Posted on 07/18/2005 12:40:00 PM PDT by datura
Since democracy is the worldwide goal of the Bush Administration, we must face the stunning fact that the integration of different nationalities under a common European Union (EU) Constitution was rejected by decisive democratic votes. President Bush can thank conservative leaders for saving him from the embarrassment of endorsing the EU Constitution, shortly before it was so soundly defeated in France and the Netherlands.
The EU Constitution was defeated, because Western Europeans don't want to be politically, economically, or socially integrated with the culture, economy, lifestyle, or history of Eastern Europe and Muslim countries. Western Europeans recognized in the proposed EU Constitution a loss of national identity and freedom, to a foreign bureaucracy, plus a redistribution of wealth from richer countries to poorer countries.
Will the political and business elites in America hear this message, and stop trying to force CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) on America?
The Senate Republican Policy Committee appears to be tone deaf. Its just-released policy paper argues that CAFTA should be approved, because its purpose is "integrating more closely with 34 hemispheric neighbors - thus furthering the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)," which the 2001 Quebec Declaration declared would bring about "hemispheric integration."
Americans don't want to be "integrated" with the poverty, corruption, socialism, and communism of our hemispheric neighbors, any more than the French want to be integrated with the Turks and Bulgarians.
Just as the French and Dutch were suspicious of the dangers lurking in the 485-page EU Constitution, Americans are wary of the dangers hiding in the 92-page CAFTA legislation, plus the 31 pages that purport to spell out the administrative actions the U.S. must take in compliance. No wonder CAFTA's supporters are bypassing our Constitution's requirement that treaties can be valid only if passed by two-thirds of our Senators.
The Senate Republican policy paper argues that CAFTA "will promote democratic governance." But, there is nothing democratic about CAFTA's many pages of grants of vague authority to foreign tribunals, on which foreign judges could force us to change our domestic laws to be "no more burdensome than necessary" on foreign trade.
We have had enough impertinent interference with our lives and economy from the international tribunals Congress has already locked us into, such as the WTO (World Trade Organization) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Americans don't want decisions from another anti-American tribunal any more than the French and Dutch wanted their lives micro-managed by Belgian bureaucrats.
The EU political elite ridiculed the French and the Dutch for not realizing that globalism is on the march, and we should all get on the train before it leaves the station. The French and Dutch woke up to the fact that the engineers of the EU train are bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Luxembourg, who invent regulations and judge-made laws, without so much as tip of their hats to democracy.
The pro-EU political bosses blamed the "non" vote by the French on worry about losing their jobs to the cheap labor of Eastern Europe and Turkey. But the worry was grounded in reality, and Americans are likewise correct, to worry about how CAFTA will put U.S. jobs in competition with low-wage Central America, where the average factory worker is paid about one dollar an hour.
CAFTA would even prohibit U.S. states from giving preference to American workers when taxpayer-funded contracts are granted.
CAFTA is not about free trade; it's about round-trip trade. That means multi-national corporations sending their raw materials to poor countries, where they can hire very cheap labor and avoid U.S. employment, safety and environmental regulations, and then bringing the finished goods back into the United States duty-free, to undersell U.S. companies that pay decent wages and comply with our laws.
The promise that CAFTA will give us 44 million new customers for U.S. goods is pie in the sky, like the false promise that letting Communist China into the WTO would give us a billion-person market for American agriculture. Or, the false promise that NAFTA would increase our trade surplus with Mexico to $10 billion when, in fact, it nosedived, to a $62 billion deficit.
Knowing that Americans are upset about Central America's chief export to the U.S., which is the incredibly vicious MS-13 Salvadoran gangs, the Senate Republican policy paper assures us that CAFTA will diminish "the incentives for illegal immigration to the United States." That's another fairy tale, like the unfulfilled promise that NAFTA would reduce illegal aliens and illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico.
By stating that CAFTA means the implementation of a "rules-based framework" for trade, investment, and technology, the Senate Republican policy paper confirms that free trade requires world, or at least hemispheric, government. You can't have a single economy, without a single government.
CAFTA may serve the economic interests of the globalists and the multinational corporations, but it makes no sense historically, Constitutionally, or democratically. Americans will never sing "God Bless the Western Hemisphere" instead of "God Bless America."
