Losing America's Livelihood

The New American ^ | 1/26/04 | William Jasper

[ninenot]

Up to 14 million jobs … are at risk of being shipped overseas, two UC Berkeley economists said Wednesday in a research report.

— Contra Costa Times October 30, 2003

“We’re trying to move everything we can offshore,” HP [Hewlett-Packard] Services chief Ann Livermore told Wall Street analysts at a meeting Wednesday.

— Forbes, December 5, 2002

But as the US economy has slowly shifted toward service jobs, factory jobs have been steadily lost — in fact, in just the past 39 months, some 2.8 million have vanished.

— Christian Science Monitor December 11, 2003

Will America be a Third World country in 20 years?

— Paul Craig Roberts, columnist-economist, January 21, 2003

John Williams has been shrimping since 1960. Together with his wife, Kathleen, he operates three shrimp boats out of Tarpon Springs, Florida, north of Tampa Bay. He has weathered recessions, squalls and hurricanes. But he is now facing a tidal wave that has already buried thousands of his fellow shrimp fishermen. It is a tidal wave of foreign shrimp — nearly one billion pounds of it — crashing onto the U.S. market from Red China, Vietnam, Thailand, India and more than a dozen other countries.
Last year Williams’ outfit, Gulf Partners, Ltd., hauled in about one million pounds of shrimp. “We’ve produced about the same amount of product for the past several years,” he told The New American, “but the price we get has dropped dramatically. Our gross revenue has dropped more than 50 percent. But our operational costs haven’t gone down; in fact, they’ve gone up.” According to Williams, who is secretary-treasurer of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, an eight-state coalition of shrimpers, the value of U.S.-harvested shrimp was cut in half, from $1.25 billion in 2000 to $560 million in 2002. Employment at southern shrimp plants dropped 40 percent.
The plight of America’s shrimping industry is symptomatic of the dire consequences potentially awaiting every U.S. industry. It also starkly illustrates how suddenly an entire sector of our economy can be targeted and hollowed out, if not completely destroyed.
For generations, shrimping has provided a good livelihood for several hundred thousand Americans in Gulf Coast communities from Texas to Florida. Then, virtually overnight, foreign producers almost completely took over the U.S. market and now provide 88 percent of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. And it isn’t because the foreign shrimp industry is more efficient or produces a better quality product. The real tsunami hit U.S. shrimpers in 2002, when the European Union, Japan and Canada banned shrimp from China, Thailand and Vietnam because of detected residues of chloramphenicol, a potent, broad-spectrum antibiotic suspected of causing aplastic anemia and other blood conditions. China, Thailand and Vietnam unloaded their shrimp cargoes on the U.S. market instead, even though federal regulations prohibit use of chloramphenicol in food-producing animals and animal feed products.
Shrimp fishermen like John Williams are fuming. “Another year like this and there won’t be any domestic shrimp industry left to speak of,” Williams told The New American, noting that he recently saw a repossessed $800,000 shrimp boat sell for $100,000 at a bank auction. “This is just plain wrong when a whole industry of hardworking, taxpaying American citizens can be put out of business like this by foreign competitors subsidized by their governments.”
What Williams finds even more galling is that our government is subsidizing his foreign competitors, too! Yes, the same federal policymakers who have slapped domestic shrimp producers with onerous regulations, are not only helping his foreign shrimpers with incredible trade privileges, but actually aiding them with loans, grants and loan guarantees as well. Through assistance provided by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Export-Import Bank and other foreign aid programs, “we’re not only giving them loans and subsidies, but advanced technology too,” Williams notes with exasperation.
In 2002 and 2003, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) introduced the Shrimp Importation Financing Fairness Act, which aimed to stop some of these policies that are aiding the destruction of our domestic shrimping industry. The Paul bill would declare a moratorium on federal regulations that are making U.S. shrimping non-competitive and end funding of federal programs and international institutions that provide financial aid to countries that are dumping their subsidized shrimp on our market.
Rep. Paul’s legislation names seven countries — Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Brazil — as the main dumping culprits. But paragraphs 8 and 9 of Section 2 are the real shockers in the bill. Most Americans would be stunned to learn what our political leaders are doing with our tax dollars. Those two paragraphs read:

(8) Since 1999 our Government has provided more than $1,800,000,000 in financing and insurance for these foreign countries through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and our Government’s current exposure relative to these countries through our Export-Import Bank totals some $14,800,000,000, bringing the total subsidy of these countries by the United States to over $16,500,000,000.
(9) Many of these countries are not market-oriented, and hence their participation in United States-supported international finance regimes amounts to a direct subsidy by American taxpayers in the shrimping sector of their international competitors.

That’s $16.5 billion. With help like that, is it any wonder that these countries are able to produce the glut of shrimp that is destroying our shrimping industry?

