Journalism according to Lou Dobbs: scoff at your opponent and call him “mindless.”      

     CNN’s Dobbs, a self-described “advocacy journalist” and author of “War on the Middle Class,” did that December 7 to the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

     “NAM says, get this. Even though American manufacturers are losing market share in this country the American market is expanding. Presumably, NAM wouldn’t mind if foreign manufacturers owned 98 percent of the American market so long as it is expanding. That’s precisely the kind of mindless, faith-based, free trade nonsense that’s landed the country in the mess we’re in,” Dobbs fumed.

     Asked for comment, NAM senior vice president for communications Pat Cleary responded via e-mail from a trade conference.

     Cleary scoffed that Dobbs’s “logic doesn't make sense,” adding that the number of jobs “offshored” is “in the tens of thousands.”

     By contrast, more than 5 million Americans work for foreign firms. The Organization for International Investment (OFII) Web page puts the number at 5.1 million Americans working at U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms.

     “This is a global economy from which the US has dramatically benefitted,” wrote Cleary, a former factory worker.

     What’s more, foreign firms in the United States pay out $324.5 billion to American workers at an “average compensation per worker of $63,428, over 32 percent higher than compensation at all U.S. companies,” OFII calculated, based on statistics from the federal Department of Commerce.