That fluttering sound you hear is all the jobs flying off to other countries. Again.

Trade deals seem to be another form of foreign aid and bribes used by State and the Pentagon. They give our jobs away bc they are too stupid to figure out other ways to do their jobs. It’s always about throwing away our money and jobs.

Since corporations are now basically nations on their own, they count in getting the ‘foreign aid’ from taxpayers. Trade deals don’t help the average American. Obama will throw out some bull telling us why we should be thankful for it. They always hurt the average US citizen. NAFTA, free trade and trade deals are other words for getting screwed.

Hypothetical: Whattya think the Presidential race would look like if another Ross Perot emerged today? I ask because that is actually what we need. Too bad we aren’t likely to get it.

But can you imagine the positive reception Perot would get today? (Given he was the same age now as he was when he ran against Slick Willie and Schrub The Elder.)

I know that the administrations thinks they can ram through these deals, but they’ve got another thing coming.

Big flash fire while the looting goes on just beyond the circle of light.

Besides the fact that Perot was crazy as a loon. Back then, that was a minus. Today it would be a decided plus, given that all the other pols have passed his looniness by miles.

There does seem to be a disconcerting correlation between looniness and the acquisition of great wealth. I think it’s to do with egotism and the disregard of anything that stands in the way. We could throw enormous self-justification in there, as well, but maybe that’s an inseparable part of the whole package.

It looks like Canada was telling the truth while the Obama campaign lied:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/03/obama-denies-assuring-can_n_89539.html

We’re all kim chi now . . . (:>

Or looniness & acquisition of power.

Haven’t really thought about it, but here’s a slightly diff take on yours. We all have our own inner looniness, but power and/or money allows it to show, whereas the poor & the powerless have to keep it under control.

I used to say that everyone was born with a misbehavior quotient, i.e., an amount of misbehavior (could be diff for diff individuals) that person must do in a lifetime. So I looked for opportunities for misbehaving that wouldn’t blow back on me.

Trade deals seem to be another form of foreign aid and bribes used by State and the Pentagon.”

Spot on – So why does main stream media not expose them as such – or at least make noise about the jobs expected to be lost?

Looks like the 2 weeks before the Ohio primary breaking of the story was not a plot by Hillary – and that Obama lied – and that the folks on the left that dumped on Hillary for pointing out the “inconsistency” were just folks that would say “of course I’d vote for a women – just not this one” folks.

Of course the memo was released by Canada’s Chicago consulate, which no doubt Hillary controlled – besides Bill did sign that NAFTA treaty – so it is all good – as Charlie Sheen would say. /s

The working and middle class are circling the drain in an ever tightening death spiral.

It’s another Obama Marxist plot. Soon all workers in the world will be paid equally, about $0.25 an hour.

The “United States of America” is dead. Long live the Corporate States of America.

Thanks for the update. The rest of us can now just bend over and get ready to take it… buh-bye US jobs.

Oilbummer just doesn’t give up. He won’t be happy till we are all unemployed, eating out of garbage bins. Hear that White House lackey?

You haven’t been doing that for the past 3 years? I thought we were all doing that.

The only think we’ve done with South Korea is join in their war games (AlJazeera.Com, Mar. 8, 2010) so it is a good question if these are already earmarked USD sweetheart deals steered to DoD contractors as GE. Back in 2007 (the bold is my emphasis),

USDA says ag exports will reach record levels. $79 billion this year is projected. Last year was $68.6 billion. Ag Secretary Johanns says this shows we [j]ust ratify the trade agreements with Columbie, Korea, Panama and Peru. Funny thing. No mention of imports. Kinda like G.E. issuing a quarterly report with gross sales only, and nothing on expenses.

(excerpt from “Trade, and China, and other news stuff” by TradeReform.Org, Sept. 4, 2007)

TradeReform.Org is against the KORUS-FTA.

Maybe the corporations are moving parts of their operations out of China and India as political pressures and wages go up (see “Wildcat Unions Springing Up In Chinese Factories, Demanding Higher Wages, Humane Conditions and The Right To Organize,” by Susie Madrak, Apr. 30, 2011).

The neo-liberals are always ready to sell off America’s assets in the name of “free markets.” But in reality, these deals have nothing to do with markets and everything to do with piracy. Although they may become stinking rich, why is piracy treated like it’s a credible economic system? And, why do Americans let them get away with it?

Trade deals are about one thing: destroying the gains of the labor movement (ie worker rights)of the last 100 years by using what amounts to slave labor in third world countries instead of US workers. Of course, Thomas Friedman won’t tell you that–he’s a capitalist oink oink.

Let’s try this. The poor and powerless have a much shorter reach than great wealth affords. But still, the unpleasantnesses of people of great wealth is striking. Meg Whitman and her equally unpleasant sons, for instance, who obviously inherited, by nurture or nature, their mother’s attitudes: I gather that multi-million dollar dorm at Princeton covered a lot of crappy behavior. Meg Whitman, the would-be czarina of CA. Jeebus, as someone around here says.

papau at 11–Many reporters on MSNBC have reported on job losses from NAFTA and other skewed agreements. Some MSM seem to report in ways that their own stockholders or CEOs lean.(Fox) The MSM also seem to flutter between reporting the truth and wanting or needing to get rewarded by future interviews–so they seem to not come down hard when they should. Also, if politicians get pay offs or favors from lobbyists, why not the MSM? They may have a code of ethics, but sometime you watch and say, what the heck was that powder puff up to?

