Brown Sludge

A Hard Rain Is Gonna Fall

January 12th, 2006

As I watch the papers and blogs and on-line news sources every day, I’m continually amazed by the way that Corporate America seems to be able to find endless ways to hurt the American economy, the American worker, and the American way of life. I’m also continually saddened by the Right’s stullifying ambivalence to these horrors.

Corporate Greed is shipping our jobs overseas at a frightening rate. Like a carnivorous wild pig with an insatiable appetite - it roots and tusks in the mud - searching hungrily for anything it can uproot that it might be able to slop down grunting and slurping. Every vital root, every nutritious thing, is sacrificed to it’s soulless porcine hunger.

They’ve destroyed our manufacturing sector - American’s don’t make a damn thing anymore. Virtually every thing you wear and drive is made in a sweatshop in some third world country - or worse - is enriching a government that would enslave us if we were to turn our back on it for a moment.

They’ve destroyed our agricultural sector - Americans don’t grow a damn thing anymore. Virtually everything you eat or drink is grown in some other country or on a corporate farm owned by the greed machine themselves. Most Americans have no idea where most of the things they’re putting in their bodies every day comes from.

They’re in the process of destroying our technological sector as we speak. Soon Americans won’t operate or program a damn thing anymore. The high-tech R&D and manufacturing sector was sold to third world governments years ago - but now even the critical technology jobs - the ones that are the thin layer of oil on our sensitive Information Systems machinery - are being sold to sweatshops in China and India. The highly important service sector is almost completely gone already.

Unbeknownst to most people the Greedy Corporate Pigs have developed a taste for other flesh now too - jobs in the Legal field are being “offshored” at an increasingly frightened rate, as are jobs in the Medical and Financial Services industries.

It might be very sobering for most people to learn that if Corporate America has it’s way - Lawyers will rely on cut-rate paralegals in India while the paralegal field in America vanishes - overnight.

It may also be upsetting when people find out that their x-rays are being handled and read not by some educated young American in the medical profession here - but by people in a third world country because they’ll “read it” so inexpensively - and (here comes the really scary part) - they’re trying to figure out a way to have diagnoses done overseas too. All of your sensitive medical data, all of your personal records, and a good portion of the things your doctor or nurse used to do for you here - is now being done by some anonymous face in some anonymous building in India - because they’ll do for $2.50 what your (educated American) radiologist used to charge $25.00 for.

You’re financial data is gone now too. Most of your banking records and sensitive financial data passes through hundreds of hands in what can only really be described as “data sweatshops” in some other country. Banks and financial institutes have “offshored” the keeping and keying and transcribing of your sensitive and important financial information to people who barely speak English.

And the hits just keep on coming.

How do they do this? Isn’t this illegal? Isn’t this un-American? Isn’t this un-patriotic?

Illegal? Unfortunately no. At least… not yet.

Un-American? Unpatriotic? Of course it is. No reasonable person could possibly argue otherwise.

When will it end?

It will only end when it’s gone too far.

I believe the day will come when our (meaning the American) economy begins to collapse. When the weight of the damage done by the merciless assault on our jobs and our wallets and our credit ratings and our lives can no longer be born by the American economy or American citizens and our once solid foundation begins to tremble and groan and begin to come apart – that’s when you’ll see the change.

When the voters have become scared and impoverished to the point where they can no longer be as apathetic and unattached as most voters have historically been – that’s when you’ll see the change.

And what a change it will be.

I predict that the day will come when moving your corporation off shore to avoid your responsibility to pay taxes in this country will become a crime that’s prosecuted zealously, and that the penalties for conviction will be years in a federal penitentiary – and the inability to ever do business in this country again.

I predict that the day will come when Corporate America will no longer be able to use financial slight of hand to avoid their tax liabilities – a time when not only will the government and communities not subsidize corporations anymore and force them to pay their fair share – but a time when a corporation will actually be forced to be responsible for it’s impact on the communities that welcome them – both environmentally responsible – and financially responsible.

I predict that the day will come when “offshoring” jobs will be either illegal outright – or will carry such a heavy tax penalty that it will be financially unattractive.

I predict that the day will come when many corporations will be exposed for manipulating vital markets in order to bilk the American consumer out of billions and billions of dollars.

I predict that the day will come when the icon of the Corporate CEO stereotype will become so vilified and hated that it will be staggering. The days of being paid millions or even billions of dollars for doing nothing more than eviscerating a corporation by “offshoring” it’s every resource – human or otherwise - and ripping out its soul in order to sell the hollow husk to a foreign government for profit will not only be over, but they’ll be reviled with a passion that is usually reserved for war criminals.

The day will come when the men who have profited so handily for already having done these things will be held accountable in federal court and be forced to stand before the American people for what they’ve done.

When the rain comes… it’s going to fall hard.

Entry Filed under: Thoughts