How Dare the U.S. Congress Call Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft on Morality In China - A Rant

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.  This is obscene, this Congress, this rubber stamp Congress, has absolutely no grounds for blaming Yahoo for their behavior in China.  This is the most hypocritical action by a congress in my lifetime. 

They are the ones who don't apply tariffs on goods and services from China.  They are the ones who look the other way when the Chinese government slaughters students to keep doing business with them.  They are the ones who keep "good trade partner" status with China while they force people to work 18 hour days on dangerous machines and allow poisonous foods into the country.

If the U.S. Government wants to take a stand on China, they should sanction them, and levy hefty tariffs on goods and services from China to pay for us screening every item until they improve the quality of the goods they are shipping into our country, and not remove the sanctions until they improve their human rights record.

Or perhaps, if they really want to do something, instead of just passing whatever garbage the President wants to introduce, they could actually help hold them accountable for destroying our right to protection from unwarranted search and seizure by allowing cases against AT&T, Sprint, and the like.  It is the only way to challenge the constitutionality of those provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have only one responsibility as corporations, and that is to the board and the shareholders.  If Yahoo had not turned over the information about the journalist, they wouldn't have been able to do business in China, it wouldn't have been acting in the best interest of its shareholders and wouldn't have been being a good corporate citizen.  Morally, obviously they shouldn't have done it, but it is the U.S. Government's fault for making it so lucrative to do business with an immoral and repressive regime.

How can you expect for a business to not try to make money.  It is the government's responsibility to provide oversight, and to structure policies as to ensure the best behavior of the corporate world, not complain about it after the fact.  How can they say that it is OK to do business with them out of one side of their mouths, and then say that if you do, we are going to publicly embarrass you?  That doesn't even make any sense.

All the government has done is what they always do, screw up the market, screw up the economy and make themselves an obstacle to peace and goodwill in the world.  I certainly hope that in the upcoming elections we make a statement against this type of boneheaded posturing by politicians.

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