This port deal with the UAE is how free trade and globalization works.

Of course there are all sorts of financial ties between our ruling family and the ruling families of the UAE, but that's par for the course.

Granted that free trade and globalization benefit corporations and our financial elite.

And our pundits tell us it's good for the rest of us too. Of course our leading pundits are millionaires themselves and their jobs depend on sucking up to wealth and power. They are hardly impartial in their advocacy of free trade and globalization.

Thirty years ago the average corporate CEO salary was around 30 times that of the average worker in the corp. Today the average corporate CEO salary is around a 1000 times that of the average worker.

Money talks in our political system. Is it no longer realistic to expect our government to put the interests of ordinary people above the interests of the financial elite?

Do board members have anything, pro or con, to say about free trade and globalization?

Here's Paul Krugman's column from yesterday's NY Times about increasing income inequality in our country:

Graduates versus Oligarchs
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Monday 27 February 2006

Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.

But Mr. Bernanke did stumble at one point. Responding to a question from Representative Barney Frank about income inequality, he declared that "the most important factor" in rising inequality "is the rising skill premium, the increased return to education."

That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group - that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.

Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system - and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who - surprisingly, given his libertarian roots - has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."

It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.

-------

my degree is in internatonal business and i spent a few years studying the theories that are purported to support globalization and they are a bunch of crap..... adam smith and david ricardo are the two most quoted for their theories on comparative advantage..... adam smith wrote the book "the wealth of nations" where the phrase "invisible hand that controls the market" came from....... either of these guys would be rolling over in their graves if they knew how todays crooks are quoting them to support theories that have no bearing on todays world and are flawed to the point of having no credit........

a great book for anyone who wants to learn more about globalisation is "when corporations rule the world" by david korten

the wto is a much greater threat to the security of the people of this country than al qaeda is or anything you will here on the news

globalisation is nothing but a sell out of the bottom 95% of the WORLD by the top 5% of the worlds rich

todays tidal wave of illegal immigrants from mexico has ties to globalisation too...... all the factories that left the USA and set up on the other side of the border in mexico are now leaving mexico for cheaper places because the labor is now TOO EXPENSIVE IN MEXICO....so all those laborers are allready on the border so why not just hop it and keep looking for work up north............NAFTA also put over 2 million of mexicos corn farmers out of work with cheap corn from the mid west so you have more jobless to add to the tidal wave of immigrants......

The eventual gift of globalization is that the lower 90% will at some point be at the same level. While that would be a good thing in Africa or China where the average worker earns less than a thousand dollars a year it isn't such a good thing here at home.
Catapiller now has a two tiered wage structure where older vested workers earn almost twice what new workers earn for the same job. The cost of living didn't just drop by half for those younger worker but their earning power did. The rich really do keep getting richer, it isn't just a phrase.

That's exactly right, Stever. And when Bubba is just another coolie he won't understand why because they won't tell him why on his "Made in China" TV. His main worry in life, other than not really being able to afford that six pack, will still be that the libs are after his guns.

I was surfing the net tonight and found this article which explains what free trade and globalization is doing to American far better than I ever could. Please read this and think about what it means for the America our children and grandchildren will live in.

Wonder why our ports belong to foreigners now? This is why:


It's The Dollar, Stupid!: When Americans No Longer Own America, Thom Hartman

The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.

Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because they "restrain trade." Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.

These policies have kneecapped the American middle class. Our nation's largest employer has gone from being the unionized General Motors to the poverty-wages Wal-Mart. Americans have gone from having a net savings rate around 10 percent in the 1970s to a minus .5 percent in 2005 - meaning that they're going into debt or selling off their assets just to maintain their lifestyle.

At the same time, federal policy has been to do the same thing at a national level. Because our so-called "free trade" policies have left us with an over $700 billion annual trade deficit, other countries are sitting on huge piles of the dollars we gave them to buy their stuff (via Wal-Mart and other "low cost" retailers). But we no longer manufacture anything they want to buy with those dollars.

So instead of buying our manufactured goods, they are doing what we used to do with Third World nations - they are buying us, the USA, chunk by chunk. In particular, they want to buy things in America that will continue to produce profits, and then to take those profits overseas where they're invested to make other nations strong. The "things" they're buying are, by and large, corporations, utilities, and natural resources.

Back in the pre-Reagan days, American companies made profits that were distributed among Americans. They used their profits to build more factories, or diversify into other businesses. The profits stayed in America.

Today, foreigners awash with our consumer dollars are on a two-decades-long buying spree. The UK's BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco's profits go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House, Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax's US Coal Mining Operations, GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse's Power Generation profits go as well. Ralston Purina's profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber's; TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance's profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by Fortis AG in Belgium.

Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat world" so-called "free trade" policies have turned us from a nation of wealthy producers into a nation of indebted consumers, leaving the world awash in dollars that are most easily used to buy off big chunks of America.

Thanks SS! That about explains it all.

Aunty M, I don't think that most Americans can compete on the world stage when it comes to survival of the fittest. Eating Sea gulls, snails, bugs sticks and leaves, will be easier for some than others in getting use to. Especially those people already experienced with 3rd living (countries) that will move here and find the pickings to be easier and better than what they were use to. And once outlaws (road warriors) control the petro, most people will have to learn to make a living without the automobile. With early birds getting all the worms, a lot of baby boomers both rich and poor want be able to survive the competition. So to assume that making a living is predictable when based on assumptions and experiences that have never been truly tested on a level playing feild with X factors incorporated is inappropriate. I did watch the movie "Soilent Green" so maybe the government already has a plan. Just as their was a Katrina hurricane plan.

aunty- your confusing me....he said surviving not making a living...i keep reading his post and your post and im not sure where the disconnect is...... it looks like you both have very similar views.....and i agree with both of you.

personally i am getting ready to get my garden going this week and i will be growing more of my own food this year than ever before.....im excited to learn how to stage things so i can have a perpetual harvest going over many months and not just a bunch of food at once in the fall

Aunty M, I don't think that most Americans can compete on the world stage when it comes to survival of the fittest. Eating Sea gulls, snails, bugs sticks and leaves, will be easier for some than others in getting use to.