Different Industries, Same Story

What do Gulf Coast shrimp boat owners like John Williams have in common with tool and die makers in the Great Lakes region, sawmill owners in the Pacific Northwest, Midwest farmers, Texas ranchers, New England manufacturers, or California software engineers and computer consultants? The same thing that their business counterparts throughout the U.S. in virtually every industry share: the threat of extinction due to perverse government policies that penalize American producers and reward their foreign competitors. They are caught in a vise of regulatory policies that have driven their operating costs far above those of their foreign competitors, and U.S. trade policies that encourage foreign producers to dump their products on the American market. On top of that, the U.S. government pours billions of U.S. tax dollars into subsidies for their foreign competitors!
America’s tool and die industry is in danger of going the way of our shrimping industry. Why should that concern the vast majority of Americans who are not directly involved in this industry? Because it is essential to all manufacturing. The industrial machinery that is used to manufacture almost everything — from cell phones, toothbrushes and Barbie dolls to computer chips, medical diagnostic equipment and fighter jet engines — begins with tool and die makers. We cannot expect to sustain a modern society, let alone defend ourselves and maintain our prosperity and technological leadership, without them. But our tool and die industry is rapidly disappearing. In Michigan, about 34,000 tooling jobs have vanished in the last five years, according to state labor data. The National Tooling & Machining Association (NTMA) reports that about 30 percent of the country’s toolmakers have gone out of business since 2000 and many more are expected to follow.
“Guys that were earning $20 an hour two years ago making very high-precision tools are now stocking shelves at Wal-Mart,” said NTMA President Matt Coffey in a recent Detroit Free Press article on the plight of the tooling industry. Coffey estimates that there are fewer than 10,000 U.S. tooling companies today, down from roughly 14,000 a few years ago. Which could mean that 140,000 tooling jobs have disappeared nationally since 2000. This trend will prove disastrous for our country, if allowed to continue.
“One of the advantages our manufacturers always have had is that the toolmakers were here and were good,” Peter Morici, former chief economist for the U.S. International Trade Commission, told the Free Press. “It undermines the whole manufacturing base in the long term if they go away,” he noted. “When all these little toolmakers go away, they don’t re-open. Their sons do something else and that skill is lost. The decline of toolmaking is like the growth of a desert. Once it starts, it’s tough to stop from spreading.”
Mr. Morici’s comments echo the alarm expressed by Bob Davis, general manager of Modern Die Systems Inc. of Elwood, Indiana, in an interview with The New American last year (“Your Job May Be Next!” March 10, 2003). “Our government has set it up so that it is unprofitable to manufacture here in the U.S.,” he told this writer. Mr. Davis noted the tremendous disincentives to production posed by taxes, regulations, employee medical insurance, and labor union obstruction — the combined effects of which are driving many businesses into the ground, or out of the country. We are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. “Our country’s entire production capability will be stripped bare if this continues,” Davis said. “And with it will go all of the jobs and small and medium-sized independent businesses that are the bedrock of the American middle class.”

Shooting Ourselves in the Foot

America’s small- and medium-sized businesses traditionally have been a vital source of jobs, as well as a wellspring of creativity, invention and innovation that has propelled us to global economic and technological dominance. Limited government interference in the marketplace combined with a general acceptance of Christian morality was the key that unleashed the American entrepreneurial spirit and gave rise to our prosperity and the development of a large middle class. But the free enterprise system that made our economic miracle possible is being suffocated in a socialist swamp of regulatory red tape. U.S. regulatory costs — especially from regulations allegedly aimed at environmental and safety risks — are particularly hazardous to small and medium businesses.
The true extent of that hazard is amply exposed in an important study released in December 2003 by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The comprehensive NAM study significantly noted that “compliance costs for regulations can be regarded as the ‘silent killer’ of manufacturing competitiveness.” The report revealed that the regulatory, tax and mandate burden is adding at least a staggering 22.4 percent (nearly $5 per hour worked) to the cost of doing business in the U.S. relative to our major foreign competitors. To appreciate the magnitude of this burden, consider that these external costs imposed by government are more than twice the average direct labor costs of U.S. manufacturers, which are 11 percent.
NAM President Jerry Jasinowski noted that the NAM study documents that “we are essentially shooting ourselves in the foot competitively by making it too expensive to make products in America.” What’s more, the regulatory agencies have negated many of the impressive gains in production efficiency of the past decade. “Taken together,” notes Jasinowski, “external non-production costs have offset a large part of the 54 percent increase in productivity achieved since 1990.”
“U.S. manufacturing has demonstrated the ability to overcome pure wage differentials with trading partners through innovation, capital investment and productivity,” said James Berges, President of Emerson, a St. Louis-based manufacturer of industrial equipment. “But when the additional external costs described in this [NAM] paper are piled on, the task becomes unmanageable, even in the best companies.”
In fact, the piling on can be worse than unmanageable; it is often fatal. Thousands of small and medium businesses already have been slain by this silent killer and many more will succumb to its deadly effects. (See sidebar.)

