap and trade” even means in the following NYT OpEd:

NYT: “Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened, breathe cleaner air and live in a more sustainable world with a stronger America. They are much less likely to support a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing, which is what cap-and-trade is all about. People won’t support what they can’t explain.”

But in his July 4th article yesterday entitled China poised to lead U.S. behind in clean energy (just a nit here, but did he mean “China poised to LEAVE U.S. behind...or has Pinchy outsourced all the copy editing to Mexico or India?) Friedman now says that he favors the climate/energy bill passed by the House. How did he go from trashing cap and trade in April to supporting a bill that includes it a mere three months later? For one thing, Friedman expresses deep concern that China has gotten on board the clean energy bandwagon — “big-time” and is genuinely worried that “China will clean our clock in E.T. (energy technologies)” if the U.S. doesn't commit to cleaning China's clock first by driving clean-tech innovation:

“This is a major reason I favor the climate/energy bill passed by the House. If we do not impose on ourselves the necessity to drive innovation in clean-technology — by imposing the right prices on carbon emissions and the right regulations to promote energy efficiency — we will be laggards in the next great global industry.”

Friedman now would suggest that the U.S. cap and trade system “drive” clean tech innovation in place of the straightforward carbon tax and cites what he describes as “key points” in his decision from this draft report of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board:

"If the U.S. fails to adopt an economywide carbon abatement program, we will continue to cede leadership in new energy technology. The U.S. is now home to only two of the 10 largest solar photovoltaic producers in the world, two of the top 10 wind turbine producers and one of the top 10 advanced battery manufacturers. That is, only one-sixth of the world's top renewable energy manufacturers are based in the United States. "... Sustainable technologies in solar, wind, electric vehicles, nuclear and other innovations will drive the future global economy. We can either invest in policies to build U.S. leadership in these new industries and jobs today, or we can continue with business as usual and buy windmills from Europe, batteries from Japan and solar panels from Asia."

So which is it? Manufacturing or “carbon abatement”? Both? Is Friedman suggesting that we become a nation of coolies by reverting back to our manufacturing era days when the U.S. polluted big time before we cooked up the brilliant idea to turn China into our backyard dump by shipping all of our manufacturing over there? Is he really suggesting that we should now compete with China's infinitely cheap labor pool by producing these clean technologies here or does this sound more like he understands that there is some serious gold in them thar cap and trade hills for a few global insiders to turn a relatively quick ROI in a brand spanking new financial “bubble” market created virtually out of thin air that will make the dot.com bust look like a ride on the teacups at Disneyland?

For all of his well-addressed concern about the need to develop alternative energy solutions, why is Friedman now hedging his bets on what he admits is a flawed cap and trade bill? Once the regulation of carbon emissions is taken away from the EPA and placed into the capable hands of Wall Street – you know, those Goldman Sach$ guys and VC's on Obama's advisory bailout board – will the sky be the limit for a few insider profiteers? But Wall Street thrives on speculation... It does seem like an interesting fork in the road when combined with the bailout of insurance companies like AIG, among others.

Oregon Congressman Pete DeFazio astutely observes:

"An unregulated cap-and-trade system could be the next subprime mortgage bubble...It is just infinitely game-able," he said, relating how Europe is now trading in "carbon futures" that give industries additional emission permits now in exchange for, say, trees that may or may not be planted in the future. "These financial people, I mean, they are very smart people and they can figure out a way to monetize anything and it would just be nuts to go down that path.
It should be done with "old fashioned" regulation, of the same kind that reduced smog over our cities and cleaned the filth out of our rivers.
I am a very old-fashioned guy. First you inventory the sources of pollution, then you cap them. You get people a schedule to reduce. You monitor them, and you fine the heck out of them if they don’t meet them [the standards]."

Back to Tom Friedman and why I believe his latest article on the subject of cap and trade qualifies him for a temporary pass out of 2Truthy's doghouse... he mentions what may well be the link to getting Obama's healthcare reform off the ground to the energy/climate bill. Does he know something we don't about the shadowy Insurance players who could be willing to allow the transfer of funds to gradually slosh into the nascent carbon trading market? After all, money is just little electrons running around somebody else's computer – considerably less tangible than wampum -- and right now, the Insurance Lobby is feeling the heat from a sitting president who appears to be dead serious in his attempt to make healthcare available to all in the U.S. Now, what if Single Payer were passed (I know, this is not likely to happen but what if) and the Insurance industry collapsed? Where would all that money go?

