UFOs or China: What's More Important to America's Future?

A presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas can't slide by without at least a couple gambling analogies, so here is my contribution: If the last Democratic debate is any indication, I'll bet the candidates are more likely to be asked in Las Vegas about whether they've seen a UFO (Dennis Kucinich in Philadelphia, to wit) than to get a serious question about jobs and manufacturing. Any takers?

This is one bet I'd love to lose.

It seems like the debate moderators have banned the topic, but the national media can no longer ignore it: American manufacturing is becoming a hot-button issue.

Yesterday, Reuters' Andrea Hopkins launched into a piece on voter concerns with this salvo:

It could be expected that Iraq would play a big role in the 2008 U.S. election campaign. But if recent populist rallies are an indication, another country may be rousing even more anger from voters: China.

And the focal point of Hopkins' analysis? Our town hall meeting on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh -- what Hopkins described as "an overflowing convention room" where "voters, union officials and company executives alike railed against unfair trade -- and demanded U.S. politicians do something."

Why have we struck such a chord?

On Tuesday night, United States Steel executive John Goodish said it bluntly: "It's our job, together with the union, to make sure we keep manufacturing competitive. It's the government's job to make sure we have a level playing field. They're not doing their job."

Voters are worried about losing their jobs because our government refuses to hold China accountable for its unfair trade practices. To add insult to injury, American consumers keep receiving unsafe food, toys, and other products in return. Jobs are going out and toxic products are coming in. Yet so much of the focus, even when we talk about jobs, is on issues like the proposed free trade agreement with Peru, which will have no real economic impact either way on our nation. Meanwhile, Congress and the Administration continue to dither on China.

Where there's smoke, there should be fire, and as I noted in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post Gazette, "Any candidate looking for a head start to November 2008 would be wise to articulate a positive, forward-looking vision on how to strengthen manufacturing in Pennsylvania and across our nation."

One by one, the presidential candidates are going to have to respond to the public clamor. And it seems that former Senator John Edwards has become the first one to make the leap. Yesterday, Edwards released a manufacturing policy paper that calls for "smart trade" and policies that will grow manufacturing jobs. Astutely, Edwards notes that "currency manipulation, illegal foreign subsidies, bad trade deals and rising energy and health care costs" that have taken a toll on American manufacturing.

So who's next? Let the competition begin.

Comments

[dgscol]

Our government has not banned the use of 401K funds from being used to invest in colonial China. Taxpayer investment funds should be used to invest in America, which is the only way to assure a golden retirement.

[dgscol]

Our government is telling us if these companies do not come back, we are finished. Rather than pander to them, how about protecting ourselves from this and an inpending depression?

How can we compete when we are subsidizing this monstrous colonial development ourselves, when we have no tariffs, and they do not buy anything from us other than our factories?

We are suckers, and we need to stand up for ourselves.

[givemycountryback]

You can blame a lot of this on Walmart. They have whole towns in China making just items for them. I think they were the first and then they tried to lie about it, remember the buy american ads they ran. Crooks and liars. This whole issue infuriates me, because now it is too late. All our factories and industries are gone and are not coming back. Corporate America has destroyed whole communities and millions of lives behind their greed. We are definitely in a decline. I do not blame the people in India and China trying to make a living. I blame the corporations and the government for allowing this to begin with. Nothing but greed rules this government.

[swift goat pet for truth]

Get serious. Obviously the MSM thinks UFO's are more important. And Edwards' $400 haircut is more imporant than his proposed policies. And Hillary's laugh much more important than her policies.

And NOTHING Biden, Richardson, Dodds, or Kucinich is worth a damm.

C'mon, get with the program.

[ljsfolly]

But people....the pilots are worried about the UFO's they just told us last week wasn't it about seeing the real things while flying? I thought I'd hit on something out of this world when I saw the pilots on TV telling what they have seen and just how important they think it is for the US to explore who is out there! Now I know UFO's exist as I'm a whack job who has seen a couple but that means little to me as far as the US spending actual bucks on the issue when there is so many starving people here in the us and our baby mortality is third world level.

[poopdeck]

This is rich!!! Unfair trade practices? Guess from whom the Chinese learned that? Great Britain, Imperial Germany, USA, Japan, France during the 19-th and 20-th centuries. They were their teachers. British opium for Chinese silver.

