Clinton Woos the Outsourcers that Workers Fear
BUFFALO, N.Y. - To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat - a company that has helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States.
So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a surprise. 
Joining Tata Consultancy’s chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton announced that the company would open a software development office in Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.
The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company: Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a champion for New York’s depressed upstate region.
But less noticed was how the event signaled that Clinton, who portrays herself as a fighter for American workers, had aligned herself with Indian American business leaders and Indian companies feared by the labor movement.
Now, as Clinton runs for president, that signal is echoing loudly.
Clinton is successfully wooing wealthy Indian Americans, many of them business leaders with close ties to their native country and an interest in protecting outsourcing laws and expanding access to worker visas. Her campaign has held three fundraisers in the Indian American community recently, one of which raised close to $3 million, its sponsor told an Indian news organization.
But in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The company, which called the arrangement Clinton’s “brainchild,” says “about 10″ employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata’s 10,000-employee workforce in the United States.
As for the research deal with the state university that Clinton announced, school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful and that no projects are imminent.
The Tata deal underscores Clinton’s bind as she attempts to lead a Democratic Party that is turning away from the free-trade policies of her husband’s administration in the 1990s and is becoming more skeptical of trade deals and temporary-worker visas.
Like many businesses and economists, Clinton says that the United States benefits by admitting high-tech workers from abroad. She backs proposals to increase the number of temporary visas for skilled foreigners.
The Tata deal shows the difficulty of proving concrete benefits to U.S. workers from the visa system. Since 2003, the year its Buffalo office opened, Tata and its affiliates have sought permission to bring more than 1,600 foreign high-tech workers to the state, including at least 495 to the upstate region and 45 to Buffalo, according to government data. Tata has brought additional workers into the country under a second visa program whose numbers have not been disclosed.
Some U.S. worker organizations say Clinton cannot claim to support American workers if she is also helping Indian outsourcing companies and proposing more worker visas.
“It’s just two-faced,” said John Miano, founder of the Programmers Guild, one of several high-tech worker organizations that have sprung up as outsourcing has expanded. “We see her undermining U.S. workers and helping the offshoring business, and then she comes back to the U.S. and says, ‘I’m concerned about your pain.’ ”
Among Indian American activists, Clinton’s work with Tata has been seen as a sign of her independence from outsourcing skeptics within her party - and a break from the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who lambasted “Benedict Arnold CEOs” for shipping jobs overseas.
The main lobbying organization for the Indian-American community, USINPAC, cites the Tata deal as one of Clinton’s top three achievements as a senator - and evidence of a turnabout, in its view, from her past criticism of outsourcing. “Even though she was against outsourcing at the beginning of her political career,” the USINPAC website says, “she has since changed her position and now maintains that offshoring brings as much economic value to the United States as to the country where services are outsourced, especially India.”
Clinton regularly reinforces that view. When CNN anchorman Lou Dobbs, an outsourcing critic, pressed her on the Tata deal in 2004, Clinton responded: “Well, of course I know that they outsource jobs, that they’ve actually brought jobs to Buffalo. They’ve created 10 jobs in Buffalo and have told me and the Buffalo community that they intend to be a source of new jobs in the area, because, you know, outsourcing does work both ways.”
This month, she made a similar case to a conference of Indian workers in Silicon Valley, saying she supported an expansion of visas. “Foreign skilled workers contribute greatly to our U.S. technological development,” she told the group via satellite.
Clinton acknowledged the strains on American workers and called for more job-training programs. But her words seemed to distance her from those who would end outsourcing. Increased U.S. job losses, she said, could cause Americans to “seek more protection against what they view as unfair competition.”
The Tata deal, she said in a 2005 stop in India, exemplified the cooperation that will “help to prevent the kind of negative feelings that could be stirred up” by critics of the global marketplace. She called those critics “short-sighted.”
Today, on the campaign trail, Clinton often strikes a different tone. Addressing union audiences and Democratic crowds, she does not highlight her support for expanding foreign-worker visas. Instead, Clinton often laments a system that, as she told a government workers union last month, rewards companies for “moving our jobs overseas.” “Outsourcing is a problem, and it’s one that I’ve dealt with as a senator from New York,” Clinton said during a Democratic candidates debate in June. She said she had tried “to stand against the tide of outsourcing.”
Clinton aides say the Tata deal is just one example of her broader efforts to help upstate New York. Whatever the results, said spokesman Philippe Reines, the effort showed Clinton helping to build a high-tech future for a region long focused on manufacturing.
