In a rather distorted Christmas message, one of my colleagues blamed those caught up in the foreclosure crisis responsible for the current economic meltdown, calling them "wrongdoers," conniving to work the system, profiting by rewritten loans and generally ruining the dreams of "Johnny and Jane Lunchbucket."

Indeed, there are folks whose IRAs and stock portfolios are seriously down as a result, but from what I've seen, most of those caught up in the foreclosure crisis are neither connivers, opportunists or wrongdoers, but as a majority, the "Lunchbucket" families themselves. Most have used the equity of their homes as a savings account -- taking mortgages out to pay for kids' education, home remodeling, for weddings, for family emergencies and to pay off usurious credit card debt that can be jacked up to 29 percent for two payments late no more than a day.

The foreclosure crisis has been long coming -- but the current situation is the catalyst, not the cause, of our recession/depression. A huge reason people are defaulting is that they're out of work through no fault of their own, but due to the fact that we've been hemorrhaging millions of jobs offshore for the last four presidential terms.

Check it out: go in your closet and look at your clothes. Where do the tags say they're made?

Need customer service for a Hewlett Packard computer? You'll be talking to someone who tells you his name is Brandon, but it's really Brahmaputra -- and he won't tell you where he's located.

How about electronics? Electronics firms have left our neighbor San Diego in droves, as have other industries, going offshore, bankrupt or out of state because of oppressive taxing, unfair foreign competition, labor laws, EPA regulations and workers comp laws that neither China nor India have to observe.

In a paper describing the eroding business base in San Diego, Michele Nash-Hoff quotes an issue of Manufacturing & Technology News, which reported that America's oldest industrial sector, the glassware industry, is down to one remaining company, Libbey Glass Inc. of Toledo, Ohio. CEO John Meier stated, "Every major domestic competitor I have faced is either out of business, in Chapter 11 or up for sale." He blamed unfair foreign competition caused by U.S. trade policies, stating, "We need a trading system that respects and rewards hard work, and ensures our ability to fight a fair fight, not one that ties our hands behind our backs while blindly worshiping at the altar of free trade."

Of course workers in other countries deserve good jobs, good pay and good working conditions. But a laid off software engineer described what industry and government have done as "strip mining society."

In the 1992 election, Ross Perot described outsourcing of jobs as a "giant sucking sound."

It's pretty loud these days. His friend Colonel "Bull" Simmons' words ring true for 2009: "If history is any teacher, it teaches that when you get indifferent and you lose the will to fight, some other guy who has the will to fight will take you over."

We are in a fight to survive.

If we don't change what we're doing, we're going to end up as a third-world nation. Soon.

In these uncertain, troubling times, may I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

Greg Scharf of Temecula is a regular columnist for The Californian. E-mail: gscharf7@aol.com.