Posted on 01/04/2016 2:19:43 PM PST by conservativejoy
Pat Buchanan. Glad you brought him up. Local and national talk radio and TV all loved to have Pat as a guest and ridicule him for running 5th in a 4 party race for President. Virtually nobody agreed with him or voted for him. Hosts ridiculed him for being the only anti-immigrant conservative and taking the big government side on that issue.
Virtually all conservatives held the capitalist position of let-the-free-market-decide.
Post 2001 people looked for a scapegoat. It wasn’t politically correct to attack Muslims who controlled our oil. So the invasion from the South became the scapegoat.
As far as I’m aware, Cruz never said anything about a wall. He supported an amendment to the Gang of 8 bill that supposedly forced the government to build the fence that was approved in 2006, signed by Bush, and is already law. Now people seem to be trying to credit Cruz with taking the lead on this issue because of his sponsering that amendment. The problem with that argument is threefold.
First, a fence is not a wall. That difference is no small point.
Second, if we’re supposed to credit Cruz as being the leader on the building of a border fence (not a wall), then the question is why not credit George Bush, and the members of congress who already passed the 2006 bill mandating the building of the fence, instead? The border fence is already law and became law before Cruz was ever on the scene. Trying to credit the border fence (not wall) to Cruz is absurd.
Third, the fact that the border fence is already mandated, and has been law for ten years begs the question. Why hasn’t it been built? The short answer is that neither Congress nor President’s Bush or Obama have had the will to see it built, even though the law requires it.
I would argue that Cruz’s amendment, which on the surface might look tough, would have done little to actually force the government to do what it’s already required by law to do - build 700 miles of fence. And it’s very possible that was always the intention (i.e. include an amendment that sounded tough but in reality could easily be ignored and or bypassed). We already have plenty of tough sounding legislation that accomplishes nothing. Often his is by design. Cruz’s amendment would have just added one more example of such a law to the books.
What’s going to get our border secured is the election of an Executive who actually wants it to get done, not the passing of some tough sounding legislation that in reality has no teeth. If you look at the details of Cruz’s amendment, it’s clear that there were plenty of holes in it that would have allowed its professed intent to be bypassed or ignored.
Likely never as long as the other pack of losers are on the stage and vying for their 15 minutes and the mods are hacks.
NAFTA history is an excellent economics lesson.
Reagan initially proposed it as a clean bill, simple capitalism, remove government taxes and regulations.
It never passed under Reagan. Under Bush, NAFTA became a Christmas tree with lobbyists of all stripes inserting more taxes and regulations that previously existed. Environmental regulations, labor regulations, and things totally unrelated to trade.
Clinton inherited the monstrosity. More lobbyists piled on. The string of Democrat Senators from WA, MT, ND, MN put in all kinds of anti-Canada energy and mining features.
When it passed, Free Trade was only in the name and no-where in the actual bill.
The result is that people became confused as to what free-trade really is.
Clinton’s Goldman-Sachs Secretary Rubin made NAFTA a joke. Rubin, with the help of IMF etal,destroyed the Mexican peso. Destruction of the Mexican financial system forced the Maquiladoras to flee Mexico for Asia.
Mexicans previously employed in a booming economy centered around the maquiladoras became unemployed.
Immigration to the US boomed (not due to Amnesty 8 years earlier) but due to jobs in the US and not in Mexico.
Because the Mexican economy collapsed, libertarian leaning Fox of PAN, the Republican party of Mexico won the presidency for the first time since the 1917 revolution. Fox was followed by the social Conservative PAN/Republican president Calderon. So Mexico had 12 years of Republican President. But now it is back to PRI/Chicago Democrat style rule.
How many people with pro and anti positions on all kinds of issues have any idea of the historical reality through which we live?
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