What do you call someone who sells out his countrymen? A traitor! What do you call someone who unnecessarily puts one of America's biggest industries at serious risk and sells out millions of his country's workers abilities to make an honest living? An effing extremist right wing GOP senator.
Last night, a few dozen traitorous parasites -- some hiding behind excuses that they wanted to be sure the US was getting a good deal -- sold out American workers with good paying jobs. They sold them out for the foreign companies that had set up manufacturing plants in their states. Very often, these plants are lured with low tax rates or no tax rates or even big buck bonuses. These plants are non-union shops that pay employees far less than union shops. (And let's be clear. If the big three are allowed to die, cars will still be built in the US -- in Kentucky, South Carolina, Indiana- places where Japanese and other nations car companies ship semi-finished parts, built overseas, to be assembled in the US. It's absolutely not the same as making cars with parts built in the US.)
These legislators are the hard-core globalists who have sold out American industry after American industry to cheap labor third world countries.
I met with my congressman the other day and suggested that we should bail out the automotive companies from the bottom up. We should give every American a coupon that can be used to buy a new high mileage car from an American manufacturer. The Big three auto makers would refund the coupons through the federal government. He explained we can't do that because of our agreement with the World Trade Organization (WTO.) "Easy," I said. "Withdraw from the WTO."
Getting into the WTO was a huge mistake. Sure the US needs to trade on a global basis, but the WTO is the wrong deal and far too bad for America for use to continue to be a part of it.
The reason we couldn't bail out our US automotive companies from the bottom up is that other WTO members -- Japan, for example -- would be able to sue the US for excluding their products from the recovery package. This is insanity. The US is doomed to failure if we are subject to agreements that prevent us from taking care of our own workers and economy first. I wouldn't be surprised if some foreign banks or finance firms sue through the WTO because the US only gave bailout money to US banks. They'll claim this gave the banks an unfair advantage against other nations' banks.
Obama did say that the trade agreements we're partial to need work. I agree. We do need international, even global trade agreements. But the ones we are in now are too primitive, too stupid. They've been incredibly destructive experiments that should be ended and replaced with smarter, better agreements.
We can replace the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA agreements. And we can replace traitorous senators -- at least some of them. Some will keep getting elected by the red-neck, right wing extremists and religious extremists in the southern and midwestern states. Those states are mostly parasitic -- they take more than they give to the US. That situation should be rectified. Now, these red-state parasites representatives are acting in a way that will kill their host, the USA. It's time to re-balance the money flow. Let the red states live with the money they put into the pot and their voters may smell the coffee and realize that their legislators have been betraying them as well. After all, those under-paid, non-union workers are getting paid less with the help of the traitor senators who are fighting unions.
Regarding the WTO and other trade agreements, there is a better way. Just as the League of Nations was an unsuccessful first try at a good idea, the current batch of Trade deals are first tries with bad terms. We need a new approach.
No life form can live without skin. Signing on to treaties like WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA totally strips the US bare of protections. It subjects the US to rule by secret councils, literally. It is unnatural to exist without some kind of a "skin." I've written about the idea that every living entity must have a "skin." Skin is not just a covering. It's a complex organ, a membrane that allows some things in and some things out. Even nations must have a kind of economic "membrane" that allows some products and services in, while keeping others selectively out.
It's time to either shut down the WTO or change it so it allows every nation to have "economic membranes" which allow nations to help their workers and industries while, at the same time, promoting free trade. There are enough smart people on this planet to figure out how to do it. It just may take enough bottom-up, grass-roots demand from the victims of the failed WTO experiment to make the better version happen.
There is some good news. Ten Republican senators voted to move the automaker bailout bill forward. That wasn't enough to break the filibuster, but it will be come January. The extreme right wing of the Republican party has become demented and dangerous to America. Their compass is broken and they are on a course towards ruin. Fortunately, the American people have seen the light and they are not allowing these fundamentalist, corporatist sellouts who no longer put America first, to bring them down. And it appears that some of the Republican members of the senate have regained their sanity and have pulled away from the extremist pack. I predict 2009 will see a schism within the GOP. Not all their members are traitors.
It is likely that George Bush will, after the senate Republicans blocked the funding for the auto company bailout, allow money from the $700 billion already authorized be used for the auto companies. My guess is this deal was set up in advance so the senate republicans could take a stand, to show their conservative, anti-spending mettle. Unfortunately for them, their misguided power play showed who they really are, as I've described above.
Crossposted from OpEdNews.com