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You're upset, and you've got that right. Don't give Bush all the blame. He's the figurehead, and Congress the body, and keep in mind that neither this president, nor the current Congress created the situation. They inherited it and built upon it.

The outsourcing of jobs and relocating of our factories overseas is a policy created over the last thirty plus years. Actually, the first legislation upon which our current policies are built prohibited what is occurring now.

Then President Nixon was looking for a way to reduce the amount of direct foreign aid our country was giving to third world countries (that was a major issue in the sixties and seventies). The original legislation gave American companies tax credits to locate factories within these nations. Products produced within those countries were to be sold in those countries.

It was believed such accommodations would in time create economies similar to our own. Nixon also proposed a lowering of tariffs to allow Japanese automakers access to our markets (Japan was the largest recipient of our direct foreign aid at the time). Within weeks Datsun and Toyota had the first shipment of vehicles at our docks.

Over the next decade Presidents Ford and Carter pushed legislation that lowered tariffs further on clothing, textiles, shoes, and small electronics. In 1985, President Reagan proposed and signed the first legislation that allowed our companies to take our most sensitive technology into these overseas factories.

The first high tech products manufactured in these factories were replacement parts for many of our military aircraft and vehicles. This was done to reduce our military budget, and originally allowed only non vital parts. This policy was later revised to include original equipment. (Ironically, many of the parts necessary to build our most sophisticated military aircraft, vehicles and weapons are produced solely in these countries today, and it would take us months, and in some cases years to "ramp up" or build the plants necessary to produce such goods if the situation arose.)

Once American companies were allowed to move high tech knowledge offshore for the production of military goods, high tech consumer goods soon followed.

That’s a simplified history of how we got the policy of outsourcing of jobs and relocating of our factories overseas. History illustrates how our policies do not move forward in a straight line, but more like a pendulum. We have nearly reached the point where our direction is about to shift. Our states and cities are buckling under financial burdens that cannot be met solely by tightening budgets and raising taxes.

Here in California, 11.5% of our high technology jobs are scheduled to be outsourced in 2005. For every 15 high tech workers that loses a job, one additional worker in a support industry, and one additional worker in a service industry will be left unemployed. With those workers out of work, their incomes out of the local economies, the tax base shrinking due to lost business, income and sales taxes, AND the unemployed drawing state unemployment benefits that further the budget crisis, there will be few remedies other then bringing our factories and jobs back home.

Our politicians need to wakeup and realize the original intent of our policies has been accomplished and like bringing troops home from battle after the war has been won, it is time to call our companies back home where they are now needed.

In time, people will insist these companies produce goods within our borders for consumption here at home. When that time comes, there will be a building boon. More irony... By then there should be a sufficient number of “legalized” illegal aliens possessing “work visas” within our borders to do the work cheap.