A Perfect storm came and went through us without us knowing what hits and left us without giving us a warning like strong winds blowing in the trees. And the Obama Administration is looking for answers from the wreckage of the previous Administration's missteps and carnage of what they left us with. But that is not all what happened here in America, we are waking up to the being sold down the creek or river without a paddle for this Free Trade agreements and the China/Walmart pact. Cheap labor is only good for Walmart and the bottom line of corporate America and the World. The jobs have disappeared and plus Corporate America has caught onto Cheap labor and give us meaning the American workforce our walking papers telling us that our living wage is now subject to the winds of the rest of the world. Labor has lost its grip on keeping Management in check. Free trade has won the day, Supply siders also won the week. We have lost our way in the wilderness.
The Lost decade in Japan has come to the USA and we now have to deal with being a Consumer Nation and not being a Manufacturing country which we were once before. Take it or leave it, our purchasing habits have destroyed our way of life.
What can President Obama do now?
Well, if he has the will power to cut some major programs and save some money, he can start to invest in the base of our country like putting people back to work making things here for us and now the world. By being either or Teddy Roosevelt or FDR type of president. But that is not likely to happen. Unless the progressives and liberals start to act like they are not afraid to be called what they are.
Stop dealiing with the lonely Conservative Republicans. They are not worth the titles they have. They are out of touch with the rest of the country.
So what if all the programming jobs are going to India and all the manufacturing jobs are going to China? There are still plenty of good jobs for YOU in the global economy, if you can...
Ride an 8-foot unicycle and catch bowls on your head, or...
Lift a 1200-pound tire, or...
Hang coffins off a 1000-foot cliff
And even if you don't have any special talents, you can still...
Climate, health care, financial re-regulation - there's a lot of heavy lifts for the Obama administration these days.
Some reports suggest that another big endeavor is being considered. Last week, new U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced that he wants to move Bush’s leftover NAFTA-style Panama Free Trade Agreement (FTA) through Congress “as expeditiously as possible.” In his first major policy speech, USTR Kirk contradicted President Obama’s specific and frequent calls for a change of course on our failed trade policy and an end to the tax loopholes that promote job offshoring.
As my colleague Lori Wallach said, "The last time a new Democratic president took on a Bush trade agreement despised by his base, the result was the destruction of the political momentum and honeymoon he needed to pass health care reform and the defeat of the Democratic majority in the next midterm election."
This deal is being pushed by financial firms like Citigroup and AIG, who have subsidiaries in Panama and who can evade U.S. taxes by parking their income there.
The trade deal does nothing to resolve Panama's tax-haven status, and could even make it worse by giving corporations new tools to challenge U.S. anti-tax haven policy.
The nitty gritty on the trade deal and Panama's tax dodging is detailed in this 50-page report my group Public Citizen just put out... the much shorter conclusion summarizes the report, and what can be done to fix the deal and Panama's tax-haven problems.
Glenn Greenwald long ago taught us why we should always look skeptically at the fact-free prognostications of the Washington Post's Steve Pearlstein. That said, this line in Pearlstein's column today caught my eye today (h/t lutton):
"The haggling now [about the automaker bailout] is over the appropriate mechanism. My guess is that the whole thing will be wrapped up shortly after Thanksgiving, perhaps in a holiday package that will include congressional approval (but delayed implementation) of the free-trade agreement with Colombia." (emphasis added)
My last newspaper column explored how the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is about nothing other than serving corporate interests; how poll after poll after poll has shown Americans intensely oppose such NAFTA expansions; how in 2006 and 2008, a total of 69 new congressional lawmakers - mostly Democrats - won on an explicit promise to stop NAFTA expansions; and how therefore, the Republican push for this trade deal is a political ploy designed to fracture Democrats much like NAFTA fractured them in 1993.
Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.
For all the talk from "free trade"-backing politicians about needing to engage the world, most of them understand almost nothing about how the world sees our international economic policies. As I show in my new newspaper column this week, our so-called Washington Consensus policies on globalization are stirring a backlash in both the industrialized and developing worlds.
To report this column, I conducted exclusive interviews with two foreign leaders - Jack Layton, head of Canada's New Democratic Party, and Otton Solis, the Costa Rican economist who formed a new political party in his country that almost won the presidency. Both of them expressed deep concerns about NAFTA-style trade deals - not only because those deals empower corporations to overturn laws passed by democratically elected governments, but because they aren't "free" in any sense of the word - they include all sorts of protectionist provisions for corporate profits. And as the column shows, their sentiment is backed up by public opinion in their parts of the world.
This is all very relevant because - if you hadn't noticed - a heated debate over trade and globalization policies is currently occurring in American politics.
