Why
The Government Tests
Few Chinese Imports
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
11 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Massive amounts of Chinese imports
are threatening public health and safety. Many food and consumer products
pose risks. Lead in children’s toys and jewelry. Toxins in foods
for pets and humans, and in toothpaste. Unsafe automobile tires. Many
prescription drugs made with few safeguards. The list is endless. The
federal government is not safeguarding American citizens through thorough
testing of imports. Why?
Simple: The Chinese have
us by our budget-deficit balls. Our government depends on China for
loaning us money and for not dumping the vast hoard of over one trillion
dollars it has accumulated by financing our huge deficits and selling
us virtually everything. Dumping dollars is called the Chinese economic
nuclear option. They can wreck the American economy any time they want.
America is being held hostage because of our government’s disastrous
fiscal and trade policies. And, yes, all this middle-class-killing free
trade globalization favors corporate interests.
It is hard to keep track
of all the ways the American public is being sold out by the federal
government as our Constitution and rule of law are shredded. Our jobs
are sent overseas and shifted to lower paid illegal and special-visa-legal
immigrants. There is no economic security. Banks and credit card companies
rape us financially through criminal interest rates and fees. Mortgage
companies took advantage of millions of home buyers that now face foreclosure
and financial ruin. We pay outrageous amounts for gasoline and, in many
parts of the country, for electricity and natural gas. And still 15
percent of the population lacks health insurance, and those with insurance
face rising costs. And millions of Americans face hunger and homelessness.
And by the way our education system sucks.
Yet the vast majority of
Americans that are not in the Upper Class and living lavishly are not
fuming, screaming and ready to revolt. They may feel cheated and screwed,
but they have not yet concluded that they are politically oppressed
– that their government is criminally selling them out, with no
end in sight – that their democracy is delusional.
The following facts are typical
of so many that should help Americans wake up and prepare for the Second
American Revolution:
The top 300,000 income earners
in America make more than the bottom 150 million combined.
Ninety percent of the Fortune
1,000 companies have set up deferred pay plans that let their top executives
set aside, tax-free, retirement income far above 401(k) limits, and
69 percent have set up “supplemental executive retirement plans”
that shield execs from company-wide pension cutbacks. That’s how
these fat cats obtain tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. All this
continues even though an amazing 77 percent of Americans say corporate
executives “earn too much” and 61 percent believe wealthy
Americans “should be taxed more.” according to a new Harris
Poll.
Billionaire Warren Buffet
paid just 17.7 percent of his $46 million in income last year, without
trying to avoid taxes, compared to his secretary who paid 30 percent
of her $60,000 salary.
The top two execs at America’s
largest private equity partnership took home over $600 million last
year — and paid taxes on that windfall at the capital gains bargain
rate of just 15 percent. And Congress shows no desire to close that
tax loophole.
Millions of non-wealthy Americans
face home foreclosure and bankruptcy, but right now there are five residential
properties in the United States listed at $100 million or more
Like some science fiction
fantasy, millions of hard-working Americans are popping anti-depressants
with abandon to dull the pain of obscene political and economic realities.
American puppets, slaves, and victims obediently obey laws, pay taxes,
borrow and consume, and endure stress, fatigue and sleeplessness. Meanwhile,
the mainstream media feed them propaganda and entertainment. Worst of
all, far too many believe they can elect Democratic or Republican politicians
that will make things better. Though millions are suffering, bitching
and moaning, they remain stuck in a political stupor. They are unready
to rebel politically and take back their country from corrupt politicians
and the moneyed interests that control them. They have not become political
dissidents – the kind that throughout human history rise up and
overturn dreadful ruling classes and governments.
Rather than contagious political activism we have compulsive consumerism.
Americans keep borrowing and spending, providing about 75 percent of
the economy that mostly benefits the Upper Class. That spending is their
potential political power. Yet they do not understand that only by using
their spending (and debt) as a political force will they get the government
to serve and protect them. That means reducing spending to obtain specific
political actions, like cutting spending by 10 percent until President
Bush ends the Iraq War.
Cheap Chinese products help
keep consumers pacified and distracted, even as Americans lose jobs
as industry after industry collapses because of floods of Chinese imports.
Our delusional democracy produces delusional prosperity. How much worse
must life for ordinary Americans become before the masses rise up in
rebellion? Apparently, a lot worse.
By then, China will probably
become the world’s only superpower, built with the wealth extracted
from the USA. The lesson of history is the rise and fall of great (arrogant,
self-indulgent) nations. The USA is in free-fall. Soaring economic inequality
is just one symptom.
Cheap Chinese products are
a powerful and insidious destructive force. Free trade globalism more
than violent terrorism or military attack is bringing America to its
knees. But no presidential candidate is making this their main campaign
theme. Shame on them. And shame on anyone voting for them. Perhaps if
voter turnout dropped to, say, 20 percent, then we might stop playing
our bipartisan delusional democracy game and take our country back.
[Joel S. Hirschhorn is a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention
at www.foavc.org and author of Delusional Democracy at www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]
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