Two quick takes on China:
First is an item from the Associated Press. President Bush met with Chinese human rights activists at the White House yesterday. The President's hypocrisy on human rights is getting downright breathtaking. If he really cared about human rights, he would close Guantánamo and rescind about 30 Executive Orders having to do with national security that basically rip the First and Fourth Amendments out of the Constitution. But I guess human rights are only good for the other guys...
Second is today's lead story from the Columbus Dispatch. According to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, Ohio lost 102,000 jobs to China, just since 2001! And we Ohioans are supposed to put up with this, why? And the Feds are doing what to help?
Does anyone care about our interests? Or are we so addicted to Wal-Mart that we don't even care about our interests?
2 comments:
Bad trade policies practically destroyed America's middle class. They are also major reason for illegal immigration, but you'll never hear anyone in Washington or our corporate media admit to it.
Obama already flip-flopped on NAFTA, and I don't see that anyone in Washington is going to do anything.
The political and corporate elite that run this country want a two-class society: the rich, and everybody else on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. In short: they don't care. Financing elections is more important than working on behalf of the people. That's why Washington will bail out Bear Stearns, Freddie, Fannie, et al before they will do anything to help working people of this country.
Along these lines, here's an interesting piece about how suicides are increasingly being used by people in response to the debt/mortgage crisis, but in the 1930's people took matters in their own hands to prevent their neighbors from being thrown out into the street:
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/93077/suicide_spreads_as_one_solution_to_the_debt_crisis/
Granted, there needs to be some personal responsibility for people when it comes to their finances, but what about responsibility for those who deliberately granted loans to people they knew would never be able to pay them back, then deliberately labeled the securities they made up from the loans as more secure than they really were? They will never be held responsible.
What really got me in the alternet piece above was some of the personal stories in the comments about people WERE trying to be responsible with their finances and are still getting screwed.
Bad trade policies and the mortgage crisis are all part of the same problem and have both been brought to you by a political and economic elite that doesn't care what happens to ordinary people.
Kind of related, Harold, but I do not agree with those who think Bush should not attend the Olympics. The athletes have worked too hard to become political props.
Post a Comment