I said most Americans, not all. I think that you are correct regarding the bennefits of livng in a communal situation, under that scenario. Sorta like, what the hippies did in the 60's and 70's. Not sure if the smaller communes will be able to protect themselves from the larger more aggressive ones.

There is one area that I am more familiar with than most, and that is Alternative or preventive medicine. I practice the healing arts (Traditonal Chinese Medicine... Bastyr alumni)and currently enrolled at the Ayurveda Academy studying for my BAMS certificate. I don't think bartering will be a problem for people such as myself. There will be plenty of sick people to go around. Hospitals and pharmacies will be in short supply thereby, medicinemen as myself, will manage just fine, thank you. Health is a huge issue facing baby boomers. We have many cronic illnesses that are life threatening, without the current medical infrastucture. High Blood pressure, diabeties and mental health, will surely take it's toll, without the convenience of the local pharmacy or community health centers, that are well staffed and supplied. I didn't mention the many degenerative diseases, or the complications of obesity that is associated within this cycle of dysfunction.

I think the statement I made earlier speaks for it's self, and doesn't refute anything that you said, but only adds the X factors that were not dealt with during the great depression era. In those days, one could walk across the rivers on the backs of Salmon, as most of this countries land in those days was in the hands of American's or it's Government, and not foriegn companies and Countries, as it is now. Those foriegn companies would have their people exploiting their land, and the scavaging american's would be considered tresspassers on their land, when gathering leaves, sticks and snails,etc., in a one world scenario

HBP and diabetes does not always need medical intervention. A simple change in lifstyle (like being forced into changing eating habits) can correct many medical conditions. In a "depression" situation, many folks would wind up in better health, not worse. In fact, today's obesity epidemic could be partly blamed on the great depression. Those who endured that hardship had a tendency to "over feed" their offspring. The next generation followed suit. Add in fast and convenience foods, and tocacco, and it's easy to see where much of our problems lie.

I would agree that life style changes do make a considerable differnece with health. Not sure if it's the great depression that's to be blamed for the oberity of today. I think it has more to do with the quality of the foods today. Many of the foods today are devoid of nutrients, due to over cooking and processing, thereby triggering the over eating. Food being deficient in nutrients will result in us eating more, in order to make up for the deficiencies, therby causing us to store the useless stuff as fat. Results is the fattening of America. I'm not only speaking of fast foods or frankenfoods, but also the many raw and processed foods containing toxic and poisonous pesticide residue. Genetically modified foods are not natural and could be the cause of many of the illlnesses we see today. Disease prevention and healing starts with the foods we choose to eat. Organic and raw, fruits and vegetables, should be eaten whenever possible in order to get the maximum benefits from those foods. In the old days, food was grown by local farmers or the home gardener, whereas today that is the exception and not the rule.

BTW, Seagulls probably taste more like pigeon than chicken, but since I've never had either Your guess is as good as any.

Aunty I'm sure you're right about the attitude of depression era people, when it came to serving size. What I am illlustrating is that it's not just an issue of serving or portion size, but also issues of quality of food (generating excessive hunger) and life style(sedentary). In those days you would eat a steak(Non Mad Cow) the size of a plate, but then go out and play all day, or do hard and demanding physical work that burned to fuel. Today we still eat huge portions of nutrient depleted food(cause and effect), but there is a difference today, in that we sit on our ar*# all day on the couch, in a chair or at the computer (games,et.) while living a sedentary lifestyle. Those are a couple of the X factors I am referring to. At any rate this is the America we live in today, and the people to consider in that scenario. "If they would only," does not represent the true reality of health condition today, but more like looking with hind site and 20-20, of current situation. I still say eating better quality or more nutrious food, will help to solve the majority of cronic diseases as well as obesity. Just by sayings no to Trans Fats, bleached flour and sugar, GM foods, as well as the artificials, pesticides and Mad Cow,(did I leave out any) ones health will improve.

Red wine. That's the secret to health and longevity. Pinto beans muy picante and red red wine.

Red wine = moderation

I make really good homebrew. I'm thinkin' I'll be rich ... or too drunk to care.

Bush is over in India saying Americans should welcome India as a competitor.

From an article in the NY Times:

"Mr. Bush strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods.

"People do lose jobs as a result of globalization, and it's painful for those who lose jobs," Mr. Bush said at a meeting with young entrepreneurs at the Indian School of Business, one of the premier schools of its kind in India. Nonetheless, the president said, "globalization provides great opportunities."

Mr. Bush said there was a "300-million-person market of middle-class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want," then "all of a sudden, people will be able to have a market here."

SO:

1)Bush is strongly defending the outsourcing of American jobs to India.

2) "if we (us Americans) can make a product they (them folks in India) want," then "all of a sudden, people (us Americans?)will be able to have a market here."

BUT: if we can make a product they want, so we "have a market" there, wouldn't the production of the "product they want" be outsourced to India or some other cheap labor country?

Does Bush even understand what he is saying?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/04/intern...CUahE/we8e45wFA

Maybe this will rustle some of the Christians and Dominionist** out
of their bubble:
NEWS TO USE
The US has issued a travel advisory warning citizens traveling to
Israel that it is a dangerous criminal state and you should avoid
visiting there. Read the full warning here
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_922.html
I can just see the paint peeling in Tel Aviv to have anything so
truthful printed or posted. How "hate crime" of the US State
Department. On the other hand, maybe they do not want Christian
Americans going over there and finding out how much they have been
lied to. That is another possibility.
Are you one of those Americans that think George W. Bush is defending
America?

