Glenn Jackson's Article

The Republican Reformation - Jobs-

Can We Still Save the American Dream?

by Glenn R. Jackson

"It will be as when a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one--to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five. … the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master's money. … the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them.

The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, 'Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. …' Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, 'Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.' His master said to him in reply, 'You wicked, lazy servant!”

Stewardship, the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care, is more moral imperative than a managerial role. Stewardship depends on rejecting the immoral mine of the here and now and embracing an entrustment for the future. Stewardship defines the temporal nature of things and foresees the future needs of others. Stewardship applies as well to nations and generations as it does to individuals.

For a nation founded on, and in, faith and one so clearly still adhering to those roots, we are a people desperately lost in our understanding of our duty to future American generations. We the people of the United States are indebted beyond measure to those generations of Americans that came before us. As we struggle and increasingly see our fellow countrymen sacrifice and die to create “democracy” in other lands, it should be blindingly clear the debt we owe for our own rare and successful “experiment in democracy.” That we were a nation at peace, within our borders and with our neighbors, is a testament to the stewardship of the American dream by our forefathers.

We owe past generations for the stewardship of a nation built block upon block from an agrarian society, to a great industrial and agricultural nation. We owe past generations for the stewardship of a true American culture forged in the blending of a melting pot of cultures into the purity of the founding American ideals. And ultimately we owe for the unselfishness of our forefathers to place the stewardship of their entrustment ahead of personal aggrandizement. As with the good and trusted servants these American stewards added to the wealth of the nation, instead of giving in to the fear of not “getting their share.”

A nation is more then a mere collection of people. A nation is a collection of peoples’ economic efforts, their philosophy of government, the use of their nation’s natural resources, their nation’s intellectual property, and the shared vision of their nation’s future. In the case of America it is, and always has been, the collective efforts of the whole that has created our nation’s success. And it is that success upon which America’s corporations were built.

And it is that collective effort of the whole nation upon which America’s corporations have turned their back. And worst of all, the American worker is the one sacrificed. From the rural sections of our country, to the high rises and the inner cities, America’s workers are being replaced, laid-off, or overlooked. The American workers, whose innovations are the bedrock of America’s growth, find themselves watching the closing of their factories and plants, of foreign workers taking their place in the American workplace, and a flood of cheap labor entering the country illegally.

The CEO’s tell the nation these events are essential in order for America to compete “globally”, but the competition is with ourselves and the money financing these events is our own. If there is any competition it must be to see which CEO can pocket the greatest profit gain.

Today we find our nation, and our tradition of national stewardship betrayed. As with the “wicked and lazy servant,” fear of what “they” stand to lose has seized our political and business elites, and in fear they have abandoned the American people to seek the easy path to personal wealth and power. Being placed above all else is the immoral “mine” of our elites’ view of their American entrustment.

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain." --Thomas Jefferson to Larkin Smith, 1809.

Leading our betrayal are America’s Corporate CEO’s who in large measure have adopted the motto “If I run it, I get mine first.” Hiding behind the good of the shareholder and a stock market bubble, CEO compensation has skyrocketed while employee job security has plummeted.

Loss of America’s employment markets continues to be the stealth issue for this American generation. Throughout the 1980’s commentators bemoaned the uncompetitive American worker and producer, but by the 1990’s America’s foreign competition had been left behind. Unfortunately the American worker, having once again demonstrated their world-class excellence, were finding by the mid-1990’s that America’s corporate elite were all too eager to sell out their American workers and to cash out the entrustment of prior American generations. Nowhere could this be seen more clearly than in the disaster befalling America’s Hi-Tech service industry.

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." – Thomas Jefferson

The “trial of strength” is over, America’s current generation of elected elites have given in to corporate power, i.e. corporate money, and these elected officials can barely contain their enthusiasm to do their corporate master’s bidding. At continuing risk are America’s blue-collar workers; exhibit A in this tale is the auto industry rescue effort. Roger Simmermaker in The worth of America's Big Three points out that in telling Detroit to drop dead in favor of so called free markets “Senator Shelby doesn’t mention…that his state has already distorted and fiddled with the so-called “free market” by funding foreign-owned Mercedes, Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda to the tune of nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer money to lure those brands’ factories to his state.”

