This excellent article’s full title is The Problem Isn’t Outsourcing. It’s that the Prosperity of Big Business Has Become Disconnected from the Well-Being of Most Americans.

The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad or even “in-sourcing.” Most big companies headquartered in America don’t send jobs overseas and don’t bring jobs here from abroad.

That’s because most are no longer really “American” companies. They’ve become global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things wherever around the world it’s most profitable for them to do so.

As an Apple executive told the New York Times, “we don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” He might have added “and showing profits big enough to continually increase our share price.”

Forget the debate over outsourcing. The real question is how to make Americans so competitive that all global companies — whether or not headquartered in the United States — will create good jobs in America.

I think the headline to the story makes an extremely important point that gets lost in the article itself. No matter how well we educate American workers or workers in any part of the world, these companies do not have an obligation to solve the problems of middle-class wages and lifestyles.

A situation where all the world’s people were highly educated and were able to be good workers at low wages would make all the corporations happy.  Well, maybe that would require Martians with good incomes to buy all the stuff that the people of Earth produce, but that is not the worry of any single company.

We all have to remember that there are interests and values that transcend the individual corporation.  In a purely capitalist economy, there is no entity whose job it is to promote these important human values.  This is one of the reasons for people to band together in the form of national and international governments to create that entity. This is the entity to promote the human values that have no assigned promoter in capitalism.

This is not to disparage capitalism for not covering this aspect of humanity.  It is only to point out that to have a whole society, we must make sure that there are entities in place to promote each of the human values that need to be promoted.

I was surprised to see that Massachusetts is one of the states involved.

ALEC is working to ensure that public education dollars get diverted to private profits. Their approach is working — for them. Not so much for the students who pay the price in the form of a subpar education and poor performance.

If our economy is going to be competitive on a global scale via a more educated work force, then we cannot afford to play games with our educational system.

Of course, the fallacy that education is the way to keep middle-class wages high is the subject of other blog posts on this site. Which is to say that a better educated work force is necessary to keep us from falling behind, but it is not enough to keep us ahead.

Sharon tells me that she has seen ads for the corporation mentioned in the above video.

This Truth Out editorial piece Mitt’s Kampaign Klown Kar  is entertaining.  However the quote I pick from the article is actually a quote from somewhere else.

From Talking Points Memo: “Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) defended Mitt Romney from Democratic speculation that he passed on him as a 2008 running mate after reviewing his tax returns, saying Sarah Palin was simply the better choice at the time. McCain called the tax claims ‘outrageous’ and ‘disgraceful’ in an interview with Politico Tuesday. He said he chose Palin ‘because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate.'”

The headline for the Talking Points Memo very brief article is John McCain: I Didn’t Pick Romney Because ‘Sarah Palin Was The Better Candidate’ It was hard for me to decide which headline I liked the best.

In a local newspaper I was reading the article In Roxbury, Romney hits Obama’s business message.

In the first 3 column inches of the printed story we read,

Mitt Romney on a visit to a Roxbury truck company Thursday slammed President Obama for suggesting profitable businesses owe their success to government.

Flanked by denim-clad workers in a garage bay at Middlesex Truck & Coach, Romney praised company owner Brian Maloney and his family, asserting “they did build this business.”

Romney’s brief address was a direct assault on a remark Obama made during a campaign event in Virginia last Friday. “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that,” the president said. “Somebody else made that happen.”

20½ column inches later in the story, we read the following:

In Virginia, Obama’s blunt “you didn’t build that” was accompanied by, “There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.”

As in all reputable newspapers, lies come first, truth comes later.

The story also points out about the founder of the business where Romney spoke:

In fact, the city and federal governments appear to have played at least some role in Middlesex Truck & Coach’s early growth.

Maloney founded his company as an auto body shop in Cambridge in 1966, while pursuing an MBA at Boston College. In the late 1970s, according to a 1986 Globe profile of the business, “he approached Boston city officials because a preferential bank loan was possible if his firm relocated to the Crosstown Industrial Park,” where Middlesex Truck & Coach remains to this day.

In its first year at the new location, Maloney’s company accepted a $560,000 federal government contract to overhaul 10 buses. Within a half-decade of the move, Maloney reported, his company had quintupled its annual revenue.

If it weren’t for the fact that I know Romney is just spouting political rhetoric, I would think that Romney suffered from terminal stupidity in pretending not to understand the meaning of what President Obama was saying.

In context, Democrats argue, Obama and Warren were simply noting that successful Americans have benefited from public investments — the roads that make delivery of goods possible, the schools that educate workers, the police and fire services that keep plants safe.