It seems everyone in D.C. thinks this deal to hand over operations of
US ports to the UAE state owned company is just loverly and not a
risk at all. Funny how being paid lots of money makes everything
loverly on these types of deals that put all of us at risk. Even the
CIA notes that the Poor Man's Nuke would most likely be delivered in
a shipping container, not by missile. Why spend all of those
millions or billions in a rocket program when you can just ship it to
the U.S.? party just sold them out?
Wake up America. God help you if you do not.
It is time for America to inform DC that the party is over.
Karl http://rense.com/general69/dom.htm
Thanks to the arrogance, belligerence and genocide perpetrated by
George W. Bush and his bunch of thugs, the likelihood of us getting a
special package at one or more ports is too high a price to pay for
the negligence and greed of those in Washington, DC.
If the port deal and operations of our ports in the hands of an UAE
Arab owned firm has you concerned, note that Bush Co is holding a
fire sale and there are other deals being reviewed at this very
time. They also have implications for national security and such
adverse parties (on the surface) as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Sandy
Berger, Madeline [Not at] Albright and Howard Dean are apparently
pushing for the Dubai port deal on the Democratic side. On the
Republican side we have such stalwarts as Bob Dole, George Bush,
Cheney, Rice, most of the Republican controlled Congress and more
lobbyists and influence peddlers than one can count in an hour.
In this way, Bush is just like Clinton in that they always try to
push two or three at the same time thinking maybe only one or none of
them gets exposed or questioned. There is not one deal, there are
three. Two involving the UAE and acquisition of key assets in the US
and another an Israeli firm that was involved in what appears to be
election fraud in the 2000 elections that got Bush into the White
House.
Dominionist** (A fringe contemporary Christian movement which marries
politics and religion under the notion that Christ intended
Christians to conquer the world for the cross, to receive the
lost "Dominion" given Adam. It is, essentially, the rebirth of
Constaninianism which led to church-state marriage, the crusades and
the mass murder of countless millions in the name of Roman Catholic
Christianity, including all those Christians which did not obey the
church and its editcs, dogmas, etc.

If you think that, you need to wake up. If others around you think
that, you need to wake them up ­ the damned building is on fire!
Are you one of those Americans that think the Department of Homeland
Security is protecting you from those dastardly Al Qaeda folks?
If you think that, you need to wake up and understand that the
Department of Homeland Security exists to protect the Wealthy Elite
thugs and this Federal government from an American uprising to cast
them from power.

