February 27, 2008
"I would immediately have a trade timeout..."
Tigerhawk freaks out over the debate transcript: "So, National Mom, we are all going to take a 'time out' from 'trade' while you convene 500 experts to 'fix NAFTA' according to the interests of the unions and environmental activists."
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It's amusing to hear Sen. Obama condemn lobbyists in his new TV ad...
"We can tell the lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda are over....They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House..."
"Yet it is also startling to see how quickly Obama’s senatorship has been woven into the web of institutionalized influence-trading that afflicts official Washington. He quickly established a political machine funded and run by a standard Beltway group of lobbyists, P.R. consultants, and hangers-on. For the staff post of policy director he hired Karen Kornbluh, a senior aide to Robert Rubin when the latter, as head of the Treasury Department under Bill Clinton, was a chief advocate for NAFTA and other free-trade policies that decimated the nation’s manufacturing sector (and the organized labor wing of the Democratic Party). Obama’s top contributors are corporate law and lobbying firms (Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden, Arps, where four attorneys are fund-raisers for Obama as well as donors), Wall Street financial houses (Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase), and big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense). Obama immediately established a “leadership PAC,” a vehicle through which a member of Congress can contribute to other politicians’ campaigns—and one that political reform groups generally view as a slush fund through which congressional leaders can evade campaign-finance rules while raising their own political profiles."
--Harper's Magazine, Nov. 2006
Well debate before last-not only did she say she would have a trade time out-but she would have a -
Trade Prosecutor.
In one of the earlier debates she said she would review each and every trade agreement-during the time out.
This USA Today article points to the clear hypocrisy and arguably influence pedalling of both Democratic candidates that makes the rumor spreading of the NYT look very weak.
Money for Tax bennies, sold by Obama and Hillary
Both Democratic presidential candidates, who promise to curb the influence of corporate lobbyists in Washington, helped enact narrowly tailored tax breaks sought by major campaign contributors.
I forgot to point out that not only were tax breaks put in place to help big donors, but the donors effectively were exporting jobs to Italy and Japan.
great fair trade stuff as well :)
Hasn't candidate Clinton also proposed a mortgage timeout? Is a healthcare timeout on the way? I'm hearing the tune of a valium platform:
Life's just much too hard today,"
I hear ev'ry mother say
The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore...
We're getting beyond nanny state politics and into fetal state politics here.
What a drag it is getting old.
The ever-so-pathetic, mindless and self-defeating hypocrisy of this is that economic relations and trade are the single largest tool available to us when using soft power instead of hard power.
There is an old, famous quote from Bastiat, "If goods do not cross borders, armies will" that history indicates is more true than not.
Idiot Democrats pandering to economic illiterates and union thugs forget this at the nation's risk. Whither the utility of soft power after we unilaterally abrogate a free-trade treaty with our largest trade partners?
Does not anyone who votes Democrat remember the collateral "benefits" of Smoot-Hawley? Has any Democrat read economic history?
It's unbelievable this sh*t has any currency whatsoever.
I thought liberals were against America acting unilaterally and tearing up old treaties.
Turns out that unilateral action is fine, provided it is done in order to screw over our biggest trading partners and mess up the economy for the sake of buying union votes. Just so long as we don't act unilaterally in order to do something like, say, depose a dictator or kill terrorists. That would be bad.
Could someone please explain to me why when a for-profit corporation or a group representing such has input into legislation it is a sin but when a teachers union, environmental lobby or whatever has input into legislation it is democracy at work?
What, if she is not happy with the way the government is running, we will have a government time out? Can you spell shut down?
This woman will be a disaster. She proves everytime she opens her mouth she is incapable of being anything other than a second rate attorney, a junior senator, and a wife who stands by her man.
Unemployment averaged over 7% for 1992 and 1993, and in January of 1994, when NAFTA took effect unemployment was 6.6%. We may be exporting jobs because of NAFTA, but unemployment has never again been that high. Also, real inflation adjusted wages grew every year after NAFTA was implemented until 2003, a full 9 years. Hhhhmmm, growing employment and growing wages, such a bad bargain for us Americans.
caplight777 said...
Could someone please explain to me why when a for-profit corporation or a group representing such has input into legislation it is a sin but when a teachers union, environmental lobby or whatever has input into legislation it is democracy at work?
Corporations and for profits are evil and greedy. Enviornmentalists, unions, and the NEA are saintly.
One provides goods, services, and jobs. That is bad, bad, bad. The others impede the production of goods, services and jobs while demanding more and more government handouts. Good, good, good.
Understand now?
caplight777 said...
Could someone please explain to me why when a for-profit corporation or a group representing such has input into legislation it is a sin but when a teachers union, environmental lobby or whatever has input into legislation it is democracy at work?
