Stop Me Before I Vote Again

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=06&year=2007&base_name=robert_reich_is_scared_of_comp

Title: "Robert Reich Is Scared of Competing With Smart Immigrants."

Yes, the main enemy on the Dean's list is not seven seas-worthy corporate buccanneers, it's our stay-at-home hyper-meritoids, like Sir Bobby Reich, the pint-sized prog knight, formerly of Clinton round table I. A guy with a reputation for lifetime goo-goo kindness to his lessers, a corner man, even, for all us lowly wagelingers.

But here's Baker's take on Bob: sure, guys like him want to comp and restore all our millions of bloodied and bowed prolios, all of us that got, are getting, and are yet to get jobsapped by "the blunt edge of globality."

Indeed it is Bobby's M.O.: make 'em as whole as can be, and then toss 'em right back in the open trade ring for another round of "take this, you fat yankee swine."

To be perfectly fair -- which Dean ain't -- Bobby's no Greg Mankiw. Hell, if some poor battered wage stiff had the Mank in his corner, he'd get filled with nothing but Wall Street moonshine. "Forget that shutup eye, and the river of blood running down into your mouth and the broken right hand... yer killin' him, Homer... plain killin' him... why, one more round like the last, and Mr Fast Foot Work Wonton over there'll be nose deep in the canvas."

That's not Bobby's way. Bobby cries for us and binds our wounds like Walt Whitman. But still there is no possible "no mas" in the Bobby playbook. And here's the rub, sez Dean: Reich has a double standard -- one for us dimbo wageryites, and another for his beloved brainery.

Take Reich on the proposed new merit-ranked immigration quotas. Here's Baker:

...when it comes to policies that could tilt the playing field the other way, so that less educated workers benefit from immigration (lower wages for highly-educated workers, means lower prices for the goods and services they produce and therefore higher real wages for those in the middle and bottom) Reich gets on Marketplace Radio to denounce them.

I say no. I say all us doughfaced proles and plebs oughta accept any "class acts" we can get on our side -- just so long as they follow us and don't try to lead the parade, as is their mommy's dream for them.

To me, baiting the success progs from down here at street level is a fools' game. Badgering doctors and lawyers and professors and other such highly credentialed frauds is no way to focus a movement against corporate-sponsored wide-open borders. I say, let 'em keep their gates closed -- if they can -- but let's find an answer to all our woes, one that lifts all "working boats" at once, like perpetually chockfull employment, and a dollar sunk so low it ain't worth a third what it's worth today over there in South world.

I hear the hoarse demotic bellow, "bring 'em down! If we can't climb, at least we can knock those high and mighty windsurfers off their pedestals." I hear and sympathize. But getting us to try and spread the misery is the final tower troll monty.

Haven't we, at least since Nixon, been cheering every time mister secular halo takes one on the snoot in the public square? And where's that got us?

Dean's wrong precisely for being so right. so far the merits have not felt the lash, but that is about to change, if it hasn't already. The merits are becoming our natural allies. Their platinum number's already being carefully punched, and they know it. TNC America is on a 35-year roll, leaving the bottom 80% dumped and draggled in its wake. But it's also a one-way ticket to hell for another chunk -- an upper chunk, the top 20% of America's jobbery -- and that will not stop 'em. The boardroom course-setters will not change course now. In fact they can't stop themselves -- it's the logic of all bottom lines to keep on lowering costs everywhere and by any means.

And so we end up here, at the moment the next great import onslaught breaks over us, like Sony TV's, Toyotas and tomato pickers before them. This time it's cheap Asian hyper-brains. We are entering the era of the American brain-wave attacks, and they'll crash over our meritoids' heads and keep crashing, until enough of us stand up and shut the floodgates ourselves.

The first huge wave is now on order, and ready to ship our way, if and when the new-model immigration bill escapes the Hill. If it does we'll surely see the beginnings of Dean's revenge, as hundreds of thousands of holier-than-thou symbol-smiths panic and rush toward our mugs' don't-tread-on-me banner.

It's only a matter of time, and plastic surgeons will be elbow to elbow with rubbermaids.