Maybe a lot of the MSM schmooze or are slightly friends with the people they report on. Or they could be related somehow. I always thought that reporter A. Mitchell could have reported more critically on her Fed Res husband.

You need a radical left to deal with these entrenched problems. Liberalism just won’t cut it. Liberals don’t scare Oilbummer. Socialists and anarchists do.

One reason Germany is doing well economically is that they manufacture or produce many of the things their own citizens use or consume. Germans buy much less from China than the US. They export too, but they manufacture for themselves more of what they need or use as a nation.

Tangential– “Assange: Facebook, Google, Yahoo spying tools for US intelligence” (RT.Com, May 2, 2011). RT.Com says “Full 40-minute version of the interview coming up later.”

Cleave the corporation from the state and neutralize its influence. End Corporate Rule. Sign the Motion. Move To Amend.

I’d like to see a graph representing # of US trade deals over time v. our national debt or borrowing.

Interesting but the USG is demonstrating how quickly country-wide asset-stripping (May 2, 2011) via USG-benefited monopolies and “monetary policy” overtakes that very quickly.

Returning here late to follow up on my Perot post: Looniness not withstanding, Perot’s position on NAFTA alone (and attendant job loss) would be enough to win him very sizeable following today.

I happened to be playing around on youtube the other day and saw this amazing series of videos from 1993 showing Ross Perot debating Al Gore (representing the Clinton Admin) on Larry King about free trade for a whole hour. Boy, the bullshit on the White House’s side was stunning. THis is the point at which the Democratic Party threw working people over the side, and it hasn’t changed one bit. The series starts here.

Our government has been captured by big business for many years now. The populace certainly never asked for these nonsense free trade treaties, and they have ruined our economy.

Depressing. Really, absolutely depressing. And Obama supporters are aghast and offended when I say I can’t in good conscience vote for this charlatan again.

Our nation has been effectively captured by private wealth/corporations since at least the Robber Baron era. It’s just that those folks used to operation on a national basis until President Clinton unshackled them.

And yeah, the Perot – Gore debate over NAFTA is a trip. Gore was telling lie after lie after lie. And what Perot was saying was absolutely true. These trade agreements lower living standards in both countries.

So, this is what Obama chooses to spend his newfound political capital on, more free trade deals. In other words, he’s spending his capital on more of the same, a big wet kiss to corporate America. How does that old saying go; the more things change, the more they stay the same!

There is far too much water under the bridge to consider voting for Obama and hoping he will change. Anthony Noel at anthonynoel@suddenlink.net is forming a New Progressive Alliance to try to answer the question of where we go from here.

Yep. Perot and Gore. That was when I, a Democrat and a union man, bolted the party. It ain’t Perot that’s loony. Its all the shit for brains people that keep electing Democrats and Republicans.

I suspect it is a false correlation – even if you could find a way to graft trade deals against other stats.

Take NAFTA – it was a net positive for jobs in the first 4 years (which are interestingly Clinton years when IRS Code 482 on allocation of profits to tax deferred other countries was strictly controlled). It was net zero for jobs after 8 years – and a loss of about 800000 jobs after 12 years. Granted that even when it was positive on jobs, the jobs created were not as high paying as the jobs that left, but it sure seems tax law – and tax law enforcement – have a very large part in the effect of the agreement on the economy.

Now the GATT/WTO rules have become totally controlled by the corporations – to the point that a mere country must surrender its own labor/enviro/banking laws to the WTO. Indeed it is time to get out of the WTO.

Finally, Paul Samuelson (Nobel econ – MIT) showed trade did not help both countries when the agreement in effect sent our “economic advantage” to the other nation – as all China trade agreements do. But Paul did not show this until 2004 – until then Ricardo and free trade were the mantra for both left and right, with the left wanting job retraining funds added. So Clinton was not taking a hard right turn back in the 90′s with NAFTA – in contrast to Obama’s hard right turn post 2008. Every other country manages trade to get a near zero trade imbalance – only the US sells out its citizens for Pentagon MIC sales.

If the Clinton trade deals were Ok before Bush Jr took office, why did the trade deficit absolutely skyrocket during the Clinton years?

Here’s the data on the Trade deficit and Federal deficit:
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=200&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=23

Clinton inherited a 39 Billion annual trade deficit from Bush Sr and turned it into a 378 Billion annual trade deficit by his final year in office. A 9.6 fold increase in the trade deficit.

If Bush Jr had increased the trade deficit he inherited by 9.6 fold, the annual trade deficit would have hit 3,628 Billion by 2008. As it was, the trade defict maxed out at 759 Billion in 2006.

Like I said in another thread, who is going to vote Democrat and Republican in the coming elections?

Contrary to the claims of revisionist historians, American industry grew and became great BECAUSE OF anti-free trade economic policies. If you want more modern day examples, take a look at Germany, Singapore, and China which are all protecting their workers, domestic industries, and economy through regulations and government intervention.

Ah, never mind. Let’s all go watch sports on TV tonight!