On Monday, I wrote about Hillary Clinton airing an ad decrying the closure of a defense manufacturing factory that her husband, Bill Clinton, helped close by approving the sale of the company to a Chinese state-owned firm. Now, ABC News is running with the story, and uncovers some more ugly details. The Clinton campaign has responded not by fessing up, but by putting out more dishonest deceptions.
Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.
In my upcoming book, The Uprising, one of the threads tying together the disparate forms of populism on both the Right and Left is a sense of confused frustration at a political system whose politicians employ disinformation and propaganda to make basic economic issues indecipherable. This has been no more obvious than on the issue of trade and globalization in the presidential race - and Hillary Clinton's latest television ad (which is also a standard part of her stump speech) shows exactly what I'm talking about.
Clinton is airing this advertisement in Indiana, bemoaning the closure of a defense contractor Magnequench's manufacturing plant in Valparaiso (she is also echoing this line in her stump speeches). Looking at the camera, she tells us she's upset that the 200 jobs that were sent to China, and that "now America's defense relies on Chinese spare parts." And then comes the kicker: She tells viewers that "George Bush could have stopped it, but he didn't."
Clinton is certainly right that it is a tragedy that 200 American jobs were killed in a corporate deal that also exported sensitive military technology to China. But she forgets to mention that it wasn't George Bush who was in the key position to stop it - it was Bill Clinton.
National Conference of State Legislatures Slams Pro-Colombia FTA Resolution as Colombia Presidential Advisor Linked to Paramilitaries Is Arrested
State and Local Legislators Continue to Lead the Fight Against Failed NAFTA Status Quo Trade Policies That Undermine Their Authority to Enact Policy
WASHINGTON, D.C. - State legislators' sound rejection today of a resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to approve the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) sent another strong signal that the trade agreement has very limited support, said Public Citizen.
The pro-Colombia FTA resolution, introduced by a Republican Florida state legislator, was resoundingly rejected by a two-to-one margin in the Labor and Economic Development committee as the Colombian ambassador observed the spring meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) today in Washington, D.C.
"That a bipartisan organization representing state legislatures so resoundingly rejects the Colombia FTA sends a loud signal that most Americans do not want to be connected with either an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Colombian government's record of horrible human rights atrocities," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division.
State legislators really are leading the way on trade. You may remember that it was Montana state legislators who successfully pressured Max Baucus into backing off his support for "fast track" trade authority. Now, our state legislators are leading again. Will the Democratic Congress listen?
Join the book club for David Sirota's upcoming book, The Uprising, due out on 5/27.
General Electric's former CEO Jack Welch is one of the great economic royalists of the modern day. He is the guy who said the businessman's dream is to "have every plant you own on a barge" - so that the plant can move away anytime workers demand better wages, working conditions or environmental standards. So it is no surprise that Welch is spending his retirement years penning warmed-over press releases for the back page of Businessweek - the latest of which repackages the same tired arguments for NAFTA trade model that have drowned out every rational economic argument for the last two decades.
What's telling about the piece is how vapid it really is. In 594 words, we are given just three selective statistics that portray NAFTA as a net plus for domestic employment, wages and exports - despite the more macro statistics that show NAFTA has been a net job killer, driven down wages and exacerbated our trade deficits. The rest of the Welch press release is rhetoric about the wonders of free market ideology - ya know, the same free market ideology that created the financial crisis.
We could write this off as the silly ramblings of a past-his-prime CEO, except the propaganda goes from Jack Welch's screeds to George Bush's mouth.
A lot of people gave me flack for simply pointing out that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership were saying they delayed the lobbyist-written Colombia Free Trade Agreement not to stop it, but to pass it. I was merely relaying Pelosi's own words, and now Reuters finally reports what I have been saying for the better part of two weeks. Under the headline "Pelosi offers some hope for U.S.-Colombia trade deal," the newswire reports on Pelosi's latest admission that her stalling tactic is aimed at passing the deal and rewarding Colombia's murderous right-wing government:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered some hope on Wednesday for congressional passage of a free trade agreement with Colombia, but said it would fail if the White House tries to jam the deal down Congress' throat.
"Perhaps we can get some of the trade agreements through. We did get the Peru trade agreement recently in a bipartisan way," Pelosi said in a speech to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, whose members were in Washington to push Congress to approve the Colombia free trade pact and two others with Panama and South Korea.
"I've told the White House we stand ready to discuss with them how we can proceed in bringing this legislation to the floor. I said 'you want to do it the way you want to do it, it will lose. You just want to jam it down the throat of Congress, it will lose'," Pelosi said.
