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.

TV Review: ‘My Father, My Brother, and Me’

Compelling PBS documentary
on Parkinson’s equally
personal for creator, audience

The PBS television series Frontline presented a compelling and very personal examination of Parkinson’s disease tonight by David Iverson, covering a gamut of issues ranging from the search for causes to the pursuit of prevention and cures, and what people can do who have the degenerative and still-uncurable disease.

Titled “My Father, My Brother, and Me,” the documentary is personal for Iverson because he and his brother both have Parkinson’s, and their father died as a result of it, raising the question of underlying genetic aspects for some of the disease’s victims.

And it is personal for my family, as Parkinson’s claimed my mother-in-law more than a decade ago, and now is being fought, at age 87, by my father-in-law.

There are a million Americans with Parkinson’s, the documentary estimated, and 50,000 new cases are being diagnosed annually. So there should have been an enormous audience, if only those with the disease and their families were watching.

But one person I feel certain was not watching is George W. Bush, whose role in the documentary was his presidential veto of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that had potential in the fight against Parkinson’s – a disease in which time is a big enemy to its victims.

Bush is shown explaining how destruction of an embryo violates the sanctity of life. And a priest is shown testifying at a Capitol Hill hearing that even if an unused embryo ultimately is destined for disposal, it is nonetheless morally wrong to use it for medical research to help the living.

Inevitably, there was also the presence of actor and Parkinson’s victim Michael J. Fox, who enlisted his celebrity into the political battle by testifying on the need for those federal dollars and was quickly ridiculed by radio commentator Rush Limbaugh – shown criticizing Fox and saying that his shaking was just an act.

Interestingly, the wrangling largely pitting conservative religious forces and politicians against scientific research took up relatively little of the documentary. It was just part of the story, the history of it all, and like the people who have the disease, politics is caught somewhere in the middle between cause and cure.

Overrall, the tone of the nearly one-hour documentary, which ought to win an Emmy award, leaned toward hope and what people can do – including a regimen of exercise and activity that seems to help slow the course of Parkinson’s for many. Afterward, a live online chat with Iverson and three Parkinson’s experts brought dozens of comments and questions from viewers they could not keep up with in answering.

But I can’t get Bush out of my head. He had the wide-eyed expression of a village idiot, talking about the sanctity of life – and went on to launch a war in Iraq that brought the slaughter of thousands of people and untold misery.

So much pain to be undone.

The documentary can be viewed online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/parkinsons/view/.

For the show's Web site, and a click-on for the producer's forum (with more than 150 comments and questions by Wednesday night), visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/parkinsons/.



TV’s other side

You have to wonder how much money NBC dumped into the production and marketing of its Monday night 3-D episode of the series “Chuck.”

I confess to having picked a sheet of 3-D glasses from a display at a local store, and with all the commercials hyping it during the Super Bowl, remembered to watch the show – for the first time. (I watch a lot of TV, but there’s only so much time to waste, after all.)

Let’s see if I’ve got it all: Chuck is some kind of ordinary guy cast into a secret agent job in a team that includes a hot chick and handsome dude, both of whom are far better equipped to battle bad guys. And in this episode, Chuck has to protect a rock star dude whose life is threatened by a terrorist because of a tattoo on his back that has something to do with secret nuclear plans.

Right.

Anyway, the 3-D effects were only marginally better than the plot and the acting.

And despite having watched this high-tech event on a high-def 42-inch Samsung TV, it wasn’t as good as the flying spear or the tiger I remember jumping out of the screen in the 1952 3-D version of “Bwana Devil” at Baltimore’s old Avalon Theater. (For the record, a knife thrown in “Chuck” just didn’t cut it.)

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