Economic patriotism

Outsourcing America

is not very helpful

in solving problem

Corporations can create jobs, but often choose a different path... or country

It was July 4^th weekend, and my landline phone and internet service were out cold, resulting in a cell phone call to Comcast for help.

My call was answered – by a guy in Costa Rica.

That he was unable to resolve or walk us through the steps needed to fix the problem was annoying.

But the more I thought about it, the more disgusted I became... with Corporate America.

On a weekend for celebrating patriotism, my call to Corporate America for help was answered in Costa Rica.

Predictable? Sure. That’s the way, ah-ha, they like it. Why pay workers in the USA when it’s cheaper to pay them in Costa Rica. Or India. Or the Philippines.

It’s a lust to maximize corporate profit, even at the cost of damaging the American economy.

I’m talking to you, Comcast – a company with pockets so deep, you bought NBC Universal (once upon a time the National Broadcasting Corporation) for a mere $13.8 billion, and can’t afford to pay Americans to answer the phone on a holiday weekend.

I’m sure it’s just a few jobs... at Comcast, and whatever other favorite American company you want to name. They all do it – farm out jobs. Outsource. Save money. It adds up, company by company. It’s so ubiquitous that we laugh at it, thanks to a TV show called Outsourced. It’s all about the fun and frolic at an American company’s office of outsourced phone-answerers in India. And it’s on, can you guess the network? (Insert chimes tones... dong, DONG, dong...) NBC.

I’ll concede that Comcast fuels plenty of jobs across America. In fact, my second attempt to get help the next day was answered by a man in Texas, and finally a very smart and efficient young woman came to my house that Wednesday and fixed the problem. Whatever caused my Comcast shutdown (the guy in Texas thought it had been a mistaken discontinuation of service by the company), getting the modem back up required a specific sequence of unplug and replug actions that had not been precisely given by either help desk.

It took four days to get a human being to come from Comcast and fix the phone and internet shutdown.

It’s taking Corporate America a lot longer to address a far larger problem: The gradual economic meltdown and its toll of growing unemployment.

Politicians piss and moan and do nothing about who is responsible. Republicans continually slap Obama for failed economic policies. Obama slaps back, saying Congress won’t pass his proposed actions.

“Spend, spend, spend, tax, tax, tax – that’s all the Democrats want,” the GOP insists.

Democrats concede on trimming some spending but insist on a solution that also raises taxes on the rich, the segment of America that has benefited from levies far lower than existed since the 1960s and widened the nation’s economic gap between the haves and the truly poor.

It’s a scandal, say some Republicans pointing out Census data, that all those poor folks have refrigerators and cell phones. You want to tax the rich to help them? They balk at giving an inch on tax increases, even sign a pledge to reject any tax increase.

Meanwhile, sitting on the sidelines is Corporate America. Big companies are getting bigger (while eliminating jobs), and banks bailed out by economically struggling government are getting bigger (and holding onto their/our money).

It seems like a crazy death spiral. Somewhere, there’s a tipping point, where Unemployed America can no longer afford the products of Corporate America, and they all crash together in an economic disaster of our collective making.

Who needs to step up? Everybody.

It’s time for a little patriotism:

American companies, come on down – phase out the jobs you created beyond the nation’s borders to cut back on employment within. It seemed smart when you did it. It seems unpatriotic now.

Democrats, come on down. There is unnecessary spending out there, no doubt. Find it. But don’t necessarily eliminate all of it. Redirect it to economic solutions.

Republicans, come on down. The rich need to give back. There’s no point to vast wealth when the great nation that makes it possible goes asunder.

Tea Party? I hate to say this, but so many of your issues distract from a solution – you need to shut up. Or maybe Middle America will wake up and see what you’re doing to it, folks closer to the financial abyss than they realize who will never see a tax increase for the rich but surely suffer the consequences of becoming poor.

We need to reward economic patriotism, and punish the alternative. We need to see folks in the halls of government point fingers at companies that gave away American jobs and fail to reverse course and bring them home.

Label them unpatriotic. For the most egregious, label them traitors.

And for companies that publicly reveal every job sent abroad, and publicly take steps to bring those jobs back: they get the tax breaks. So do the companies that invest in America and its job market.

Eventually, perhaps, we’ll all reach the other side, go shopping and buy something that wasn’t made in China.

I’d love to read about economic patriotism in my local newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, but often it arrives soaking wet or not at all. I call to complain, and reach a customer satisfaction desk in the Philippines.

