Ultimate Hypocrisy: Preaching Family Values While Outsourcing American Jobs

Today in America, there seems to be no shortage of hypocrites offering volumes of expert advice on how to be a good parent. From the mass murder Barack Obama, whose nighttime drone attacks kills children in Afghanistan and Pakistan on a regular basis, to literary hacks like Mitch Albom who believe that only dads, and not moms, can do any wrong.

Now, a new series of public service announcements known as “Parenting Counts” are running on PBS, sandwiched between children's cartoons, which supposedly encourage American parents to do a better job. The spots, which are produced by the Talaris Institute and the Apex Foundation, deal with issues such as “child stress” and “setting a good example”, and can be seen on YouTube!

But what exactly are the Talaris Institute and the Apex Foundation? NCPForce! decided to do a little checking and here's what we found:

The Talaris Foundation was established in by multimillionaire Bruce McCaw, and his wife Jolene McCaw, who inherited a fortune from his father's telecommunications company. McCaw is considered one of the 400 wealthiest Americans (for a glimpse at the MCCaw mansion, see here: http://www.examiner.com/real-estate-in-seattle/bruce-mccaw-s-seattle-mansion-for-sale-for-33-9-million-million). Supposedly, the McCaws were moved to found the Talaris Research Institute in 2000 after becoming new parents; supposedly they wanted to make more accessible to the general public the knowledge of child development experts. No problem with any of this, except that the organization happens to have strong ties to the U.S. military/industrial complex. Its main partners are defense contractor Boeing and the U.S. Army and Air Force at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the state of Washington. This is more than a little worrying especially when we consider that one of Talaris' main goals is to train child development professionals and educators.

As for the Apex Foundation, it is a charitable wing of the corporation Apex CoAdvantage which specializes in outsourcing American jobs. According its website at http://www.apexcovantage.com/index.asp, Apex Covantage was established more than twenty years ago by Shashi Gupta and Margaret Boryczka, and it has been exporting America jobs to India ever since. Apex's clients include AT&T, Exelon, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Qwest, the American Medical Association, The National Institutes of Health. Its projects are valued at hundred of millions of dollars, and the company is unapologetic about shipping out American jobs at a time of economic crisis.

The Apex Foundation, on its website, has this to say about outsourcing:

OUTSOURCING
Having been one of the pioneers in what came to be called “outsourcing,” when we opened our first operations in India twenty years ago that worked primarily on straight-forward data conversion, we now think of geographical location as just another part of the generic problem of efficient workflows. Work should be done wherever it can be done most efficiently [i.e. quality-controlled output unit per dollar]. The best location changes with labor costs and benefits, skill sets available, and costs of transmission and delivery. We can show you the costs of alternative location decisions for all workflow segments.

BUT NOW WE ARE IN A RECESSION
Yes, and perhaps we will be for some time. But isn’t this the time you most need cost savings and more efficient operations?

NCPForce! agrees that “parenting counts”. But we also believe that finger waggers and advice givers ought to be be upfront and honest, and practice what they preach.
Childhood Stress? Perhaps the little boy in the Parenting Counts ad is stressed out by TV coverage he sees of unending wars in the Middle East done for the profit of large corporations. Or maybe he's really worried because Daddy has been out of work for months, and Mommy has just gotten pink-slipped.

Setting a good example? Instead of a public service ad snuck in between cartoons, responsible adults with power, money, and influence could set the best example of all for children by refusing to work with war profiteers and those who destroy the jobs of American parents.

Hypocrites beware – NCPForce! is watching.