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."
In theory, of course. In theory, the nations of the EU can withdraw from it at any time, but in reality they're hooked into it. They've become so dependent on it that they fear the consequences of withdrawal.
Like the Senate is going to impeach him for signing a treaty that they themselves ratified?
Wouldn't it be more productive to call for the electoral defeat of those Senators?
That's not true if one side adsorbs the negative externalities of the other. What economists miss in these analyses of comparative advantage are the costs of socialized risk and military protection.
The more we integrate with those cultures, the more we lose our sovereignty. Do you really want us to follow in the path of the Europeans?
It's not a treaty (that wouldn't pass); it's a trade agreement (that maybe they can sneak by).
Why NAFTA wasn't taken to court over this bogus distinction I'll never know.
You seem to be utterly clueless to the fact that since NAFTA and GATT our trade deficits and budget deficits have soared, same with illegal immigration (which includes numerous thugs committing all sorts of mayhem on Americans), debt at all levels (fed, personal, corporate) has increased tremendously, property taxes in areas servicing illegals rise unabated to deliver them all their "services" and benefits, etc. so try as I might fail to see how this all works in the interest of working people.
Interesting, now that you mentioned it, I looked up the vote and saw that it was only 54-45. Maybe there still is hope. In any case, though it still required at least a majority of the Senate to approve. 2/3 of them aren't going to turn around and impeach him for it.
Why NAFTA wasn't taken to court over this bogus distinction I'll never know.
I don't know what difference it would make. The government will just say that it's not a treaty; it's an act of Congress. It's not like the courts have recognized any meaningful limitations on those.
Phyllis Schafley knows perfectly well that it is non-college educated Americans who are bearing the brunt of free trade as they must compete with cheap illegal and offshore labor, a competition which can only result in them being reduced to a third world standard of living. And that is why Joe Sixpack is dead against CAFTA and NAFTA and free trade in general because he is getting the shaft.
I think this is an optimistic but erroneous view of why the EU was defeated. If this were true, I believe we could say western civilization in Europe was saved, but this is not why France voted down the EU constitution.
Wouldn't it be more productive to call for the electoral defeat of those Senators?<<
Why yes, it would!
But do we need the electoral process to rid ourselves of those who disobey the constitution? We should be able to throw them out on their ears without a fare thee well...
Stiil the President has the power to veto right? If he does not follow the constitution, then he is just as guilty.
The government would be lying. When a nation "agrees" with any other nation, the laws of nations are very clear that such an instrument is a treaty. Further, the Congress and the Administrative branch often lack the Constitutional authority to execute the terms of extranational rulings.
Yeah, I know, that doesn't stop them.
I would also add to the list small business owners who hire Americans and offer a livable wage plus PAY numerous payroll taxes as opposed to those large and small businesses who hire illegals and in many cases do NOT pay a livable wage, EVADE numerous payroll taxes and force taxpayers to supplement their employee's living expenses. Believe me a lot of people are furious about all this crap.
Dust off your version of the Constitution. A President can't veto a treaty, which requires a supermajority to pass anyway.
I think I'm seeing the intellectual abilities of the pro tax protectionist crowd.
If President Bush says it's good then I'm for it. A good born-again Christian man like the president wouldn't try and swindle us or sell us out to global corporations.
We kinda do. If only one person (say, the President) is doing it, then we can get Congress involved. But if the entire political class is doing it, then our only recourse is elections. Well, that and forcible overthrow, but how realistic an option is that? What's approach is actually going to get the job done, instead of just being emotionally satisfying to talk about?
See #25 et seq.
I think I'm seeing the intellectual abilities of the pro tax protectionist crowd.
I'll bet you can "see" quite a bit, sitting in that glass house of yours. Just remember not to throw any stones.
"If President Bush says it's good then I'm for it. A good born-again Christian man like the president wouldn't try and swindle us or sell us out to global corporations."
Please tell me you were trying to be sarcastic.
Dust off your version of the Constitution. A President submits the treaty in the first place, which requires a supermajority to pass. CAFTA is a "trade agreement," supposedly not a treaty, which therefore supposedly requires a mere majority of both houses and then a Presidential signature.
Trade agreements concluded that way are a fraud on the Constitution.
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