Friedman writes:

“And this is why I disagree with President Barack Obama when he signals that he has to focus on extending health care and put the energy/climate bill — now in the Senate — on the back burner.

Health care and the energy/climate bill go together. We need both now. Imagine how poor we would be today if U.S. firms did not dominate the top 10 Internet companies. Well, if we don't dominate the top 10 E.T. rankings, there is no way we are going to be able to afford decent health care for every American. No way."

Aside from his obsession with U.S. globo-corporate domination, could Friedman be on to something by recognizing that the energy/climate bill and healthcare go together? I do, however, question his logic about needing to dominate the “top 10 E.T. Rankings” in order to be able to afford “decent health care” for every American. I mean, if other countries far less wealthy than ours, like Venezuela can do it – I see no reason to conclude this. (h/t The Rag Blog.)

I read somewhere recently that cap and trade would pay for U.S. healthcare reform. By allowing the evil health insurance industry which profits wildly through the calculated screwing of its paying customers to die on the vine, would this release funds to support a universal healthcare system supported by the creation of a dominant U.S. controlled global carbon market?

If so, then this would make me have to take Obama out of my doghouse, too. Or, I' just don't know what the hell I'm talking about and I am, for some mysterious reason, feeling more generous than necessary towards the usual suspects who might – just might – in a million years --- finally see that most of us really want to clean up this place and deserve the right to healthcare and to the right to contribute to the prosperity of our local economies that has been greedily denied to so many for far too long.

-2Truthy

Tom Friedman Gets Pie Thrown in Face

Flatworlder Tom Friedman's Ship Comes In

-Tom "Billionairre Blowhard" Friedman Holds Court -

Well that was rich!

America’s not-so-favorite douchebag extraordinaire to the political one-world-flatworld stars, Tom “Billionairre Blowhard” Friedman, got a pie thrown in his face yesterday at Brown University!


Why? Does shilling and stomping and whoring around with a few get rich quick green-startup elites who see green $$$$ at the expense of ravaging the planet of dwindling, precious resources and some savvy environmentalist groups having his number bring good company and porfolio returns?


As usual, some of the comments are the best part of articles. Here’s my favorite:

If you're going to be throwing pies in the faces of notable people at public events, then you're going to need practice. And don't even bother trying a pie assault if you're not willing to get close enough to your target to risk apprehension. These were obviously amateurs.” -Liam

-2Truthy

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

Doing a Cheney: Tom Friedman Puts 'Climategate' in Perspective, Prepares for %1 While Chris Floyd Discusses the Boiling Point

(Photo Credits/Scientific American)

Copenhagen Climate Change Summit

What a mess. It's a rare day (as in when hell freezes over) that yours truly agrees with anything that  leading flatworlder doctrinaire, Tom “Fingernails on the Blackboard” Friedman has to say. Whether it's climate change or globalization, he has unexpectedly earned himself another PARTIAL temporary stay out of 2Truthy's doghouse for at least being on the same page for  his understanding of global warming science.

In today's Seattle Times Op-Ed column, Friedman registers his take on the current Copenhagen climate change summit disaster dubbed “Climategate" that has turned on the fire hose at credible scientific global warming research, threatening to dampen the burgeoning, global cap and trade carbon market momentum. Depending upon which camp you fall it into, when it comes to the volatile subject of global warming and climate change, the yea and nay camps both have much to gain or lose when looking at the debate through an economic prism.

Shrouding his thoughtful (or manipulative) message in a hawk (pro-war) and dove (pro-environment) analogy, Friedman begins by describing Cheney's 1% doctrine of logic when he declared the best strategy to “confront” a new, unprecedented type of threat, a "low-probability, high-impact event." Cheney explained:

"If there's a 1 percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." Cheney contended that the United States had to confront a very new type of threat: a "low-probability, high-impact event."

This assertion, of course, was and is cold comfort to anti-war activists. Then Friedman compares Cheney's 1% doctrine to legal scholar Cass Sunstein's “one percent principle”, observing that Cheney “seemed to be endorsing the same "precautionary principle" that also animated environmentalists.”

