THE GREAT AMERICAN BLEEDOUT

On February 10th, 2004, Lou Dobbs’ guest on his CNN show Lou Dobbs Tonight was Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Here’s what he said: “THERE IS A LEGITIMATE VALUE IN OUTSOURCING – NOT ONLY JOBS, BUT WORK”. In his capacity as chief of Big Business’ umbrella organization Donohue’s agenda was to actively encourage American companies to fire their workers and farm the work out to other countries with cheap labor and make even greater profits than they already are.

Donohue went on to say “….PEOPLE AFFECTED BY OUTSOURCING SHOULD STOP WHINING. THE BENEFITS OF OFFSHORING JOBS OUTWEIGHS THE COST”. In other words, get over it. You’re expendable. Stop your complaining. Offshoring your job benefits the company, and that’s more important than the likely fact your life will be ruined.
Donohue recently went to India to meet with business leaders there who were importing American jobs by the millions, and said this: “WE ARE VERY CONFIDENT THAT OUTSOURCING IS HERE TO STAY. IT WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY FOOLISH TO TRY TO STOP THE PHENOMENON”.

Donohue discussed the impact of outsourcing jobs on American workers with this statement: “THE OUTSOURCING DEAL OVER THREE OR FOUR OR FIVE YEARS AND THE TWO OR THREE SETS OF NUMBERS ARE ONLY GOING TO BE, YOU KNOW, MAYBE TWO, MAYBE THREE MILLION JOBS, MAYBE FOUR”.

Are you listening? He’s saying that three or four million hardworking but nameless, faceless working chattel should be thrown off their jobs without a second thought about their fates because it’ll make the shareholders more money and generate bigger bonuses for the CEO and other execs.
There’s a word for this type of behavior: Sociopathy.
A sociopath is someone who acts in complete disregard for the rights and welfare of someone else. A sociopath is someone completely lacking in the human quality of empathy.
In a letter to the Senate earlier this year designed to influence the debate on the small business jobs bill Donohue wrote: “THE CONCEPT OF ECONOMIC GROWTH IS NOT A ZERO-SUM GAME. REPLACING A JOB THAT IS BASED IN ANOTHER COUNTRY WITH A DOMESTIC JOB DOES NOT STIMULATE ECONOMIC GROWTH OR ENHANCE THE COMPETIVENESS OF AMERICAN WORLDWIDE COMPANIES”. Senate Republicans did his bidding and killed the bill with another one of their filibusters.

Now, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been openly promoting the firing of U.S. workers so the work can be done in other countries, it has been spending $75 million on attack ads intended to influence the election. These ads are overwhelmingly against Democratic candidates and on behalf of Big-Business-friendly Republican candidates. The overarching theme is that the Democrats are to blame for the persistently high unemployment levels. There’s a word for this: Hypocrisy. Moreover, these ads are paid for out of the same bank account that accepts donations from foreign companies that benefit from outsourced jobs from America. Some of these companies are state owned, which means that foreign governments are directly influencing the midterm elections in favor of candidates who will implement policies that further facilitate the continued flow of American jobs to other countries, particularly to India and China.

So how can we voters in America turn this around?
We can’t. Why can’t we?

Our political leaders are selected by various Special Interests operating behind the scenes, like, for example, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Other Special Interests such as Big Industry, Big Finance (Wall Street), Big Labor, and other powerful interests such as certain billionaires collectively have a death grip on our political system. We get to choose between two candidates presented by competing interests, and sometimes by the same interests. Either way, whoever gets elected will be wholly owned by those who put up the money to get them elected. Once elected, they go to Washington as stooge fronts for the Power Elite hiding behind the curtain pulling all the levers and knobs.
This business tactic of eroding away our manufacturing capacity and killing millions of jobs for the benefit of the various business tycoons and the investor class is like a termite nest centered on Wall Street with tentacles extending throughout the land. These tentacles are choking the life out of this country and eating away at us from within, all for the sake of runaway corporate greed. Millions of people are out of work and millions more who used to make a decent living are now working at or near minimum wage. In 2008 the median household income was $52,059. In 2009 it had fallen to $49,777. That’s a 4.6% drop in one year. It’s now only a little more than double the poverty line for a typical household of four. At this rate over half the country will be living in poverty in ten years or so. And if the Tea Party gets their way, there’ll be no safety net for the displaced. There may even be rioting and bloodshed if it gets bad enough.

In this upcoming election a critical mass of voters appear to favor replacing incumbents, especially Democratic incumbents, with Big Business-friendly far-right Republicans and messianic Tea Party zealots with an agenda of making things immeasurably worse. Voters are blaming the Democrats for not doing enough about joblessness, when it’s Senate Republicans who have been blocking any initiatives by the Democrats and the President. They're being manipulated by monied interests who are flooding the airwaves with attack ads blaming President Obama for the economic malaise that they've caused! To anybody who’s paying attention, it’s obvious the Senate Republicans and their handlers are trying to destroy the Obama presidency, but the sad fact is that not enough people ARE paying attention. They just don’t know what’s happening. All they know is that they don’t like what they see. They're told that supporting tax breaks for rich "job creators" will be a good thing, and it's Obama who wants to raise taxes and kill more jobs. It’s a brutal mess and somebody has to pay. It’s a mob mentality. This type of environment is reminiscent of the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. They’ve got what they think is the culprit in their gun sights and they’re about to pull the trigger. By the time they figure out it’s a case of mistaken identity, it’ll be too late.