Driving Jobs Offshore

Even large corporations cannot absorb the crushing U.S. regulatory burden for long without losing competitiveness vis-à-vis foreign producers. However, large corporations have options not readily available to many smaller businesses: They can more easily move their manufacturing and processing operations overseas, outsource many of their service sectors to cheaper foreign providers, and import cheaper foreign employees under various visa programs. And that is precisely what they are doing, in huge quantum jumps that defy any historic comparison.
America is in the midst of an enormous job outsourcing boom that gives every indication of accelerating. In addition to the continued massive hemorrhaging of America’s manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that began two decades ago, we now have a huge and growing crisis involving the flight of millions of hi-tech and white-collar jobs. If appropriate action is not taken to address the factors propelling this massive exodus, it is not an exaggeration to say that America is headed toward has-been status. A much-quoted study by Forrester Research Inc. last year predicted that at least 3.3 million white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries by 2015.
An October 2003 report by researchers from the University of California-Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics suggests that the Forrester predictions may be extremely conservative. According to the Berkeley researchers, as many as 14 million service jobs are at risk of outsourcing.
The authors of the Berkeley report, Ashok Deo Bardhan and Cynthia A. Kroll, note that “the recent boom in outsourcing is causing growing apprehension in the U.S. that this may well be the largest out-migration of non-manufacturing jobs in the history of the U.S. economy.” (Emphasis added.)
Many of these jobs are going to India. By tabulating reports in Indian newspapers and business journals for the month of July 2003 alone, Bardhan and Kroll reported that they found “25,000 to 30,000 new outsourcing related jobs announced by U.S. firms. In the same month, there were 2,087 mass layoff actions carried out by U.S. employers resulting in a loss of 226,435 jobs.”
“The jobs being created in India and elsewhere are in a wide range of service sectors,” say Bardhan and Kroll, “such as geographic information systems services for insurance companies, stock market research for financial firms, medical transcription services, legal online database research, and data analysis for consulting firms, in addition to customer service call centers, payroll and other back-office related activities.”
In addition to the millions of U.S. jobs that soon could be leaving for India, China, Russia and other offshore destinations, there is the added threat to American workers from imported labor. Hundreds of thousands of American information technology (IT) workers have lost their jobs in the past several years to foreign replacements through the L-1 and H-1B visa programs. American software engineers, computer designers, technicians, electrical engineers and other hi-tech employees are being replaced by workers from India, Pakistan, the Middle East and China.
No other country in the world has adopted such reckless and suicidal immigration policies. Incredibly, the Bush administration is advocating an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens that dwarfs the amnesty proposals of Bill Clinton. Moreover, President George Bush and many members of Congress enthusiastically favor more outsourcing, more L-1 and H1-B visas, and more immigration overall. At a December 15, 2003 press conference, President Bush stated: “I have constantly said that we need to have an immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee.” (Emphasis added.) There is virtually an unlimited supply of willing employees worldwide who would be more than happy to immigrate to the U.S., but how is that going to help put Americans back to work?
It won’t, says Jan Frelick, who has experienced the outsourcing and foreign “temps” up close and personal. Mrs. Frelick worked for computer giant Hewlett-Packard in the San Francisco Bay area but transferred to HP’s facility in the Sacramento area in 1990. As computer security administrator for her division and a member of the division’s business control team, she had a ringside seat from which she watched HP outsource droves of jobs. “Then, on August 24, 2001,” Frelick told The New American, “it happened to me. I wasn’t ‘downsized’ — the term they deceptively use — I was replaced. So were almost all other employees in many units. The IT Support Desk, for instance, which previously was staffed completely by Americans, is now staffed by people from India.”

False Solutions, Toxic Antidotes

The cheery advocates of globalization blithely dismiss concerns about massive job losses, the wholesale gutting of our economy and the flight of entire industries from our shores. Their mantra-like response is that the huge exodus of jobs, manufacturing, and technology is actually a good thing representing the elimination of obsolete remnants of the “old economy,” to make way for the higher value, cutting-edge technologies and jobs of the new global economy. These glib advocates are dealing in voodoo economics and globaloney social science. The jobs and technology we are outsourcing do not have to do with genuinely obsolete technology like buggy whips and whale oil lamps, as the globalists assert. They have to do with the production of real wealth, real products and real services that are essential to sustaining a modern, prosperous society.
Where are the wonderful new jobs the globalists keep promising? Hundreds of thousands of skilled and experienced white collar and blue collar workers — engineers, computer programmers, toolmakers, accountants and technicians — are unemployed, or have been reduced to taking near-minimum-wage jobs. Political forces, not market forces, are driving these devastating changes. As we have noted above, it is perverse government policies that are responsible for making American companies uncompetitive, subsidizing our foreign competition, outsourcing jobs and flooding our job market with immigrants and “temporary” foreign workers. America has gone through economic downturns before and seen periods of high unemployment. But the economy has always rebounded and the jobs have returned as businesses have revved up production. However, that is not going to happen with the thousands of businesses and the millions of jobs we have been losing.
The Bush administration and its allies in Congress — Republican and Democrat — have given no indication of reversing our disastrous course. Indeed they are proposing supposed solutions that would prove to be even more calamitous. They are saddling U.S. businesses with even more oppressive mandates and regulatory overkill, while pushing for more job outsourcing, more temporary worker visas, far greater immigration quotas, an amnesty for illegal aliens and the removal of virtually all tariffs.
Moreover, the president has staked out 2004 to push for completion of the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement, a plan to merge the countries of the Western Hemisphere into a European Union-style common market. However, like the original European Common Market, the FTAA is much more than a trade pact. It has been designed to evolve into a supranational regional government, but in a much shorter time span than it took the Europeans to arrive at that stage. Like the EU, the FTAA’s central executive authority would be strongly socialistic and would gradually claim the power to overrule the national laws and constitutions of its member states. The FTAA Declarations, Plans of Action and Charter drafts call for regional “integration,” in accordance with the charters of the UN and the World Trade Organization. The FTAA would establish a bureaucracy of agencies to monitor, and eventually dictate, regional health, education, labor, environment, foreign aid, immigration and security policies. Like the EU, the FTAA is set up to acquire, gradually, full legislative, executive and judicial powers. As such, it is plainly a power grab disguised in the garb of a trade agreement.
The most frightening aspect of the proposed FTAA is the fact that its realization would spell the end to our national sovereignty and sweep aside constitutional impediments to the concentration of tyrannical power. But the more immediately felt effects would include a rapid dissolving of our borders and an enormous deluge of immigrants (both legal and illegal) from Latin America and the Caribbean. At the same time, billions of dollars of agricultural products, textiles, manufactured goods and other products will flood our markets devastating every industry sector in the same way that our domestic shrimp industry has been wrecked.
These so-called solutions are manifestly suicidal. If America is to be spared sinking into Third World status, we must completely reverse course. That means awakening and energizing a minority of the American public sufficient to compel Congress to: abolish the socialist regulatory monster that is destroying our country’s competitiveness; take back control of our borders and enforce sensible, reduced immigration; end all U.S. taxpayer subsidies to foreign competitors; and defeat the FTAA. It’s really very simple. Not easy, but simple.

