Oh please. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate in 1993. NAFTA didn't even have to come up for a vote if the Democrats didn't want it to.
Posted on 04/09/2004 12:22:04 PM PDT by Havoc
Dear Mr. President,
You don't know me, nor do I expect you to. But I'm one of those voices out here in the ether that actually did vote for you. I'm not one of those seminar caller types nor a Democrat pretending at being a republican to subvert the party faithful in dishonest fashion because their ideas aren't popular enough to win them anything. No, I'm a life-long republican who cherishes the memory of Ronald Reagan and who thought highly of you right up to the time you sunk a knife in my back economically.
Sir I understand it's a hard job being president. I also understand that in IT my job causes me to have to think on my feet and respond to an everchanging environment just to keep it. And while I was busting my behind for a company I happened to love doing a job I happened to love, you decided it's a good thing to do an endrun around equal protection and hand my job to a Mexican worker at 1/3 of the rate I'm being paid. Sir, Retail employees get paid more than that Full time and they're earning below the poverty level. The Job I hold for the moment requires a lot of hard work and problem solving skills, it requires good customer care skills, and it requires a long knowledge of Computers and software I didn't get from a degree but from practical experience.
I worked long and hard for years looking for the break that would get me in the door with my current employer. And I currently have a carreer with them. Or had, rather. I've worked for EDS for nearly 4 years. I will lose my job just short of that anniversary or just after it depending on how the breakdown happens.
I have a handicap that keeps me from driving a car. Not an official handicap, because it's so rare a problem that 1/2 of 1% of Americans have the condition so it doesn't rate being called what it is. I'm a blip on the screen. But, it means I have to live close to my employer and sometimes rely on others to help me get things done. I've lost everything and put my life back together 3 times in 15 years sir. And having just accomplished it again after 4 years with my employer, your policy has killed any protection I might have otherwise enjoyed from having my job destroyed by foriegn competition. And it puts me right back on the brink again. Sir, if I don't stand a chance of winning, it isn't competition - it's fish in a barrel. Where is my equal protection under the law?
The "competition" didn't get hired because of race or creed; but, because of national origin. They got hired because their cost of living is low enough that they can be paid sub-poverty wages to do my job. They are taking my job because they aren't constrained by the laws we have in this country to protect us and preserve our liberties. Lower cost of living, and no laws to constrain them. See, we used to have what was called ANTI-DUMPING laws on the books before Nafta to prevent the subversion of our economy by those who would attempt to compete on an unfair basis and put American firms out of business. We aren't a global economy, the globe is not the United States of America. They don't respect our rights, our Constitution, our laws or ourselves. The average citizen of the world might; but, we aren't dealing with them, we're dealing with the leaders who have their boots on the neck of the citizen of the world.
It seems today that I have to be a Mexican to get a fair shake in America. There are some 8 million of them here illegally as a tax on our system and working here taking jobs that Americans can do; but, which apparently, nobody wants to offer a fair wage for as long as they can get slave labor off the books. That isn't enough though. We need to employ More workers from Mexico, India, China.. As long as we're doing it, sire, why not be obvious and lets put Sally Struthers on the TV to advertise IT Jobs for the people under repressive regimes in africa who can live on 52 cents a day, "the price of a cup of coffee." I don't care what color their skin is, No citizen of the United states could live on that and shouldn't be asked to compete with it. It's too blatently obvious that it's unfair. And that seems to be why it's "good for us all".
Your policy sir. It's you on the tube telling me it's good for me to lose my job to a Mexican worker outside of our system and in a manner with which I cannot compete. There isn't a job comparable to it here that I can take to make up the difference cause those are being outsourced too. Outsourced. How about endran. Because sir, that is what is happening - it's an end run around our system - around our rights, our laws, our constitutional provisions and protections. Your policy has relieved me of my job without due process. It tied my hands before I had a chance to respond. And so many businesses are being forced to do the same thing, that I don't stand a chance any more than those earning 3 times what I do in the same field who have lost their jobs already and have had to take 11k a year Retail jobs just to eat while their houses go up for sale.
