As usual, the ever-expanding economic divideremains the most under-considered issue worldwide. Through the prism (pyramid) of its creation, the ways it maintains itself, and its long and short term ramifications, every other major issue of our time is better understood, if not directly tied. This includes war, immigration, education, crime, health care, even climate change and national security. At what point should we (they)be more afraid of our own economically terrorized 90+%than of bands of 'extremists' holed up in caves on the other side of the world, disenfranchised and radicalized by the exact same forces?

  A couple of weeks ago, I noted that corporations were now beginning to think that China, with its rising prices and increasing wages (relatively speaking), wasn't cheap enough. And, so, comes another report via Reuters:

   The result is higher prices at U.S. stores like Wal-Mart and Target that have increasingly filled their shelves with Chinese-made goods. It may also mean thinner profit margins for a wide swathe of Corporate America, which for years looked to China to drive down costs. And it is beginning to spur a global treasure hunt for the world's next low-cost factory.

In addition to bonddad's excellent diaries, I thought I'd throw in my two cents, literally and figuratively.

We'll start with one of my favorite quotes from HL Mencken:

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."

Now the fact that Del Monte is selling Starkist tuna to the South Koreans may not be the hugest deal, but it's a sign that the term "globalization" which once meant US buying of foreign assets due to Clinton-era dominance is going to mean quite the reverse. And those who advocated most fiercely for it are going to get it good and hard. We hope for the lesser-paid that they keep their jobs and have better corporate masters.

"But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property."

About 2,000 years ago, a hyper-militarized, authoritarian state dominated by professional soldiers, domestic security forces, and international financiers, publicly auctioned off their nation's most prestigious political office to the highest bidder.

ABC News reports that due to the high cost of fuel the price of shipping a container of goods from China to the US has almost tripled causing some companies are moving their factories from China back to the US.

Jobs Coming Home?
You can watch the video but it's in a flash window so I don't think I can directly link to it.  If you go to this link ABC's flash player will pop up.  Then click on World News, then World News Reports, then on the video titled "Made in America."

I listen to the Ed Schultz Show in the noon-3 timeslot on AM1090 in Seattle.  He announced today that the Jones Radio Network has been bought out by Triton Radio Networks.

• Press release from Jones
• Triton Media Group has their press release embedded into their flash pages.

So I did some research and edited some articles on Wikipedia, and got worried.

In today's Washington Post there is the following article: A New Social Contract  By Michael Kazin professor of history at Georgetown University and  Julian E. Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. They state:

For the first time since 1964, Democrats have a good chance not just to win the White House and a majority in Congress but to enact a sweeping new liberal agenda. Conservative ideas are widely discredited, as is the Republican Party that the right has controlled since Ronald Reagan was elected. The war in Iraq has undermined the conservative case for unilateral military intervention and U.S. omnipotence. Economic insecurity has led Americans to question the rhetoric about "big" government, while President Bush's embrace of new federal programs has undermined GOP promises to cut spending.

 That is one way of seeing why we are at this threshold.  There are others.  Look beyond the break and see what I am getting at.

I have lately been hearing the woeful cries of the end of free trade.  

The liberalization of global trade has come ``to a screeching halt,'' said Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

I'm guessing not everyone is going to miss the 'free-trade.'

We live in a rapidly changing economic environment.  The changes are in response to structural influences.  The primary structural shift was the expiration of the previous financial treaties in Hong Kong in 1997.  There have been at least the years since then to prepare for this shift.  In my opinion, the moment that China's sovereignty was returned to China, marked the moment that the modern global economy truly began.

Further amateur analysis from somewhere inside the learning curve following the fold...

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

Police Break Up Saturday's Protest

This past Spring (Fall in Argentina) Argentina's president, Cristina Kirchner, decided to raise export taxes on grains. This has led to more than three months of bitter protests by farmers, essayed here, and to shortages of meat, oil, flour and fuel.

Please join me in Gualeguaychu.