[GingisK]

I don't hire experts, I hire motivated people.

This works to a degree, depending on the nature of the work. A motivated person with little or no knowledge of a high tech field will not produce the same results of someone who is truly an expert, particularly in an esoteric field. There just isn't enough time in a single person's lifetime to reinvent the technologies. Every field has its experts; and, the scope of their knowledge and skill is often breathtaking. You have to match the job with the appropriate person. I have a BS degree, but have done the computer groundwork for seven Master's degrees for other people. Go figure. On the other hand, I have seen work firsthand that no amount of eagerness would accomplish. The end product was the result of highly educated (and highly motivated) people in multiple fields working long hours for years.

For your own enterprise, I wish you the best of luck. Judging from your responses, I'd bet that luck has little to do with any success you have or might enjoy in the future. It is always good to hear of someone who is successful by the sweat of his brow and product of his own mind. Hire American. Hire smart and skilled people. We're damn good, and no citizen of some third world country will keep us running should times turn bad.

[hedgetrimmer]

I spent last year trying to get investment in a robotics project. Unsuccessfully. Japan is investing enormously in robotics right now, but the United States venture capitalists do not have an interest in the area.

[Protagoras]

You are in need of a remedial economics course and real history. I suggest you spend some time in the non fiction aisle.

It seem you have been stuck reading fiction.

[FITZ]

Don't expect a repeat or a continuation of the American Industrial Revolution.

Industry and manufacturing are going on --- there is a continuation --- but it was decided that the continuation would go on outside of this country.

[FITZ]

The problem with the manufacture of robots so that every American could have their own robot is that the Chinese and Indians could manufacture them much more cheaply. A robot is going to be nothing but some mechanical parts and computerized circuits ---- pretty cheap to mass produce in China where other things like that are produced. We've shut down our factories, assembly lines, tool and die shops etc.

[ElCapitanAmerica]

If the president doesn't address this issue, which is not only about jobs, but it's also ultimately a threat to the security and technical lead of our nation, I'm left with no choice but to "outsource" my vote to the other party.

They might not solve these problems, but oh well too bad, maybe the Dems will be cheaper to buy once they have the executive. That is after all, the purpose of outsourcing, cheaper labor not quality, right. Seems to fit here.

[gonzo]

"...John Williams has been shrimping since 1960. Together with his wife, Kathleen, he operates three shrimp boats out of Tarpon Springs, Florida, north of Tampa Bay..."

True! I see them in my backyard.

Deal Hammered Out On Shrimper Relief By MIKE SALINERO msalinero@tampatrib.com Published: Jan 9, 2004

TALLAHASSEE - Florida shrimpers and state lawmakers reached agreement Thursday on how to spend $7 million in federal relief money to help the beleaguered domestic shrimp industry.

The Legislative Budget Commission approved a plan that calls for $4.6 million in direct payments to about 1,100 shrimpers, including those from Alabama and other states with landings in Florida.

The commission also agreed to industry requests that $1.2 million of the federal money go to a marketing campaign. Commission members slashed the marketing money at their last meeting in October.

Congress appropriated $17.5 million in March for the South Atlantic and Gulf shrimping industries. The money is to provide relief for an industry battered by less-expensive imports. China, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil and other countries have captured 88 percent of the U.S. market by selling low-cost, pond-raised shrimp. At the same time, domestic shrimp prices dropped 40 percent over the last six years.

``Imports have killed the industry. We need all we can get from marketing,'' said John Williams, a Tarpon Springs shrimper and secretary/ treasurer of the Southern Shrimp Alliance.

Legislators have been skeptical that a $1.2 million marketing campaign can get consumers to choose Florida shrimp.

``When was the last time you were in Red Lobster and asked if they had Florida shrimp?'' asked commission chairman Sen. Ken Pruitt, R- Port St. Lucie.

Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, said a $1.2 million shrimp campaign will be like a ``ball lost in the weeds'' competing for public attention against multimillion-dollar advertising efforts.

But shrimpers were united in the need to market the product.

``That will be $1.2 million more than we've ever had before,'' Williams told Lee. ``It's a beginning.''

Joanne McNeely, who heads up seafood and aquaculture marketing for the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said the agency has already had success with small shrimp campaigns targeted to groceries. Large grocery stores often have three or more types of shrimp, McNeely said. Florida shrimp is typically more expensive because it costs more to harvest from the sea.

McNeely said many consumers are willing to pay the extra money when they see the department's ``Florida Fresh'' identifier in grocery advertisements. During these promotions, stores have seen sales of Florida shrimp increase 500 to 2,000 percent.

``When we tell them it's Florida, they're willing to pay a little more to have that ocean flavor,'' she said.

