Anti-Nafta/WTO are not important talking points from Democratic canidates

[wuushew]

I am not denying the necessity of these views, but how the hell is President Kucinich/Sharpton going to repeal over a decade of pro-globalization policy in a Republican controlled congress. Many here bash Dean or Kerry for being too centrist. At least a centrist canidate would be able to accomplish more with the current makeup of congress. Any inequities in trade issues must take a backseat to winning the Whitehouse and preventing American militarism.

Just to remind people what are important issues in 2004

(A)Anti-war, stance.....no more Iraqs EVER!

(B)Pro-environmentalism

(C)Preventing ultrarightwing-whackos from getting in the federal courts

(D)Restoring international relations with former friends

(E)Protecting civil liberties

[JohnKleeb]

1. well E Kucinich is trying for

He is going to introduce legislation to repeal the Patriot Act, he gets good marks from enviromental groups, he wants us to join the world court and rejoin others, he's the most anti war of them all imo, and on restoring relations I think he can do that. Also I know trade may not mean much to you but try telling that to people who lose their job because of NAFTA and stuff that.

[Maple]

2. You can't repeal

NAFTA....thousands of businesses and millions of people have spent money, hired people, built, retooled and so on ..on the basis of it.

Pulling out of that would turn the American economy upside down and right into the toilet.

Investment money would also leave.

Adjustments have to be made...every country involved has complaints...but overall the numbers support the benefits promised.

You can't take your ball and bat and go home everytime that every little thing isn't 100% perfect.

[rucky]

3. The Economy, stoopid!

[Maple]

6. Yeah I'd agree with that

It's the economy more than anything that will make the difference.

It's just that pulling out of trade agreements will make things worse not better.

Halting the borrowing to invade countries on false pretenses would help much more.

[MaverickX]

4. Repealing NAFTA is a wasted fight..

The key to changing NAFTA is in its enforcement. Basically we need to enforce NAFTA in a way that builds Mexican industry and allows them to produce their own goods to sell to us rather than having US companies go there, produce goods, and then ship them back here.

[wuushew]

5. I agree

Plus people only think about the Mexican half of Nafta, many good things have come from increased trade with Canada.

[MaverickX]

9. thats because..

Canada has its own industrialized manufacturing sector. Mexico is mainly a resource and land exploitation economy, it has no manufacturing sector of its own.

[Maple]

13. Canada's manufacturing sector

is pretty much gone as well. That's not because of free trade, but because of globalization.

Canada also has a major sector in lumber, oil and other natural resources.

We are moving to high tech and the information economy, same as you.

Mexico luckily can skip the industrial age, and join the info one fairly rapidly.

[Armstead]

7. That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess

I agree that the WTO and NAFTA may seem like esoteric issues.

But that doesn't mean they should be ignored. We have gotten into the mess we're in because we've ignored these "obscure" issues over the last 30 years.

Nothing that we are experiencing is George Bush's fault. Including the items on your list of important issues. He is simply the current enabler of something Democrat Centrists and GOP Fascists have helped to create. And those are merely the symptoms of a Bi-Partisan Selling Out of America.

Allowing the Corporate Takeover of the World in gradual steps through "pseudo free trade," deregulation, privitization and swampland politics has made these things so entrenched that they become ever harder to combat.

And the end result -- which we are seeing -- is a totalitarian media, the dismantling of the middle and working class, the immense gap between rich and poor, and all the rest of it.

Eitehr we continue to find reasons to ignore these problems and pass the Point of No return, or we stop waffling and start telling some truth for a change.

That's your only choice.

[Maple]

8. There is no 'corporate takeover of the world'

or pseudo-free trade or any of that other stuff.

Countries trade. That's a good thing.

Barriers come down. That's a good thing.

Some people breathe ideological fire. That's a bad thing.

[Armstead]

10. You don't think so?

I wish I lived in your sheltered dream world.

While I do not believe there is a conspiracy of a small number of rich guys pulling every string, the domonant trends and power in society have been a massive sell out of the public interest to the elite.

Yes trade is a good thing. We need more of it. But the WTO/NAFTA version of "free trade" has nothing to do with free trade. It's about dismantling government to allow the corporate sector to do whatever it wants whereever it wants.