Have a favorite corporate outsourcing tale, or one about a company that brought jobs back? Post it here, and share this blog with your friends.

Maryland politics: Does time heal?

Harry Hughes, left, and Marvin Mandel shake hands at Maryland Inn gathering. (Photo by Bonnie J. Schupp)

Mandel, Hughes meet

socially, and sociably,

at press group reunion

Ex-governors not exactly friends decades ago

It was, many believed, an unlikely moment: The handshake, smiles, pleasantries.

Even the sight of these two men in the same small party room seemed unlikely – and some members of the old-timers’ press corps had expressed fears weeks ago that it would not go well.

The setting was the periodic gathering of the “Vintage Press Irregulars” – folks who had covered political news in Maryland’s capital city of Annapolis, some of them for decades. Many are retired now, as are some of the politicians and state officials joining in the low-key reunions.

Thursday afternoon, the mix included as guests two former governors who, since the 1970s, have been viewed as far less than friends: Marvin Mandel and Harry Hughes.

Hughes had been Secretary of Transportation under Mandel, and resigned in 1977 citing issues of integrity and alleging interference by a politically-connected contractor in the award of work on Baltimore’s subway project.

A few months later, Mandel was convicted on charges of mail fraud and racketeering centering on secret deals involving racetrack ownership and the award of racing dates. He served some 19 months in federal prison before President Ronald Reagan commuted his sentence, and in 1987 Mandel’s conviction was overturned by a federal judge on the basis of a Supreme Court decision in another case.

Were it not for Mandel’s legal controversies, Hughes might never have become governor. He faced off with three other major contenders in the 1978 Democratic primary, including the man who had served as acting governor during Mandel’s imprisonment. An influential state senator from Baltimore, the late Harry J. “Soft Shoes” McGuirk, famously described the Hughes candidacy as “a ball lost in tall grass.”

But in a strange twist, polling by the Baltimore Sun newspapers, which had endorsed Hughes, showed that people would vote for him if they thought he had a chance of winning -- and with that, his numbers rose rapidly and the polling pretty much became self-fulfilling prophecy on election day.

The Sun’s endorsement said the election would give voters a chance to break away from past political corruption that had included criminal convictions of the previous two elected governors – Democrat Mandel and Republican Spiro T. Agnew, whose 1969 departure to become vice president had paved the way for Mandel’s appointment and subsequent election to two full terms. (Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion in 1973, and resigned the vice-presidency.)

So that’s pretty much the background.

Mandel, the Baltimore native who rose to become speaker of the House of Delegates and by political happenstance and acumen, Maryland’s only Jewish governor. Hughes, a native of the state’s Eastern Shore and former legislator who upset what was portrayed as a rotten political applecart in succeeding him.

Thursday, when we arrived at the historic Maryland Inn meeting site within view of the State House dome, Hughes was sitting in the bar chatting with a few friends. Mandel arrived and sat in the party room across the hall, chatting with a couple of his friends. For about an hour, they were both in the party room, as close as 10 feet from each other and engaging in separate chats.

My wife, photographer Bonnie Schupp, was taking pictures of them and others, and wondering how and if the two governors might be brought together at least for a photo so she could pack away the Nikon D700 and flash weighing heavily on her sore wrist. I stood next to Hughes, looking for an opportunity, a break in his conversation… and there was a pause, just long enough, for me to ask: “Mr. Hughes, could you take just a minute for a picture of two governors together?”

He smiled, walked a few steps over to Mandel’s side and offered a hello. Then they shook hands, talked briefly, as Bonnie fired away. Click, flash, click, flash….

Joining the conversation, I learned about something else they had in common – besides politics and having been Maryland’s 56th and 57th governors, respectively. They had both played baseball as young men – Mandel in college, Hughes, as I had already known, in the Class D minor league. Both were pitchers. Both ended up going to law school. (According to the Web site baseball-reference.com, Hughes appeared in 16 games in 1949 with his local Federalsburg team, and had an 0-4 record and 5.54 earned run average; he hit .227 with 5 singles in 22 at-bats. Law school clearly was the right choice.)

And they’re both following the World Series when not working.

Mandel, 90, who won back his law license after the criminal case was overturned, remains engaged in his law practice.

Hughes, 84, chairs a state commission bringing together agricultural and environmental interests to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay.

Last week, heading home from a weekend near Ocean City, we rode across a bridge named for him along Route 404 at the Choptank River, an important Bay tributary through farming country.

Did time melt away their differences?

Probably not. But at least they were polite.