A Bankrupt Nation

It is becoming more apparent with each passing day that the American lifestyle as it currently exist is unsustainable. For more than three decades we have accepted the false narrative that we can live beyond our means and there will be no cost for the extravagance. Not only has our government accepted and promoted this falsehood, but we as a nation have accepted it as well. It has become so engrained into our national psyche that anyone who dares to point out its inherent flaws is immediately ridiculed by politicians, the media, and their fellow citizens. You see rather than looking at the real culprits of our failed domestic and foreign policies we want to create these “bogeymen” who want to destroy our sacred way of life. The truth is that it is always easier to blame others for our shortsightedness and faults.

For more than three decades we have been taught and believe that if we could just change the world into our image all of our problems would be solved. The latest and a perfect example of this strategy was our response to the 9/11 attack. After being attacked our first response and really our only response was to say if we can only change those godless and depraved Arabs and the Middle East to be more like us this would prevent anymore attacks. Now think about that response for a minute. They hate us for our freedoms so our answer is to offer them those same freedoms? Rather than sit down and analyze the situation and the causes behind the attacks, we commit ourselves to this “global war on terror”. A war in which no one seemed to have considered the cost in lives, material, and national psychology. We developed this strategy that the way you prevent war is by starting wars. No one considered the truth about military power, that it has limited effects on the outcome of international events.

You see we live in a country where following the Cold War we believed that we were invincible. We believed the hype that we were the only “Super Power” and that by being such we were entitled to exert our control (influence)over the rest of the world. That we could solve not only all of our problems, but the rest of the world’s problems by using our forces to recast the world in our image. I mean after all it worked in Germany and Japan didn’t it? This belief or thought pattern is not exclusive to Republicans or Democrats, it is deeply seated in all of us. The sooner we acknowledge this fact the sooner we will be able to address it and that in stead of demagoguery we should look in the mirror and see that we have found the enemy and it is us. It is this insane belief that we can continue to enjoy this lifestyle without paying for it that continues to fuel our downfall. Somewhere there has been this disconnect on Main street and in Washington that there is this unlimited supply of money, credit, energy, food, etc. and that if we just change them or drill more or buy more we can solve all of our problems.

The only President in recent times that had the temerity to begin the discussion of how we were on the road to bankruptcy was ridiculed and loss in a landslide to the king of false hopes. Jimmy Carter in his now infamous “malaise” speech said some very thought provoking things. He tried to tell America that we could not continue on this road of consumerism based in living on credit, foreign oil, and importing all of our products. He stated that we had switched from a nation of producers to a nation of consumers. He stated that we had begun to rely to heavily on others to do what we had once done for ourselves and that ruin lay at the end of that road.

What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure...The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.[1]

I would ask anyone interested in the subject of what we are facing as a nation to please read the speech in it’s entirety. I would also dare anyone to deny how so many of the issues and proposed actions given by Carter were not at least a beginning to resolving the same problems we are facing still. If we had initiated some of the solutions proposed by President Carter I doubt we would be facing the problems today to the magnitude that we are. But of course he was immediately branded a pessimist and a loser, it kills me how so many people say tell us the truth we can handle it. Well, when someone decided to try that radical strategy we see how it was received.

The truth be told we as a nation are on the verge of losing what little democracy we had. We have decided for the sake of consumerism and expediency to abdicate our rights to control our government. We no longer believe in government by the people for the people. We want to make all of the tough problems go away by outsourcing them to the poor, the mentally weak, and the uneducated. So long as we can continue to feed our vigorous appetites for more of everything. Every President since Carter has won elections by promising one thing; that we could continue to live this irresponsible lifestyle without any sacrifice. We could have our bullets and butter at the same time. We could extend American power without having to give up anything. Sacrifice and hard work which were once the bedrock of the American experience are now viewed as negatives and old fashioned.

The days of the free lunch are quickly coming to an end. We can no longer continue to live beyond our means. Most Americans have maxed out not only their credit cards, but their mortgages and retirements. Our government and business leaders have resorted to borrowing from foreign countries to finance our debt spending spree with little or no concern about the strategic repercussions of these decisions. They would have us to believe that we are safe from foreign intervention or pressure from our indebtedness. As if the borrower has the power over the lender through sheer military force. It they don’t give us what we want then we will destroy and take what we want.

We as a nation must use this crisis as a starting point to return to production and innovation. We could use this opportunity to create an alternate energy source industry and production. When Senator Obama proposed such an idea he was immediately ridiculed. It is this type of closed minded, corporate financed rhetoric that has to stop if we are ever going to overcome the problems that beset us. Thirty years after President Carter’s speech we are still no closer to finding and using alternative energy technologies. We are still locked into the mindset that we can dig more holes and destroy more of the earth to solve our problems without any sacrifice. The snake oil propaganda must stop and stop now.

