FRITZ SHOUTS IT FROM THE MOUNTAIN

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.
—Barack Obama

"Remember he is the same President that stated doctors would take out perfectly good tonsils because it would mean more money for them."
—Citizen Rain

ON OR ABOUT DECEMBER 18, 2009, former South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings released this scathing essay on why all the jobs have evaporated in America:

Who is against jobs in the United States? The big banks, Wall Street, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Business Roundtable, the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Retail Federation, Corporate America, the President of the United States, Congress of the United States. Everyone is crying for jobs, but no one seems to understand why there aren't any. And the reason for those opposing jobs is money.

Beginning in 1973, big banks made most of their profit outside of the United States. Industries off-shoring, investing, banks financing the investments, transfer fees, fees and interest on the loans made for bigger profits. Long since, the big banks under the leadership of David Rockefeller have led the way to off-shore and make a bigger profit. Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citicorp and Wall Street, conspiring for a bailout and now using it for bonuses, make more money from the off-shored operations.

The Council on Foreign Relations ought to be renamed the Council on Making Money. A recent PEW poll reported fully 85% of Americans said that protecting United States jobs should be a top foreign policy priority. But only 21% of the Council on Foreign Relations agrees. Financial interests organized the Business Roundtable to continue off-shore investment and profit. The local Chamber is for Main Street America, but Tom Donahue and the United States Chamber have sold out to the financial interests and oppose jobs and producing in the United States. Thirty years ago, hundreds of thousands of Arrow shirts produced in China were a best seller in the United States. But at Christmastime, the Chinese supply ran short and the retail stores had to order the same shirt from New Jersey. They made 20% less profit on the New Jersey shirt. Retailers are all for profit from imports and against domestic production and jobs in America.

Corporate America would fight any initiative by the President, the Congress, or the government to create jobs in the United States. That is, production that faces competition offshore. In globalization, U. S. production can't make a profit, can't survive. Its competition will off-shore the same article for a lesser price, putting you out of business. Moreover, Corporate America doesn't have to bother with labor in China. The China government controls labor and you don't have to worry about a work stoppage or minimum wage. All they have is a maximum wage.

And Corporate America doesn't have to worry with clean air and clean water or the environment in China. Nor does it have to worry with OSHA and all of its safety rules. Many times the factory building is furnished and you don't have to worry with capital costs. If you make a profit, you can just reinvest it in an additional operation and not have to pay any U. S. income tax. If the operation fails, walk away with no legacy costs. Corporate America bitterly opposes its government protecting and strengthening the U. S. economy because producing again in America will put the executives back to work. They can send a Jaycee to China to watch the quality control daily and sit on the 32nd floor on Sixth Avenue with the internet, keeping check, and, leaving early for a massage and drinks. With production in China they don't have to work.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President dithered for months over the number of troops. But he can't equip the troops except for the favor of a foreign country. The War Production Act of 1950 requires the President to make sure that we can produce in- country those articles necessary for our national defense. Enforcing this law would limit the campaign contributions. Under Section 201 of the trade laws, the President is supposed to take action, like impose tariffs or quotas, when a certain production is endangered. Not only endangered, our automobile production has been bankrupted. But all the President does is give Detroit bailout welfare. The President doesn't want to limit the campaign contributions.

The same with Congress. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota long ago tried to allocate the tax incentive for foreign jobs and production to domestic jobs and production. The Business Roundtable and the U. S. Chamber fought it like a tiger and killed it.

As the President said in his West Point talk, there is fierce competition in international trade and globalization. All countries move to protect and build their economies while the United States goes out of business. The one advantage that the U.S. has is its richest market in the world. It is fast becoming the poorest market and the U.S. is losing any clout to maintain a strong economy.

The economy is in the hands of Summers, Bernanke and Geithner. Campaign contributions are in the hands of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel. The poor President is smart, diligent and working his head off campaigning. But he is inexperienced and not governing, and the Congress is in a Mexican standoff over an archaic filibuster rule that reveres democracy by the minority.

Of course, the media, which knows this and keeps it top secret, is owned by big business.

If I don't meet you in the breadline, my children will.

Merry Christmas!

And the always interesting James Nollet has this to add...

There seems to be an optimal size for self-government. Self-governing entities that are too large don't work well. The only way the USSR and Yugoslavia held together was by FIAT from a strong, centralized, authoritarian regime.

I hold that America has lost its capacity for responsible self-government. Electing Obama Osama is merely the latest in a long series of proofs of this contention.

Democracy in America was always an EXPERIMENT.

The experiment has run its course. The only thing that can now save the United States is an American Napoleon.

CITIZEN RANT #524

WARREN BUFFETT, THE RICHEST MAN in the world advocates that America must balance it's world trade balance account if we are to survive because he knows in doing so America will gain $760 billion dollars (our trade deficit) in new jobs every year.

We can hear the Texas twang of US Presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992. If America had a Positive Trade balance, then we should stay NAFTA and the WTO. But that's not the case. Six months after America Pulls out of NAFTA and the WTO. America will be back to gaining new jobs big time. Because $760 billion dollars in new jobs is a lot of new jobs.

Currently, even the "higher paying technical jobs" we were promised are being farmed out overseas.

We're tired of talking to computers when I want to ask the bank about my retirement funds. When I do get someone on the line, the sap is usually in Florida or India while I am sitting in Texas.

We're tired of not having enough checkout people and being urged to use a computer.

We're tired of turning over everything we buy and finding the words "Made in China". Especially when we are told much of what we buy is actually manufactured by "workers" of the Chinese army.

We're tired of being told we're intolerant because we think people who come to the USA should immediately learn to speak English, especially those taking American jobs. The melting pot has vanished along with national pride. Instead, we have a rotten stew of simmering self-interested minorities who maintain loyalty only to the country or religious entity from which they immigrated.

Yes, this is our response to this endless apologizing to the world for acts of tyranny we never committed...

America became great through the good ideas and hard work of her motivated citizens, who met challenges and transformed these ideas into solutions. Our industrial revolution spread and benefitted people throughout the world. However, as technology improved, America made her greatest mistake, allowing a large number of our manufacturing and agricultural businesses to be outsourced. We need to get back to basics, people! We need to re-institute the Puritan work ethic on which this country was founded and made great!

We need to support each other as Americans! It's nice to 'help our neighbors' but let's be truthful, if we can't afford to take care of our elderly, homeless and veterans, and if we can't afford our own healthcare, how can we afford to continue to give foreign aid to the rest of the world? The world is quick to condemn America but falls short on memory—we are always the first ones to offer a helping hand in a disaster, we are the first ones to send food and money and medicine to countries all over the world in their time of need, and all at no cost to the recipients—only to the American citizens!

Perhaps we should ax foreign aid and redirect that wealth to our own people, to our own economy, to our own success—instead of climbing aboard a sinking ship contemplating trade war strategies. In all fairness, we need to put Americans back to work—in manufacturing, industry, agriculture, healthcare, service, and every other area of contempoary need. America needs to withhold funding from Congress to allow them to see where the money they so readily and irresponsibly spend is actually derived.

Congress does not own the treasury. Money is the operative exchange unit for goods and services rendered. Money does not grow on Congressional trees...