Isn't it treason to give away the country?

I think it is treason to give away the country, but I think it's a stretch to say that private companies are pieces of the country. A better example of the treason that is going on is the cheap leasing of federal lands and offshore areas to multinational energy companies who rape the land and sell the oil and coal back to the American people at a huge profit. Why doesn't the U.S. use SeaBees to harvest the oil and sell it to the American people to pay for our country's debt? We don't need to give away our assets to private companies in order to tap our nations resources.

Yet the fallacy is that it creates jobs. No, the jobs would be created no matter how it was done. The U.S. could hire U.S. companies to tap the resources and sell them for the U.S. rather than giving the resources away to anyone including foreigners who want to rape the land for the price of a lease.

Also, when the lease expires, the clean-up costs result in a superfund site that exceeds hundreds of times the value received from the lease. It's as if you leased your government issued car to a teenager who uses it in a smash-up derby to win a huge prize and then you get it back along with parking tickets.

What were you thinking? Oh, it's not really your car... it belongs to the people of the U.S. and you just got control of the property because you were elected.

Isn't that treason? The fact that the multinational oil companies are able to create straw-man companies to donate to the campaigns of various people of both parties to ensure that most of the candidates owe homage to them kinda makes it obvious whom our politicians are working for. No matter who gets elected, the super rich get represented first. This will only change when we start prosecuting them for treason. But how will that ever happen when the corruption is systemic and the prosecutors and judges are all in on it too?

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus. "His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman. Lincoln ignored Taney's order." Disobeying a court order is a direct violation of the Constitution of which the president swears to uphold. What could be more treasonous? In the end there were no official sanctions against Lincoln. The only thing that stopped this madman was a bullet to the head. He had even set up military tribunals to prosecute and execute American citizens in violation of their Constitutionally guaranteed rights.

General Ambrose E. Burnside had former-Congressman Clement Vallandigham arrested in May 1863 for continuing to express sympathy for the Confederate cause after having been warned to cease doing so. Vallandigham was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to two years in a military prison. He appealed his sentence, arguing that the Enrollment Act did not authorize his trial by a military tribunal rather than in ordinary civilian courts, that he was not ordinarily subject to court martial, and that Gen. Burnside could not expand the jurisdiction of military courts on his own authority.

In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were accused of planning to steal Union weapons ... and were sentenced to hang by a military court. However, their execution was not set until May 1865, so they were able to argue the case after the war ended. In Ex Parte Milligan (1866) the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Congress's 1863 suspension of the writ did not empower the President to try to convict citizens before military tribunals where the civil courts were open and operational.

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Executing people on conspiracy charges? Lincoln should have seen that bullet coming even if it was the back of his head.

We have had traitors in every level of our government since the beginning.

Just look at the set-up of the banking system. One national bank is awarded the sole privilege of loaning out all the money that the U.S. treasury prints, and they get to charge whatever interest rate they want. The government thus has abdicated its ability to control the interest rate, instead giving that control over to a private party that could even be a foreign national. Wait, what? You mean whoever happens to own the bank that is selected to be the national bank has more control over our economy than Congress and the President combined? Yup. And it has been that way since the beginning.

We don't have to have just one national bank. The Treasury could be set up to deal directly with multiple banks. Why it isn't is because of the huge profits and power that are able to be funneled from the people into the pockets of the individuals who set up the system.

In the end, our democracy is just a sham used to give people the feeling that they are in control so that they will obey.

Fair/Free trade is good for a country. Right now we have free but without the fair. It isn't treason and you can hardly blame Reagan for it. Most of the really unfair part kicked in during the Bush 1 & Clinton administrations.

But our environmentalists have done the most to make it so a business can't function in the US.

I'm in total agreement with Vulcan.

Rove, Cheney committed the closest thing to treason by outing Valerie for revenge.

But we can't expect US companies to remain on shore if they know full well they can make a higher profit off shore; that's capitalism.

Plus they are legally responsible to their stockholders for the companies performance, not their employees.

It is up to us to make sure it is more advantageous for the companies to stay on shore and hire American workers.

That's not treason - that's what right wing pinheads call the "Free Market" (read: Helping Hand to Billionaires).

Karl Rove and Dickless Chaney committed treason when they released the name of Beverly Plame for political reasons - one of our CIA agents in the Middle East.

Republicans know that treason is OK as long as you make LOTS OF MONEY doing it. If you don't, then they'd probably put you in Leavenworth - or Guantanamo.

I think it is treason to that our government would allow a private foreign oil company build a pipeline through our country and put it on private owned land and then that oil is sold to other countries.