Paul Craig Roberts says good-bye

Roberts has severe criticism for what he calls "free-market shills" who write in support of the off-shoring of "high-productivity, high value-added American jobs" that they consider too dirty for Americans to do. Nowhere does he mention how government policies over the last century might have driven these companies overseas. But his biggest disappointment is the strength of the government-media connection. He writes:

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job. . . .

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”

For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

Given this state of affairs, he has announced he will no longer write columns. But it's more like a man saying he can't take it anymore.

I liked his hard-hitting style even though I didn't always agree with his position. If he really is departing from the commentary scene, I will miss him.