If Romney really doesn’t understand the role that government plays, then he should not take a position in government, should he?

Here is the third installment of what will be at least a four part series. The first two parts are in my previous post The Hunger Games Economy.

This multi-part interview from The Real News finally puts together in one place the picture of the American future that I have been talking about for the last 32 years. This goes beyond what Elizabeth Warren has talked about.

The main point of this installment is:

Obama understands what needs to be done but like the Republicans, he responds to the needs of big money.

Jeff Faux gives his main reason for voting for Obama instead of Romney in the upcoming election. It amounts to “at least Obama won’t be a complete disaster.”

The Business Week article Iran denies link to attack on Israelis in Bulgaria gives me a chance to comment on the recent propaganda attack on Iran from the United States government as well as Israel. From the article comes the snippet:

Iran on Thursday denied it was involved in a suicide attack against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria that killed at least seven people.

There have also been a spate of reports of interception of Iranian plots based in many other countries around the world.

Until proven otherwise, I will take these as efforts by our own government to spread disinformation to our own people, in contravention to the law.

However, let us suppose for a moment that Iran were plotting strikes against the United States and its allies.  Would this be surprising?  We are trying to strangle Iran economically until they concede to our demands to stop developing nuclear weapons that they may not even be developing.  They keep telling us they are not, as Iraq kept telling us before we went to war with Iraq and discovered that Iraq had been telling the truth all along.

If you were a country that was being strangled by a foreign enemy with an arsenal that dwarfs the rest of the world put together, you might just give in to their demands.  If you wanted to resist, you’d know that a conventional military resistance would be suicidal.  The only avenue left to hurt your enemy would be guerrilla attacks (the enemy will call them terrorist attacks).

Given the history of the United States overturning your democratically elected government and installing the tyrannical Shah of Iran, might you be more likely to fight than give in?

What must the directors of U.S. foreign policy be thinking?  Do they think that Iran will eventually cave and that Iran can make no other response?  Do they think that threats and coercion are the best way to get results? Does the present political climate in the U.S. make it impossible for even (or maybe especially) a Democratic administration to think upon diplomacy instead of actions leading to war?

With the war in Afghanistan looking like it might wind down, are we looking for other avenues to keep the military/industrial complex in full swing?  Maybe we can engage in a minor skirmish in Syria until we have ripened the situation in Iran.  After that we have North Korea, and if we  play our cards just right, we can go to war with Pakistan.  Maybe in between some of these other fights, we can work Venezuela into our schedule.

Is the American voters’ hunger for war insatiable, or will the people finally stand up and say “Enough!”

This multi-part interview from The Real News finally puts together in one place the picture of the American future that I have been talking about for the last 32 years. This goes beyond what Elizabeth Warren has talked about.

Below are the videos from the two parts that have been published so far. Watch the link above to gain access to the other parts of the interview as they are posted.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren spoke at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library Forum to mark the one year anniversary of the opening of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

If you are concerned about your debt load, you need to listen to this speech. You may not really understand how you got helped to fall into untenable debt, but Elizabeth Warren has some eye opening information for you.

She also talks about what her Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is doing for you. You might also be glad to hear that organized people can make progress against the big money interests, and Elizabeth Warren tells you how.

Politico has the article The Democrats play hardball.

Obama told Democratic leaders he would refuse to entertain any talk about separating $550 billion in defense cuts from the overall $1.2 trillion in across-the-board spending reductions set by law to kick in next year — despite repeated demands from GOP leaders and the Pentagon to do so. The president reiterated there will be no compromising on extending Bush-era tax breaks for U.S. families that earn more than $250,000 annually.
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Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said Democrats should “stick to our guns” and not buckle on the tax issue.

Andrews added: “If [Republicans] want to explain to their base why they permitted a $3 trillion income tax increase and a $500 billion defense cut, let them do it.”

But with so much at stake, some Democrats think their leadership — along with Republicans — will be forced to give in ahead of the year-end fiscal cliff given the risks to the U.S. economy.

“As we get closer,” said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), “I think pressure is going to build.”

As Democrats across the nation sing out in unison, “it’s about time.”  Almost unison, anyway.  Perhaps Kent Conrad can be taken to the woodshed for a special delivery of the message. Maybe if he knew that the future of the Democratic party and this country rests on his sticking to the plan, he might find the courage to keep his mouth shut when appropriate.  When the Republicans are looking for the crack in the Democratic wall, there is no sense in holding up a red cape, and shouting “Toro, Toro.”  Don’t you just love those mixed metaphors?