Shrimpers said they do not plan to bash the foreign products, even though they believe the sea-harvested shrimp are healthier. Williams, the Tarpon Springs shrimper, said the European Union, Canada and Japan have banned shrimp imports from China and Thailand because of heavy use of animal antibiotics to prevent disease in the densely packed shrimp ponds. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration typically checks about 2 percent of imports for chemical contamination, Williams said.

In return for restoring the marketing money, Pruitt insisted that smaller shrimp outfits pay less out of their relief payments toward the marketing campaign than larger harvesters. A shrimper who lands less than 200,000 pounds over three years would get $4,350 instead of $3,500.

Remaining money will go to wholesale dealers, reward compliance with federal regulations to protect sea turtles from shrimp nets and cover administrative costs.

Mike Salinero can be reached at (850) 222-8382.

BREAK

The problem in shrimping in Florida is the easy availability of foreign farm-raised shrimp. The EPA and other gummint agencies have effectively stopped any shrimp-farming here, and they're going after chicken-farming and beef-farming next! (OK, I was kidding - they're already EPA'd up-the-ass.)

Here's some REAL facts to upset y'all: Jeb Bush refuses to allow off-shore drilling for gas and oil in Florida waters. Off-shore gas/oil platforms generate huge amounts of shrimp and fish. There has never been a serious accident involving gas/oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The USA is increasingly dependant on foreign oil and gas, and the Gulf of Mexico seems to have as much petroleum as the Middle East. This list goes on and on...

Tarpon Springs (my home!) is also famous for those cheesy sponge-diving movies of the '50s, with guys getting caught in giant underwater clams and such. I really enjoy the sight of the occasional sponge-boat coming in with its' catch displayed.

Paying gummint money (OUR TAX MONIES) to the shrimpers is a short-term helper, but it only helps them go-out-of-business. REAL gummint help would be a philosophy that fills their nets with their own well-earned money.

As I said before, I live on the Anclotte River in Tarpon Springs, one mile from the Gulf. It's pretty much where I wanted to wind-up. No ice or snow! What has happenned to my Industry is something that I should have seen coming, but I missed. I don't look for some Government subsidy to save my Industry, but I'll take anything that gets my employees kids through college. I owe them that.

There is so much opportunity available to us as a Nation, and our own Government bureaucracy is killing it. < /rant >..............FRegards

[Texasforever]

Here is what you and the John Birch Society were saying about Ronald Reagan exactly 20 years ago

Anti-Elitist Reversals

The history of that period shows that Ronald Reagan exploited this issue very capably. On February 26th, in New Hampshire where the matter had become the deciding issue in the primary, voters gave him a lopsided victory. His strong showing and the correspondingly weak showing by George Bush delighted the nation's conservatives and set a pattern for future victories that carried Mr. Reagan all the way to the White House.

But something else happened on February 26, 1980 that should have raised many more eyebrows than it did. On the very day that Ronald Reagan convincingly won the nation's first primary, he replaced his campaign manager with longtime Council on Foreign Relations member William J. Casey. Mr. Casey served as the Reagan campaign manager for the balance of the campaign, and was later rewarded with an appointment as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The selection of William J. Casey in the strategically important position of campaign manager was highly significant. He is a New York lawyer who served the Nixon Administration in several positions including Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. In those two posts especially, he gained a reputation as a crusader for U.S. taxpayer-financed aid and trade with communist nations.

During this same period, while serving as an official of the State Department, Casey declared in a public speech given in Garden City, New York, that he favored U.S. policies leading to interdependence among nations and to the sacrificing of our nation's independence. (27) These attitudes are thoroughly in agreement with the long-term objectives of the Insiders, but are not at all consistent with the public positions taken by Mr. Reagan. But very few made note of the Casey appointment because very few knew anything about Mr. Casey.

Snip

Rockefeller Ties In April 1980, Mr. Reagan told an interviewer from the Christian Science Monitor (28) that he would shun the directions of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. But George Bush, who had recently resigned both from the Trilateral Commission and from the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, could not shake the stigma of his Insider connection.

In Florida, understanding about the Trilateral Commission led to widespread use of a political advertisement which claimed, "The same people who gave you Jimmy Carter want now to give you George Bush." (29) An identical ad appeared in Texas. The Reagan bandwagon, propelled in part by its attack on the Insiders, began to score one primary victory after another.

Eventually, Ronald Reagan convincingly won the Republican nomination. Conservatives across the nation were delighted That is, they were delighted until he shocked his supporters by selecting George Bush as his running mate. George Bush was the very epitome of the Insider Establishment type that had made so many of these people strong Reagan backers in the first place. That night, at the Republican convention, the word "betrayal" was in common usage.

Ronald Reagan had repeatedly and publicly promised that he would pick a running mate who shared his well-known conservative views. But, of all the Republicans available, he picked the man who was the darling of the Rockefellers. Nor was the Rockefeller-Bush relationship any secret.

Campaign finance information had already revealed that prior to December 31,1979, the Bush for President campaign had received individual $1,000 contributions (the highest amount allowed by law) from David Rockefeller, Edwin Rockefeller, Helen Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, Mary Rockefeller, Godfrey Rockefeller, and several other Rockefeller relatives and employees.

Staunch Reagan supporters frantically tried to stop the Bush nomination. But political considerations quickly forced them to go along. One after another, they began to state that their man was still at the top of the ticket. "It was Reagan-Bush, not Bush-Reagan," they said. But all had to admit that the issue of Trilateral domination of the Carter Administration could hardly be used with a Trilateralist veteran like Bush on the ticket.

