Houston Democrats

From Wal-Mart Watch:

So (Senator Byron) Dorgan (D-ND) sat down to write his first book, “Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America,” a 277-page polemic that hits bookstore shelves next week...Dorgan said he blames Wal-Mart - in 2005 "economically more powerful than 161 countries," the United States' largest employer and China's "eighth-largest trading partner" - for contributing to this trend.

"Wal-Mart has been able to force American companies to move factories to China so they can keep wholesale prices low," he wrote, noting that 70 percent of the goods the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company sells are made in the Middle Kingdom.

From Roll Call:

“I thought, ‘You know, I probably can’t win a vote on trade in the Senate, but maybe I can write a book and influence people around the country to become more active in pushing back against these trade agreements that ship American jobs overseas,’” Dorgan said in a recent telephone interview.

Central to Dorgan’s thesis is that free trade doesn’t equate fair trade. According to “Dorgan’s Doctrine of Manipulated Advantage,” countries such as China exploit workers and the environment to create artificially low wages.

Click here (PDF) to read about Wal-Mart and outsourcing to China.