Sold to the Highest Bidder

One of my favorite places for informed, in-depth news AND ANALYSIS about world events is Foreign Policy, which I link to in the sidebar.

Notice the caps for "and analysis" - news is news, and anybody can report what they think they see going on.

I want to understand the dynamics below the surface and, frankly, today's reporters are generally a lazy group of people. They like to be spoon-fed from press releases, and there is very little real investigative reporting among the MSM. Oh, sure, if there is some safe smut, like a sex scandal, they might dig, because that sells copy. It is especially rewarding if it is a Republican that has gotten caught.

But, where do we really get good in-depth analysis?

Anyway, Foreign Policy has an excellent article about "free trade" entitled Nothing Free About It at which I was the first commentator. My ranting comment is as follows:

Sold to the Highest Bidder

All of those very legitimate points aside, how can people of one nation, who must pay high tax rates and whose employers have strict environmental regulations, possibly compete with what is essentially slave labor in a nation that is eager to sacrifice the environment in order to achieve economic growth?

"Free trade" isn't free - it means someone is getting screwed.

Add to that the current US practice of offering "offsets" in our high-tech military exports. Foreign buyers of US military hardware agree to buy our weapons, provided at least some of the production occurs in their country, not ours. That means the jobs, the know-how, the national-security-related industrial base - it's all over there, in a nation that might just be our enemy after the next election or coup. On top of that, we are often giving US foreign military aid dollars to these countries, provided they buy our weapons. But, what good does that do Americans, if "our" weapons are being produced there? We pay foreign nations American tax dollars to become de facto competitors as we develop their industrial base.

The trouble is, American leaders, both political and business, all too often serve not the United States, but the almighty dollar. We can understand that of business leaders, though some concern for America would be nice. However, this is unacceptable on the part of our "public servants" who abuse their positions of trust to take care of business interests - often foreign business interests - while on the US public's payroll. In turn, these business interests take care of our "public servants" after they leave public service.

And when we get sold "change", the only thing that changes is the names of the connected people who benefit from screwing us, as our "public servants" sell us out to the highest bidder.

Look into the Sibel Edmonds case, and see if that serves as a primer to know what I'm talking about.

Or, here's one for you. It's a long post - read it all the way to the end, because it doesn't take you where you might think it does at the beginning.