War bad, environmentalism good. But true to Friedman form, what starts out at the beginning of his article as sober analysis falls as flat as the big, fat, flat world hoax the King of Globalization himself has choked on. Friedman concludes that even if global warming is proven to be a “hoax”, we at least should work towards building “a clean-power economy” which would “raise our energy costs”. What's this? Invoking the Royal “We”? Aye, and here lies the rub. Now "we" US taxpayer plebs are all “we”...Whenever the next big bubbles roll out, leave it to the wealthiest 1% to cook up ways to stick the bill on the growing numbers of poor who, through disastrous labor and trade policies from the same ilk, have destroyed the lives of millions of middle class American citizens. Group hug time?

At least he gets it right on the science and the desire to clean up this place. But he fails to address, as usual, the players behind the curtain and how, in an ungreedy global flat world, the wealthiest 1% have no proclivity to contribute in mighty, unprecedented ways to start covering the “clean power economy” costs by halting US job outsourcing (which he champions) and reforming lousy trade deals. And maybe it doesn't even matter if the science is right. What does matter is the growing divide between this US have and have-not society that he and his insider BFFs don't seem to ever want to change.

Whichever side you are on when it comes to the climate change debate, it is crystal clear that these two very wealthy, beltway tied, ex-vice presidents Dick Cheney and Al Gore  have no shortage of corporate oil industry experience and have both invoked the 1% doctrine. Let's hope that the spoils don't trickle up to the wealthiest 1%, as they tend to always do – because for all of the “global warming denier” bluster out there, a conservative guess would bet that 98% of it is coming from an increasingly alarmed population which is increasingly being left out in the cold by the wealthiest 1% doctrinaires who scream “Let them eat coal.”

And for all of the urgency involved to “get the job done” over the sham of a “health care” bill, so it goes at the Copenhagen Summit as President Obama has once again hummed the same mantra. Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque couldn't convey my thoughts on the climate change debate any better in this fine, timely essay entitled Boiling Point: Hijacking the Planet for Power and Privilege:

“The Copenhagen talks have become captive of what we might call the "Reform Syndrome"; i.e., the absolute, urgent imperative to put together a crappy deal that gorges the rich and hobbles the poor in egregious ways -- but which can be palmed off on a compliant media and a diverted public as some kind of "reform." The important thing is that an illusion of positive action be created -- while the same-old same-old keeps grinding on behind the scenes.”

It's a status-quo thing, I know, and for what it's worth, I hate to see guys like Gore serving as the hubris stuffed, corporate Neo-frat boys dupe (or duper) in this bubble. Either way. The very best outcome of rolling ahead with a cap and trade carbon trading market is that if the US can't innovate and manufacture anything around here anymore and continues selling our jobs to the third world under the ruse of a Great Labor Shortage, at least it warms the cockles (what are those?) to know that the 1% who make the rules that play the fools will have pulled off another derivatives beast bonanza. US Plebs, get over yourselves!

Like Floyd says, the “same-old keeps grinding” and at least we can be certain that the beat goes on, blowing snows or sinking sands.

-2Truthy

H-1B CEO Busted in Federal Bribery Sting: FBI Raids Obama Appointee's Office

FBI Raid Arrests 2 at Obama Appointee’s Office

WASHINGTON - FBI agents on Thursday arrested two men in a bribery sting and searched the city's technology office, recently led by President Obama's recently appointed computer chief, Vivek Kundra.


On March 5, Obama named D.C. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Vivek Kundra as the federal government's Chief Information Officer (CIO). Funny timing...Kundra's last day was March 4. He was in charge of technology in the District since 2007, and has also been a consultant to Obama since he won the election. Kundra has now taken a leave from his position until further details become known of the FBI's investigation into Kundra's Washington, D.C. IT offices.


A private contractor and an employee of the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer Administration were both arrested in a federal bribery sting, involving Sushil Bansal, President and CEO of BPO outsourcing firm Advanced Integrated Technologies Corporation (AITC) receiving $350,000 in .Net Development Support and Peoplesoft Consulting Support contracts from the D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Office.

A direct report to Kundra, Yusuf Acar, 40, an employee of the D.C. Office of the CTO was also taken into custody by FBI agents at his home in Northwest D.C. FBI agents found $70,000 in Acar's Northwest D.C. home when they arrested him Thursday morning.


Government records show Bansal is not a U.S. citizen and holds an H-1B visa, which is given to foreign workers in “specialty occupations” most notably the technology sector. And what “specialty occupations” might U.S. corporations and government agencies need to fill right now, with millions of white collar technology professionals losing their jobs to cheap foreign workers? For starters, knowing how and who to contact in Washington’s pay-to-play culture appears to still be en vogue around the Hill.