1. Narrow tax breaks for 1 firm or a narrow sector of the economy obviously have both a negative impact on some other sector directly and almost always raise prices for America as a whole as wll as reducing revenue for America as a whole. Teachers can argue that they are "doing it for the children". Refunding duties on Italian tomato's, helps 3-4 firms and hurts US workers and US industry and tax payers as a whole.
2. putting an earmark tax loophole in place for quid pro quo contributions ultimately would be a felony if it could be proved. In this case, its clear that benefits and cash were provided by the parties to each other. what hasn't been proven is a contract to do so. This is an order of magnitude clearer than: she might have given him sex in exchange for votes that he was gonna make anyway, but nobody knows if the sex happened, much less any influence on any vote
3. It is rank hypocrisy on so many levels, lets count a few
- lobbyists getting favors
- special interests beating american interests
- corruption
- exporting jobs
- increasing the cost of health care
- decreasing R&D in drugs by US firms, and US patents
- etc
McCain is clearly clear of all of this. He should bludgeon them with it.
Women are not interested in economics. Nor are those who pander to them.
Obama may bring about change, but ridding Washington of the influence of Special Interests won't be one of them. As has been pointed out here already, hyprocrisy on this issue is all over everyone.
Trade timeout? Yeah let's all have one big freakin' vacation while you figure it out.
Women!
Here is a podcast on trade, by Mike Munger. It's popularized enough to understand.
And he's cute and has really nice eyes.
THE CLINTON ANTHEM
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Phil Ochs
Phil Ochs The Crucifixion (Jim and Jean)
Middle Class Guy-
I have come to the fountain of wisdom. Thank you.
The Drill Sgt-
Not so much. So to pander to the Sierra Club Clinton takes a million coal rich acres in Utah, against the wishes of the State and people of Utah to make it a National Wilderness or some such thing. In so doing he panders to his not-for-profit base, costs the economy jobs and much needed energy resources. Hmmmmmmm.
I think I'll drink at the fountain of wisdom over at Middle Class Guy.
Time out. National Mommy, indeed! Have you ever watched the Hillary and Bill hand gesture repertoire. They point at you--a lot. Most body language and speech consultants tell you to use pointing sparingly--almost never--because it is so paternal/maternal, I'right-you're wrong, you better shape up bucko. Nobody has the courage to coach her.
When Obama started getting the substantial support of white men, all incomes I thought, "This is a backlash against feminism."
For forty years or so women like Hillary have been telling men everything is wrong with them and they are everything that is wrong with the world. Well guess what--we ain't gonna vote for you, your nagging, your pointing, your condescension, your glare or your cackle.
Wow, I feel better now that I got that off my chest. Something just snapped--had to go with it.
Ah, hell, let's go back to important issues like shoes, food, art, music, shopping, travel, weather, and the poetry, ditties, and plays of the (in)famous Trooper York.
I would suggest that the problem for Hillary! and Obama here is that people are now reading and parsing what they actually say, and not just, in Obama's case, how he says it. So, what might have flown under everyone's radar 4 or 8 years ago as an emotional appeal by Hillary! to unionized labor over jobs they lost to NAFTA by being uncompetitive, are now appearing as the insanity that they really are.
It actually would be quite humorous if Hillary! were to suspend NAFTA on her own. I have no doubt that there would a number of winning lawsuits filed claiming that she is violating an existing treaty that was fully agreed to by the Senate. There is really nothing in the Constitution that would give her that power.
So, for civil rights violations, Takings, etc., the government would likely end up liable to any number of people on both sides of the border who were hurt by her actions. This would likely cost our government and taxpayers even more than would her mortgage holiday.
My daughter pointed out that Senator Clinton's makeup on the last debate was atrocious. Now she is just 13, but still, it did look bad around her eyes.
I think she is self destructing. Maybe because deep down inside she feels that she is temramentally unqualified for the job, maybe because she is more comfortable in the victim role than she realizes.
But I think we are witnessing the death of her candidacy.
Trey
Revenant said...
I thought liberals were against America acting unilaterally and tearing up old treaties.
Only Treaties they consider "sacred" even if they are growingly unworkable as the post-WWII world order and the UN continue to breakdown.
Like Geneva. Terrorists civil liberties. Obligation to take in any refugee of the 3 billion that pass through 20 less "choicy" countries before showing up on our door step. Various UN "Conventions" generally directed at the 1st world, never voted on by the American people, that Elitists think supercede the US people and their laws because a plurality of unelected foreign bureaucrats want it so. The ICC - also known as Slobbo's 5-Star hotel for 5 years.
Other treaties they are content ripping up.
Versailles Treaty elements trashed for Wilson's idiotic Democracy movement. The Vietnam Peace Treaty, in order to stab Cambodia and S Vietnam in the back. Abandoning the Shah and the treaty obligations we had to him. Ripping up the Panama Canal Treaty because the Dems thought it was "wrong" to wait until treaty expiration to give Panama and it's Chinese port managers control.
