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October 31, 2007 8:13 PM
On Trade, The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Sorry for the light posting today, I'm in transit for most of the rest of the week. However, while I had a moment, I wanted to flag this from Bloomberg News.
The good:
"The House of Representatives voted for the largest expansion ever of a program to help workers hurt by imports or overseas competition, setting up a fight with President George W. Bush who has threatened to veto the measure...At the last minute, the House added a provision that would require smaller companies to give notice before they lay off workers and extend the notification period to 90 days from 60."
The bad:
"At the last minute, the House added a provision that would require smaller companies to give notice before they lay off workers and extend the notification period to 90 days from 60."
The ugly:
"The House Ways and Means Committee approved a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Peru, clearing the way for the accord to be considered by the entire House next week after months of delay. The committee backed the agreement by a vote of 39 to 0."
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THis is depressing but par for the course given what sort of creature is running the House.
And its going to kill the Democrats reputation among independents as pro-working class. The thing is people in this country are shown almost every week how another line of toxic products arrives from China, our country hemmorages jobs and all Congress does is facilitate more of the same. People are pissed as a result, you can see it in the polls where the Congress is rated lower than Bush and Cheney.
And if that botox bitch Pelosi and the pampered elite of the "A" list blogs thinks the people who gave the Dems a majority in '06 are going to repeat it in '08 they are mistaken. Too many things are going wrong now. Skyrocketing oil prices(which means $$ more heating oil and gas), a dollar falling apart, a imploding real-estate market and out of control trade deficit. All of these are going to have serious implications for a lot of people.
I wouldn't want to be in either party.
Fair Trade vs. "Free" Trade; Mad Money takes on a "Free" Trade cheerleader.
Items of note; Sirota's "Education Myth", the "'Free' Trade is always good" mantra, Cramer's surprising populist warnings, complete with John Edwards' "two countries" theme.
From a Tim Russert interview with Maria Bartiromo, Erin Burnett, and Jim Cramer on 20 Oct:
BARTIROMO: We need to focus more on education... We need to prepare our children and adults much better for competing with the rest of the world.
CRAMER: You can’t just have two countries, either. We can’t have rich—the large, rich population do well, but the much larger poor population be left out. But again, that’s political. It’s not economic. It’s political.
...
BURNETT: And three-quarters of the manufacturing jobs that are lost in this country, when those people get new jobs, they’re making less money than they were before. So, for the average American, that’s why they see free trade as a bad thing, ... That’s what we have to fix, that wage gap...
...
BARTIROMO: And you can’t be a protectionist. I mean, that will be a negative and slow down all economies. And by the way, you see protectionism seep in around the world...
You know, the same thing going on all around the world. And it is a negative. Free trade is only good.
...
CRAMER: When you’re selling food, when you’re selling equipment, you’re doing great. When you’re building—when you’re building typical old-fashioned American industries, you’re just saying, what happened? How did we let the Chinese take over?
And I really want to emphasize, I agree with Maria. Fair trade is with China free trade with everybody else. It’s just one outlying country that I believe has just decided to take over most of industry in the world and doesn’t play fair.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What are you going to do? You going to close our markets to China?
CRAMER: No, you be tough with them...
Excerpted from the transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21478661/
(This interchange is ~2/3 down the page.)
3rdoption,
The only way we're going to conquer those SCUMBAGS is to first do away with the BIG LIE that "Consumer spending drives the economy". The "free" traders who get these SCAMS passed know the "PAVLOV DOG" idiocity of consumers who spend compulsively like there's no fucking tomorrow.
By the way, I used to see Cramer on the "Kudlow and Cramer" show and boy did I hate that motherfucker for acting like an abused dog defending its ABUSIVE master. Or better yet, Cramer would make a "nice spouse" to be picked on by Kudlow !
P.S.: I apologize for associating dogs with Democrats, Cramer, Alan Colmes, etc ... but let me tell you a real live event that kept me this angry. Once, I had a dog who was nice and lovely but my wife was almost mugged by a robber who happened to also be the previous owner of that second hand dog we got from the pound. Not only did the FUCKED up dog not help my wife but he actually defended the robber against my wife. Luckily, I got home just in time and , with my loaded shotgun hidden in my basement, ANGRILY killed the dog and the robber. Yeah, I had to fucking fight in court on animal murder and homicide charges but my wife and neighbors helped me out. So what does this have to do with my anger against the Democrats ?!?!? The Democrats are no different than that FUCKED UP dog I had to shoot and the same thing with the GOP being exactly like the robbers. I learned from all that that when someone or a group BETRAYS you even to the point of knowingly supporting its abuser against you, it's time to SHOOT THAT MOTHERFUCKER DOWN and that's why I'll keep pounding on that it's high past time the Democratic Party and the GOP were ABOLISHED even if I sound like a madman !!!!
"...even if I sound like a madman !!!!" - GrantBurkeVT
Ok, here's the deal with analogies. An analogy is supposed to support by exemplification your postulation, not entirely freakin' overwhelm it by nuclear-ification.
"Ok, here's the deal with analogies. An analogy is supposed to support by exemplification your postulation, not entirely freakin' overwhelm it by nuclear-ification." - 3rdoption
I think Grant meant to say this for an analogy. Democrats are to Republicans as that dog is to the robber. Anyway, what's your point?
By the way Grant, I'm sorry to hear what happened to you and your wife. It's such a major tragedy that this is exactly how we are all being taken for granted by both political parties. FL is a perfect example of such a mess with one party dominating the entire state government and even then the Democrats knowingly give in to the GOP interests. There are plenty of people out here in Florida happy to run Independent candidacies compared to the Democrats. In fact, at one point, there were twice as many Libertarians running against the GOP as there were Democrats ! The reality as I see it is this. The GOP are happy to use the Democrats to keep Independents from running down the GOP. And just when the Democrats are about to suffer their lowest of the lows, the GOP will swoop in and resuscitate them and in return the Democrats will happily accept playing the role of the ABUSED partner. Come to think of it, the Democrats have indeed been RAPED beyond repair !
GrantBurke is right IMO that both parties ought to be abolished. Both are corrupt and in cahoots with one another in keeping the current system broken. They do not want a system that is responsive to the voter. And yeah they don't want competition either, this is why both go batshit crazy when a 3rd party starts showing some popularity - like Nader.
Its also clear that neither party cares about the country or people. All they care about is feathering their own nests and achieving life time positions of power.
And the problem is until both parties are totally discredited and disempowered with the people we cannot build new parties to replace them.
The good news is that both parties are doing a splendid job at making themselves look like fools and losers to the public.
The bad news is at the rate the country is being dismantled by these fools we won't have a country left in which to rebuild our political system.
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