Snip

For the critically important post of White House Chief of Staff, Mr. Reagan named James Baker III. The White House Chief of Staff determines who gets to see the President, what reading material will appear on his desk, and what his policy options might be on any given situation. But James Baker had fought against Ronald Reagan as the campaign manager for George Bush in 1980, and as a campaign staffer for Gerald Ford in 1976. He is a confirmed liberal who was an opponent of the philosophy enunciated by Mr. Reagan during the 1980 campaign. In his White House post, he leads a team of like-minded men who have virtually isolated the President from the many conservatives who supported his election bid.

Snip

Policy Reversals As President, Mr. Reagan has been given the image of a tough anti-communist and a frugal budget-cutter. But the images do not hold up under close scrutiny. Only one year after taking office, he acquiesced in the taxpayer-funded bailout of Poland's indebtedness to large international banks. Even worse, he skirted the law which mandates that any nation in such financial difficulty must be formally declared in default before the U.S. government could assume its debts. What made this action doubly revealing was that it occurred at the very time that thousands of Polish citizens had been incarcerated in a typical communist crackdown against even a slight semblance of freedom.

During 1981 and 1982, Ronald Reagan personally signed authorizations for the U.S. Export-Import Bank to finance nuclear steam turbines for communist Rumania and power generation equipment and a steel plant for communist China. (32) Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars are being provided for the industrialization of these Red tyrannies.

Also, Reagan Administration officials announced plans to sell arms to Red China; they told anti-communist businessmen in El Salvador that the U.S. would oppose efforts by any anti-communist Salvadorans to gain control of their country; and these same Administration officials refused to honor a pledge to supply Free Chinese on Taiwan with the fighter planes deemed necessary by the Chinese for defense.

Snip

More Reagan Duplicity At the halfway point of the Reagan four-year Presidential term, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office forecast budget deficits in the $150 billion range for the Reagan-directed fiscal years 1982, 1984 and 1985.34 Others insisted that the deficits would be even higher. The largest deficit in the nation's history, prior to the Reagan Administration, was $66 billion during the Ford years. Budget deficits, of course, translate into inflation, high interest rates, business slowdown, higher taxes, and unemployment. If federal spending were no more than federal revenue, if we had the benefit of a balanced budget in other words, some of these problems would be far less severe

. Shortly after he took office, Mr. Reagan twisted the arms of conservative senators and congressmen to get them to raise the ceiling on the national debt. Had he insisted on no further increases, the spiralling growth of government could have been checked. But instead, he used his influence to authorize more debt. Then he did the very same thing again eight months later, and again in 1982. As a result, interest on the debt alone grew to $117 billion for fiscal 1982.

In his State of the Union address on January 26, 1982, President Reagan again appealed to conservative Americans when he stated

: Raising taxes won't balance the budget. It will encourage more government spending and less private investment. Raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs.... So, I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year.

One result of the failure of the Reagan Administration to stand by the philosophy which brought the President to the White House is that conservatives everywhere have been blamed for the nation's woes. The congressional elections of 1982 amounted to a significant setback for the entire conservative movement. It seemed to many voters that the conservative program had been tried and found wanting. The truth is that the conservative program has yet to be tried. And the reason why it has not been tried is that the Insiders who surround Ronald Reagan are still in control.

Snip

Will America continue on a path which amounts to fiscal suicide? Will our government continue to build and support communism everywhere, while it works simultaneously to destroy the few remaining anti-communist nations? The John Birch Society wants to put an end to Insider control of the policies of this nation. If we are to succeed, the active help of many more Americans is needed in a massive educational crusade. Whether or not you decide to help will count heavily toward whether the future for this nation will be enslavement or freedom

. The Insiders are hoping that you will do nothing. But true Americans everywhere are asking for and counting on your help. The best kind of help you can give is active support for and membership in the John Birch Society.

[meadsjn]

If this is true, our so-called conservative President has broken the oath he took on inauguration day with his hand on the Bible!

He swore before God and man to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States and now is actively working to destroy it!

He most certainly did not! He changed the oath, omitting any mention of the Constitution. He did mention "upholding" or "enforcing" the "laws", which is another matter entirely, since most of our gazillion laws are un-Constitutional.

[gonzo]

"...I love a good crawfish etouffe..."

It's still a bug, Mama. The taste is the bug, not what it's grown in.

You can grow perfect roses in pure cat-manure, which is probably the only reason for allowing cats to live, but no longer under my windows at night!................FRegards

[EagleMamaMT]

That may be true, but I still don't believe it's a good idea to eat foods raised in human waste. There are too many chances for parasitic and bacterial contamination. I always read labels in the grocery stores to see where the produce and foods are raised before I buy them.

I will agree with you about cats! :) I have one but she's the only one in the world I actually like. I guess I'm more of a "dog person" instead of a "cat person".

[Cronos]

It's no longer a matter of letting the Third World catch up; it's now an issue of how long it'll be until they leapfrog us.

