Hot off the presses from MSNBC:
"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter's protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."
The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the bill expanding NAFTA into Peru, and the much-trumpeted labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements). Leaving enforcement to the Bush administration -- or any administration -- is the biggest loophole possible. It is precisely why corporate lobbyists have bragged to reporters that the standards are not enforceable.
Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project -- a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.
Trade has been known to be a huge issue in Iowa (remember Dick Gephardt in 1988), so this announcement could very well ripple through the 2008 primary.
PLEASE stand up, PLEASE stand up.
*crk!*crk!*crk*
(sound of crickets under empty stage)
Kucinich, Gravel, and (possibly) Richardson. None of which are front runners.
Front runners:
Hillary ("I didn't know that bill I voted for was to authorize war") Clinton
Barack ("I'm a corageous leader, except when it comes to my voting record, where I vote with the pack or sit out the tough votes) Obama
John ("We won't get out of Iraq in my Presidency) Edwards
Who will we choose?
Then, of course, you have to look past Iraq toward foreign policy in general as well as domestic issues...
So, Sirota could compile a list of the follow-up questions he'd ask, then he'd use posts like this to encourage people to go to Obama appearances and try to ask those questions.
And, if there's video of the response that's much more powerful.
Unregulated capitalism is not a "victimless" crime. The New World Order is founded on exploiting foreign labor and privatization of their resources through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, bot of which have operated in a predatory way.
Have you ever tried to enforce rights under NAFTA? Silence from pro-NAFTA and WTO fans.....You can't, that's why.
Slavery in foreign countries and the rape of their resources should not be the foundation of the American system and the basis of its economy and foreign policy. Also, it's not "too late," as others suggest. We can change course and save our middle class yet. This is not "protectionism." Read up on what happened to the British.
Let me put it this way.
If the DLC Queen doesn't support this, then she's more worried about Edwards than Obama, because she really wants to make sure that Edwards doesn't win Iowa.
"Obama accepts done deal Hillary helped pass".
Breaking news?
Hardly.
Yes, a challenge to every status quo US policy would engender him to those who seek wholesale change while drawing the full-throated ire of the corporate media and their enablers in Congress (hardly a wise campaign tactic), but can't we focus on differences in policies that can actually be accomplished by a change away from GOP/DLC dominance of our government?
Obama isn't Hillary. Nor will he succumb to the rhetorical pandering we see coming from Johnny-come-lately DLC insiders turned anti-establishmentarians (Edwards and Richardson) in order to split votes among the real democrats to ensure Hillary wins.
Ignoring how crafty, duplicitous and determined the establishment is and how low they will stoop is dangerous. Their white buffalo's have been presented to maintain their dominance... don't overlook all the empty bottles of peroxide in the voting records and assume the bleach has sunk into their roots.
This is just another DINO moment where far to many Democrats show that when Corporate America says "jump" their response is "how high?".
Rather than pandering as Hillary and Edwards are doing, Obama is staightforward.
His record of telling people what they don't want to hear isn't always welcome, but it sure can't be called cowardice.
I agree with Obama's statements. Yeah, we need to protect our workers as much as we can, but the global economy is real and it already affects every aspect of our lives. It does.
Protectionism is not the key to keeping American jobs. Do I have all of the answers? No. But fencing ourselves off from the rest of the world doesn't make much sense.
I wish you would dedicate one of your blogposts to educating readers about The New Economy. Its real Mr. Sirota, and our people need to understand it. Barack does, and that's why I am supporting him.
Go BArack.
We always hear about all the cheap goods/services we have thanks to the double whammy of outsourcing & insourcing.
And while I'm dubious of just how much we *actually* save, no one points out that the a lot of the supposed savings come in the form of *non-essential* goods and services.
Ok, so we can buy cheaper flat screens, MP3 Players and the list goes on and on.
Meanwhile real wages and benefits are stagnant at best and going down at worst with rising inflation for the things we *actually* need (gas, food, etc).
Although as I've said before, does anyone actually know how much we save by outsourcing/insourcing labor? Is there any research that clearly shows that as consumers, we save X number of dollars on average?
I'm guessing no, primarily because I don't think we ARE saving that much money, if we're saving anything at all.
Most corporations (like Nike) kept prices at about the same level even *after* shipping labor to some third world country and passed those savings onto (drumroll) CEO's and the other top brass along with a few more bucks for their shareholders.
Meanwhile the spin is that we're supposed to be THANKFUL for being able to accumulate a bunch of "cheap" electronics and other non-essential goods and services
One thing I would like to mention is that it's really unreasonable (in my view) to make comparisons with where we are now and where we were when we were the only big dog on the block. When manufacturing was huge and Japan and much of Western Europe were wiped out, we were afforded a generation that was economically in a different place than the generation before it or a generation after.
I think a big problem today is a poor ability to adapt to new or changing labor markets; I place much of that responsibility on our education system, given the increasing proportion of high skills work demanded in the US.
The exact transcript of the record says:
“Mr. REID. Mr. Chairman, there will be no more votes tonight. We have tried to work something out on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment and the Biden amendment. We have been unable to do that.
We have been very close a few times, but we have just been informed that Senator Biden will not have a vote anytime in the near future. There will not be a vote on the other one anytime in the near future. We hope tonight will bring more clearness on the issue.”
I strongly disagree with Obama's plan to reverse the Bush tax cuts and use a lot of that money to provide tax cuts for the lower/middle class.
Why?
For one thing, it buys into the conservative ideology that tax cuts are always the answer for all that ails us.
And for another, there are FAR more useful ways to spend that much needed money. How about universal healthcare, education, etc, and the list goes on and on.
But I do agree, he's a better candidate than Hillary who really does seem to be the most special-interest dominated candidate.
The fact that she's taken more money than ANYONE (regardless of party) from the healthcare industry is enough to make me not support her.
theyoungturks.com
-ihavenobias
Obama's plan doesn't buy into any conservative ideology. In fact, reversing Bush's tax cuts is smart because (1) the rich need to pay their fair share, which they have not done under George Bush, and (2) We need money to invest in things like infrastructure, education, health care, and a whole host of pressing domestic agendas.
Who cares about reinforcing a "conservative ideology about taxes". Reversing Bush's tax giveaway to the rich makes sense for the "middle class/working class/working poor multitude" who have not benefited under George Bush.
You balk at Obama's plan to "provide tax cuts for the lower/middle class", commenting that there are "FAR more useful ways to spend that much needed money". True, hasn't Obama said that he would reverse Bush's tax cut to provide both tax relief AND funding for the things you care about like "universal healthcare, education" etc.? Yes.
Obama makes sense.
The upshot was the wealthiest folks got around 6% reduction while the lowest group got between 1% and 2% reduction.
This means for $20,000 of income, the richest saved $1200 and at 2% for the lowest income bracket, the savings was $400 on $20,000.
This disparity alone makes it imperative to get rid of Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy.
Factcheck.org credits as their source: Congressional Budget Office, "Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law , 2001 to 2014," Tables 2, 4.