I don't have a degree. I don't get retraining. I just get to lose my job at the whim of your policies and will likely lose more than that in the end. You see, I bought a new home too - a year ago. This job made it possible for me to do that. And as with my Job, I had to get a huge break to be able to pull it off. I've been behind you and a cheerleader of yours since I first heard you speak. I understand that the tanking economy isn't your fault. I understand it isn't your fault we were attacked. I understand and agree with pretty much everything you've done to date, sir. This however is in my mind beyond sickening. It is a betrayal of myself, my coworkers and every other hard working IT worker, Auto worker, etc that has lost their job due to this. It is a betrayal by their government and their employer. And it's a distrust you've earned by subverting them and me. For me, it's not just my Government, it's my own party.
Now I've heard all the arguments for outsourcing and all the copout phrases about what we do about companies that have outsourced to the US. Tell me, sir, how many of them outsourced to do an endrun around their system of government, their constitution, their laws and their workers. How many of them outsourced to us to produce goods for their home market. That isn't an argument that flies with me in the face of doing an endrun around us. They've built plants in our land and are working within our market, within it's rules, within our laws, within the constraints of our constitution and are paying a competative wage. Our companies are doing the opposite. And any way you cut it, it is economic and constitutional tyranny. I'm not a single issue voter sir, until that single issue is my life and livelihood.. until members of my own party call me a robber and a thief for expecting to keep my job when I've worked my behind off to do so.
I did it right. I've busted my backside under an ever increasing workload, kept my promise to my employer and my client. Never missed a metric, never dropped the ball for either of them and have always exceeded expectation as a member of one of the best teams on this planet in my humble opinion. My job is gone not because we didn't produce and not because either couldn't afford it; but, because Mexicans work cheaper and don't have our protections, laws, rights or constitution. I have a strong work ethic and a loyalty to my company that even now makes me shudder to say a bad word about them. I have no illusions; but, I was raised that if you do your best it pays off. I know now that if you do your best, you get kicked in the teeth just as hard, and if you get ahead a little bit, the government will be there to kick you back down. I appreciate how hard your job is. Mine is pretty dang hard too. But how about you and everyone in government work for $600 a month from now on like the Mexican workers replacing us. How about you all work for the income you're forcing me into. If it's good for us, it should be good for you too. You, and all the ivory tower types in our party that hiss at me for being upset over losing my job and wanting to defend myself. How would that be, sir? I'd just as soon see little Tommy Daschle and Ted Kennedy go fly a kite as hear them spout one more offensive evil lie about you. But I'd just as soon, too, see you join them holding the string if you're gonna ruin me and tell me it's good for me. How about if we just outsource your jobs too - oh, wait, that would be unconstitutional too, wouldn't it.
What nonsense. Reagan presided over an economy that was recovering very nicely from stagflation. Inflation was gone, oil prices were low, the stock market was booming, and millions of jobs had been created in 1983. Utterly unlike now. The Democrats of 1984 always expected to lose, so I don't know where this "surprise" nonsense of yours is coming from. Reagan was always comfortably ahead in the polls with approval ratings off the charts, running comfortably on peace and prosperity.
Oh please. Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate in 1993. NAFTA didn't even have to come up for a vote if the Democrats didn't want it to.
It's a matter of public record. What's the matter, that not in your talking points?
Stability is an illusion. You can be the best telephone switchboard operator in the world at the largest, most stable company on the planet, and still be out of a job tomorrow when a new computer replaces you. Ditto for being a great Java programmer and getting replaced by a new HTML design package, or a newspaper corner salesman getting replaced by a new vending machine.
To get real stability, you need Soviet levels of control on an economy. Yes, Russians didn't get fired back in the USSR...of course, they're still earning only about $30 a month today, too...and making fewer things than Taiwan (which has a tenth of Russia's population) or South Korea.
