Take This Job and Ship It

Here's a review of Senator Byron Dorgan's new book titled "Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics are Selling Out America" from St. Martin's Press. This is an important book that deserves to become a best seller.

As big companies move their jobs to China, sell their products in America, and run their profits through the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes, they undermine American workers and threaten our future.

For some commentators, the world may seem to be “flat,” but Senator Byron L. Dorgan knows better. With both barrels blazing, the senator from North Dakota contends in this forceful and provocative book that while exporting jobs may be good for the giant corporations, it is a disaster for America as a whole.

Trade can’t be “free” when our small businesses and working people are expected to compete with exploited workers and slave labor in third-world nations that care little about the conditions in their factories and not at all about the pollution they generate.

Our trade deficit now increases by $2 billion a day, but pharmaceutical companies have such influence in Washington that Medicare, by current law, is not allowed to negotiate lower drug prices. We import oil on an ever-increasing scale, putting ourselves into debt with the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and other Middle Eastern nations; with their windfall profits, they continue to buy American assets. China’s booming economy and abundance of cheap labor is threatening our economic survival as America’s manufacturing base is dismantled.

We have mortgaged our fortunes, our principles, and our way of life.

With biting wit and an unerring moral compass, Dorgan weaves colorful stories about the dancing grapes from Fruit of the Loom underwear, Fig Newton’s escape to Mexico, the disappearance of the flag decal from Huffy bicycles, and how a trade agreement sent exotic dancers to Canada. He exposes the absurdity of our global-trade policies, and isn’t afraid to name names.

Dorgan pulls no punches and, most important, he offers a refreshing, bold strategy for putting our country back on track. America can once again be a booming exporter as well as a good trading partner with the whole world, but to mindlessly cheer on the loss of more than 3 million jobs (and that’s only the beginning) is just plain folly. In the long run, the United States cannot help the rest of the world by impoverishing its own people and bankrupting its own economy. With a little courage and some original thinking, the negative trade balance can be slowed, even stopped and reversed.

Senator Dorgan’s is a message that must be heard – before it is too late.

* THE REAL CLASS WARFARE

Apologists for corporate greed often accuse economic populists of engaging "class warfare." Well, the real class warfare is being waged by overpaid CEO's who give receive additional perks while insisting that employee benfits and pensions must be reduced or eliminated.

Froma Harrop, one of my favorite syndicated columnists, called attention to this hypocrisy in Wednesday's Seattle Times http://tinyurl.com/o5xhl

"It's not news that American executives have put ordinary workers' benefits on a diet while they go for a fourth helping. What makes this redistribution of corporate wealth special is its brazen and unblushing quality. We are not talking here about some stock option deal where the top guys are rewarded for increasing shareholder value. In this case, the money gushing into the executive suite is simply being siphoned through holes drilled in workers' paychecks." An example, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal:

"General Motors has long complained that its "legacy costs" have made the automaker dangerously uncompetitive. By "legacy costs" it means the health benefits and pensions that it promised its workers and retirees. In an effort to ease those "burdens," GM recently announced it would end pensions for 42,000 of its salaried employees."

"But guess what The Journal discovered? It found that the fund for those middle-class pensions was actually bulging with $9 billion more than was needed to honor them. The real problem, it turns out, was GM's executive pensions, which management had been supersizing even as it demanded cuts from the lower-downs. GM's executive-pension obligations, we learn, are $1.4 billion."

"General Motors is not the only company to have built up extravagant pension deals for the privileged few. Executive-pension liabilities have hit $3.5 billion at General Electric, $1.8 billion at AT&T, and $1.3 billion at ExxonMobil and at IBM. "Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million," The Journal reports.

"Cleary, the workers whose pension plans have been frozen aren't the only ones losing out. These unfunded executive pensions suck off earnings that are supposed to be going to the stockholders."

Corporate executive officer benefits are clearly out of control. Companies should not be allowed to escape their pension obligations and even file for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 while continuing to provide outlandish compensation packages to CEO's.

* THOUGHTS ON THE CONNECTICUT SENATE RACE

Despite Ned Lamont's narrow victory in last Tuesday's primary, the voters of Connecticut still have a race between two Democrats for Senator as the Republican nominee is not expected to be a significant factor. Joe Lieberman, now running as Independent Democrat, is not my idea of a perfect Senator.

While I did initially support U.S. intervention in Iraq, I now recognize that was a mistake. I also agree that Lieberman is out of touch with reality on Iraq and made himself vulnerable for a primary defeat by failing to criticize the Bush Administration's handling of the war. In my view, Lieberman has voted wrong on a number of issues including trade matters and some of the controversial social issues like abortion rights and gun control.

I do respect Lieberman for his willingness to take unpopular stands and that he seems to be a gracious man with a strong personal faith. Lieberman has been willing to criticize the entertainment industry for degrading our culture.

Far more important than saving Joe Lieberman's political career is stopping the Moveonner Left who want to have total control over the Democratic Party. If these people win control over the party, moderates and conservatives are eventually going to crushed although a few might be tolerated now.

Ned Lamont may not be radical but he is being backed by a dangerous faction in the party that will dissenting views if they are allowed to gain control of the party. Lamont will be obligated to this faction if elected. Any Senator from Connecticut will be relatively liberal but this struggle within the party is not so much about philosphy as about power and the tolerance for differing views within the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, Ned Lamont is a millionaire elitist who would have been a Rockefeller Republican thirty years ago. While Lieberman does not really fit the bill for a populist Democrat, Lamont will definitely take the party further in the direction of being a group of ivory tower social liberals. If re-elected, Lieberman will be a vote for Democratic Senate control as he will remain in the Dem caucus.