Bansal’s company, AITC has also received contracts from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2008, he also received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Association of Indians in America, according to AITC's Web site. According to Bansal’s bio on the website, prior experience to founding his “fast growing IT consulting firm” involved working in several IT project management capacities implementing financial systems, including the Department of Homeland Security, the organization that dedicates itself to replacing American white collar professionals with cheap labor from India:

“He also worked with AMS-CGI and SAIC and provided IT consulting and project management services to the Department of Defense, US Navy, Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department, the Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Communications Commission, and several other civilian federal agencies.”

While millions of American computer science and IT professionals are losing their jobs due to corrupt and greedy cheap labor lobby hiring policies that our government officials seem to sanction, we can also thank pompous and out of touch journalists like Tom Friedman for promoting the inhumane meme that this “bunch of losers” known as American citizens are not worth hiring. (For a superb analysis on the Great American Labor Shortage Myth, read Citizen Carrie’s The Ross School of Outsourcing, where this “Detroit housewife” mops the floor with the butt end of the William Davidson Institute and Tom Lantos professor of business administration at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.")



President Obama has pledged to make transparency and government acquisition a priority, and appointing CIOs who pander to the corporate driven status quo agenda and cheap labor lobby at the expense of millions of unemployed and underemployed American technology professionals is not the best practice for Obama to seize this opportunity - unless of course, he also has some serious$ skin in the game. Is it too much to ask that this president starts choosing to make the right appointments for the sake of American citizens who worked so hard to build this great country by demanding a political and business culture of integrity, trust and credibility from his agency leaders and cabinet? Will this administration dwarf the previous one in its corrupt, pay-to-play culture?


Corporate America Code Blue…Meanwhile, American technologists, many with advanced degrees - are being told they need to be retrained -- but it is the CEOs and vc’s who need the retraining. It is high-time to deliver anti-sociopathic training skills and seminars to corporate, academic, and beltway “thought leaders” who have, since the nineties, been responsible for ruining the lives of millions of computer science and IT professionals. This ruse of a “skilled labor shortage” has been well-documented.


Let’s hope Obama’s team takes a few house cleaning tips from our friend, Citizen Carrie, who, in her aforementioned post, offers a detailed account of the inhumane hiring practices geared to kick Americans to the curb in favor for cheap, imported labor and provides a few suggestions to cure this sick house of corporate America’s love of the cheap labor lobby infected with the Hubris Disease.

-2Truthy

Shell Pushes for "Unfettered" Cap and Trade

Cap & Trade or Carbon Tax?

Silicon Valley – It's the Derivatives Beast, Stupid! Get over yourselves and embrace the politics of eco-guilt and its elitist fraternal twin, cap and trade.

Climateer Investing reports that Shell Oil is pushing for an “unfettered” carbon trading market, along with BP Plc. Both support cap-and-trade, while Exxon Mobile Corp. prefers a more environmentally and consumer friendly carbon tax scheme. LWOH readers will recall that even the world's flattest and not-so-hottest NYT opinionator trashed cap-and-trade BEFORE he was for it. As yours truly has suggested, when former billionaire Tom Friedman is following the money, it's time to take a closer look at who's behind the next bubble. After all, if the U.S. can't keep its intellectual property safe from the Chinese or make stuff here anymore, what do Americans do for jobs? Time to tap George Soros and trot out the Goldman Sachs investment bankers. So...

Bend Over, Here it Comes Again! This from Climateer:

“Remember, just as economists using the tools of science (mathematics) doesn't make economics a science, artificial constructs like cap-and-trade using the tools of markets doesn't make the racket "market based".”

For more LWOH cap-and-trade market analysis, there are also voluntary cap-and-trade programs such as the one operated by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), whose inbred and humble roots began with the current POTUS along with an all-too familiar, all-star caste.

As yours truly has also noted here, even Al Gore expressed the downside of cap and trade, preferring the more sensible carbon-based tax system which would create direct incentives to develop and use less carbon-intensive fuels and more energy-efficient technologies. Avast, me hearties! The Derivatives Beast waits for no one.

In other exciting news, Al Gore's Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers VC funded 25 or so person start-up Hara Software, which came out of stealth mode a few months ago, has been described as a “hot commodity.” Their product is meant to track the carbon footprints of large corporations and to identify or police “a business' entire environmental impact from laptop to long-haul truck.” Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers invested $6 million in venture capital with recent follow on investments from JAFCO Ventures and Nth Power. Fast Company explains Hara's noble rot or “low-hanging fruit” identification scheme:

“Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee says the software, "is focused on understanding organizational metabolism, the input and output of natural resources and energy."  Hara--"Fresh green" in Sanskrit--tracks use of electricity, water, chemicals, and gas, and compares it to outputs of waste water, greenhouse gas, and solid waste. The software identifies the "low-hanging fruit", or the simplest ways to cut energy use and waste, along with longer-term goals.”

