http://www.madnamerica.com/index.htm

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Thanks

I was watching “Sunday Morning” news and they were talking about these Boston Tea Parties people were having..all they talked about was taxes. Lately on any news I haven’t heard them talking about the outsourcing of our jobs, unemployment, loss of our homes.

I see on the internet petitions trying to stop the outsourcing but they do not seem to be reaching alot of people which just means alot of people are not surfing the internet researching this outsourcing. Not to many signatures.

I just entered “Stop outsourcing of jobs” and found them. I don’t know if people just don’t know what to do or to many don’t worry about it because their jobs are safe for the moment.

Perhps it is working in other areas. Delta are closing the India call centers, in time we may be able to actually have conversations which make sense again.

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Oh thank God!

This might be interesting. This was part of a letter I recieved from a friend who is from Canada. Looks like Afghanistan jobs are the same.

“unfortunately i never got the truck drivers position i applied for in iraq, and had to take labouring job here in afghanistan, with less money that’s why i am now looking to change jobs , but there is lots of balkans here i.e. macedonians, kosovo’s, bosnians etc , not as many americans as i thought there would be but that’s because they can pay them less”

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Good to know. Thanks

The Bleeding Of American Jobs

The United States must stop the bleeding of American jobs to cheap-labor countries. If we don’t stop this job loss, we will eventually impoverish ourselves, since the overwhelming number of Americans must work in order to live.

There is only one way to stop this loss of jobs. Scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement, withdraw from the World Trade Organization and do what our Founding Fathers intended for us to do  negotiate trade agreements with individual countries.

With those countries whose living standards, wages, health and environmental regulations are the equal of or are superior to our own, such as Japan and Canada and Western Europe, we can negotiate free-trade agreements. Nobody is likely to close an American plant and move the jobs to Germany or Japan, where wages and benefits are as high as or higher than those in the United States.

With cheap-labor countries, however, we must impose not only protective but punitive tariffs. That is the only way to stop American capitalists who care nothing for their workers or for the country from moving jobs to cheap-labor countries.

So-called free trade, as it has been practiced, is a racket. If you haven’t figured that out yet, let me explain it. The free-trade agreement with Mexico, for example, isn’t designed to allow us to import tequila and tamales duty-free. It is designed to allow American manufacturers to close their American plants and relocate them to Mexico  where they can pay Mexican workers a pittance and ignore health, safety and environmental regulations. Then their products are shipped back to the United States to be sold at a fat profit.

Ditto with China and the rest of the cheap-labor countries. Most of these countries frankly have nothing to export. What they have is a surplus population and hence a huge supply of cheap labor. If we levy, say, a punitive tariff of $100 a pair on Nike shoes made in cheap-labor countries, I guarantee you Nike will reopen its American plants or go out of business.

As for American companies that farm out service jobs to cheap-labor countries, the answer is a punitive tax; say $5,000 per foreign worker. This would be fair, since there is a public cost for every unemployed American.

Economics is a lot simpler than economists and ideologues would have you believe. Capitalists are motivated by greed. End of story. To change their harmful behavior, you have to take away from them the only thing they care about  money.

By negotiating separate agreements with individual countries, as logic dictates, we can avoid the past problems caused by across-the-board protective tariffs. We could, as I pointed out, have free trade with other industrial countries. There is no reason to protect Ford from competition with Toyota. There is a good reason to prevent Ford from moving its manufacturing plants to Mexico.

Today is not yesterday, and today’s problems are not yesterday’s problems. The old argument of protective tariffs versus free trade is no longer applicable in this global economy, dominated as it is by huge transnational corporations. Capital is mobile; workers are not. Profits made at the expense of American workers and the American treasury should be viewed as hateful and wrong.

We now have a choice. We can stick with theory, even though it no longer fits the facts. We can continue to let big corporations buy favors from politicians. Or we can seize control of our own government and impose restraints on corporate greed.

To do nothing is to condemn our grandchildren to a bleak future.

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Here Here!! Thanks

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Damn!

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64651/bennett-ramberg/the-precedents-for-withdrawal has a little piece of the essay on the subject of why nation building, and its costs, can be so effective and why is it better to leave some placves to fend for themselves but, also why it can create a propoganda explosion such as after friendly forces left Cambodia and allowed Pol Pot to move in and begin the rule which ended up with 2 Million deaths and a lot of hatred to use for recruitment purposes.

All nation building/colonial or whatever, countries have had this issue, France, Netherlands, England, Portugal and now the US have to draw the lies on what they willendure in the name of assistance and where they will walk away and leave a possible civil war to rage and to stop the cries now, it is not all OIL based.

People who resign are not shown in jobless figures and neither are those whose benefits have ran out and those who work for companies like KBR who pay no unemployment and so leave workers with little option to be considered as unemployed. The numbers are far higher of course but, disclosing such would surely cause those who are working to hold their monies even tighter and eaked the economy farther. A rare case where ignorance may not be bliss but, can be useful to halt the already disturbing state of affairs.

