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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Halting the sellout and selloff of America should unite both liberals and conservatives For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Listening over the partition to office bull sessions you get a sense of what's on colleagues' minds besides NASCAR and golf. Area technical professionals are frequently, but not always, conservatives. These aren't people that far-right radio talkers smear as America haters. Like their liberal colleagues, they're not. But they are uneasy. They worry that America is being sold off and sold out. "Remember when we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall? What do you think the Chinese are going to do when American democracy falls?" "It doesn't happen in one fell swoop. It happens bit by bit, until there's nothing left." Posted outside one cubicle is a commentary advocating a renewed union movement. Foreign competition is not a West versus East issue, it explains. "It's the much more ancient and pervasive competition between the haves and the have-nots: the robber barons versus the indentured servants, the lords versus the serfs, the enslavers versus the slaves." No, that's not from a socialist workers' daily. It's from a Web site about factory maintenance, PlantServices.com. What's striking — encouraging actually — is how in our "divided" country we share many common concerns: jobs heading overseas, vanishing pension funds, corporate money trumping voters' interests and America's long-term prospects here and abroad. Conservatives focus more on economics and heavy-handed government; liberals focus more on protecting civil liberties and workers. Everyone's bottom line is on the line. When spokesmen announced that more future projects would be done in Mexico, India, etc., they said it's unavoidable. The corporation has to leverage cheap, overseas labor to remain competitive and provide jobs here in America. See, globalization made us do it. Everybody else is doing it. Glance around the room and watch the eyes rolling. Your mother never let you get away with excuses like that. In the press releases it's never about goosing the bottom line, but about providing jobs. No problem there. Except "providing jobs" is the free-trader version of "support our troops." When a corporation planning a factory plays one state against another for the best package of taxpayer-funded site preparation and tax incentives (let's not call them bribes), it's about providing jobs. If a sports franchise suckers a city into building it a new stadium at taxpayer expense, that's about providing jobs. Even eliminating jobs is about providing jobs. On June 23, Charlotte-based Wachovia bank announced that to remain competitive it would cut costs — meaning jobs — by offshoring programming work to India. Chief information officer Martin Davis told the Charlotte Observer, not doing so "ultimately impacts our ability to provide additional jobs for the community." I think they all attend the same marketing seminars. As if squeezing that last drop of profit out of each fiscal year is the furthest thing from their minds. To hear it told, the primary motive behind lives they've devoted to the widget business is to provide jobs. It's like that classic "Twilight Zone" episode in which a benevolent race of alien giants arrives to bestow peace, prosperity, and health upon puny earthmen. Their intentions are found in an indecipherable text they've brought, entitled "To Serve Man." People discover only too late that it's a cookbook. Several homeowners were on the menu in June when the Supreme Court ruled that New London, Conn., could use eminent domain to transfer their property to private developers. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the "public use" clause of the Fifth Amendment includes taking property for a "public purpose." Public purpose includes developers razing homes to put up shopping malls and hotels because they increase tax revenues and, of course, provide jobs. In protest, Californian Logan Darrow Clements proposed constructing the "Lost Liberty Hotel" on the site of Justice David Souter's Weare, N.H., farmhouse. Think of all the jobs. Conservatives are furious. For them it's about big government violating property rights. Liberals are furious. For them it's more about cutthroat capitalists running roughshod over the little guy. Over at the copier, talk turns to the coming partisan fight for the open Supreme Court seat. It seems they are liars and cheats without principles, who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Not like our side. Maybe instead of maligning each other we should identify common interests and seek common ground we can take a stand on together.
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#4. To: Willie Green (#0)
They are united. They're united for the sell-off.
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