The rise of the high-speed Internet, a bought-and-paid-for U.S. government and million-dollar executive pay that is not performance related are permitting greedy and disloyal corporate executives, Wall Street and large retailers to dismantle the ladders of upward mobility that made America an "opportunity society."
Updates
02/12/11
The U.S. trade deficit with China hit a record $273 billion in 2010. No wonder – China does everything it can to keep American goods and services out even as it floods the US with job-killing imports. It hits American steel with an import tax, and a Chinese state-owned company that processes electronic payments for credit cards has a virtual monopoly, shutting out a US supplier. The Obama Administration is taking its case to the World Trade Organization after talks with Beijing went nowhere. Good luck there.
02/10/11
If the job-killing Korea free trade agreement, the largest since NAFTA, isn’t stopped, the Obama Administration will try to push more through Congress. US Trade Representative Ron Kirk says the Administration will send the Korea trade deal to Capitol Hill “within weeks” and will “immediately intensify” talks with Colombia and Panama to finalize trade pacts with those countries.
02/10/11
The most liberal member of the Senate, Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont fired off a letter to the director of the Smithsonian Museum furious over statues of the President’s in the museum gift shop - made in China. "As a nation, we have all got to be aware that one of the major reasons that the unemployment rate in this country is so high is because it is increasingly difficult to find products in our nation's stores that are manufactured in this country,” wrote Sanders. The independent senator began his political career registered as a Socialist.
02/09/11
The outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing to foreign nations has become a national security issue for the U.S. intelligence community. Top Spy Probes Outsourcing of U.S. Manufacturing. The Director for National Intelligence – the nation’s top spy - is so concerned over loss of domestic capability and dependence on foreign nations for key high-tech materials, components and systems that the intel chief is undertaking a probe of the state of American manufacturing.
02/09/11
Like NAFTA, the Korea Free Trade Agreement grants foreign corporations extraordinary rights and empowers them to sue the U.S. in foreign tribunals and demand compensation for loss of expected profits. These outrageous rules allow unelected UN tribunals to overturn laws approved by the American people, and would even require U.S. taxpayers to pay damages. Over 250 foreign corporations with operations across the US would be given the power to sue you, the American taxpayer. See if one of them is near you.
02/09/11
Phyllis Schlaffly, grand dame of the conservative movement, says trade with communist China is anything but free and downright anti-American. In a recent column titled “Re-evaluating ‘free trade’ with China,” Schlaffly says bluntly “there is nothing free or fair about it. It is trade war between an aggressively protectionist communist government and a U.S. that is shackled by foolish and out-of-date illusions about free trade.” And she has even harsher words for GE boss Jeff Immelt. Read more.
