The F Word: No Solutions at State of the Union - Laura Flanders

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/laura-flanders/33893/the-f-word-no-solutions-at-state-of-the-union

Obama will deliver his take on the State of the Union tonight, and while Congress has bickered about bipartisan seating, it doesn't matter where anyone sits because the profiteers who define what's possible in our politics have already barred any serious solution to what ails us.

We know what the problem is: Jobs. 15 million still unemployed. A National Journal piece last week noted that the Great Recession wiped out what amounts to every U.S. job created in the 21st century. And jobs had already been leaving -- for three decades.

That's a bipartisan problem -- remember who passed NAFTA, which first opened the floodgates. As a commentator with the hardly radical Hoover Institute told the Journal -- Instead of reinvesting the gains of globalization in improved plants or a higher quality of life work in the US, private companies privatized the profits and hired abroad. Driving down wages for them, and us.

Now as cheap production's boosting profits again, as Heidi Shierholz reminded GRITtv yesterday, while CEOs are smiling, communities are frozen, cold as ice. And again big business is promoting trade.

Abroad, "That's where the customers are," the president said last week, and with a jobs-czar like Jeffrey Immelt the GE CEO at his side -- we're going to hear a lot more of that.

More at the link --