As we share stories of our fathers today, I would like you to join me in a journey, back to a time when the title father meant something quite different.  Back to a time when a man who held a job could support a family.  Back to a time when a mother who chose to work did so for her own pleasure.  Back to a time when this nation was strong, her people lived mostly in comfort, and her goals were to lift up the children of the next generation through education, health care, and good nutrition.

My father would recognize this current incarnation of America only because it would trigger memories of an earlier time when none of these goals were even a glimmer in the eyes of a down trodden, struggling mass of men and women, victims of the greed and deformed egos of a hand full of those who are never satisfied.  Yes, my father was born during the last Gilded Age.

While most of our country, rightly so, is focused on the ever increasing cost of gasoline, and its effect on our economy, this will be one of those diaries that reminds you that a much more valuable resource (now commodity?) is endangered.  This resource is something we need for life, and it is simply water.

We are running out of freshwater

In the first seven years of the new millennium, more studies, reports, and books on the global water crisis have been published than in all of the preceding century. Almost every country has undertaken research to ascertain its water wealth and the threats to its aquatic systems. Universities around the world are setting up departments or cross-departmental disciplines to study the effects of water shortages. The Worldwatch Institute has declared: "Water scarcity may be the most underappreciated global environmental challenge of our time."

For this diary, I will be offering quotes out of a new article on "The American Prospect"...follow me below

I just read Jason Furman's 2005 piece on Wal-mart, as well as some of his other 'insights' on the wonders of free market globalization. I think it's time we clarify this 'Change' thing.

   Yesterday, I highlighted the rolling out of a very important piece of legislation: the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act of 2008 (cleverly, the TRADE Act). So far, the only Senate co-sponsors, who have joined the bill's sponsor Sherrod Brown, are Byron Dorgan, Russ Feingold, Bob Casey and Sheldon Whitehouse. So, today, it's worth asking Sen. Obama: will you add your name as a co-sponsor immediately?

"Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making" is also the title of a book written by David Rothkopf who has identified "just over 6,000" people who match his definition of the superclass (with the help of his researchers)- and described its ability to rule the lives of billions of people worldwide.... Sure, there are 'good guys" among the superclasss, but they are clearly not winning... you have been warned!

Although there are now more people enslaved worldwide than at any time in human history, according to acclaimed human rights activist and leading expert on slavery, Kevin Bales, founder of Free The Slaves, an organization devoted to rescuing and rehabilitating slaves worldwide, as reported here:

...ending global slavery would cost between $10 billion and $15 billion, roughly ten percent of the amount the US government is sending out in tax rebates.

This is going to be as pretty as a middle aged guy in spandex...

I've had a long history with Superman.  Years ago when somebody would express serious confidence in my ability to do an impossible job, I'd say, "...Well, I don't have an S on my chest, yet..." Lately, I like to joke about my twice-daily change ritual(I'm a bicycle commuter http://www.dailykos.com/... as the "Superman" routine.  Just this past week, a student asked me, "Mr. Barr what superhero would you be?"  I tried to think of somebody obscure, but all I could think about was Superman.  So the other morning, my back stiff from too much driving, stress, lack of sleep, and myriad other issues, I knew it was time to do some Yoga.  As I was doing my routine, I looked down...I had my Superman pajamas(my wife gave them to me for Christmas) on.  I laughed. Does the Man of Steel ever have to work the kinks out?  What this has to do with anything, I will explain below the fold.

Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.

For all the talk from "free trade"-backing politicians about needing to engage the world, most of them understand almost nothing about how the world sees our international economic policies. As I show in my new newspaper column this week, our so-called Washington Consensus policies on globalization are stirring a backlash in both the industrialized and developing worlds.

The economic and political imbalances of the past century (or so) are reverting. Supply-side economics, the 'trickle down theory,' has proven once again, as in the Gilded Age of robber baron monopolists, to be the conmen's diversion of attention away from their continuing enterprise, namely... 'siphon up.'

It seems the unraveling of the ability of the US to project influence and hegemony around the earth is already well under way.