Yesterday, President Bush spat in the face of American workers.
He visited Hyderabad, India, along with Bangalore the (forgive the expression) Ground Zero of what the heroic commentator Lou Dobbs calls the "Outsourcing (of) America."
It is the exporting of American customer service and technology development jobs to places like this that has pitched loyal and well-qualified workers on the street. That guy behind the convenience store counter, the department store sales clerk- those people might have been computer-code writers or financial service firm reps just a year or two ago.
But their jobs were shipped out because the greedy institutional investors that were the largest shareholders at these outsourced workers former employers shipped their jobs to places like Hyderabad.
Shipped their jobs to Hyderabad because the CEOs of these companies cared, and care, more about the stock price of their company than the people who work for the company.
And make no mistake about it- most of these outsourcing corporations have executive suites full of Bush supporters. Scumbags with thick stock and investment portfolios rendered corpulent by increased stock prices made possible by outsourcing.
And Bush - sworn to protect America and its nearly 300 million citizens- sees the world exactly the same that the Benedict Arnold CEOs do.
"People do lose jobs as a result of globalization. And it's painful for those who lose jobs," Bush told an entrepreneur during a discussion at Hyderabad's Indian School of Business.
Something about Bush "feeling the pain" of a financial company customer service rep in South Dakota, or Delaware, now struggling to make ends meet because her job was shipped off to India strikes me as highly unlikely.
But don't expect anything to change.
"The United States will reject protectionism. We won't fear competition. We welcome competition, but we won't fear the future either because we intend to shape it through good policies," Bush said.
Yea, right. Good policies like outsourcing our jobs, and then jumping with glee at the site of the carnage.