As for the white-collar jobs, and in particular computer related jobs, losses are running significantly above the national average for all other occupations (figure 1 below) the United States Congress on November 20, 2004 INCREASED the number of H-1B foreign worker visas (a technical visa) by an additional 20,000. They worked this magic at the behest of America’s technical companies because those companies desperately need cheaper and cheaper labor to pad their bottom line and boost their share value. This need for cheap labor obviously is outweighing the needs of thousands of willing American technical workers looking for their own return to significant employment.

It is clear that outsourcing of U.S. jobs and the importing of cheap foreign labor (H-1B, L-1, H-2 visas to name a few) to take jobs that American’s DO WANT will continue to occur and at an accelerating rate. The stories of American worker’s training their foreign replacement workers have fallen on deaf ears. The Center for Immigration Studies reports that the issuance of work visas continues at record-setting levels, and “looking only at the net increase in employment, the number of foreign-born adults (legal and illegal) holding a job has grown 1.7 million since 2000, while among (Americans) the number working actually fell by 800,000.”

Peter Brimelow’s website VDare.com, and economist Edwin S. Rubenstein have created the VDare.com American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI) noting that “the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish monthly figures on immigrant employment. So we are forced to make do with a proxy: Hispanic employment.” Rubenstein calculates the “ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic employment growth since Bush’s inauguration in January 2001 and derives, based on data provided by the US Department of Labor Statistics “the best indicator of how immigrants fare relative to native-born workers over time.”

United States Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) said, “We could create 10 million jobs by merely enforcing our immigration laws.” "When my colleagues get a letter from a constituent who has been displaced by foreign workers, they should write back to them and say, 'It is the policy of this government to displace you, to move you into a lower economic income category, because we believe in cheap labor and we believe the politics of open borders helps our party.'"

Yes, we are seeing the mad result of “corporate citizenship” overrunning our elected leaders’ sense of national stewardship as their foundational governing principle. The national multi-generational entrustment that had been the greatest source of confidence for the future of all past American generations is being lost. The financial strength of our economy was inherited from the dedicated efforts of previous generations. Our nation of laws and protections was inherited due to the sacrifices of many men and women from prior generations. The security and safety afforded us in a troubled and dangerous world was gained from the ultimate sacrifices of many prior generations. Yet today we find our nation and citizens being stripped of all of this generational entrustment with the full acquiescence of the elected leaders who are the supposed defenders of America’s national entrustment.

The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 1821. ME 15:314

Well perhaps these considerations will not occur to ALL. As much as this generation will be harmed by the betrayal of fiduciary duty, it will be America’s children that will suffer the most. The American middle class is the absolute bedrock of this nation. They are the beneficiaries of prior generations’ efforts culminating in a large well paid and stable population. And the middle class is also a group that has been well satisfied and confident in their lot in life. The American middle class lives with the expectation that as they stood “on the shoulders” of their parents to advance to new heights, so their children will reach higher still from theirs.

Business Week in a 2004 report on free trade and the trading away of American jobs, details some disturbing statistics. Business Week reported that by 2008 an estimated 1.2 million American jobs would be lost to offshore outsourcing, and 3.4 million American jobs will be lost by 2015. These jobs will be in areas traditionally coveted by the American middle class in technology, legal, architecture, business, and life science professions.

In addition to jobs lost to offshore outsourcing, non-immigrant work visas will also conservatively bring an additional 500,000 foreign workers into the United States by 2008 (at current levels 85,000 – 115,000 H-1Bs annually and 55,000 L-1 visa annually) and another 1 million foreign workers by 2015. This assumes that congress can resist the demands of corporate America to return work visas to pre-2004 levels of 250,000-plus (H-1B and L-1) annually.

The safety nets are gone and our children will be compelled to walk the high wire of globalization by an elite class that has abandoned their duty to be good stewards of the American dream. After countless generations of Americans worked to build the structure of a strong and safe nation with a broad-based education system, a massive technical, transportation, and power infrastructure, and a cultural environment that supports business and market growth and ideals, this generation of elites conducts a fire sale and giveaway of generations of hard won entrustment.