That's quite wrong. Our competition in most fields is exclusively Asian -- from Eastern, South and South-East Asia. I don't see Africa or South America producing any serious competition. The Asian economies that were supposed to leapfrog us are way behind in terms of GDP per capita -- the US has the second highest GDP per capita at $33,000. Japan is way behind and the Europeans are even further behind. India and China's GDP per capita? Don't make me laugh. They know it themselves and have put conservative targets of 2020 to 2050 to reach developed nation status. That's only getting to being a 'developed' nation, forget about being serious competition to the US. the US was until recently the largest exporter of goods in the world. We got overtaken recently and NOT by China, NOT by India, NOT by Japan, but by Germany. That's right, GERMANY is taking away our manufacturing edge. We're still on top in exporting of services and our share in that is GROWING. Our GDP is GROWING. If this economic indicators are pointing UP, why is there so much of doom and gloom? It's just like people are getting so complacent in their jobs they want jobs for life -- well Japan showed us what that can lead to. Someone in an earlier post asked for a level playing field -- somethign like taxes, tariffs, union rules, eh?

[Cronos]

I'm not voting for W. I'm voting either Constitution Party or Libertarian.

That's splitting the conservative vote, so we have 4 years of Dem rule (followed by Hil in 2008 so that means possibly 12 years of dem rule). Do you really want that? Vote Bush.

[Mamzelle]

Shrimp--

Notice significantly cheaper shrimp at the markets? No?

These low prices are not being passed along to the consumer. Shrimp is not any cheaper at Red Lobster or at Krogers.

Slap a tariff on the sea bugs!

[spacewarp]

First off, why would I vote Bush? He lost my vote. Second, if the "conservative vote" was together and marching in lock-step for Bush, we would get more of the same. Bigger and bigger government. It's time for the conservatives to wake up and realize that in 4 years, we're going to be facing choices. Today, we don't really face much of one. Bush is going to win. Big. Even without my vote.

What we're facing in 4 years, with Cheney repeatedly saying he won't run, is for the first time since LBJ decided to not run, a dual open primary from both the majors. If the Republicans see the Conservatives as a "given" then they have no need to be conservative. After all, where else are they going to go? Well, given a choice, I'd rather be in a party that believes in the same principles I do. Not one that believes in party first.

Paul

[ninenot]

Agreed. Some BIG fights here in WIsconsin over prison labor--usually won by the manufacturers, not the prison system.

[Paul Ross]

More jobs are lost to protectionism than creative destruction. And the latter creates jobs, the former cannot.

B'zzzt. Incorrect. You need to revisit history. The Republicans had it right in 1896, and those who have learned from history (which obviously excludes the CATO-ites) still embrace protectionism...certainly the Chinese do.

---

Republican Party Platform.

Adopted at St. Louis, June 16, 1896.

The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their representatives in National Convention, appealing for the popular and historical justification of their claims to the matchless achievements of thirty years of Republican rule, earnestly and confidently address themselves to the awakened intelligence, experience, and conscience of their countrymen in the following declaration of facts and principles:

For the first time since the Civil War the American people have witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor and disaster. In administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensable revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund, pawned American credit to alien syndicates, and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule. In the broad effect of its policy it has precipitated panic, blighted industry and trade with prolonged depression, closed factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise and crippled American production, while stimulating foreign production for the American market. Every consideration of public safety and individual interest demands that the Government shall be rescued from the hands of those who have shown themselves incapable of conducting it without disaster at home and dishonor abroad, and shall be restored to the party which for thirty years administred it with unequalled success and prosperity. And in this connection we heartily endorse the wisdom, patriotism and the success of the Administration of President Harrison.

Allegiance to Protection Renewed.
We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of Protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer; it upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign demand and prices; it diffuses general thrift and founds the strength of all on the strength of each. In its reasonable application it is just, far and impartial, equally opposed to foreign control and domestic monopoly, to sectional discrimination and individual favoritism.

We denounce the present Democratic tariff as sectional, injurious to the public credit and destructive to business enterprise. We demand such an equitable tariff on foreign imports which come into competition with American products, as will not only furnish adequate revenue for the necessary expenses of the Government, but will protect American labor from degradation to the wage level of other lands. We are not pledged to any particular schedules. The question of rates is a practical question, to be governed by the conditions of the time and of production; the ruling and uncompromising principle is the protection and development of American labor and industry. The country demands a right settlement, and then it wants rest.

Reciprocity Demanded.
We believe the repeal of the reciprocity arrangements negotiated by the last Republican Administration was a national calamity, and we demand their renewal and extension on such terms as will equalize our trade with other nations, remove the restrictions which now obstruct the sale of American products in the ports of other countries, and secure enlarged markets for the products of our farms, forests and factories.

Protection and reciprocity are twin measures of Republican policy and go hand in hand. Democratic rule has recklessly struck down both, and both must be re-established. Protection for what we produce; free admission for the necessaries of life which we do not produce; reciprocal agreements of mutual interest which gain open markets for us in return for our open market to others. Protection builds up domestic industry and trade and secures our own market for ourselves; reciprocity builds up foreign trade and finds an outlet for our surplus.

We condemn the present Administration for not keeping faith with the sugar producers of this country; the Republican party favors such protection as will lead to the production on American soil of all the sugar which the American people use and for which they pay other countries more than $100,000,000 annually. To all our products--to those of the mine and the field, as well as those of the shop and the factory--to hemp, to wool, the product of the great industry of sheep husbandry, as well as to the finished woolens of the mill--we promise the most ample protection.

Merchant Marine.
We favor restoring the early American policy of discriminating duties for the upbuilding of our merchant marine and the protection of our shipping in the foreign carrying trade, so that American ships--the product of American labor, employed in American shipyards, sailing under the Stars and Stripes, and manned, officered and owned by Americans--can regain the carrying of our foreign commerce.