U.S. Reviewing 2nd Dubai Firm
Israeli Deal Also Faces Security Check
By Jonathan Weisman and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
March 2, 2006 A01
The Bush administration, stung by the public outcry over the Dubai
port deal, has launched a national security investigation of another
Dubai-owned company set to take over plants in Georgia and
Connecticut that make precision components used in engines for
military aircraft and tanks.
The administration notified congressional committees this week that
its secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
(CFIUS) is investigating the security implications of Dubai
International Capital's $1.2 billion acquisition of London-based
Doncasters Group Ltd., which has subsidiaries in the United States.
It is also investigating an Israeli company's plans to buy the
Maryland software security firm Sourcefire, which does business with
Defense Department agencies.
Administration officials are privately briefing leaders of half a
dozen House and Senate committees this week about the two planned
transactions, concerned that both deals could stir controversy in a
political climate that remains supercharged over the Dubai port deal.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers angrily protested after learning
late last month that the administration had approved a $6.8 billion
deal to allow a maritime company based in the United Arab Emirates to
take over significant operations at six U.S. ports without a thorough
investigation and without consulting members of Congress. Last
weekend, the Dubai maritime company agreed to a 45-day investigation
to stem the protest and allay concerns of a possible breach of U.S.
port security.
In the past, the foreign investment committee rarely told Congress of
such inquiries. Wary of another misstep, administration officials
decided to inform lawmakers of the two other pending transactions
with national security implications for the United States.
There have been suggestions in the trade press that the publicly
traded Israeli firm, Check Point Software Technologies, has been
subjected to more scrutiny than Dubai Ports World, the state-owned
Arab company that was initially cleared to take over operations at
the six major U.S. ports with no security investigation. That inquiry
was initiated only after an outcry about turning over port security
to a country that has been cited for ties to terrorism. Sources
familiar with the Israeli investigation said cybersecurity officials
at the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security all
raised serious concerns about the purchase before the port
controversy erupted.
Dubai International Capital's acquisition of Doncasters could present
some of the same political problems created by Dubai Ports World's
purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
Once again, a state-controlled Dubai company with deep pockets is
purchasing a British firm with U.S. holdings. Doncasters has
operations in nine U.S. locations and manufactures precision parts
for defense contractors such as Boeing, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney
and General Electric.
A spokesman for Doncasters' corporate office in Connecticut said the
company had no comment on the security investigation.
Although many foreign companies manufacture parts used in U.S.
military equipment, in this instance CFIUS members decided to look
more carefully at the Doncasters transaction. The CFIUS met last week
and tentatively decided to subject that proposal to a 45-day
investigation, and it finalized that decision in a conference call
late Monday. The decision came on the final day of the regular 30-day
review period. Aides on the Senate banking committee said the panel
was notified late Monday that the CFIUS had initiated both national
security inquiries.
"The CFIUS process is charged with determining if there are national
security concerns in any transaction, and it takes that role very
seriously," said Tony Fratto, spokesman for the Treasury Department,
which leads the interagency committee. "It looks at each transaction
on a case-by-case basis, and if security concerns are raised by any
member of the committee at the end of an initial 30-day review, the
case goes into investigation."
The 45-day investigation of the Israeli deal began in early February,
several weeks before the controversy erupted over the Dubai port
deal, administration officials said. The investigation of the Dubai-
Doncasters deal began this week, at the height of the political
turmoil over the port issue.
Yet Fratto said that neither of the new investigations were
started "because of public reaction to some other transaction."
Of the 1,500 acquisitions that have been referred to the CFIUS, one
has been rejected. But deals with security implications tend to fall
through before the 45-day investigation. In 1989, 204 deals involving
the purchase of a company with significant U.S. operations triggered
a security investigation. Last year, only 65 went that far.
In the case of Check Point, the security questions were apparently
raised early on, according to people familiar with the review. Check
Point's proposed $225 million purchase of Laurel-based Sourcefire
raised red flags with government cybersecurity officials.
Check Point was built by Gil Shwed, whom Forbes magazine has
described as an Israeli billionaire who served in the electronic
intelligence arm of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Sourcefire makes network defense and intrusion detection software for
an array of customers, including the Defense Department. The company
has deep roots in the National Security Agency. Its founder and chief
technology officer, Martin Roesch, has served as an NSA contractor.
Its vice president of engineering, Tom Ashoff, developed software for
the secretive spy agency.
Last August, the Israeli government signed an agreement with the
Pentagon to alert the United States before selling other countries
technology related to national security. The United States asked for
the agreement after learning that Israel had sold unmanned aerial
vehicles to China in late 2004.
The CFIUS investigation is to be completed in mid-March.
Check Point officials declined to comment yesterday on the security
investigation. In announcing that its deal would be investigated, the
company released a statement pledging that "Check Point and
Sourcefire are both committed to working cooperatively with the
committee during the investigative period."
In the case of Dubai International Capital and Doncasters, an
acquisition that ordinarily may have been whisked through the process
without objection is now under security investigation, administration
sources said. Dubai International Capital is the financial arm of
Dubai Holding, an investment conglomerate that is the third-largest
shareholder of DaimlerChrysler Corp. and is a major investor in
Holiday Inn Express in the Middle East.
Doncasters' expertise is in forging, fabrication, machining and alloy
production. The company owns a plant that makes aerospace turbine
blades and components in Farmington, Conn.; a turbine and generator
plant in Rincon, Ga.; a steel foundry in Springfield, Mass.; and a
metal-rolling plant in Groton, Conn. The company's Web site says the
Georgia and Connecticut plants manufacture "engine ready airfoils,"
for aircraft, helicopter and tank engines.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
It may not seem connected to you, but the DU issue is also right in
the middle of this type of secrecy and misconduct on the part of our
government and their doing deals that are exposing this nation to
considerable risks.
The Choice Point software company mentioned above is the same one
that collaborated with the State of Florida to have about 40,000
removed from the voting rolls in 2000 because they had minor traffic
violations. After the elections the State of Florida sent out
apology letters but only after they had been denied the right to
vote. Last time I checked, I do not think Bush won Florida by 40,000
votes.
The DU weapons are a terror weapon in that we use them to deter [with
fear, just like a terrorist] anyone from daring to stand up to US
military power. That 20 Year War Plan commissioned under Clinton ­
Gore included Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Nigeria,
Equatorial Guinea, and many others.
If the government and their wealthy masters want to make money and at
the same time undermine national security that is OK with them. They
can always get on the TV and in the press and on radio and sell you a
line of crap and way too many Americans accept it as fact and go back
to sleep or back to their mundane lives.
Far too many Americans do not make the mental leap that our military
policies, foreign policies, energy policies, fiscal policies are all
interconnected and they are not interconnected for your benefit.
They are interconnected to make lots of money, undermine your life,
our National Security because there are really big fortunes to be
made in such underhanded deceit. It is literally treason against
this nation and failing to uphold their oaths of office, but money
makes them do it every time.
No one in Washington, DC is going to let National Security stand in
the way of making really large amounts of money. They do not have
the conscience or moral courage to make that call and stand on it.
We have thoroughly polluted three target nations in Bosnia, Iraq and
Afghanistan, and at the same time have polluted lands far away and
exposed hundreds of millions of people to deadly toxic materials that
will kill or ruin the health of many. If they can and will do that,
who is to think they would not sell us all out for the right amount
of money? We are planning to attack other nations that choose to not
do business with the United States and pollute them and the rest of
the world even more.
If I were President we would have a moratorium on such deals and
National Security from top to bottom and from bottom to top would
undergo a full review and modification. There would be many changes,
many firings, many companies removed from the process of National
Security. National Security is a process and does not hinge solely on
how much money someone gets to pocket at the expense of all of us.
The 20 Year War plan would be burned and start over with a different
approach.
Something would be done to stop the DU pollution and address that
which we have already done, without exception and excluding all of
the wealthy elite that participated in the DU pollution. Instead of
raking in more money at our expense, they would be facing immense
financial liabilities, both civil and criminal.
I would also see to it that Congress is placed under full
investigation, for that is long overdue and also the lobbyists that
they are so cozy with:
"War is a Racket." General Smedley Butler, USMC Ret.
http://brickburner.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/02/senator_feinste.html
Senator Feinstein's War-Profiteering
"The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with
murder, however, some of them are also reaping the benefits of the
Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton
and how his ex-company is making bundles off US contracts in Iraq.
But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Senator Dianne
Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war
on terror".
The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her leading up to the
invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us though,
there may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies.
According to The Center for Public Integrity, Senator Feinstein's
husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a
civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire
investor wheels 75 percent of the voting share.
In April 2003 the US Army Corps of Engineers dived out $500 million
to Perini to provide services for Iraq's central command. A month
earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and
construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul.
And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to
$500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in
the southern Iraq.
Senator Feinstein, who sits on the Appropriations Committee as well
as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of
her husband's investments. The Democratic royal family recently
purchased a 16.5 million dollar mansion in the flush Pacific Heights
neighborhood of San Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war
profiteering and the leading Democrat, just like Cheney, should be
called out for her offense.
And that's exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bullet-
proof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and
just as callous."
Next time you see Diane Feinstein whining on TV and feigning her
Liberal concerns, remember she is up to her ears in this, raking in
the big bucks through her husband, and it is all connected ­ the DU,
the military and foreign policies, the lining of just the right
pockets to your detriment and mine. As for being a concerned
Progressive Environment loving, Anti-War Democrat, she is a complete
fraud. It is all about the money.
This DU story might be the biggest since 9-11, and unlike 9-11 they
cannot hide this one or remove the evidence. Yet most are not aware
of it and have not read or heard about it.
We put the information in the hands of over 600 newspapers, over
4,000 reporters all over the world, many TV stations, many of the so
called environmental groups, and nothing happened yet in almost two
weeks.
Where is the outrage of Conservative America that believes in clean
air, clean water, and good health?
Where is the outrage of Greenpeace regarding DU pollution here and
abroad?
Where is the outrage of the Natural Resources Defense Council
regarding DU pollution here and abroad or any other environmental
group for that matter?
Are any of them truly concerned about clean air, clean water, healthy
food supplies, quality of life, even health other than for
themselves? I think not, I think they are in it for the photo op and
the money. I am out here on the front lines and the patterns are very
clear to see. Money overrides even sanity in our national capital.
Where is the across the board outrage of the veterans that have been
treated so shamelessly by this government? I know many veterans are
wide awake and active, but what about the rest of them that so
blindly support what undermined their lives and their health? I have
met many whose health has been upended and some that will not be with
us this time next year. They are not the old, they are the young and
were robbed for their future and enjoyment of life.
How about those Democrats that just rolled over on the renewal of the
Patriot Act? I wonder how many Progressives, Liberals, Democrats ­
whatever they prefer to call themselves - now see that their chosen
party just sold them out? Wake up America. God help you if you do not.
It is time for America to inform DC that the party is over.
Karl http://rense.com/general69/dom.htm

