Brown Sludge

Book Review - Lou Dobbs Exporting America

January 21st, 2006

Cool Hand Lou - “He grin like a baby - but he bite like a gator.”

It gets very lonesome being a Conservative who blogs against corporatism.

Normally, when you engage a Conservative in a discussion about foreign policy, or individuals rights, or the difference between say libertarian or truly conservative ideologies you get wise and reasoned arguments. You’re likely to learn something too – Conservatives being an educated and well-researched lot.

But mention Big Business in anything but the most glowing terms and their eyes glaze over and roll back into their heads until you can only see the whites and they begin to shake and chant like they’ve been possessed by the spirit of Gordon Gekko.

It can be truly depressing.

So… when I read Lou Dobbs “Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas” the sky opened up – and celestial white light shined down on me in great bright shafts as a heavenly choir of angels sang “Hallelujah!”.

Lou Dobbs, host of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight has a background that simply can’t be ignored:

• Harvard Educated Economist.
• Anchor and Managing Editor of Lou Dobbs Tonight, the standard by which all other business hours are judged. Period.
• Columnist for Money magazine.
• Contributing editor for U.S. News and World Report.
• Publisher of his own financial newsletter “Lou Dobbs Financial Report”.
• A syndicated financial radio show broadcast on over 700 stations nationwide.
• Philanthropist.

The list of awards he’s won is staggering. Everything from the Peabody to an Emmy to The Father of The Year. For real.

Oh yeah… he’s a Republican too.

As I read Exporting America I was just blown away.

First of all… I was expecting a “geek read”. You know what I mean. Books like this can be really dry sometimes, especially when written by someone with propeller-head credentials like Lou Dobbs. In an effort to source their material and present proof – they sometimes get heavy handed with the charts and graphs and stilted rhetoric.

Not Dobbs. Nuh uh. No way Brother.

It’s an incredible read. Make no mistake – he’s well sourced and he backs up his arguments well – but Dobbs’ incredible grasp on economics shines through in his writing as well. He’s one of those gifted writers who knows precisely what he wants to say – and precisely how to say it in a perfect economy of words. And he never goes “geek” on you either. Everything is down to earth and presented in terms that are really very accessible.

In other words, you don’t have to be an economist or a financial egg-head to read this book. Far from it.

And what a book it is.

I thought I was pretty educated on how Corporate America is abusing the country – spending most of my days and evenings pouring over books and news articles and watching the breaking news cycle like a hawk – but I ended up absolutely humbled by Dobbs superior knowledgebase.

And… and… he’s a Republican!

In “Exporting America” Dobbs really lays out the excesses of Corporate America – and just how far they’ll go in their assault on America’s Middle-Class.

With an awesome and surgical precision he lays it all out for both sides of the political equation.

From the obscene CEO salaries that don’t seem to have any basis in reality – to the merciless “offshoring” of American jobs in the name of “Global Competition” – to the secret roundtable discussions that Big Business has in order to strategize how best to spin what are clearly un-American activities in a way that won’t seem so illegal or unpatriotic.

And he is relentless.

Dobbs ain’t no liberal. He’s a Triple X Hard Core Capitalist – and he’s got the street cred to back that up.

But he’s got a little idealist in him too and in his Heart of Hearts – he’s an Original Gangstah Conservative with real-deal working class roots – and he realizes that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that there is value in our communities and the Old School American way of life. He doesn’t buy into the idea that corporations only exist to perpetuate greed – he believes that they have an obligation to be responsible citizens of the communities and the countries they inhabit, and when they behave in ways that hurt those communities or the country – Dobbs isn’t shy about taking the big Joe Pesci aluminum baseball bat to them.

And he’s a Republican!

“Exporting America” exposes Corporate America for the irresponsible citizens they are.

Things I learned from reading “Exporting America” :

That manufacturing and IT jobs aren’t the only jobs that are being “offshored” at a frightening rate.

That the medical industry, the legal profession, and the banking industry are running as hard as they can to jump on the “offshoring” bandwagon too.

That your sensitive financial information, your sensitive medical records, your sensitive legal documents and even your x-rays will be handled and processed by people in another country.

That Toyota and other foreign automobile manufacturers are investing in American factories and American workers and American jobs – while the Big Two “American” car companies are desperately scrambling for ways to ship the entire process to China and other countries. Try to get your mind around the idea that soon Toyota will have more of a claim to the “Made In America By Americans” bumper sticker than Ford or GM will. /boggle.

That big corporations are perfectly aware of how detrimental the wholesale “offshoring” of American jobs and trade is to the American worker and to the economy in general – so they have summits to discuss how they can keep from looking unpatriotic and un-American.

That our trade deficit is so insane that most economists aren’t sure the gap could ever be made up.

Lou Dobbs laid it all out for me in “Exporting America“.

I just can’t tell you how good it does my heart to see someone with Dobbs’ street creds going at Corporate America with the aluminum baseball bat.

And he doesn’t just do the ‘curse the darkness’ thing – he hauls out the candles and takes a chapter at the end to look for solutions and to talk about what needs to be done to stem the tide.

Dobbs takes a metric ton of heat every day of his life for these positions. He’s been called everything from a liberal to a terrorist – and there are people – PROFESSIONAL people mind you – colleagues of his - that have set up Anti-Dobbs websites – some of them get pretty nasty – some of them get downright personal.

But Dobbs never quits. Every night on his television show on CNN he brings his considerable intellect to bear on the issues he feels passionate about – and he never lets them forget it. His Corporate Crime Watch is nothing short of heresy in the circles that he moves in – but he never sells out.

You gotta get this book.

If I could afford it – I’d buy a box of them and send them out to every Conservative who’s too stoopid to realize that Gordon Gekko’s speech was satire – or that Ayn Rand Objectivist philosophy somehow has a damned thing to do with drinking Corporate Kool-Aid.

You can buy it here (from a truly independent bookseller of course).

Watch his show every night on CNN at 5:00 CST. I make it a point to never miss it. He used to use the aluminum bat on ‘em once a week or so – but when Big Business started to get upset he realized he was on to something and now he’s swinging it most nights. His “Corporate Crime Watch” is an awesome thing to behold.

Read him in Money magazine

Read him in U.S. News and World Report here.

Read his on-line newsletter Lou Dobbs Financial Report here.

Read about his radio show here.

Read about his humble beginnings and charitable dealings here.

Buy his book here.

Did I mention he’s a Republican?

Entry Filed under: General