I am with you to "trimmer", selling out our homeland via a back handed deal is very ugly to say the least. Glad your on our side. That short Texan warned us, I at least voted for him. DR-Cafta seems to be sinking inspite of our president and Billy Bob Clinton's lobbying efforts.
HooYa!
You could not be farther from the truth in characterizing my views as redistributionist, and doing so simply does not advance the validity of your arguments. My wish that individuals living in Central America enjoy prosperity from their own productivity is not redistributionist, but free market capitalism. You are arguing for high-tax, high-tariff protectionism that prevents Americans from buying goods they desire, and preventing Central Americans from doing the same. Exactly how do you think you can come off as a protector of Constitutional rights?
That would be the Supreme Court that "figured out" that the line item veto was unconstitutional. LOL!!
To summarize, a price support program that literally pays for itself keeps American sugar producers in business, gives us a self-sufficient sugar supply( a goal other countries feel is important too) and stabilizes the price so that manufacturers that produce with sugar don't have their prices going through the roof all the time for raw materials.
Hedgetrimmer defending price supports
That was easy. LOL!!
And if you were really interested in OUR prosperity, you would be supporting DR-CAFTA because the only effect it hsa is reducing tarriffs for American exports to the free, democratic nations of the Carribean. The rest of what you've stated has jumped the tracks of any kind of logic chain.
I'm actually defending stable prices and secure supples.
Easy, there, Iron Matron. GWB has signed CAFTA, and this is a pro-Bush site.
No, I disagree. All that you quoted simply encourages WTO countries (big developed economies like the US) to grant MFN status (regular trading treatment) to small, backward economies. You fellows seem to think the volume of your posting makes the substantive point, but it doesn't. A more prosperous world will be very good for the USA, and the sooner the better. Africa is impoverished today due to the socialist/dictator policies of high taxes and government power above all, including the very ill-considered grants of money and material goods that keeps their own producers from making a profitable living. Yet our government, the IMF and the World Bank have continued to go along with it (although GWB has been trying to pull away and set a new course).
When 'free trade' agreements enable capital to flow out to countries chasing the lowest possible wages, it empowers the internationalists because now they can control the wages, domestically and abroad.
DR-CAFTA does not do any of these things. All of the nations that are part of the agreement can export to the US without limit as things stand now. What this agreement does is eliminate the tarriffs the US pays when exporting to their nations, meaning that American worker's products are more competitive in their domestic markets. It also gives the US a leg up on China in these markets, and China is bank-rolling the anti-DR-CAFTA movement.
Ya Savvy?
As if those two "mechanisms" are remotely similar.
If you really disagree with the creatoin of NATO there really is no point in continuing this discussion.
Translation: You're very eager for an excuse, however flimsy and dishonest, to cut and run.
This is merely about an agreement to open foreign markets in the face of an agressive enemy who would rather they stay shut to us.
So you claim. It's just as likely that this aggressive enemy would have further access to our own economy should this deal go through. And tell me, in what other ways that you can think of has this administration been demonstrating its concern about this "agressive enemy"? Has it, for example, been shutting down Export-Import Bank subsidies to companies that trade with them? How about funds to the IMF that underwrite loans to them because they're a "developing country"?
And this conversation will not continue unless you give me one example of our soveriengnty being lost to Canada or Mexico due to NAFTA.
NAFTA tribunals have been subjecting American courts to an additional layer of review. Yes, I know about the inevitable counterresponse that Americans "don't have to" obey these tribunals. If that's the case, then why have them?
Wish away. I could wish for Santa Claus and the tooth fairy as well, and Peace on Earth. We all wish prosperity to everybody. Fine. But your wishes, needing to be implemented by another erosion of the U.S. Constitution with yet another arm of a supra-national authority, by "agreement" that is not even legitimately implemented by treaty...is a wish that is not permissable. E.g., Not over My Constitution, you don't, buddy! Paws off!
You are arguing for high-tax, high tariff protectionism that prevents Americans from buying goods they desire.
B'zzzt. Wrong.
First remember the whole point of the Constitution, it is not extremist libertarian flap-doodle.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Revenue tariffs did all of that: Promoted union. Uniformity promoted the establishment of justice. Internal tariffs were banned. We created our own INTERNAL free market. The trade promoted domestic tranquility, and funded the common defense, and promoted the general welfare. And the evidence is that they indeed did secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. Certainly the Founders saw no contradiction whatsoevever in funding goverment with duties, imposts and so on, although you must. I think the intellectual fault is not with them, therefore, but you.