Cubans and apparently North Koreans have "stability" too...but a lot of good that does them.
Even Europe's level of "stability" is being blamed for their own inefficient workforce and 10+% unemployment rates in France and Germany.
And for examples of "stability" close to home, consider how inefficient most government bureaucrats are...all of whom work for agencies that wouldn't know "re-engineering" or downsizing if it walked in the front door with a big neon sign on its head.
He correctly realized that raw capitalism of your variety is destructive and indeed self destructive because it triggers the "populism" response of ordinary people protecting themselves, their families, their communities, and their country.
But don't be surprised. Most of what passes for so called "conservatives" who want to ban offshore outsourcing are simply Marxist platitudes rehashed with modern buzzwords.
In your eagerness to expend the lives of others to your ideological vision of a pure free trade world you talk like a Communist. True conservatives recognize that there is a higher value that pure greed. They have no wish to be "citizens of the world". They understand that in a world that conserves, the free market serves humans, not the other way around. True conservatives recognize the sacred worth of human beings and do not treat them with your Stalinist level of ruthlessness. That is why the Christian Coalition did not support NAFTA and religious conservatives are by and large strongly anti-oursourcing. Read Phyllis Schalfly among others.
Capitalism, however, will sort out offshore outsourcing if the government stays out of it.
Grownups do not take it for granted that stories always have happy endings. What if "sorting out offshore outsourcing" means the total technological transfer of American technology to China ? You may be willing to abdicate control of our geopolitical destiny to line your pocket. I am not.
No, farm and home foreclosures in 1935 were vastly higher than farm and home foreclosures in 2003.
Even if you limit the debate to bankruptcies alone, there were 82,000 business bankruptcies in 1987 versus only 36,000 in 2003.
Frankly, what these stats should tell you is that personal bankruptices are being abused to dodge debt more today than back in the past when such tactics were more used to protect assets from legitimate hardships.
Indeed, the NAFTA vote is a matter of public record, easily looked up. Again, weren't you briefed in proper MNC shill fashion ? This is the second time you have been ignorantly wrong on the subject, the first when you said it was not voted on in the House. Do better.
The vote totals speak for themselves. In neither house did the majority of Democrats support NAFTA.
"He correctly realized that raw capitalism of your variety is destructive and indeed self destructive because it triggers the "populism" response of ordinary people protecting themselves, their families, their communities, and their country."
Thanks for trying to promote stealth communism today, but no, Marx didn't even get that angle correct.
Yes, capitalism is destructive of the old order, but it is a *creative* destruction. Buggy whip makers see their jobs get destroyed by capitalism instead of "protected" by the nanny state, but the new automobile manufacturing jobs soon outnumber the old buggy whip jobs by orders of magnitude, and pay more to boot.
Protecting jobs from their capitalistic destruction will only rob your children of the better paying jobs that *always* replace whatever was destroyed.
The alternative, however, is to stagnate your economy. Improvements that make old jobs obsolete have to be banned by law, much as India did back in the 1920's when they banned automated textile machines to "save" the hand-sewing jobs that they had. That cost India half a century of prosperity in exchange for 50+ years of finger-numbing poverty.
And while an uneducated India of 1920 *could* fall for such Marxist, protectionist nonsense, the India of today is less likely to be so conned (though they do have some serious protectionist measures still in place)...and most certainly the U.S. of today isn't going to fall for such tired old theories. Just look at the public backlash against Bush's steel tariffs last year and the year before and multiply that by 150 times more...if you dare enact trade barriers that increase prices at Wal-Mart or raise phone or software costs by 60% or more.
Nonsense. The vote totals were mere window dressing. The Democrats controlled *both* the House and Senate as well as the Presidency in 1993. NAFTA wouldn't have even come up for a vote if the Democratic Party hadn't desired it to pass.
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