Do you really believe the corporate media are ethical purveyors of the truth?

Do you really want all biological forms of life to become the "intellectual property" owned by Monsanto?

Do you really believe that Enron was a better purveyor of public power than a highly regulated quasi-public utility company?

I could go on but I won't.

Except to say that I am at heart a moderate, not an ideological fire-breather. But we are not living in a moderate society. If you look behind the curtains you will see that Bushism is nothing more than the latest symptom of this.

[Maple]

12. I'm not in a sheltered dream world

I work with the economy....every day. It's what I do.

There is no plot, no conspiracy or anything else...to enslave mankind.

Free trade is nothing of the sort regarding dismantling govt to allow corporations free rein.

It has it's problems, but it's about removing barriers....for goods, services and people. No protectionism...because that kills prosperity.

I don't recall saying anything about the corporate media, or Monsanto.

Media around the world is excellent. Don't judge everyone by Fox.

Monsanto is not the entirety of GM...it's one company.

Enron was also one company.

There are bad people, and there are bad companies. That does not mean there is any plot to take over the world. There are also excellent people and companies.

There are also 190 other countries in the world beyond the US...don't judge everything by some current political situation solely in your own country.

[Armstead]

15. I work with the economy too

I know how it works. And I said above that I know there is not a small group of X-Files types pulling every string.

But the elite and "cheap labor conservatives" have successfuylly bamboozled people into accepting policies and values that are detrimental to the interests of the majority. It is Monopoly Capitalism, it is not truly free enterprise.

Protectionism is sometimes bad and sometimes good or necessary. There is no "one size fits all" answer. Each country has to be able to determine their own policies based on their own priorities and needs. THAT is free trade in trhe real sense.

Having uneleced, unaccountable bodies like WTO, and behind closed door contracts like NAFTA are the opposite of truly free trade. They are saying "if you want to trade in the world you have to abandon your own laws and sovergnty, and follow the rules we set."

The Americam media sucks. The good media abroad is primarily due to policies that are the opposite of the American policies. And corporate "pseudo free trade" would undermine the better forms of media buy turning it all over to the Rupert Murdoichs if the world.

Enron was just one company, but it had a lot of power and has a lot of imitators. And thise who follow the values you endorse considered it one of the "most admired companies." If Enron's management hadn't screwed up internally, they'd still be screwing us.

[Maple]

19. No that's not 'free trade'

That's every country looking out solely for their own interests.

Something that usually leads to war.

In the real world, you have to give a little, to get a little.

Negotiate, compromise...deal, trade, and bring down barriers.

No pushing to the head of the line with the 'me first' attitude.

The WTO is not 'unelected and unaccountable'

It has representatives there from all the countries involved.

The govt you elected sends them. Do you want to start electing ambassadors and diplomats too? Every bureaucrat in the country as well?

The people who attend WTO do so because they know what they are doing, not because they're your neighbor that you elected. You need professionals for something like that....not just somebody who was popular because they stumped and shook hands at some barbeque.

The deals and contracts are all available. Most of them take years to put together in such a way that everybody will sign on.

Your local rep does not have the time, the experience or the knowledge to do that.

A world agreement means you all agree to something new to all of you, and beyond any one country.

You've signed many other deals that affect your sovereignty...every deal signed with a foreign country does that in fact. Military alliances, trade ones, aid ones for that matter.

So? That's the basis for globalization.

Many problems can only be solved on a world level...a global level. Pollution is an obvious one....it's everywhere, and one country, or even a few acting alone can't solve it. It requires joint effort by all the countries.

Which means if you are belching out smoke you get told about it...and yes, that affects your sovereignty....and a damned good thing in my opinion.

No one is about to allow either Fox or Murdoch to take over everything. They haven't now, and they never will.

Enron was one company in one country....there are close to 200 countries and millions of companies. Occasionally you will get one that screws up. You fix the company, you don't ban all companies.

[Terwilliger]

17. some people live in a fantasy world

"We need to revamp the world, so that we have equal numbers of homeless in Jakarta as well as Chicago!" :eyes:

[RichM]

18. An asinine remark, easily shown to be dead wrong.

What do you think Cheney's secret energy plan was, if not an example of the corporate takeover of national energy policy?