Second, I favor a net increase of true liberty. Actually, I favor eliminating US Income taxes, federal, state, personal and corporate. And capital gains. I favor repealing the 16th Amendment if necessary to safeguard a switch over then to two basic revenue streams: A national sales tax of approximately 15% Constitutionally limited, except where Congress officially declares War. And a 25% revenue tariff on ALL imports. China would receive special treatment. Revoke MFN, and impose the standard Smoot-Hawley 50% tariff. The net effect of these would be to tax consumption, especially bad consumption, i.e., Chinese and other foreign goods, encouraging return of production back to the U.S. without governmental edicts, letting the "market decide."
Under this governmental financing approach, a lot of people would be able to actually save money, and increase investment activity. With no income tax, the primary lever for Congress to squander OUR monies on various social agenda through the tax code would go away. This would be the most immense restoration of personal liberty since the Revolution. It would shrink government. The cost of paying your taxes by buying goods is well worth it. And if you save your money, even you could afford to buy goods from China, if you are foolish enough to still want to.
Now let's turn to the last part of that sentance of yours, I.e., :
"prevents Americans Buying the goods they desire." What a load of B.S. Most people buy what is on the shelves. If they are seriously interested in a particular brand or a source, and want it badly enough (i.e. "desire", ha!) then they can and somehow will afford to pay for it. I "desire" to have an F-22 Raptor in my garage, but that "desire" is not good enough. Even were I to have a big enough wallet, that isn't good enough in that case. The government's policy of not letting that technology too broadly loose protects our national security. And you have failed to show how we need to subvert our legal system and constitution in order to make things "freer". What products can't we buy right now from any of these latin american countries? Name one. And what consumer goods can't they buy from us (of the diminishing number we still manufacture)?
And then contemplate the redistributionary impacts, where a third of the dis-employed are still, after many years still making less than they were prior to the NAFTA-impacted job losses? How much stuff are they able to buy? Your side: [Crickets chirping, punctuated by a caustic, Get A BETTER Job loafer!] Then you come up with this insinuation, which you better look in the mirror first before you again lodge it against anyone defending this country:
Exactly how do you think you can come off as a protector of Constitutional rights?
Based on that animus in your inquiry, I believe its fair to surmise how you would regard the Founders of the Republic AND the Constitution itself. George Washington favored revenue tariffs. Alexander Hamilton favored revenue tariffs. John Jay favored revenue tariffs. James Madison favored revenue tariffs. And Thomas Jefferson, who originally opposed them, did a 180-degree turn after he saw how crucial it was to have a broad range of domestic manufactures, and ability.
So since I have strong reason to believe I have been faithful to the views of the Founders, and I actually read the Constitution from time to time, I would hope that you would change your premature, and erroneous, conclusions as to who is the greater proponent of Liberty here.
So look not for the speck in my eye, but the log in yours.
LOL!
Pot, meet Kettle.
The best part was actually when he tries to diagnose our internal polity, though, and he actually did more than these American free traders do...he cited a bona fide conservative, Phyllis Schlafly:
Phyllis Schlafly, a syndicated conservative columnist, responded three weeks later (to Bush asserting that free trade was a moral imperative) in an article "Free trade is an economic issue, not a moral one". In it, she noted that while conservatives should be happy finally to have a president who added a moral dimension to his actions, "the Bible does not instruct us on free trade and it's not one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus did not tell us to follow Him along the road to free trade ... Nor is there anything in the US constitution that requires us to support free trade and to abhor protectionism. In fact, protectionism was the economic system believed in and practiced by the framers of our constitution. Protective tariffs were the principal source of revenue for our federal government from its beginning in 1789 until the passage of the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax, in 1913.
Were all those public officials during those hundred-plus years remiss in not adhering to a "moral obligation" of free trade?" Hardly, argued Schlafly, whose views are noteworthy because US politics is currently enmeshed in a struggle between strict-constructionist paleo-conservatives and moral-imperialist neo-conservatives. Despite the ascendance of neo-imperialism in US foreign policy, protectionism remains strong in US political culture, particularly among conservatives and in the labor movement.
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