Hara has also managed to attract Rupert Murdoch to help his media company, News Corp clean up their emissions, or whatever it is that they drag around in their canvas bags for lunch. News Corp go carbon neutral by 2010. It's one thing to ask the local steel mill to go all carbon neutral, but an office full of self-satisfied, upwardly-urban, literate neophytes? Aren't these people already heeding the climate change memo by wearing more sweaters in the winter, turning the lights off, recycling  their empty ale bottles and cooling it on the A/C during hot summer days like the rest of the world's eco-serfs?

News Corp’s manager of Energy Initiatives, Vijay Sudan, said in the company's report that News Corp had looked “at numerous solutions” and chose Hara “due to the intuitive nature as well as the breadth and depth of the Hara solution.” Given the sheer size of News Corp, Hara has bagged a very large win for such a small, newbie firm. Back in 2007 Murdoch described the impact of News Corp going carbon neutral as similar to “turning off the electricity in the city of London for five full days.”

There we have it. In a million, climate change wracked years, London would not ever stand for the electricity being turned off for a five full days. And with Hara's low-hanging fruit detection technology, let's hope that Murdoch's noble soldiers on the front lines will not end up losing the war on climate change, and that a good time will be had by all. After that, at least a few investors will collect their checks and go back to their country houses or Westminster flats.

Elaine Meinel Supkis at Culture of Life News offers signs of intelligent life in the blogosphere on the subject of cap and trade, as she reports how hackers released private global warming emails:

“The obvious hysteria of the people pushing us into the fatal carbon trading market scheme has alerted many people who already are not prone to trust bankers, into digging in heels over global warming.  And thus, we are set on the path to another mega-confrontation that will not be based on science by EITHER side of the issue but will be mostly emotional.”

About those emails, while one can reasonably conclude that although the science of global warming is real, a current cooling trend is here. One of the emails indicated that one scientist had to hide and bury the current cooling trend in the data INSTEAD of explaining or clarifying it with regards to “global warming.” Supkis correctly points out that the emails do not disprove global warming, but rather show that “scientists can be stupid or difficult like other people.” She truly understands the science behind global warming and the political and economic motivations prompting the urgency going into Copenhagen:

“Global warming was NOT embraced by the ruling elites until it was connected to the Derivatives Beast. Then and only then, did it take off like a rocket. Only, the sun didn’t cooperate, did it?”

-2Truthy

Biden: "We Misread How Bad the Economy Was"

The Gay Swami Times

Welcome to The Gay Swami Times NEW twitter edition, where keeping it brief means our noses are snugly positioned in yours with 140 characters or less! (you can now tweet me @thegayswami).

Today's exhilarating feature story Russia, India Question Dollar Reliance Before Summit proves India to be the victorious Vedic villain that a growing number of U.S. critics say it is! Mwahahahahahahaha!

“Russia and India said the world economy is too reliant on the U.S. dollar and called for changes in how $6.5 trillion in currency reserves are managed, as Group of Eight leaders prepare to meet this week.

“The dollar system or the system based on the dollar and euro have shown that they are flawed,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, repeating his proposal for a new international reserve currency.”

India is going to take their American jobs and then crush the U.S. currency and will replace it with curry and more mangoes! Hahahahahahahahahaha! India is THE SUPREME MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE, who shall crush the dollar AND steal U.S. jobs, too! India is now the tyrannous, thief -in-the-night country that most of America can't see because it has very, very good friends in Congress and the White House to conceal this truth as we ply their traitorous masters with our special tantric treasures...

Even their Middle Class Czar, Joe Biden, is now going “ooooooooopsy...” with this headline story “We misread how bad the economy was” on ABC's THIS WEEK that leaks the good news about American unemployment going up, and up and up! And the story hides the celestial truth that India is winning by stealing Americans jobs AND THEIR CURRENCY through stealth operation 'Kundalini' where we infiltrate their corporations like the coiled sleeping serpent, ready to deploy our latent energy located at the base of the spine. Especially on their lusty CEO's. Joe Biden told ABC that the Stimulus is working, and we know how to stimulate their politicians in all the right places!