[1] http://www.eoearth.org/article/Jimmy_Carter's__malaise_speech_

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Made In China

I remember when I was a kid we were poor, we use to have to shop in the discount stores before Wal-Mart. Usually they were mom and pop dime stores as they were called back then. Nothing ever cost a dime, but the name let you know that the merchandise was cheap and usually not very good. Most of the merchandise was made overseas in places like Korea, Japan, and China and at the time they seemed like exotic and mysterious places. We use to buy our toys there and they wouldn’t last very long, sometimes they would break as soon as you unpacked them. But again they were cheap and as a child it was always the getting that was important.

As I grew up those exotic names were replaced by others like Indonesia, Honduras, and the Philippines. The names changed, but the quality of the merchandise didn’t. Fortunately, my economic status improved to the point where I didn’t have to buy those items any longer and I could afford a little better quality merchandise. As the world has grown to embrace the global economy and the corporate pariah continue their race to the bottom, it appears that China is becoming the epicenter of the free trade showdown. In the past few months we had story after story and multiple investigations into how the Chinese do business. In their effort to secure access to the billion consumer market that is China, many businesses and governments have allowed themselves to be seduced into ignoring basic safety and inspection practices. The results of course have been a series of poisonings, deaths, and slave labor reports, not just here in America but the world as well. How is it possible that we can be exposed to these dangers in this century? Where are the safeguards that should be in place to protect us from exposure to these hazards? Eating food from another country should not carry with it a possible death sentence.

The answer lies in a large part to our globalization and free trade policies. It also lies in our desire to save money and enlarge corporate profits. Our trade deficit with China last year alone was 232,588.60[1]. That’s right; that is two hundred million dollars more we are receiving than we are sending out. Because we are importing so much from China there is no way to inspect it and defend ourselves once it arrives here. This means we have to do our due diligence prior to it getting here, but of course this is not being done.

China manufactured every one of 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in United States this year, including popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets; consumer advocates, parents and regulators are alarmed at fact that over all, number of products made in China that are being recalled in US by Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in last five years, driving total number of recalls in country to 467 last year, an annual record; this makes China responsible for 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000; this may reflect fact that toys made in China now make up 70 to 80 percent of toys sold in country; string of toy recalls has inspired new demands for stepped-up enforcement of safety by US regulators and importers, as well as by government and industry in China; Thomas & Friends trains are made for RC2 Corp of Oak Brook, Ill, at plants it oversees in China; RC2 declines to comment on safety control measures at its company plants in China, as does Toy Industry Assn; consumer advocates say staff of consumer product commission has been cut by more than 10 percent in Bush administration, leaving fewer regulators to monitor safety of growing flood of imports.[2]

The level of products entering our ports from China is too massive and our inspection is too lax to not expect a brewing catastrophe. Yesterday it was Fido; tomorrow it could be our children. Our business and government leaders must take a more active role in insuring our protection from Chinese imports. It is irresponsible to expect a country like China to police itself; their focus is to maintain their cheap labor force and high exports. China has shown over and over again that it will act only in its national interest and will resist any efforts to change how they do business. It is up to our government to do a better job through legislation and policy changes to make the Chinese aware that protecting our citizens is important. Instead what we have is once again placing profits over people; the WTO and other trade organizations have little or no method of combating the problems lax local inspections and policies.

Western companies have been so anxious to transfer manufacturing to China’s cheap factories that they have been happy to close their eyes to what else goes on over there — just as Google or Yahoo were happy to assist in repressing information to get a toe into the Chinese market, or as Washington and other Western capitals compete in trying to please visiting Chinese leaders. The ultimate source of China’s failings is a Communist Party that has jettisoned worn-out Marxist economic theories but clings to its authoritarian rule on all other fronts, creating a dangerously unbalanced behemoth.

This is not an argument against trading with or investing in China. Globalization can be a potent force for democratization. But human rights violations cannot be relegated to untouchable internal affairs. Just as the world has not hesitated, rightly, to lambaste the United States over issues like Guantánamo Bay, it should not be shy about systematic and widespread violations of human rights in China.[3]

The things that are being uncovered are just the tip of the iceberg; if we are to participate in these trade agreements and organizations we must do so with more emphasis on people and less on profits. We can no longer remain silent to these abuses to save a few cents at Wal-Mart, what are the lives of our children worth? Free trade is only as good as our trading partners and any partners that do not take safety first are not good partners. It appears the tag “Made in China” hasn’t changed much since I was child, have we?

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[1] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html#2007

[2] http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70D13FF385B0C7A8DDDAF0894DF404482

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/opinion/22fri3.html

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