It doesn't have to be complicated. Some things are just common sense.

If it would pay to outsource your job to a low wage country, your job is in danger.

First it was textile workers to have their jobs outsourced. Then a load of other manufacturing jobs. Now its gotten to computer programmers! it's hard to say how it will all end.

Real wages of American wage earners will go down under globalization. How could they not go down?

The funny thing is bush tries to defend the outsourcing by saying Americans need to educate themselves better for 21st century jobs.

What types of jobs does he think are being outsourced? Minimum wage jobs? So the only jobs that will be left here are fast-food, mortgage broker, ditch-digger, etc. How much education do those require?

Do I need more than my computer science degree to have a job in the 21st century in America?

That dude really is clueless.

Suggestions for Bush Outsourcing:

Immigration: Mexico

Drug Enforcement: Columbia

Atomic Energy: North Korea

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms: Dick Chaney


Medicare Part D Prescription Program: Christian Science Church

Enforcement of sexual abuse of children laws: U. S. Catholic bishops


Census Bureau: Young Republicans

Federal Emergency Management: The Robin Hood Society

National Academy of Science: The Flat-Earth Society

Office of Management and Budget: General Motors and Delta Airlines

Homeland Security: Hamas

Federal Elections Commission: OPEC

Aunty,
"JLH, Keep posting the stuff you dig up on DU. There's an aweful lot of ex military guys I know who are too young to have some of the illnesses they do, including my hubby."

Glad that you are following this very serious issue AM. It has been a concern of mine for some time now. The issue is real and people are suffering from exposure to radiation, one of the most toxic of contaminants none to mankind. The following will help to illustrate it.

Depleted Uranium
Kills Indiscriminately

By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
3-3-6


ORMOND BEACH, Florida -- An alarmingly high percentage of U.S.
military personnel who have served in Iraq have been afflicted by a
variety of health problems commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome.
Exposure to uranium spread through the use of depleted uranium (DU)
weapons is thought to be the primary cause of the high rate of
chronic ailments and mortality among Gulf War vets.

While initial casualties from the first U.S. invasion of Iraq were
light, long-term casualties from the 1991 war ultimately exceeded 30
percent, according to Terrell E. Arnold, former Chairman of the
Department of International Studies at the National War College. The
long-term casualty rate from the current war in Iraq, Arnold says, is
likely to be much higher.

Official statistics of killed and wounded from the 15-year long war
against Iraq do not reflect the veterans whose service-related
injuries only become apparent after they return from Iraq. The
official death rate of those killed and wounded in Iraq does not
include these vets, many of whom suffer slow and painful deaths as a
direct result of their service. Dustin Brim was one of them.

Lori Brim lost Dustin, her only child, when he died at Walter Reed
Hospital in Washington at the age of 22 on Sept. 24, 2004, after a
six-month battle with what was eventually diagnosed as Non-Hodgkins
Diffuse Large Cell B Type Lymphoma. When Mrs. Brim asked the doctors
how her young, healthy, strong son had contracted cancer all they
would say was ?bad luck.?

Her caseworker and nurses at the hospital were more forthcoming with
information. At different times during the six months nurses would
take Mrs. Brim aside and urge her off the record to do some research
on DU. Asked whose idea it was for Dustin to join the Army in summer
2002, Mrs. Brim said, ?It was mine.? As a single mother, Mrs. Brim
had approached an Army recruiter out of concern for the well-being of
her son. She thought the Army would be good for her son by giving him
some discipline and direction.

Dustin had not wanted to join the Army, his mother said. But Dustin
was never meant to be in a war zone, she added. The U.S. Army
recruiter had promised her, that as her only child, he would not be
sent to war. Mechanically inclined, Dustin became an Army mechanic,
an E-4 specialist serving in the 1st Maintenance Company under the
541st Maintenance Battalion from Fort Riley, Kan., and was deployed
to Iraq in August 2003.

Dustin?s work in Iraq involved working on disabled Army vehicles,
including tanks, which his unit repaired and retrieved, or if damaged
beyond repair, destroyed with explosives on the spot. Most of these
vehicles, having been in the battlefield, would have been heavily
laden with DU and other toxins. Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of
the U.S. Army?s Depleted Uranium Project, said that mechanics like
Dustin are not properly prepared or protected to be working on DU
contaminated vehicles.