Buffalo’s population has fallen by half over 50 years, as automotive and other manufacturing jobs moved overseas. Resentment is so high that voters last year nearly dumped a longtime Republican congressman for an anti-trade Democrat, who had made outsourcing his biggest issue.
For Clinton, a newcomer to New York when she ran for the Senate in 2000, the upstate region was considered a challenge - a traditionally conservative area that did not participate in the economic prosperity during her husband’s presidency. So, as a candidate, she pledged to use tax credits and other incentives to create 200,000 jobs in the region.
In 2002, Clinton took a group of Indian business executives on a tour of the region and to a meeting with administrators from the state university in Buffalo. The group included Tata Consultancy Services, an information technology consulting firm that is part of Tata Group, a conglomerate with interests in electricity, steel, aviation, cars and hotels.
At the time, Tata Consultancy had two offices in the state - both in New York City to service Wall Street clients.
But a year after the tour, the company flew Clinton to join its chief executive, S. Ramadorai, in Buffalo for an announcement: It would open an office there.
Tata also signed a memorandum of understanding with a university research center to pursue discoveries in genetics, drugs and other areas. In a news release, Tata said that deal “will eventually lead to opportunities for training, recruitment and job creation in Buffalo.”
“There was a sense of excitement on the part of the community,” said Anthony M. Masiello, Buffalo’s mayor at the time, “to have a company like Tata that would not traditionally look at coming to western New York.”
But soon the company faded from public view, said Andrew J. Rudnick, president and CEO of the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership, an economic development group in which Tata was initially active. “They told us their business strategy had changed,” he said. “The reality is that the number of people that Tata is employing here now doesn’t seem to be significant.”
At the University at Buffalo, Bruce A. Holm, director of a research center pursuing projects with Tata, conceded that the partnership had not played out as hoped. But he said that progress was still possible.
Tata officials say the company has hired 50 people from the Buffalo area in the last four years but most have left or have been transferred to other locations. They say the Buffalo operations remain important to the company and a part of the civic life of the city.
But critics say that Tata has done more to undercut workers in upstate New York than it has helped - and that Clinton is wrong to argue that exposing U.S. workers to competition from foreign workers is helping both groups.
Since Tata arrived in Buffalo, “the reality is that it probably created many more jobs for workers overseas and displaced lots of American workers,” said Ronil Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a prominent critic of outsourcing.
A report released by two senators said that Tata was one of the biggest users of foreign-worker visas in the United States, employing more than 7,900 visa recipients last year. The large number of visas suggests that companies are circumventing laws designed to protect American workers, Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in their report.
Clinton and many other lawmakers have called for cracking down on visa abuse. At the same time, she has backed an increase in the number of foreigners admitted to the U.S. each year under the main type of visa for high-tech workers. The cap is 65,000 each year; companies are seeking 115,000.
And her campaign continues to telegraph - sometimes in front of Indian American audiences - that she sees benefits to a globalized world.
Three weeks ago, her husband drew applause at a conference of 14,000 Indian Americans in Washington as he extolled the benefits of “open borders, easy travel, easy immigration.” He said the outsourcing debate bothered him because it failed to acknowledge the contributions of Indians who settled in the U.S. The same day, he headlined a fundraiser at the conference for his wife’s campaign.
Labor union leaders, who haven’t decided whom to endorse for president, say they have watched the Tata deal and Clinton’s statements on outsourcing.
“People do want to see from her some recognition that the outsourcing of these service jobs isn’t a good thing for the U.S. economy,” said Thea M. Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO. “It’s a little bit of an open question where Sen. Clinton’s going to end up on outsourcing.”
Total … 495
–
*H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to hire high-skilled international workers for up to six years. Obtaining certification from the Department of Labor does not necessarily mean the company secured visas, but that is the only public indicator of where a company intends to deploy foreign workers. Whereas H-1B certification data is public, similar information is not available for L-1 visas, which accounted for more of Tata’s workers in 2006, according to a U.S. Senate report.
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
Job Destruction Directory
http://www.zazona.com/
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/
In the year 2001, 9 out of every 10 new job openings for computer/IT were taken by H-1Bs, and despite record unemployment the INS issued 312,000 visas in 2002.
Much like her corporate whore husband the only thing Democratic about this bi*ch is her label
Can’t wait to hear all the Fakeocrats try to sell this witch in the name of fear in the very near future…..There is nothing more disgusting than a sellout
For Clinton… the upstate region was considered a challenge - a traditionally conservative area that did not participate in the economic prosperity during her husband’s presidency.
Huh? Rust-belt, blue collar, pro-union cities like Buffalo or Rochester are conservative?