Why do you suppose the EPA & Dept of Interior & "regulators" of virtually every industry are all staffed by former high officials of those very same industries? What is this, if not a corporate takeover of the government?

Haven't you ever looked at a page of statistics showing the percentage of the US economy accounted for by the biggest 500 corporations, over the last 5 decades?

Have you ever read "Wealth & Democracy?" It describes, among other things, the distribution of wealth in the US, & how it's changed in recent decades. The distribution has never been so lopsided as it is today -- not even in the "Gilded Age" of the 1890's, nor in the 1920's.

What social force do you think Republicans represent, if not the corporate oligarchy?

What do you think economic neoliberalism, & agreements like NAFTA are, if not attempts by corporations to create rules that circumvent governmental authority, & thus grant corporations immunity from all public accountability for their actions?

What you call "breathing ideological fire" is merely a natural & logical reaction to awareness of the true state of things -- a problem you won't be burdened with, I'm quite sure.

[Maple]

20. For Terwilliger and RichM

You people focus on the US far too much.

I know it's your country and important to you, but you need a larger viewpoint here. At the moment you can't see the forest for the trees.

There already ARE homeless people in Jakarta. Always have been.

And it's only by removing barriers and working together that we can prevent homelessness there.... as well as in Chicago.

I don't care what Cheney thought he was doing. He hasn't managed to accomplish it, and never will....because the world community is now set up so it's not possible for one (pardon me) maniac and his cohorts to do so.

In case you haven't noticed, they've been checkmated at every turn. For all that they cheer on Fox, it just ain't happening.

Get off your patios occasionally, leave the ideology at home, and look at the world from the viewpoint of the other 6 billion of us.

The world does not revolve around the US...much to Bush and Cheney's chagrin.

YOUR job is....get rid of your junta there...and rejoin the rest of us.

[RichM]

21. I agree that our job is getting rid of our junta here -- BUT the source of

that junta's power is the takeover of our country by large corporations.

And it's not just our country -- the reason Blair acts like Bush's little poodle, & that Austrailian PM John Howard does the same, is ALSO because of the takeovers of their economies by large corporations.

The homeless in Jakarta did not have to be permanently homeless. One can't just accept that as a historical inevitability. But when the US government backed the 1965 military overthrow of Sukarno, the chances of the homeless remaining homeless increased dramatically. In fact, it was the very likelihood that their lot might be bettered, that convinced the US that something had to be done about it.

Ditto for most countries in Central America & some in South America -- as soon as a political movement arose that might have bettered the lots of the poor, in comes the CIA to "restore stability."

The overthrow of Allende is an example -- IT&T played a central role in this. The overthrow of the Guatemalan govt in 1954 was sponsored primarily by the needs of the United Fruit Company.

And your estimations that Cheney & cohorts have been "checkmated at every turn" -- you're quite right that I haven't noticed this -- BECAUSE IT ISN'T TRUE! Where are you getting this complacent view from? What makes you think Cheney is getting any less than 100% of what he wants? He got his Iraq war, his Halliburton got the mammoth contract to "rebuild" Iraq, he still gets a million bucks a year WHILE SERVING AT THE TOP OF THE GOVERNMENT! The US media don't even have the integrity to raise the question of whether or not this is a conflict of interest.

Please, explain why you think Cheney & Co. are "being checkmated." If you can convince me that there is even a tiny germ of solid substance to this assertion, I'd sleep better.

[w4rma]

11. Dean:I am tired of having...our best jobs...shifted elsewhere in the world

...
While U.S. unemployment improved in June, Dean said it’s still at a nine-year high and ignores the underemployed, which he pegged at 6 percent.

“These are people who had $50,000 good jobs and now they are making $25,000 or $30,000, and they have two of them, in some cases,” Dean said. “I am tired of having an economy where our best jobs are shifted elsewhere in the world.’’