Mrs. Brim said that her son had not even been equipped with a pair of
gloves, let alone a mask or protective garb. The Army?s failure to
inform and instruct its personnel about the dangers of DU exposure is
one of Rokke?s main concerns. At Christmas 2003, Dustin surprised his
parents with a visit home. It was the last time Mrs. Brim would see
her son in a healthy condition. A photo of Dustin taken in Iraq in
February 2004 shows him smiling and strong.

In early March, however, Dustin began to complain of abdominal pains.
He went to the doctors on his base 11 times during the month
complaining of severe pain and constipation that lasted for weeks. He
was sent back to his job and told to ?work it out.? During the last
two weeks of March, he wrote to his mother telling her that his pain
was unbearable.

On March 31 he passed out from pain and breathlessness. His sergeant
happened to be with him and took him to the doctors who thought he
had gall bladder problems and sent him to the hospital in Baghdad.
The next day, April 1, was Dustin?s 22nd birthday. After being
assessed and heavily drugged, the doctors allowed him to call home to
tell his mother that he had cancer.

In Baghdad, the doctors had discovered that Dustin had a huge
cancerous tumor on his esophagus, which severely restricted his
breathing, a collapsed lung, the loss of a kidney, numerous blood
clots and a tumor progressing on his liver. The doctors could not
believe that Dustin had been turned away so many times for medical
help and still manage to endure as long as he did in his magnitude of
pain while carrying an 80-pound pack on his back, his mother said.
Dustin was flown to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and
then to Walter Reed Hospital.

?The story of Dustin Brim is just one more avoidable tragedy of our
insane use of uranium munitions,? Rokke said. ?When I lost Dustin, I
lost myself,? Mrs. Brim said. ?This is something that should not have
happened. There is something going on but no one wants to talk about
it on the record. I am sharing my son?s story with you in the hope
that perhaps it will make a difference.?

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium_kills.html

So Aunty, John Lee, if what the article says about the long term casualty rate from the first Gulf War due to DU is true, does that mean our military personnel in Iraq now are at risk? And what about the Iraqis?

SS as GH mentioned in a previous reply to this subject,"this in only the tip of the Iceburg." Read the folowing for more on the subject.

