SEPTEMBER BOOKS PART III

I decided that my final September book deserves its own post too, and I am getting up on my soapbox to discuss it. Our book club selection for September, it was written by North Dakota's junior senator, Byron Dorgan. I don't think I have ever gotten political in this blog, but there's a time for everything.

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" Take This Job And Ship It" should be read by every single American man and woman. It's that powerful. I don't know that I have ever said about a book that it changed my life, but this one already has and will continue to do so.

After reading this book, I finally understand why a senator from my state was against NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Americans may have free trade, Dorgan says, but he insists that we don't have FAIR trade. I learned so much about our huge trade deficit (it increases by $2 billion a day), about companies taking good jobs from Americans and outsourcing them to other countries, about corporations so greedy that they locate subsidiaries in countries where they find tax shelters. Did you know that such venerable American companies as Fruit of the Loom, Fig Newton and Radio Flyer have gone overseas? Did you know that we lost three million jobs in five years?

I understand why Dorgan is anti pharmaceutical industry and pro-union. and why he praises the economic theories of Warren Buffet. But most of all, I understand that the baddest of all the bad big box stores is Wal Mart. Here's where I step on that soap box.

I will never shop at a Wal Mart again. My friend Jude kept trying to tell us book club members about Wal Mart, but I never got her point. I get it now. Wal Mart is so large and powerful that it can force manufacturers to lower their prices. Because of this, they take their manufacturing plants to places like Mexico or China, where they can find cheap labor.

Wal Mart, in turn, acts like it's doing Americans a favor by offering them low-priced goods. My friends, Wal Mart is doing you no favor. It has taken good, solid, well-paying jobs out of your communities. One example Dorgan used is that of the closing of a certain American plant. On the last day, each worker left a pair of his or her shoes in the parking lot. Their message: "You will never be able to fill our shoes."

Although unions may have shady pasts, they built America. They got us fair wages and safe working conditions (remember the young girls in the woolen mills on the Eastern Seaboard in the 1800s?). Workers at a Canadian Wal Mart tried to form a union, and Wal Mart shut down the entire store.

Wal Mart has led to the deaths of Main Street businesses as well. A very good example is Williston, North Dakota. When Wal Mart opened at the edge of town it was the death knell for Williston's downtown. First the Woolworth's went, then Ben Franklin. Pretty soon, people couldn't seem to find a reason to go downtown anymore. The cafes closed, then other businesses. There is a definite ripple effect when a Wal Mart comes to town.

As well, Wal Mart is offering you goods made in sweat shops, hellholes that work people - children even - literally to death, for just pennies a day. Low-income people look to Wal Mart as their savior. But, says Dorgan, picture this: A woman is standing in line with her two daughters, proud that she can afford to buy her girls the colorful t-shirts she has in her hands. But what if someone came up and grabbed her daughters and put them to work at a slave-labor factory, starving and mistreating them? No, it's not her daughters being forced to do that, but it's some woman's daughters.

Wal Mart is ruining our standard of living, destroying American prosperity and dooming the American working middle class. Soon we will all be either rich or poor. And I know I won't be one of the rich.

As I said, this book has changed my life. I will try to look for the Made in America label, although it will be difficult to find. I buy a lot of clothes at resale already so at least I won't be directly contributing to the demise of American clothing manufacturers.

If I can afford an item only at the Wal Mart price, I'll wait until I have the extra dollars to buy it somewhere else, or do without it entirely.

If I need a pretty trinket, I don't have to buy something new made in China. I can always go to a thrift shop, flea market or antique shop, knowing that what I purchase was either made in America or that I, again, did not contribute directly to a company's death.

I note, sadly, that although Dorgan's book was a New York Times bestseller, it hasn't made much of an impact. I know for certain we will end up with a Democratic Congress after the next election. Hopefully, Dorgan can then do something about those "brain dead politics." At the end of the book, he offers specific solutions to each of the problems he outlines in the book.

I am proud of Senator Dorgan for taking up the challenge of writing this book that needed to be written. He is one elected representative who gives a damn.

By the way, I am also proud of our other North Dakota Congressmen. Our senior senator, Kent Conrad (below) was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 best senators. Not bad for a sparsely-populated, backward state, eh?

And our lone representative to Congress, Earl Pomery (below), made news a couple of months ago when caught on video phone calling President Bush a "clown". Yes, I'm proud of that. Bush is a clown. Let's not beat around the Bush about. He is an embarrassment to our country, an incompetent, bumbling fool, and much worse, a danger to our country.

North Dakota, a redder-than-red Republican state, consistently re-elects these Democrats. They must be proud of them too.

Well now you know my political leanings, for better or worse. It's time for me to get off my soapbox. It's not a comfortable place for this girl to be. But sometimes a girl's just gotta do what a girl's gotta do.