Dean fans made up a thick portion of the crowd, often turning Dean’s 25-minute stump speech into a rally of revival proportions with interrupted calls of “amen’’ and “yes, yes.’’
...
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/Main.asp?SectionID=25&SubSectionID=377&ArticleID=85948
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=124665&mesg_id=124665

...
HOWARD DEAN: No. What I said-- Well, I'll tell you what I said in a minute. But I'll follow my train of thought here, most briefly. Free trade has benefited Vermont a great deal. Here's the problem with free trade, and here's why I support fair trade, and why I want to change all our trade agreements to include human rights with trade, as Jimmy Carter included human rights with foreign policy. I still think NAFTA was a good thing. I think the president did the right thing. But the problem now is that, 10 years into NAFTA, here's what we've done. We have shipped a lot of our industrial capacity to other countries. And the ownership pattern, and the ratio of reward between capital and labor in those other countries is what it was 100 years ago in this country.

So the reason for NAFTA is not just trade. It's defense and foreign policy. That is, a middle class country where women fully participate in the economic and political decision making of that country is a country that doesn't harbor groups like Al-Qaeda, and it's a country that does not go to war. So that's in our intersect. That's why trade is really in our long term interest. What we've done so far in NAFTA is we've transferred industrial capacity, but we haven't transferred any of the elements that are needed to make a middle class. The truth is, the trade union movement in this country built America, not literally-- Well, they did do it literally with the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, and things like that. But they built America because they allowed people who worked in factories and mines to become middle class people. And America was the strongest country on earth, and still is, because we have the largest middle class on earth, with democratic ideals. That is, working people in this country, by and large, feel that this is their country, and they have a piece of the pie, and it matters what they think.

Now, if you want trade to succeed, ultimately, we're going to have to create a climate in other countries that are beneficiaries of NAFTA where they can create a middle class with democratic ideals. That means we should not have any free trade agreements, and we should go back and tell the WTO that "you need also to include environmental standards and labor standards." Here's why. Today, if you run a factory in Iowa-- Let's suppose you spend a million dollars a year disposing of all the waste products that come out that are toxic. You can go to another country and dump all that stuff in the river and on the ground. So America, because we have environmental standards, and we're willing to trade, straight out, free trade, with countries that it's cheaper by a million dollars, before you even get to wages, to do business there, I think that's a big problem. We're essentially saying, "Our environmental laws are strict. It's cheaper for you to go into business someplace lese. Go ahead." That's the wrong thing to do.

The same with labor standards. I don't know why we should be shipping our jobs offshore when kids can work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for a small amount of wages. And isn't that what America fought against 100 years go? Wasn't that the victory of the trade union movement? So it seems to me that my position makes sense. We've gone through 10 years of free trade. We've gotten to a position where we now need to change our trade agreements.
...
http://www.jfklibrary.org/forum_dean.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=46131&mesg_id=46131&page=

http://www.howarddean.tv/

[Maple]

14. Well we Canadians asked

to have human rights and environmental protections added to the free trade deal some time ago...but the deal will only be reopened, we were told, if the US gets first dibs on all our water and entry into all our cultural programs. (No distinctly Canadian media, they would be bought out.)

So fixing it had to wait until there was a new US president that recognizes the need for honest dealing and trading.

I'm delighted Dean seems to be so inclined.

I sure hope he makes it.

[Terwilliger]

16. How is ANY Democrat going to get anything done in a Repuke congress?

unless, of course, they get a Republican Democrat :eyes:

[DemBones DemBones]

22. First of all, we can change the make-up of Congress when we change

the White House occupant. And we must do so.

Armstead and Rich M. have done a fine job of explaining why we must stop corporations from gaining any more power and take away some of the power that they have. Read their posts. Stop deluding yourselves about "free" trade and globalization being for your benefit or for the world's benefit. They are only for the benefit of the oligarchy. Cheap labor conservatives are part of the oligarchy and serve its needs, not the needs of the lesser beings in the middle and lower classes. Their only interest in the other classes is to keep wages and benefits down and compress them all into one class that lacks the power or money to oppose the oligarchy and the fascist government it supports.

When the government serves businesses and ignores needs of the people, fascism is the result. If you're waiting to see swastikas, forget it. Fascism doesn't look the same in every incarnation.