[Observer1]

For most Americans, when you say China, they see RED. Ah! the great RED menace.

Always blame somebody else for America's problems. While countries like india and China have been looking at improving their economies ( and by the way improving the living conditions of their two billion people), what has America been doing? Building their military, and starting wars wherever they can.

Social policy and the well being of American citizens is no longer at the top of the agenda.

America's motto is now: "National Security above all else"

The mere fact that UFOs are a point of interest above health care and manufacturing indicates the ludicrosy that permeates American thought.

[realitytrumpsbull]

The martians are more important. They will
concentrate mankind in pellet form, for later
consumption. They will consume the consumers.

LOL

[Novista]

Why only China?

Maybe India is part of the problem re manufacture? And possibly US corporations with short-term answers yielding long-term problems?

Not to mention Paulson lauding "a strong dollar" ha! and Ben the Barnacle throwing billions to keep a broken market afloat. And of course Mr. "Age of Flatulence" and his easy credit.

With friends like these, you need not demonize enemies abroad.

Naybe one small answer is NO MORE H1Bs. I'm sure some of the IT people who've fallen through the cracks in the government lies about unemployment would applaud.

How about accountability for the financial press who claim "No one could have foreseen ... " the housing bubble. Just like they never noticed anything wrong with Enron. How about a big stick for the SEC who approved the bizarre accounting practices of Arthur Anderseon firm for Enron.

How about jail sentences for money market fund managers who violated regulations against buying into risky investments? Or rating firms that gave AAA to tranches that any Economic Student 101 would have known were toxic?

How about worrying less about 'growing manufacturing jobs' when your eye was off the ball of throwing them blithely away?

[peonyharp]

From the website www.dennis4president.com:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Made in China” has become a health and safety warning label for American consumers following the recalls of tens of millions of Chinese-made toys, but the “real warning label should say ‘Made in Washington, D.C. by corporate lobbyists’ because the life-threatening hazards of these products were either ignored or brushed off by members of the Congress seven yeas ago,” Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said today.

And, at least one then-member of the Senate, John Edwards, who has been railing lately in favor of higher safety standards for Chinese-made products, defended his 2000 vote supporting expanded China trade with the famously reported comment, “it does us no good to pretend that these remedies are perfect and that people will not be hurt.”

“Senator Edwards knew seven years ago that people would be hurt, so why did he vote for China trade?”Kucinich asked. “How credible is his newfound consumer protectionism and his campaign advocacy for trade reform to save American jobs?”

~2nd half follows~

[peonyharp]

~~continued~~

Kucinich, D-OH, noted that Edwards, who became a millionaire as a trial lawyer with considerable expertise in product liability matters, “knew better than any other member of the Senate what the risks were in sending U.S. manufacturing jobs to a country with almost no labor standards, no health and safety standards, and no environmental standards.”Beyond that, Kucinich pointed out, Edwards’ vote in favor of the 2000 China trade agreement has resulted in the loss of more than 973,00 manufacturing jobs and more than 1.2 million jobs total, according to studies released by the AFL-CIO.

“If he knew then that this trade agreement would hurt people and put Americans out of work, he had a moral responsibility to vote against it,” said Kucinich, WHO HAS A PERFECT RECORD IN HIS VOTES AGAINST UNFAIR TRADE AGREEMENTS [emphasis mine]. “Like his now-regretted vote in favor of the resolution that led to the Iraq war, his votes on trade issues raise questions of judgment.”“When candidates stand in front of a union audience or in front of the cameras, they bemoan the three millions jobs that have been lost because of ‘free trade’ agreements,” Kucinich noted. “When they had a chance to vote as a member of Congress, they strongly supported those agreements. That means they voted against American workers, and, as recent events have shown, against American consumers.”

Kucinich cited an analysis conducted by Public Citizen in August http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2007/08/how-the-prez-ca.html showing the actual voting records of all of the Presidential candidates on trade agreements.

The report, titled “Eyes on Trade,” gave Kucinich the highest ranking of any candidate: 93% for supporting “fair trade” measures. He would have received a 100% ranking except he was absent for one of the votes."

Nice voting record there too. He shows up. He votes. Something so simple, yet lacking in the other candidates.