I shall be with the unemployed soon also, it will be odd to be ou of work, first time since 1988 that I will not have a job lined up befor leaving the current one.

Whether you believe it took 8 or 16 years to create this situation, it is going to take more than a few bailouts to fix, only when company bonuses are based on a 5 year mean average will the leaders begin thinking of long term gains instead of short term bonus returns

Ms Sparky’s Response:
I agree. Well said!

Another thing that they do is when they say unemployment is down…they are not telling you how many people have used up their benefits and just can’t collect unemployment anymore.

Also the good ol’ welfare won’t help people who don’t have children at home.

I noticed that they haven’t updated the stats on the unemployed lately. They need to give some of these overseas jobs to the people who are on unemployment and get them back to work.

Ms Sparky’s Response:
That is a very very valid point!

So I really wonder what the actual number of Americans not working is??

And we’re still giving jobs away to Third Country Nationals, and giving aid to every nation in the world but our own. . . hhmmm food for thought

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Also you can add people who’s unemployment has run out. They don’t get counted either.

We each have 30 yrs. experience driving truck and my husband also has Heavy Eq. experience. I myself was hauling nitro at the age of 19 and my husband had even hauled fuel for the shuttle and also highly explosive fuels. We are very devoted people, I myself even worked driving up to 40 minutes before our 3rd daughter was born.

My husband has won 8 Emmy awards in the past 8 yrs. and 2 of those are for his truck driving abilty. I won 2 emmy awards in 2007 for my truck driving ability. But we cannot get employment in our own country. We are going on 6 months now without working.

Companies who long haul here will not hire us because of the way a law was written, excluding television production drivers from the federal rules and reg. in reference to the amount of hours they can drive. But, people want to read the law and understand it in their own way. It has nothing to do with us, only movie companies who are in a location for a period of time and TV trucks that go to disasters. So they look at us as being inexpeienced. Even though we saved the company truck from being hi-jacked when we went to mexico City last year.

We now live in a 33 ft travel trailer and in another 30 days we will not beable to make the payments. I believe the count for people losing their jobs by now has got to be higher then 5 million as it has been growing at an increased amount every day.

Sorry for making this so long, it just breaks my heart when I see our jobs being given to other countries. We all paid a lot of taxes and to watch it be given to others just chaps my hide.

I grant you, england is a great allie and we are greatful to have them work beside us, but we need to take care of this country. At least the citizens of england can go to a doctor when ill, we americans can’t even do that if we don’t have insurance. We just lost another company recently, Hanes in North Carolina moved their plant to Vietnam. this need to stop, pretty parts of the U.S is going to look like a third world country.

Ms Sparky’s Response:
I totally get it. I called Sears today to find out where my repair man was and talked to someone in India that couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand them!

Hi Ms sparky
I am disappointed by your hire american act.
As england are part of the allies why should the jobs only be for americans ? If our country can fight along side the usa we are not good enough to help ensure the electrical work is up to standard granted I do not koe anything about your codes but I can recognise a good installation and a dangerous one
Regards
(name removed to protect privacy)

Ms Sparky’s Response:
First, Americans are not being replaced in Iraq by Brits. Americans and Brits work side by side. Americans are being replaced by Third Country Nationals from SE Asia and South Africa. And I’m not just talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. I am talking about US government funded projects all over the world including the US. How would you feel if A bunch of Americans were doing work that was being paid for by your tax dollars at one of your military bases? England has a great licensing program and they are a benefit to the camps in Iraq. Not a problem. But, you would expect Brits to be hired before Americans if British taxpayer money was being used…wouldn’t you? Over 5 million people lost their jobs last year in the US. People are losing their homes. Wouldn’t you think it’s time to be a little protectionist?

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Very good points.

I have ran into major safety issues on many bases and have dealt with an Irishman and Phillipino who have almost been ran into the ground because they brought up major safety violations and demanded that they be corrected, the biggest problems many of us over here face are US ex-pats who refuse to do the work right or instruct the SCW’s the wrong way to do it and never inspect the work later.

We also have a lot of US ex-pats who live in Taiwan or the Phillipines and such who send their money offshore and pay nothing into our economy either but the simple fact is that good and bad workers come from every country and bad supervisors are the main problem if they never inspect workers or if they are the ones falsifying records or threatening the workers to do what is wanted instead of what is right.

We all make mistakes, even me but I am divorced now so that nullifies it, but if you plan something wrong from the start, it is no longer a mistake.

If a company sends its prodctivity overseas and sells in the US, it should be seen as a foreign company and charged as such, no new rules or legislation required just a rewriting of the companies state of origin and taxes calculated accordingly.

If the rules allow local labor to be used, why are all the SCW’s not from Iraq such as they are on some other sites? I know that some Iraqi SCW’s were killed in the early days for cooperating with us but with things as good a they are now why is there no plan to integrate the locals and build the local economy that way as well?

Ms Sparky’s Response:
Most people are not trained to instruct and inspect. They are electricians or whatever trade….not teachers.