We couldn't accomplish this wealth transfer without their politicians and the CEO's and especially the help of Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab), and this Administration! And our special friend, Tom Friedman, who actually made everybody believe for a little while that the WORLD WAS FLAT! Hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Now, let's all take out our Bikram yoga rugs and pray hard to Lord Vishnu to keep all of these guys on our side since U.S. citizen's jobs are migrating to us faster than fruit flies on leftover butter chicken, now would be a good political time for Obama and Biden (if they dared, hahahahhahha) to tell us what to do with our yoga mats and mangoes!

Ohmmmmmmmmmmmmm,

The Gay Swami

Iowa Caucus 2008: The Class Ceiling, Elites and Wannabes

Iowa Caucus 2008: Economy and Health Care Top Issues

Great Education Myth? Great Labor Shortage Myth? Have/Have-Not America?

DES MOINES — Adam Nagourney reports today in the New York Times that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates “are navigating a far different set of issues as they approach the Iowa caucuses on Thursday than when they first started campaigning here a year ago, and that is likely to change even more as the campaigns move to New Hampshire and across the country.” As 2Truthy has been reporting, disappearing jobs and healthcare are the number one issues facing Americans today as corrupt corporate and political elites and their media enablers flock the cornfields in a last ditch effort to convince innocent Iowans about the “merits” of the corporate welfare candidates vying for the Big House. Nagourney adds that all the candidates are hearing questions about immigration and trade deals at virtually every stop.


David Sirota has written extensively on what he has coined “The Great Education Myth” and “The Great Labor Shortage Myth” and reports today that U.S. News and World Report is the latest to “debunk” the Great Education Myth.


Sirota, author of the bible on this Hostile Takeover, concludes that although education is “certainly a good thing”, American citizens with college degrees and advanced degrees are victims in an economy “rigged by free trade policies that create an economic race to the bottom.” He couldn’t get that more right. So WHO IS RIGGING this great education myth and how does it tie into “legal” immigration, lowered wages, and disappearing jobs?


Answer: In her excellent post Help Wanted: High Tech Workers at the Kool-Aid Factory, Citizen Carrie of one of my favorite blogs, Carriesnation.blogspot.com has researched the "formula behind the corporate and political fear-mongering"

Bad schools = bad workers = more American jobs being given away

And provides a partial list of what she refers to as a “Rogue’s Gallery” of organizations and foundations run by an inner circle of elites determined to kick America’s educated middle class to the curb:


Eli Broad, from the Broad Foundations, one of the organizations that keep producing flawed Skills Commission reports.

-Allan Golston from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations U.S. Program, yet another entity involved with those Skills Commission reports. Golston also represents a man who is hell-bent on producing a nation of ubermenschen who are not only willing, but eager, to work at slave wages to keep producing flawed software that nobody needs.


-John Engler, President of the National Association of Manufacturers and former Governor of Michigan, a man who suffers from the "Everyone's an idiot except me" syndrome, and who firmly believes that if we could cut unnecessary government regulations (you know, like the ones that gave us covered sewers, clean air and safe working conditions), we wouldn't need to continue offshoring our factories.


-Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, notorious for bringing in boatloads of H-1B workers while slashing thousands from the payroll.

There are others.


Visit this website (edin08.com) STRONG AMERICAN SCHOOLS (SAS). Now that we have taken a peek at the Rogue’s Gallery above, pay close attention to an organization that no one has heard of called Strong American Schools (SAS) and note the insulated cast of characters who tell us on their website

“America’s students are losing out. The world is changing, jobs are evolving, and far too many students are simply not being prepared to be successful adults.”

Guess what? These corporate fear mongers are in Iowa today as we speak influencing the candidates and the caucus goers. Carrie notes that Strong American Schools (SAS)


“will get their wish granted and make education a huge issue in the 2008 election. It might just be the opening we need in order to get the issues of corporate greed, phony skills shortages and depressed wages out in the forefront of the national news.”


Tech Lobby Ditches America’s Students and Computer Scientists. In a previous post, I point out just how much "we don’t need no education" to flip burgers… and yet, the collective zeitgeist of Tom Friedman inspired elites tells us that we don’t matter in this race to the bottom.

Come on, all you tractor pulling motherfuckers in Iowa! Play the game right and caucus your asses off tonight and vote for the candidate who gets it, John Edwards! (Who else does?)


-2Truthy