Okay, here goes: My first out-on-a-limb analysis

Heretofore, I've relied on others' news accounts and opinions about events before I've ventured my own, citing others' of course, as I adopted them. But this time I'm venturing my own opinion without backup, and will await the learned press and pundits' reaction.

The India deal is a tragedy for the American worker. Put aside the nuclear thing--that's already been condemned by those who seek true disarmament, and rightfully so. I'm talking about this "opening of markets, thawing the Cold War" nonsense. Here's what it really means: American corporations will gain a new huge expanse of consumers for their goods, while they pay dirt wages to produce those goods, wages set by the low-level margins that are prevalent in the Third World. The "sucking sound" of American jobs that Ross Perot talked about twenty years ago will become a tornado, a devastating drain of jobs out of America, while American corporations, with their powerful brand-names will profit mightily from this new horde of consumers.

The India deal is nothing but a payoff to giant American companies, a spit in the face of American workers, with Bush saying we shouldn't fear competition, meaning, of course, that the corporations won't fear it because they'll reduce wages to meet it. But the American worker with no health care, a huge mortgage and credit-card debt, and kids to educate? Is he/she supposed to compete with a worker in India/Korea/Malasia/Singapore who's happy to earn the equivalent of $2.00 an hour?

Yes, says Bush. Let the American worker eat cake.

You heard it here first. The India deal is the most outrageous insult to our economic system--trashing our wage-earners in favor of big business--since the days of the robber barons.