What “destinies of high promise” will the children of this generation attain? Well, no one can really say, or more likely no one really wants to say. For the truth is that as eagerly as our elites charge down this path of a betrayed American entrustment it is their own wealth, glory, and power that light their way.

America’s white-collar workers held their tongues in large measure as our manufacturing base was ripped apart by trade deals like NAFTA, GATT, and WTO, an oversight they have now come to regret. Now as those same trade deals and every new trade deal forged under Fast Track Trade Authority begin to take their toll on the white collar job market it is becoming clear that the stops are out and this next shipment of middle-class job destruction is accelerating down the ramp onto the largely unsuspecting American middle-class.

Abraham Lincoln spoke of America as the “last great hope of mankind.” Ronald Reagan often used the inspiration of the 1630 sermon of John Winthrop's, "For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill”. The eyes of all people are upon us (Matthew 5:14)” as his vision of America.

However, preferring ROI (return on investment) to Thomas Jefferson, and the rigors of Ricardo’s comparative advantage to George Washington, our current leadership urges liquidation…”come one come all to the liquidation fire-sale of the American Dream,” as their vision for the new American century.

"…the question whether, by the laws of nature, one generation of men can, by any act of theirs, bind those which are to follow them? I say, by the laws of nature, there being between generation and generation, as between nation and nation, no other obligatory law." - Thomas Jefferson

As the nation runs up debts in the trillions of dollars to bail out US financial groups, whose hubris was staggering in view of their still uncalculated losses, it is time for the Republican Party to lose their affinity for Wall Street and return to the needs of Main Street. Malfeasance and financial misconduct have been evident in the Wall Street culture since at least 2000. And the same questionable practices that should have prompted an investigation of Wall Street practices and oversight have been blinking red as they concern America’s use of guest workers and the Department of Labor’s oversight of corporate America’s hiring practices. Conservatives in the Republican Party need to champion Main Street in the following areas:

Guest Worker (non-immigrant visa) Reforms: (http://www.programmersguild.org/factsheets/)

a) Reform the flawed "prevailing wage" calculation that allows employer to pay H-1b workers at the 17^th percentile of what average-skilled Americans are paid within the same occupational classifications. Abolish the four DOL wage levels and mandate that H-1b be paid at least the average wage within the classification.

b) Require that employers first make a good faith effort to recruit American workers before DOL could approve a Labor Condition Application (LCA) for an H-1b worker. The most direct legislative means of implementing this is to make the “H-1b dependent” provisions of the H-1b statutes apply in all cases.

c) Ban the remarketing of H-1b workers via “bodyshops.” Any H-1b use should be as a direct hire by the employer that requires the skills. The growing use of H-1b by bodyshops, which first obtain H-1b workers and then aggressively shop their resumes against U.S. workers makes a sham of the entire program.

d) Restrict the usage of the L1 visas which allow guest worker to enter the country for one year, but being paid at origin country wages. These guest workers are able to be trained by American workers as their replacements.

Free Trade deals and Job Protection:

It is time to recognize that there is no free lunch and no free trade, and that it is America’s Middle-class that is paying the price by suffering the corresponding loss of jobs with every “free trade” deal struck. It is time to count that cost and to renegotiate trade deals to ensure job protection for American workers.

Save the US Auto industry:

(See http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp227).

It is time to recognize that we are already in a global trade Cold War and that the US is losing. When Republican US senators take the line that foreign auto production in their states is a replacement for a viable US auto industry, then the Republican Party has a death wish and the nation will suffer. Senator Shelby’s Alabama alone could lose from 21,000 to 76, 000 jobs (estimated by the Economic Policy Group) depending on whether GM or a more total industry failure occurs.

It’s time to stop political grandstanding; it’s time to stop listening to our financial elites who have led us into ruin, it’s time to return to protecting Main Street over Wall Street because it’s past time to save the American Dream.

Glenn R. Jackson is the founder of the American Reformation Project, Board Member of Hire American Citizens, and Member National Board of Advisors for FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). Glenn was a founding Board member and first President of the National Association for the Employment of Americans (NAEA), and organizer of American Jobs Coalition (organizations fighting against the American Worker Replacement Program). Glenn is also a former State Chairman for Buchanan 2000 Presidential campaign, and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party (a Reform Party affiliate). Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.