So now, if you oppose the capitalist neoliberal oligarchy of Hillary, you will be called a “conservatve”.
Sorry folks no surprises here. She’s part of the Washington Elite. Money talks . . . regular people do not count when you are counting greenbacks. Conservative, Liberal, Republican, Democrat the real difference between them is the amount of money they can raise. Period . . .
‘Nuf Said
Another day, another Clinton assault and yet she will be coronated and say “Let them eat cake”.
All above: so true and so depressing. How any true liberal/progressive can claim for HRC the mantle of leadership is beyond the comprehension of any reasonably intelligent person. And yet she supposedly ‘leads’ in the polls. The ability of the average American to harbor delusional thoughts continues to amaze me.
This will come as no suprise to astute progressives because many of us remember the Clinton administration’s active involvment in promoting outsourcing and the moving of corporations to lower wage nations with government funding (USAID). The Clintons are no friends of the working class!
Maybe that’s the real reason Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR is building detention camps — to house large segments of Americans that the banks foreclose on, since their jobs were outsourced and the speculators refuse to lower the cost of real estate…
This *should* be a wakeup call to the multitude of nose-holding lesser evil voters out there. Is Hillary Clinton really worth selling out your convictions and your self-interest yet again? Or is it finally time to abandon lesser evilism and work towards building a true progressive party; an actual SECOND party as opposed to the one Corporate Party made up of Democrats and Republicans?
The mighty oak falls, because hidden in its core, are termites, eating away at is ablity to stand against the storm. Outward, it appears healthy, able to withstand the tempests blood.
This country, once had a strong core, a spine of steel, and its workers were quietly industrious, and a successful, prosperous middle class was made.
Today, that spine is rusted through, and though it wears the outward garb of prosperity, its shallow support will not stand the storm gathering on the horizon.
Steady yourselves my fellow Ameircan’s, we’ve mortgaged our future, sold our seed corn, pumped the well dry, in debt beyond our means to pay and a hard time is coming.
Don’t ask why - because the truth is something you don’t wish to hear.
Hilary Rodham Klanton has shown why she has been on such good terms with Walmart and the rest of the slave labor, union busting jack asses. If you like slave labor and voting for a sow for rich man’s affirmative action program, you’ll love Klanton.
“Some say the American Middle Class has bee destroyed.
I say it is alive and well and living in Calcutta”
“Some say the American Middle Class has been destroyed.
I say it is alive and well and living in Calcutta”
And in India, all this outsourced work is being billed as the harbinger of development even if it is creating a bloated middle class of hunchbacked telemarketers and call centre cripples. However, once enough Chinese learn English, those companies will end up moving there too.
It’s a never ending treadmill of cost reduction and profit maximization by any means necessary.
I generally believe in lesser evilism in that suffering most Democrats is roughly equivalent to enduring waterboarding while suffering Republicans is more like being burned at the stake. However, I think Hillary comes with matches and plenty of gasoline.
The fact that Bush-Enabler Hillary still has a “D” behind her name is sufficient for the Dem koolaid drinkers.
We have one local talk show host here in my city who is still a Dem koolaid drinker. Very, very tow that D party line nonsense.
I heard him the other day out of one side of his mouth list a litany of things he did not like about Hillary (one thing he said is that she is unprincipled and he doesn’t like jelly fish type people). Then out of the other side of his mouth he said that if she’s the nominee he will vote for her (assuming there’s an election, he didn’t say that though).
I thought to myself: You STILL haven’t learned have you after all this time that, in part, “lesser evil” politics got us exactly to where we are now and will keep us in this rut. You can’t possibly see past this D party-line nonsense that’s been programmed in you by your parents. There are many, many people like him.
If Hillary had a “R” behind her name would this guy still vote for her? I’m sure the answer to that is NO.
And that shows how silly people like him really are.
There was a story on about the booming tech industry in India. In Silicon Valley more than half the engineers were foreign born and have been here less than 5 years. Maybe if India can start their own tech industry there, fewer of them will come here.
Hitlery: Bush with tits and sober.
Get used to it. She’s the conservative’s pick to lose liberals the election. Find other strategies.
A “red, white and blue flu” day? Is that already decided upon?
Personally, that sounds too “flag-waving” to me.
I’d prefer the slogan “A Nation in Distress Day.”
Unless I’m missing some meaning with the other slogan, the “A Nation in Distress Day” seems more appropriate.
(You know, the upside down US flag type thing.)
I don’t know… it’s kind of funy, when the outsourced bill collectors call, and leave messages. They never can get my name right.