The Currency Plank.
The Republican party is unreservedly for sound money. It caused the enactment of the law providing for the resumption of specie payment in 1879; since then every dollar has been as good as gold.

We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote; and, until such agreement can be obtained, the existing gold standard must be preserved. All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolable the obligations of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth.

Justice to Veterans.
The veterans of the Union armies deserve and should receive fair treatment and generous recognition. Whenever practicable, they should be given the preference in the matter of employment, and they are entitled to the enactment of such laws as are best calculated to secure the fulfillment of the pledges made to them in the dark days of the country's peril. We denouce the practice in the Pension Bureau, so recklessly and unjustly carried on by the present administration, of reducing pensions and arbitrarily dropping names from the rolls, as deserving the severest condemnation of the American people.

Foreign Relations.
Our foreign policy should be at all times firm, vigorous and dignified, and all our interests in the Western hemisphere carefully watched and guarded. The Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and no foreign Power should be permitted to interfere with them; the Nicaragua Canal should be built, owned, and operated by the United States, and, by the purchase of the Danish Islands, we should secure a propert and much-needed naval station in the West Indies.

The massacres in Armenia have aroused the deep sympathy and just indignation of the American people, and we believe that the United States should exercise all the influence it can properly exert to bring these atrocities to an end. In Turkey, American residents have been exposed to the gravest dangers, and American property destroyed. There, and everywhere, American citizens and American property must be absolutely protected at all hazards and at any cost.

We reassert the Monroe Doctrine in its full extent, and we reaffirm the right of the United States to give the doctrine effect by responding to the appeals of any American State for friendly intervention in case of European encroachment. We have not interfered, and shall not interfere, with the existing possessions of any European Power in this hemisphere, but those possessions must not, on any pretext, be extended. We hopefully look forward to the eventual withdrawal of the European Powers from this hemisphere, and to the ultimate union of all the English-speaking part of the continent by the free consent of its inhabitants.

Suffering Cuba.
From the hour of achieving their own independence, the people of the United States have regarded with sympathy the struggles of other American peoples to free themselves from European domination. We watch with deep and abiding interest the heroic battle of the Cuban patriots against cruelty and oppression, and our best hopes go out for the full success of their determined contest for liberty. The Government of Spain, having lost control of Cuba, and being unable to protect the property or lives of resident American citizens, or to comply with its treaty obligations, we believe that the Government of the United States should actively use its influence and good offices to restore peace and give independence to the island.

The Navy.
The peace and security of the Republic, and the maintenance of its rightful influence among the nations of the earth, demand a naval power commensurate with its position and responsibility. We therefore favor the continued enlargement of the navy and a complete system of harbor and seacoast defenses.

Foreign Immigration.
For the protection of the equality of our American citizenship and of the wages of our workingmen against the fatal competition of low-priced labor, we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can neither read nor write.

Civil Service.
The Civil Service law was placed on the statute book by the Republican party, which has always sustained it, and we renew our repeated declarations that it shall be thoroughly and honestly enforced and extended wherever practicable.

Free Ballot.
We demand that every citizen of the United States shall be allowed to cast one free and unrestricted ballot, and that such ballot shall be counted and returned as cast.

Lynchings.
We proclaim our unqualified condemnation of the uncivilized and barbarous practices well known as lynching and killing of human beings, suspected or charged with crime, without process of law.

National Arbitration.
We favor the creation of a National Board of Arbitration to settle and adjust differences which may arise betwen employers and employed engaged in inter-State commerce.

Homesteads.
We believe in an immediate return to the free homestead policy of the Republican party, and urge the passage by Congress of the satisfactory free homestead measure which has already passed the House and is now pending in the Senate.

Territories.
We favor the admission of the remaining Territories at the earliest practicable date, having due regard to the interests of the people of the Territories and of the United States. All the Federal officers appointed for the Territories should be selected from bona fide residents thereof, and the right of self-government should be accorded as far as practicable.

We believe the citizens of Alaska should have representation in the Congress of the United States, to the end that needful legislation may be intelligently enacted.

Temperance and the Rights of Women.
We sympathize with all wise and legitimate efforts to lessen and prevent the evils of intemperance and promote morality.

The Republican party is mindful of the rights and interests of women. Protection of American industries includes equal opportunities, equal pay for equal work, and protection to the home. We favor the admission of women to wider spheres of usefulness, and welcome their co-operation in rescuing the country from Democratic and Populistic mismanagement and misrule.

Such are the principles and policies of the Republican party. By these principles we will abide, and these policies we will put into execution. We ask for them the considerate judgment of the American people. Confident alike in the history of our great party and in the justice of our cause, we present our platform and our candidates in the full assurance that the election will bring victory to the Republican party and prosperity to the people of the United States.

Homepage

© 1997, Rebecca Edwards, Vassar College

[Regulator]

Or Cosmetology

Or Biotech. "Seize the Opportunity", as a famous guy whose ranch is already paid for recently said.

[Protagoras]

Nonsense

[gonzo]

"...but I still don't believe it's a good idea to eat foods raised in human waste..."

Well, the Chinese have been using human manure for thousands of years and they're down to 1.3 - 1.2 billion people who can't drive cars properly.

Actually, we use it too, after it comes out of the waste treatment plant. It's just another fertilizer called 'NA-CHURS'.............FRegards