“Respectful” McCain’s Rust Belt Ruse

I actually have to give “Straight Talk” McCain a bit of credit here (just a bit, though); this story tells us…

ABC News' Tahman Bradley Reports: A number of Democratic strategists have said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be the best presidential candidate to help down-ballot Democrats in the fall, but a new ad set to be released by the North Carolina Republican Party could make a few candidates weary of latching onto Obama's coattails.

The North Carolina Republican Party is trying to use the controversy surrounding Sen. Obama's former Pastor Jeremiah Wright against Democratic gubernatorial candidates in the state.

And do you want to know something? I actually hope they do, because it will boomerang on them. The “attack politics” of the ‘90s and the early part of this decade (the “oughts”?) simply aren’t going to get you elected (that hasn’t dawned on Hillary yet, but I’m sure it will in a couple of weeks, to say nothing of the Repugs who, apparently, will be the last to learn that lesson also).

But given all of this, we read the following statement from the McCain campaign…

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, moved quickly on Wednesday to reject the ad (involving Wright and Obama, yet again – this is a recording). In a statement, spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said, "From the beginning of this process McCain has expressed his intent to run a respectful campaign based on the issues, and we have repeatedly called for all parties to follow his lead."

That’s commendable, and that’s why I’m sure McCain will disavow this also.

And this tells us of McCain’s recent stop at Youngstown, Ohio, preaching the free-trade mantra to a whole bunch of former factory workers now without jobs (I’ve give him points for doing it in front of them as opposed to the chamber of the U.S. Senate, but that’s about it)…

Continuing a weeklong tour of what he calls the "forgotten America," McCain called for the increased use of community colleges to retrain workers and investment in alternative energy technologies to replace the manufacturing jobs that have gone overseas as free-trade agreements made it easier for companies to move to where production is cheaper.

Oh yeah, McCain and alternative energy technologies; want to know how he “supported” such technologies in Congress (from here)?

- McCain Skipped Vote on Green Tax Credits in Stimulus Package.
- McCain Skipped Vote on Renewable Energy.
- McCain Skipped Vote to Establish $32.1B of Tax Incentives for Renewable Energy and Efficiency.
- McCain Opposes Renewable Electricity.

(By the way, I suppose our dear corporate media cousins are going to make an issue of McCain’s abysmal record of missing votes, to say nothing of how he voted when he actually showed up for work, the same day they hold him to account for John Hagee and Rod Parsley…in other words, get used to hearing the sound of crickets.)

And another version of the story by the AP’s Matt Stearns tells us that McCain told the people of Youngstown that “we are in an information-technology revolution.”

Uh, yeah, that’s nice, but I wonder if “Senator Honor And Virtue” is aware of the following (from last May here)…

A new report from the Brookings Institution puts some fresh numbers on the rate of corporate job exporting. According to today’s Bureau of National Affairs Daily Labor Report (subscription required):

Growth in the offshoring of information technology, business office, and other service-providing occupations will cause the loss of an estimated 2.4 million jobs in some 250 U.S. cities between 2004 and 2015, according to a report by the Brookings Institution.

The offshoring of service jobs, including ones held by college-educated professionals who previously thought their jobs were immune to foreign competition, has “created a new source of job insecurity,” and the movement of work to other countries is expected to grow over the coming decade, especially in information services and “back-office” services, the study said.

The Implications of Service Offshoring for Metropolitan Economies finds that metropolitan areas with large concentrations of information technology service jobs or back-office jobs are generally more vulnerable to service offshoring than other metropolitan areas.

Further, 28 metropolitan areas, with 13.5 percent of the nation’s population, are likely to lose between 2.6 and 4.3 percent of their jobs to service offshoring, higher than the average loss among the metropolitan areas studied.

Between 2004 and 2015, service offshoring is likely to cause the loss of 2.6 percent of jobs in metropolitan areas that specialize in information technology services and 2.4 percent of jobs in metropolitan areas that specialize in back-office services but only 1.9 percent of jobs in other metropolitan areas.

And by the way, this tells you just how widespread this insidious practice is (and isn't it a comfort, by the way, to read how CFOs are concerned about "currency risks" and "business climates" but care absolutely zilch about the destruction wrought on individuals, families, and communities by their actions?).

The AFL-CIO story also emphasizes that Bushco has tried to privatize as many government jobs as it can, of course, thus making those jobs subject to offshoring also.

So basically, if you live in a big city and work in IT (and with all due respect to the good people of Youngstown, it’s a stretch to consider many of them stepping into that field from factory work without serious retraining), rest assured that the specter of offshoring will be hanging over your head well into the next decade, at least. And though we expect the Dems to fight against that, we have to be realistic (and I expect nothing from McCain and the Repugs except more of the name, and so should you).

Update: "War On Poverty"? Visiting NoLA's Ninth Ward? McCain's acting like another "John" who was once in this race here, though that "straight-talking maverick" is going to have to convince me these are more than photo-ops, which he can't, of course.