But NAFTA and some other treaties may have to fall, not on political sentiments, but as matters of survival of America's industrial base, the middle class. Survival of our whole financial system that is now transferring wealth out of America at 1 trillion dollars a year with our trade defecit and reliance on those exporting nations to loan us money to fund our wastrel ways..Our entire financial base is at risk, with the dollar turning into toilet paper, the prspect of the Euro becoming the global currency standard, and the threat to lower America's credit to junk status the 1st symptoms. Bush-whores, Clinton-whores to the Owner Elites and the Corporatists now face the unavoidable evidence that free trade and transfer of all our technology to overseas competitors outside narrow "military fields" cannot work against limitless cheap Asian labor and "cheating" in the form of bypassing worker benefits, environmental costs, fudging taxes and hidden subsidies while keeping health care and pension costs out of expotable products that most other countries freely do.
Free Trade true believers and dogmatists believe that 150 years of strong tariffs and protection of developing industries had nothing to do with us becoming the largest economy with the most scientists and engineers by the turn of the 20th Century.
With no imperialistic wars for markets for most that time.
With a steady improvement in the standard of living of all Americans.
No, that is the "worst period", and though almost all economists believe inelastic financial systems caused the Depression, free traders and Hayek worshippers scapegoated a modest-sized tariff, Smoot-Hawley, applicable only to the US market...as the cause of the global capitalist Depression.
Free traders would have you believe that trade deficits don't matter as long as jobless consumers have great new cheap Chinese trinkets, that gutting our high tech services and industries makes us more competitive, and of course "By Jingo" the American Worker can "out produce, outcompete anyone!!". (Unless of course they are lazy union bastards unwilling to accept a modest pay reduction from 30 bucks down to 8 bucks and hour so they can "beat" the 2.00 and hour Chinese worker because they are 4.1 times more productive..so more profits can go to their billionaire bosses to better "trickle down".)
Like oligarch capitalism, free trade globalism that has screwed most countries and most workers outside the Chinese and a fabulously wealthy Global Elite - is going down.
And it will be the Reagan Democrats, as thoroughly betrayed by Bush Corporatists and Clintonista bootlickers to the Owner Class, that join with traditional Republican conservatives, Independents, and progressive Dems to end the era of job-exporting, wage-destroying Fatcats.
About the only thing Reagan Democrats value more than national security is personal job security and the dream of a better life and career for their kids. That is now severely threatened by a small rich minority in America that has shafted the rest of the country and they must be stopped.
Women are not interested in economics. Nor are those who pander to them.
Reaaaallly?
"Does not anyone who votes Democrat remember the collateral "benefits" of Smoot-Hawley?"
Al Gore does. I watched as he explained it to Ross Perot.
This is what happens when people like the Clintons try to help you:
Liberals Helping People
This isn't a freak out.
It's a proper reaction to Hillary's insane statement.
What the Hell would a "trade timeout" even look like? Is Hillary going to seal the borders?
Why is Hillary so nasty towards our trading partners? How does this square with Americans restoring their standing in the world? The rest of the world WANTS to trade with us.
I think you need to take a blog timeout.
Hillary can't be serious. Where would we get our underwear?
The drill sgt opposes free trade, US economic growth: Apparently Congress has to pass a law to stop Customs from doing whatever the hell they want: "We won this in court. The judge decided that the government was wrong," Rienzi said. "Customs didn't want to listen. That's why the bill."
Obama pushed a bill so American industry could buy raw materials cheaper. My guess is that processing foreign materials into finished products is a win for our economy. And throwing tax benefits in front of industry helped the South attract industry from the North, and helped Singapore attract industry from the US. It's about time we used it as a tool to attract industry from Asia.
big Chicago interests (Henry Crown and Company, an investment firm that has stakes in industries ranging from telecommunications to defense)
The Crowns have been big Jewish philanthropists for years. (See McCormick Place's Arie Crown Theater, named after their patriarch). The made their money in building materials, concrete, gravel, etc. They appear to own about ten percent of the stock of the defense contractor, General Dynamics, and have a son and an advisor on the board. You can read about the current family head, Lester, here: http://www.engology.com/eng5crown.htm
Crimso... Man! You stole my Smoot-Hawley thunder.
Barack's pause is the calm before the crap storm that would be his presidency.
What is so funny about this to me is that I bought a bottle of wine at Kroger called "Mommy's Time Out". Hillary's been hitting the sauce and wants us all to do so with her!
A time out? She is the POd mom. No soubt about it. We do not need mom in the White House.
John and Ken have a nice analysis of Hillary vs Obama, Hillary as nerd with Asperger's syndrome, unable to see how she comes off ; and Obama as the class president.
Click Feb 27 3PM.
Smoot-Hawley. LoL. Talk about living in the past.
The world changes and people need to look at reality & not just repeat "Free Trade" dogma. Or shout insults at the top of their lungs.
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