(do you see the irony)
Like in 2000, a vote for a Democrat is a wasted vote! Nader in 2008!
Maybe all those outsourced labor survivors can get an 8 million dollar book deal.
David Brooks (heart) HRC.
Nuff said.
JJpeter
that’s one of the most genuine and true definition of the contemporary disease we failed to recognize years ago (one example, the day that our FLAG WAVING Lobby of the Auto Dealers signed up with the Japanese Auto Industry..great economic **terrorism** golpe which still affects us…)
**
The mighty oak falls, because hidden in its core, are termites, eating away at is ability to stand against the storm.
Outward, it appears healthy, able to withstand the empests blood
**
Hmm… may seem petty but ours is a nation based on packaging and appearances over content, increasingly. With that being said, blue is a major royal color; and the style of her outfit, kind of what a queen would wear in the 21st century. The woman is taking a sincere liking to power, and already envisions herself in the chief office of the land. (I am not a Hillary supporter… just because she is a woman hardly means she wins my vote, given the disastrous policies and past record she also wears… a lot less well.)
Just what we need to solve our problems. Replace the Emperor with an Empress. Anybody ever hear or watch Puccini’s Turandot?
I doubt we’d have such a happy ending.
Don’t get sway or influence by the polls. Please vote your conscious!
LibertasFugit: “…Replace the Emperor with an Empress…”
- either way, these ‘emperors’ still have no clothes!
I’ve observed that on most threads concerning Ms Rod’em Clinton someone invariably mentions her breasts. Methinks we ought take more notice of the two pointy bumps on her head, than those on her chest? ~ Long flowing gowns do not an angel make! - her previous grimy record vis-à-vis Big Business has more the taint of devils than Seraphim.
The only aspect of her chest which interests me is whether or not a deeply compassionate heart beats there, -and a heart which is as full of courage as other heroines we have known.
I fear neither is the case.
Living in the remote, hermetically sealed world of high power politics, she seems to lack deep and *genuine* compassion for the poor and oppressed.
And being very much part of ‘The Establishment’ she seems also to lack the needed valour to bravely stand up to the big, ruinous corporations, - or the many villains in her political world.
Therefore, of what use is she to we ordinary folk in the world? – She’s just another empty shell it appears.
Shame about that, coz women have SUCH an important part to play in re-shaping the world, but I believe this woman is not one we can trust to initiate any real changes.
Hilary ‘Radical’ Clinton? –I think not!
I can remember when this lady and Lieberman were flying off to Israel at taxpayer expence to tout Sharon and bad mouth Arafat.
I had been emailing these two Israeli Republican senators for months to stop doing that. Finally, I all but accused these two of treason just before midnight on the 10th of September, 2001. I couldn’t see all the reasons for 9/11 but I could see enough.
Well, Arafat has gone to his reward (due to denial of medical care) and neither Heaven nor Hell wants Sharon…and so it goes.
As one unsurprised by the venality of the democrats- which I’ve been watching for a little over thirty years now- I see nothing new in the mealymouthed mercenaries who surround Clinton, Obama, Edwards and company. Nor is there anything particularly different about the true believers who still defend a vote for a “lesser evil”, in the hopes they’ll influence the “democratic” party, which has been on a steady rightward drift since 1973, one which has become particularly pronounced since the ascension of the DLC in the mid to late 1980s.
So I’ve long found it particularly insulting when people half my age come to me and tell me that I’m acting “politically pure” when I reject what is in truth, their own dogmatic ideology. Apparently they don’t know or don’t care that we all labored under the delusion that the only problem earlier generations had was that we didn’t know how to apply strategy as well as the newcomers do. And as I’ve known for awhile, the only thing more dogmatic than a dogmatic left is a dogmatic moderate. Certainly nothing’s more violent, protected as their tendency is with all the firepower of the corporate state.
So Clinton’s machinations and that of her following surprise me not at all. Unfortunately, time burns. The only thing that’s going to shift this country at all is an alliance, a united front of differing political tendencies, from libertarian to green to labor, challenging both democrats and republicans for a place at the table. That opposition will hopefully be based in the working class majority. Short of that option, democracy in the United States is finished.
TERROR- when you have no job, no shelter, no food, etc.
TERRORISTS- Our pres-dent, congress and senate who have given tax breaks and subsidized moving machines/factories to foreign soil.
Obviously these terrorists are making lots of money from selling US out.
Homeland security?
AIPAC, ASINPAC, leading recipient of Health Insurance money, friend of Rupert Murdoch, Member of Wal-mart’s board, voter for Iraq war, etc…!!! Is there no outrage against Progressivism of which she is not guilty?