Foot Shot

http://www.issuesandalibis.org/


Depleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets
By Leuren Moret

A death sentence here and abroad
"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam"
Vietnam was a chemical war for oil, permanently contaminating large regions and countries downriver with Agent Orange, and environmentally the most devastating war in world history. But since 1991, the U.S. has staged four nuclear wars using depleted uranium weaponry, which, like Agent Orange, meets the U.S. government definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Vast regions in the Middle East and Central Asia have been permanently contaminated with radiation.
And what about our soldiers? Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs reported this week to the American Free Press that "Gulf-era veterans" now on medical disability since 1991 number 518,739, with only 7,035 reported wounded in Iraq in that same 14-year period.
This week the American Free Press dropped a "dirty bomb" on the Pentagon by reporting that eight out of 20 men who served in one unit in the 2003 U.S. military offensive in Iraq now have malignancies. That means that 40 percent of the soldiers in that unit have developed malignancies in just 16 months.
Since these soldiers were exposed to vaccines and depleted uranium (DU) only, this is strong evidence for researchers and scientists working on this issue, that DU is the definitive cause of Gulf War Syndrome. Vaccines are not known to cause cancer. One of the first published researchers on Gulf War Syndrome, who also served in 1991 in Iraq, Dr. Andras Kor始yi-Both, is in agreement with Barbara Goodno from the Department of Defense's Deployment Health Support Directorate, that in this war soldiers were not exposed to chemicals, pesticides, bioagents or other suspect causes this time to confuse the issue.
This powerful new evidence is blowing holes in the cover-up perpetrated by the Pentagon and three presidential administrations ever since DU was first used in 1991 in the Persian Gulf War. Fourteen years after the introduction of DU on the battlefield in 1991, the long-term effects have revealed that DU is a death sentence and very nasty stuff.
Scientists studying the biological effects of uranium in the 1960s reported that it targets the DNA. Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist retired from the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab and formerly involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in soldiers from the 2003 war as "spectacular ... and a matter of concern."
This evidence shows that of the three effects which DU has on biological systems - radiation, chemical and particulate - the particulate effect from nano-size particles is the most dominant one immediately after exposure and targets the Master Code in the DNA. This is bad news, but it explains why DU causes a myriad of diseases which are difficult to define.
In simple words, DU "trashes the body." When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Fulk was more specific: "I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people."
Soldiers developing malignancies so quickly since 2003 can be expected to develop multiple cancers from independent causes. This phenomenon has been reported by doctors in hospitals treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the U.S. military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies from unrelated causes has been unknown until now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure.
Just 467 U.S. personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are dead, and by 2000 there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. This astounding number of disabled vets means that a decade later, 56 percent of those soldiers who served now have medical problems.
The number of disabled vets reported up to 2000 has been increasing by 43,000 every year. Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs told American Free Press that he believes there are more disabled vets now than even after World War II.
They brought it home
Not only were soldiers exposed to DU on and off the battlefields, but they brought it home. DU in the semen of soldiers internally contaminated their wives, partners and girlfriends. Tragically, some women in their 20s and 30s who were sexual partners of exposed soldiers developed endometriosis and were forced to have hysterectomies because of health problems.
In a group of 251 soldiers from a study group in Mississippi who had all had normal babies before the Gulf War, 67 percent of their post-war babies were born with severe birth defects. They were born with missing legs, arms, organs or eyes or had immune system and blood diseases. In some veterans' families now, the only normal or healthy members of the family are the children born before the war.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that they do not keep records of birth defects occurring in families of veterans.
How did they hide it?
Before a new weapons system can be used, it must be fully tested. The blueprint for depleted uranium weapons is a 1943 declassified document from the Manhattan Project.
Harvard President and physicist James B. Conant, who developed poison gas in World War I, was brought into the Manhattan Project by the father of presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry's father served at a high level in the Manhattan Project and was a CIA agent.
Conant was chair of the S-1 Poison Gas Committee, which recommended developing poison gas weapons from the radioactive trash of the atomic bomb project in World War II. At that time, it was known that radioactive materials dispersed in bombs from the air, from land vehicles or on the battlefield produced very fine radioactive dust which would penetrate all protective clothing, any gas mask or filter or the skin. By contaminating the lungs and blood, it could kill or cause illness very quickly.
They also recommended it as a permanent terrain contaminant, which could be used to destroy populations by contaminating water supplies and agricultural land with the radioactive dust.
The first DU weapons system was developed for the Navy in 1968, and DU weapons were given to and used by Israel in 1973 under U.S. supervision in the Yom Kippur war against the Arabs.
The Phalanx weapons system, using DU, was tested on the USS Bigelow out of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1977, and DU weapons have been sold by the U.S. to 29 countries.
Military research report summaries detail the testing of DU from 1974-1999 at military testing grounds, bombing and gunnery ranges and at civilian labs under contract. Today 42 states are contaminated with DU from manufacture, testing and deployment.
Women living around these facilities have reported increases in endometriosis, birth defects in babies, leukemia in children and cancers and other diseases in adults. Thousands of tons of DU weapons tested for decades by the Navy on four bombing and gunnery ranges around Fallon, Nevada, is no doubt the cause of the fastest growing leukemia cluster in the U.S. over the past decade. The military denies that DU is the cause.
The medical profession has been active in the cover-up - just as they were in hiding the effects from the American public - of low level radiation from atmospheric testing and nuclear power plants. A medical doctor in Northern California reported being trained by the Pentagon with other doctors, months before the 2003 war started, to diagnose and treat soldiers returning from the 2003 war for mental problems only.
Medical professionals in hospitals and facilities treating returning soldiers were threatened with $10,000 fines if they talked about the soldiers or their medical problems. They were also threatened with jail.
Reporters have also been prevented access to more than 14,000 medically evacuated soldiers flown nightly since the 2003 war in C-150s from Germany who are brought to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C.
Dr. Robert Gould, former president of the Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has contacted three medical doctors since February 2004, after I had been invited to speak about DU. Dr. Katharine Thomasson, president of the Oregon chapter of the PSR, informed me that Dr. Gould had contacted her and tried to convince her to cancel her invitation for me to speak about DU at Portland State University on April 12. Although I was able to do a presentation, Dr. Thomasson told me I could only talk about DU in Oregon "and nothing overseas ... nothing political."
Dr. Gould also contacted and discouraged Dr. Ross Wilcox in Toronto, Canada, from inviting me to speak to Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), the Canadian equivalent of PSR, several months later. When that didn't work, he contacted Dr. Allan Connoly, the Canadian national president of PGS, who was able to cancel my invitation and nearly succeeded in preventing Dr. Wilcox, his own member, from showing photos and presenting details on civilians suffering from DU exposure and cancer provided to him by doctors in southern Iraq.
Dr. Janette Sherman, a former and long-standing member of PSR, reported that she finally quit some time after being invited to lunch by a new PSR executive administrator. After the woman had pumped Dr. Sherman for information all through lunch about her position on key issues, the woman informed Dr. Sherman that her last job had been with the CIA.
How was the truth about DU hidden from military personnel serving in successive DU wars? Before his tragic death, Sen. Paul Wellstone informed Joyce Riley, R.N., B.S.N., executive director of the American Gulf War Veterans Association, that 95 percent of Gulf War veterans had been recycled out of the military by 1995. Any of those continuing in military service were isolated from each other, preventing critical information being transferred to new troops. The "next DU war" had already been planned, and those planning it wanted "no skunk at the garden party."
The US has a dirty (DU) little (CIA) secret
A new book just published at the American Free Press by Michael Collins Piper, "The High Priests of War: The Secret History of How America's Neo-Conservative Trotskyites Came to Power and Orchestrated the War Against Iraq as the First Step in Their Drive for Global Empire," details the early plans for a war against the Arab world by Henry Kissinger and the neo-cons in the late 1960s and early 1970s. That just happens to coincide with getting the DU "show on the road" and the oil crisis in the Middle East, which caused concern not only to President Nixon. The British had been plotting and scheming for control of the oil in Iraq for decades since first using poison gas on the Iraqis and Kurds in 1912.
The book details the creation of the neo-cons by their "godfather" and Trotsky lover Irving Kristol, who pushed for a "war against terrorism" long before 9/11 and was lavishly funded for years by the CIA. His son, William Kristol, is one of the most influential men in the United States.
Both are public relations men for the Israeli lobby's neo-conservative network, with strong ties to Rupert Murdoch. Kissinger also has ties to this network and the Carlyle Group, who, one could say, have facilitated these omnicidal wars beginning from the time former President Bush took office. It would be easy to say that we are recycling World Wars I and II, with the same faces.
When I asked Vietnam Special Ops Green Beret Capt. John McCarthy, who could have devised this omnicidal plan to use DU to destroy the genetic code and genetic future of large populations of Arabs and Moslems in the Middle East and Central Asia - just coincidentally the areas where most of the world's oil deposits are located - he replied: "It has all the handprints of Henry Kissinger."
In Zbignew Brzezinski's book "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives," the map of the Eurasian chessboard includes four regions strategic to U.S. foreign policy. The "South" region corresponds precisely to the regions now contaminated permanently with radiation from U.S. bombs, missiles and bullets made with thousands of tons of DU.
A Japanese professor, Dr. K. Yagasaki, has calculated that 800 tons of DU is the atomicity equivalent of 83,000 Nagasaki bombs. The U.S. has used more DU since 1991 than the atomicity equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs. Four nuclear wars indeed, and 10 times the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from atmospheric testing!
No wonder our soldiers, their families and the people of the Middle East, Yugoslavia and Central Asia are sick. But as Henry Kissinger said after Vietnam when our soldiers came home ill from Agent Orange, "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used for foreign policy."
Unfortunately, more and more of those soldiers are men and women with brown skin. And unfortunately, the DU radioactive dust will be carried around the world and deposited in our environments just as the "smog of war" from the 1991 Gulf War was found in deposits in South America, the Himalayas and Hawaii.
In June 2003, the World Health Organization announced in a press release that global cancer rates will increase 50 percent by 2020. What else do they know that they aren't telling us? I know that depleted uranium is a death sentence ... for all of us. We will all die in silent ways.
To learn more:
Sources used in this story that readers are encouraged to consult:
American Free Press four-part series on DU by Christopher Bollyn. Part I: "Depleted Uranium: U.S. Commits War Crime Against Iraq, Humanity,"; Part II: "Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD: MD Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked,"
August 2004 World Affairs Journal. Leuren Moret: "Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,"
August 2004 Coastal Post Online. Carol Sterrit: "Marin Depleted Uranium Resolution Heats Up - GI's Will Come Home To A Slow Death,"
World Depleted Uranium Weapons Conference, Hamburg, Germany, October 16-19, 2004
International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan. Written opinion of Judge Niloufer Baghwat
"Discounted Casualties: The Human Cost of Nuclear War" by Akira Tashiro, foreword by Leuren Moret
(c) 2004 Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who has worked around the world on radiation issues, educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress and other officials. She became a whistleblower in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after experiencing major science fraud on the Yucca Mountain Project. An environmental commissioner in the City of Berkeley, she can be reached at: Email .