Again, Pelosi has been saying this from the beginning. But national reporters don't want to report that, and even many progressive leaders in Washington are trying to pretend that the delay was an entirely positive and benevolent move.
I sympathize a little bit with that latter group - we all want to believe the Democratic Party will do the right thing and tell ourselves that the party is acting in good faith. We want to believe it no matter how many times we get trampled by that same party, whether it's NAFTA, PNTR, Peru or any of the other job-killing trade deals that Democrats have rammed through Congress.
But believing that the Democratic Party always operates on behalf of the little guy on these issues is not optimism - it's delusion, especially when we see an army of former Clinton administration officials being paid with Colombian government blood money to pass this deal. On fundamental economic and corporate issues, the Democratic Party - like the Republican Party - answers to money and power - and if this deal is going to be stopped, it is going to require a whole lot of people power to stop it. Because as our Speaker of the House is saying, she's using legislative maneuvers not to prevent this monstrosity from passing, but to prevent it from losing.
As progressives, we sometimes feel a bit uneasy about making declarative statements about the values people express in their actions. We hesitate, for instance, to call things "evil," not wanting to be like George "Wiith Us, or Against Us" Bush. That's understandable - absolutism can lead to bad places. However, sometimes when confronted with the blatant, undeniable truth, we have to call things out for what they are. That's what I did in my newspaper column today - the first of a two-column series on the anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. In this column, I discuss the problem with blood money being used to buy off the Democratic Party.
As I keep saying, Democrats' move to delay the Colombia Free Trade Deal is not a move to kill the bill and take a stand for human rights abroad and a just economic policy at home - it is a move to make sure the bill can ultimately pass. Here's the New York Times with more evidence:
Ms. Pelosi and other Democrats said their intent was not to kill the agreement...Even though a majority of Democrats are opposed to further trade deals, under the right conditions, a sufficient number of them could probably be found to join with Republicans in approving the pact with Colombia. The agreement with Peru passed in that fashion last year.
"Globalization can be a good thing; trade can be a good thing," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a member of the Democratic leadership and a frequent trade advocate. (emphasis added)
As NAFTA-architect-turned-investment-banker-turned-lawmaker Rahm Emanuel spews his doubletalk, keep reminding yourself: They aren't trying to stop it, they're trying to pass it...they aren't trying to stop it, they're trying to pass it...How many times do we have to be fooled by poorly executed and unconvincing tricks before we wake up and say enough is enough?
Yesterday, I wrote a post saying there was a good, bad and potentially ugly side of Nancy Pelosi's move to delay a vote on the lobbyist-written Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The ugly side would be if this is a ploy to actually help the pact pass - and some new pieces of evidence suggest that's the goal.
Well, at least Democratic corporate hacks in Washington are being a little more honest with us about why they refuse to kill a trade deal with a murderous right-wing regime. It's not about principle, it's about what it's always about - money:
Yet Democrats would have faced unwelcome political consequences for voting to defeat the trade deal. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who has voted for other controversial trade deals, said Democrats would have faced "pretty bad" political fallout among supporters in the business community had they killed the agreement.
So this is what Democrats meant when yesterday CongressDaily said they thought killing the deal "is not seen as a viable political option" despite polls showing the vast majority of Americans opposing our current trade policy. That's the definition of "politically viable" in D.C.: Not whether or not a position is at odds with the American people, but whether it is at odds with Big Money.
Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) was confident that House leaders would schedule a vote on the trade pact in a post-election session, when wavering members would be more willing to support it. "I think there'll be a vote in the latter part of November, or early December," he said, adding it would likely be approved in those circumstances.
More evidence that we're watching some really nasty shenanigans unfold. Here's the real bottom line to this: Right now, even Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) - Mr. Corporate Hack - is upset at Bush's tactics. In other words, people inclined to support the deal like Baucus are worried Bush's tactics have rankled lawmakers into voting against the Colombia deal - lawmakers who normally would. So the only real reason to delay it - if it is going to be brought up again later - is to pass it, not to reject it.
This is pretty simple legislative logic. Why delay it, rather than seizing the opportunity to kill it right now? My guess: Because the Democratic leadership doesn't want to kill it - they want to pass it in a more electorally-safe way.
Here's one question: Why does there seem to be so much more liberal outrage at what's going on in Tibet or Darfur, than what has long been going on in Colombia? I don't really understand this. Sure the magnitudes might be different, but 2,500 union organizers murdered should generate some really serious outrage. But whenever it comes to labor issues and taking on neoliberals, it seems Left-istan never gets as outraged as other human rights crises. I could be wrong - but that's just my sense.
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