To all those counseling supporting this Corporate hack I ask you do you really believe in “lesser of 2 evils” with someone who is this patently evil?
What we keep getting with this strategy is the “evil of 2 lessers”
As for the recent CD article telling us to “hi-jack” the Democratic Party,it reminds me of something a friend told me years ago after our unsuccessful effort to “take over” the Dems. We found out they had no intention of being taken over by the likes of us. My friend said the effort was “…like an ant running up a horses’s leg with rape on it’s mind.”
Nader08 asked at 236p “Is Hillary Clinton really worth selling out your convictions…? That’s the BIG question and my answer is NO,NO,NO, a thousand times NO!
I am currently reading Mark Steel’s worderful “Vive La Revolution” about France in the late 1700’s.
The workers and peasants did not achieve freedom by becoming Monarchists! We will not achieve it by becoming corparatists or by supporting corporatists at the polls!
Enough already! I will support Kucinich or Gravel but we all know neither would be PERMITTED to be the Democratic nominee.
So when Hillary runs in ‘08 I will vote Green, or Populist, or Socialist, or Libertarian or maybe I’ll go fishing, something I have never done before.
Dr King said once”…it is time for words to be matched by deeds of uncommon courage.”
At the very least our deeds should include making Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political life a living hell.
Enough!!!!!!
Siouxrose: Love your comments, always.
Until we get Public Money for Public Office, candidates will have to get their money from those that offer it or not stand a chance. We need to change how elections are funded and run, if we the people are to ever get our country back.
She reminds me of Lady Macbeth.
AARP and other major companies cry like bratty school children if they can’t bring in more H1Bs, it really messes up profits. The worker they can get cheap is the bonus, the profit, the thrilling race to success (or the bottom). It’s fascinating to go into an IT department at places like AARP and see mostly Indians, with the random white person. The whole concept is generally recognized as class warfare or terrorism by one group of Americans, and a great way to run a business by the powerful minority. Hillary tends to the powerful minority.
This is EXACTLY why I cannot support Hillary. If she is the candidate, I will not vote for president. The curse of big money in this country is the worst thing that we have to confront, and she is on the wrong side. She loves big money and they return the favor.
The surest sign of her being owned by them is when she says that she thinks that outsourcing has been a good thing for this country. This is, of course, a big money lie. Removing someone’s job from them and returning NO job in return is NOT a good thing for any country. Putting this country firmly in the classification of “third world” does NOT help us at all. Big money has it’s claws in her DEEPLY. And I cannot vote for someone who represents the very problem I want solved.
This outrageously racially biased “new analysis” does not even acknowledge that globalization is not a one way street. It is alright to strong arm third world countries to open up their agricultural, media , insurance and financial services sectors to US companies, but God forbid if Indian companies bring in their own workers. Bringing in workers is part of the goods and services global trade deal. US is free to employ US citizens in India for their companies, but do you think the share holders would stand for that? Not withstanding the salary disparities 15% of Intel India employees are either green card holders or US citizens (of Indian origin obviously). I suppose it is not polite to talk around the dinner table that the largest number of Microsoft and IBM employees after US are in India. It would only exacerbate the anxiety of the disgruntled US worker.
Kalia, the article is not racist. It simply states the obvious: Indians, Chinese and Mexican/Central American workers are being used to lower American living standards. I understand your standing up for your countrymen but my allegiance goes to the American worker who is getting the shaft from both parties. Hillary will get my vote when Hades freezes over.
Give your imagination a workout: Imagine anyone below the Mason-Dixon line voting for Mrs. Clinton. Then try imagining anyone in rural America voting for Mrs. Clinton. Now imagine the Republican Party handing millions of dollars to Mrs. Clinton so she can get the Democratic nomination and then be drawn and quartered as the Republicans romp to victory which, along with their electronic voting machines, would ensure another 8 years for the Republican corporatists. If you can manage all that imagining, imagine a U.S. after another 8 years of Republicans.
The problem is this.
Hillary voted for the war and defended it until she started running for President and wants to retain undefined “residual” forces there indefinitely. Yet most anti-war people will vote for her.
Hillary has an outright top anti-labor consultant working for her, has always supported, in the end, free trade with no labor or environmental protections, and, as you can see from this article, also supports foreign companies that bring in and outsource to offshore companies work that American workers WOULD do. Yet most of the Labor leadership will support her.
She got the most important vote of her career wrong, contributing to the Iraq debacle demonstrating horrific judgment, a lack of ability to choose advisors and an incredibly limited world view, yet all sides buy into the spin put out by her DLC supporters that she borders on omnipotence, even though she didn’t read the NIE prior to voting for the war giving it the appearance of being bi-partisan.