How do you like the coup d'etat so far?
And more importantly, what are you planning to do about it?

Yada yada yada, talk talk talk. I'm sick of all this blather about what the "elites" are doing to us.

As long as people know more about "The Simpsons" than the First Amendment to the Constitution or "People" magazine and playing music as loud as can be humanly tolerated is more important than becoming informed about the issues that really affect us, we have absolutely no excuses for the fate that we will suffer.

No amount of self-sufficiency will keep our enemies or the wolf from our door. We will have no one to blame but ourselves.

Only an informed electorate voting at 80 percent or more will provide any hope for us. If we can't get off our dead butts for a couple of hours on election day, we don't deserve "freedom".

Here's a new column by Paul Krugman that goes to this issue:

"Decisions by and for the elite

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Columnist


President Bush’s main purpose in visiting India last week seemed to have been to promote nuclear proliferation. But he also had some kind words for outsourcing.

And those words help explain something that I know deeply puzzles the administration’s political gurus: Bush’s dismal polling on economic issues.

Now the U.S. economy isn’t doing as well as Bush partisans think it is. In fact, since the end of the 2001 recession, the recovery in jobs, output and especially wages has been unusually weak by historical standards. Still, the economy is expanding, so it’s impressive just how large a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush’s economic management.

Why doesn’t Bush get any economic respect? I think it’s because most Americans sense, correctly, that he doesn’t care about people like them. We’re living in a time when many Americans are feeling economically insecure, but a tiny elite has been growing incredibly rich.

And Bush’s problem is that he identifies so totally with the lucky, wealthy few that in unscripted settings he can’t manage even a few sentences of empathy with ordinary Americans. He doesn’t feel your pain, and it shows.

Here’s what Bush said in India when someone raised the question of the political backlash against outsourcing: “Losing jobs is painful, so let’s make sure people are educated so they can find — fill the jobs of the 21st century. And let’s make sure that there’s pro-growth economic policies in place. What does that mean? That means low taxes. It means less regulation. It means fewer lawsuits. It means wise energy policy.”

OK, so you’re a 50-year-old worker whose job has just been outsourced, and Bush tells you that you should go get a 21st-century education and rejoice in the joys of a lawsuit-free economy. Uh-huh.

Actually, Bush’s remarks were even more off-key than they seem, coming during a visit to India. India’s surge into world markets hasn’t followed the pattern set by other developing nations, which started their export drive in low-tech industries such as clothing. Instead, India has moved directly into industries that advanced countries such as the United States thought were their exclusive turf. When BusinessWeek put together a list of areas “where India has made an impact and where it’s going next,” that list consisted almost entirely of high-technology activities such as software and chip design.

What this means is that American workers whose jobs are threatened by Indian competition are, in many cases, people who thought they already had acquired the skills to “fill the jobs of the 21st century” — but have just discovered that Indians, who are paid about a tenth as much, also have those skills.

U.S. workers deserve a better answer than yet another assertion that a rising tide raises all boats, because that’s manifestly untrue.

We’re living in a time when most Americans are seeing little if any benefit from overall income growth, because their share of the economic pie is falling. Between 1979 and 2003, the share of overall income received by the bottom 80 percent of taxpayers fell from 50 percent to barely over 40 percent. The main winners from this upward redistribution of income were a tiny, wealthy elite: More than half the income share lost by the bottom 80 percent was gained by just one-fourth of 1 percent of the population, people with incomes of at least $750,000 in 2003.

And those fortunate few are the only people Bush seems to care about. Look at what he had to offer after asserting, in effect, that workers get outsourced because they don’t have the right education: lower taxes, deregulation and fewer lawsuits. That sounds like a wish list for wealthy individuals and big corporations.

Bush once joked that his base consisted of the “haves and the have-mores.” His remarks in India show that he really can’t imagine what it’s like not to be a member of a privileged economic elite."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Krugman writes for The New York Times.

Whee! I love it. This thead must mean that Cut and Paste is now socially acceptable. H' ray.
Now back to planting the garlic.

"Let em eat cake", she said.

MMmmmmm - garlic - one of the basic food groups at Casa Eddie!!!!

I usually plant it in the fall, but last fall I was busy observing the fauna in the Huckleberry range. It does Ok in the spring planting too. Just takes another month to reach harvest quality. Scampi cannot be without garlic.
Keeps the werewolves at bay too. You know, the Loup garou. Sometimes know as lupo in the vernacular. Not to be confused with a Sicilian coach double barrel shotgun.