Bob Herbert's final column for the NYT: Our nation has lost its way entirely

[brentspeak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&hp

Losing Our Way
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 25, 2011

snip

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies. Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

snip

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities. When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

snip

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

snip

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

[brentspeak]

1. self/del

[LooseWilly]

2. Maybe Immelt will devise a strategy whereby workers won't have to pay taxes either...

Of course, the simplest strategy to achieve that aim is to keep them unemployed... :+

Maybe that's Obama's strategy to win the moderates?

[roguevalley]

5. I'm sure Obama will get good advice on how to avoid taxes too.

[Armstead]

3. My this column is gettiung around...It's been posted numerous times

including by me.

And I've seen it referred to and linked to several other places.

I just wish Herbert's observations would have always gotten such notice over the years.

(I gave this a rec tho, because it deserves to be seen as widely as possible)

[applegrove]

4. I wonder who the new left wing columnists will be?