For reasons absolutely unknown to me, those who should be opposing her and refusing to support her, because she does harm to the anti-war movement and the labor movement, simply remain on the sidelines or outright support her. If the anti-war and labor leadership united and made it clear that she is unacceptable, she would not be able to get the nomination. Instead she looks like a shoe-in because of their support or silence.
Clinton will lose the ‘08 election. I will not vote for her either. I would rather another neo-con seize the office again, and swiftly put the final nail in the coffin of the middle class.
As for “outsourcing”, that is conservative code for “exporting American jobs to third-world countries”. If you want to get under the skin of conservatives and corporations, don’t speak their code–call it “exporting American jobs”.
“Foreign skilled workers contribute greatly to our U.S. technological development.” That is total bullshit, Ms. Clinton.
Foreign workers demand much less pay than American workers. They are here to be trained by corporations and then shipped back to the countries they came from, to put Americans out of work. US corporations receive tax incentives to ship jobs and plants out of the country. US corporations wanted an increase in temporary visas JUST so they could hasten the exportation of jobs to cheap labor markets.
Corporations and the Indian government feed off each other in their greed to destroy technology jobs in the United States. Are Indians better technology workers? Time and again, studies show that this is a lie.
Do not support Clinton. It’s not about gender; it’s what others have said about her: She is a friend to everything that is wrong with the USA.
I was a fan of Hillary until I became informed. She is consistent in they way she contradicts herself. Hillary “Show Me the Money” Clinton.
She did not run for president in 2004. I could not understand why she did not challenge Bush until I figured out that they are on the same team.
I am starting to feel like I am the patsy in the game of American politics (democratic hold’em). Again I have to choose between folding (not voting) or going all in (choosing the lesser of all the evils). Either way I loose again.
We need a political revolution…
Eventually a political system and a power hierarchy that has no qualms about exploiting the resources of foreigners will have have no qualms about exploiting its own population. It happened in the heyday of British empire. Read Dickens. And it surely is happening in the US. Why do you think 3000 plus are dead in Iraq. The powers that be have already stopped pretending that it is not about somebody else’s oil.
My choice about whom to vote for was still undecided. I have always been anti-outsourcing. It is one of the greatest enemies the working class has. I will definitely not vote for Hilary!
Hillary Clinton refused to speak before the Take Back America gathering because Code Pink and a few other samll groups of anti war were in the audience.l
the Democratic Party apparatus agreed to remove any disenters from teh premices before she agreed to talk.
That my friends is power and those within the party damn well know it and she is their last hope of remaining at the gravy bowl within DC politics.
It makes no difference if she does run for President because this is not a race on policy but personlaities.
All Cnadidat4es will of agreed before hand to not enter the war debate except if it is framed on not leaving because it would cause a blood bath.
By voting for either partys choice you have legitimized remaining in Iraq, the economic poliucys of jobs offshoring and the saem corporates wil gain no matter your choice.
I hear many differing views on how best to rearrrange things and people in DC amd while I admit the elections will in all probability drive the last nail in Freedoms coffin, but it is not just here in US but yes Globaly we should be thinking.
For whatever happens here the world will be watching.
It is not just the politicos we want to send a message to but the whole world as well.
Refuse to be governed!
Do not waste your vote by casting a vote.
To vote for any party when you know that only a major of either Republican or Democrat is going to win is a waste of vote for it legitimizes the system.
Refuse to vote!
Get out the vote to not vote.
Help register every relative dog or cat illegal immigrant or legal immigt=rant and explain that the whole world is watdching them not vote for one of the most deadly and corrupt organizations in world.
While we alredy damn well know we as voters do not have any real say in the system, now is the time to stand up and show the world that yes ewwe are A
darn my typing is bad,cont: Americans and no one can jam things down our throat anymore.
When two hundred million registered voters choose not to vote it will hit every newspaper in the world.
Block the polls with demonstrations of silence. Tell city hall you do not want any candidate using public facilitys to give speeches.
Tell city hall you want ordinances that disallow or place restrictons as to size, 2inch square would be good, any election signs on public lands or throughways and if your state has billboard laws use them against big GOP or Demo lawn signs.
Phone in all the talk shows and say you will boycott teri advertisers, repub or demo makes no diff.
Tell them you give one week and then appear at their doorsteps if they don’t desist.
Use the internet and e-mail every demo or repub site you can, not once or twice but hundreds of times just to say good-bye.
There are as many ways to resist as there are people in this land.
For all the young bloods who look at Revolutions by the gun, do not sink to as low a level as those who already conrol by the gun. Try peacefull non violent methods first and if they knock us down then you help me up and I will help up another and yes it may then be time to Ride to the Guns but not before they fire the first 10 or 20 volleys.
There is no second chance coming up, this is the time, now, not tomorrow, start now.
Once upon a time the Amerians stood for something; something that drew others who were sufferign oppression to try and emulate, and yes many came here just for the riches but by doing so they also found out what freedom here was like compared to what their relatives they had left were going through.
Hell I am old but just once more I would like to serve my country, not in war but in search of peace and human dignity. I owe to to my decendents and damnit I owe it to myself. you don’t even have to advertise what you are dong be polite and civil and just maybe enough will be doing the very same the wrord will get ut, That is the beginning of grass roots populism.
I may get knocked on my ass but at least I can say I stood as an American.
Hillary WalMart Clinton
Perhaps we have a chance to influence Hillary by scaring her with vote taking by Unity08.
To say that Hillary is ahead in the poles, is ridiculous. Once again we are being taken in by the media. They said “Bushie”,won twice. Do you believe that?
Hilary is a fascist whore. Her hands are equally in blood as Georgina (GWB). Killing children, women are what they doing.
Just wonder what kind of church they attending (they call themselves Christian). What kind of 10 commandments they are practice.
I think, that only way to stop outsourcing is to make law, that for every H1B company should issue full scholarship for an American teen, so in the future will be no ‘shortage’ for high tech workers (and others).
I lost my job in Wachovia, just a few weeks ago due to project outsourcing to India. IT over there has 90% of experience (just after school) developers from India. I have 20 years experience in IT. I also know that Wachovia is moving calling center to Philippines (they can not pay $8.00 an hour to folks here).
My protest was: closing all accounts in Wachovia and open with First Charter bank (a true American bank).
If you have account in Wachovia or Bank of America please close and tell them why. Do not support companies that selling yours, your friend jobs for a few bucks less.
I believe, only Kucinich has good plan how to deal with outsourcing.
Vote Denis.
Hillary is basically telling Wall Street she will out-corporate any Republican so please don’t let the crazed right-wing hounds loose and just let her slide back into the White House without much fuss. That appears to be the game plan. And Wall Street may go along with it as the rich white male corporatist brand is getting sort of stale and harder to sell and the unsophisticated gullible masses will be easily fooled into seeing progress in the new brand of rich white female corporatist.
It’s about time somebody started talking about Hilary’s tatas.
“When two hundred million registered voters choose not to vote it will hit every newspaper in the world.”
What would be more effective would be to show up at the polls, vote where appropriate for the local candidates or referenda, but write-in “none of the above” or “Noam Chomsky” - something more clever and less frivolous than “Mickey Mouse” - for President, and in most cases, Senator or House Rep. Yes, all e-voting machines allow write ins - (actually type-ins) but many (deliberately) allow too few characters for most full names.
Please note that repugs are united and at permanent war (”business is war”) where all’s fair including deception. Divide and conquer is an effective tactic they’re using on all blogs such as this. This is not a call for paranoia, but for unity. We’ll have tough choices, but we need to have a direct democratic vote on which candidate(s) to support and unite around him or her, or to reject them all and not vote, have a general strike, or whatever effective means we can unite around.
The local democrat as mayor may someday be your governor or senator; he or she may change offices but will always remains a democrat.
It is not the party names we need to change it is the thinking of those who go by those names who need to get bitch slapped.
They are not our rulers or even leaders, we the people are supposed lead them and rule their conduct in our name.
It is not a name that is working against the people and nation it is a philosophy bred from birth and not even buried when its proponents die as they are glorified among their peers and the populace at large for public serivice, as theri gold laden casket is lowerd into ground by workers who cannot even afford to die.
It is a system of corruption that has only one reason for existence today and that is to “Legalize that Corruption.
Vote with a blank ballot.
Vote by changing your bank if they outsource; a great idea.
Refuse to buy into the system of outsource that cost your neighbors a good paying job because you know they and their children now face hard times.
Refuse to buy products from major grocery outlets that have put local and American farmers out of work.
Refuse to buy all a corprotions products because they have partnered with foreign interest to put american enterprise workers out of jobs; ie: Tyson chickens a major major Clinton supporter got him to pass a bill that allowed foreign fisheries to enter territorial waters that allowed Tyson to partner with Asian fishery entitys that closed us fish processers and drove commercial fishermna out of buisness.
We can find many ways to push back and even if we think what difference does it make if I take my measely few bucks out of a bank or refuse to buy foreign foods and goods if we know others are doing it alongside of individual actions for change it adds up!
Most of all Americans have got to stop cutting their own and each others throats.
Damn but we are good at that.
We let our politcos give land to, example, Hyundia, then give them tax free statuss for 10 years, let them pay less wages and benfits of our own doemstic auto makers, and our workers line up in dutifull gratitude for a job.
A job that the Chairman of Hyundai boast that he can produce an auto cheaper in US because the wages and benfits toits workers is lower here than in Korea!
Ever wondered what being bitch slapped felt like?
When japans Minister of trade came to US he surprised the Bushy crowd with one speech in which he told american industrialist and fianciel movers, “While maximumization of protfits is a much sought after goal in Japanese industry and buisness sectors it was nowheres near as harmfull to its laborers as was the US system.”
Continuing on he noted,” In japan the advancement of industry meant the advancement of its labor force and reached down into the whole family within its thinking; whereby health of worker and even education for their children the city of corporoate and even the nations into buisness plans.”
Tis is a buisness philosophy that is completley foreign to american buisness as iut has always been an extraction oriented mindset, extract as much profit as quickly as you can and then move on to another profit maker, not for everyones advancement but just for your own advancement.
This is the US philosophy of buisness carried into the government sector to the max as we can see today.
We do not beleive in fair trade but exploitation for maximum returns in our overseas deas=ls and if necessary we use our militarty or covert governemtn forces tio keep those profits high even if it kills foreign workers.
From exploiting foreing nations workers and resources to exploiting US governmental functions which expolits its domestic peoples is where we are today.
Clintons both wife and husband have never really been on the side of working people, but they have been damn good at sounding like it.
The trouble with living around overly economically advanced people their entire lives, they really cannot understand what folks really want.
Thus the polls and the focus groups that are designed to manipulate the public and the politicians as they are used to fortify the daily barrage of Madison Avenue opinion making that tells each and every one of us what we want and what we need.
Can any one of us deny the influence? Do we even know ourselves these days?
“Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
Were idiots, babe.
Its a wonder we can even feed ourselves.”
Jaded Prole July 30th, 2007 1:58 pm
This will come as no suprise to astute progressives because many of us remember the Clinton administration’s active involvment in promoting outsourcing and the moving of corporations to lower wage nations with government funding (USAID). The Clintons are no friends of the working class!
But, they feel our pain!
Remember that?
When Hillary (during Bill’s Blow-Job/Impeachment proceedings) accused the Republicans of a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ she was deflecting attention from herself and the fascist policies she and her husband promote(d)… setting the stage for the glorious End of History.
I can think of no better reason to vote for a third party than as a repudiation of Clinton: or should I say GWB in a skirt?
Make no mistake about this woman of many faces, she a Statist, globalist, Neo-Liberal/Neo-Con, to the bone.
I recall when she was first lady, that she and Bill’s personal secretary, among other women in the Admin, Both wore a little lapel broach that was a depiction of the Eagle clutching the ‘pearl of great worth’ as it is known in esoteric circles. Call it the New World Order, or whatever you want, but there is every indication that she will push for the North American Union, more NAFTA-like policies, greater powers of World Govt (UN), etc… at the expense of our sovereignty, our jobs, and our freedoms. She has the blessing of the CFR, AIPAC, Defense Industry, and other players already. It (her reign) will probably not include unchecked bloodletting, torture, nukes, imperialism, etc. like the Bush cabal, but the Neo-Cons will still have a sympathetic ear in power to which they can whisper their evil incantations.
In 2001 I worked for SITEL that did tech support for AOL. I remember when they asked for volunteers to go and help set up a new callcenter that was to help take overflow AOL calls to lower the hold time. That callcenter had a lunch room, a workout room, rooms to sleep in and just all around the best looking building I have ever seen for a callcenter. I said then after I saw the pictures from the volunteers that went that once that Callcenter is up and running we were going to lose our jobs. No one believed me, but within 6 months thats what started to happen. Call AOL now and thats who you will be speaking to is someone from India. This job only paid starting out at $7.20 and hour, but in India they were starting the workers at I believe it was $3 something an hour. Its a win for the company. They get tax breaks for going overseas and it cost less to pay for the work. If the Clintons can explain how this helps American workers I will like to hear it. AOL couldn’t give me their service, I will not support a company that will use Americans to get them up and running only to transfer their jobs overseas and I cannot support anyone that thinks its OK for Americans to lose their job so the Business can make more money.