Replies

OUR prosperity

Whose prosperity? Certainly not the prosperity of the paycheck to paycheck citizen and taxpayer who make up the majority of the population of the country.

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. By giving them this control over our domestic wages, the internationalists have effectively disconnected wages from the cost of living here, in a manner that cannot possibly support the costs to live here. In effect, they are driving the standard of living down to the level of the third world, in a domestic economy where we have extrodinarily high first world expenses for housing and everything else. How does that create prosperity in our domestic economy??

There is no 'free' enterprise' in the US now, because the individuals who represent wage earners in the United States have no position to negotiate for work that pays enough to pay their cost of living. "Free trade" is destroying the domestic economy in other ways as well, because soon the purchase cost of the product will no longer be supported by wages in the domestic economy that are high enough for individuals to afford to make the purchase.

You ignored my question on NAFTA, so conversation over.

Which "question" was that? The illogical, rhetorical one, that can't be answered, but does not in any way defeat the position you attack? I.e.,

So tell me, how much soveriegnty has been lost due to NAFTA?

Lots. Bunches. Does that help you? How do you quantify a loss of liberty, a loss of constitutional integrity? A loss of loyalty by our own politicians? If you have a measure, that should prove extremely interesting.

I could take a stab at some impacts: How about its direct impacts on illegal immigration, i.e., an outright invasion across our borders?

Can you name any specific examples? Has Canada foisted it's healthcare system on us or has Mexico compelled us to start having ciestas?

Freeper Tomatoealive posted a cogent summary of the socialists interim global agenda, Here, as reprinted below:

Historians are known to label a year by hindsight, but 2005 was targeted as a year for a big decision back in 1994 at a Miami Summit of the Americas. Thirty-four nations whose elite attendees had a mind-set for the demise of sovereignty planned a piecemeal replacement of our republic with a regional government controlled by international bureaucrats and world courts.

One of the bigwigs at this affair was Bill Clinton, having received his unction from David Rockefellar and his cohorts of the Council on Foreign Relations, targeting 2005 for congressional passage of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

At the 2003 summit, details were fine-tuned for CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, planned to help expand the North American Free Trade Agreement, the three-nation pact that has outsourced our industrial base. Few have heard of CAFTA, the steppingstone for FTAA, which will congeal every independent nation in our Western Hemisphere into a bureaucratic monstrosity patterned after the European Union.

These so-called trade pacts are a fraud. Free trade by simple word study means removing government controls. But these international agreements have voluminous regulations and international agencies and courts with jurisdiction over education, health care, law enforcement, infrastructure, energy and environment.

What does our 4-to-5-page Constitution restrict? Government! Any change and increase in powers of the government can only be done by constitutional amendment. Yet the FTAA is an open-ended process with already thousands of pages of regulations. International agreements would regulate every area of life: world government composed of regional trade blocs.

NAFTA started with the U.S., Canada and Mexico. CAFTA would add all six Central American countries. FTAA would totally entangle all 34 nations in the Western Hemisphere, excepting Cuba, for now.

People should contact Congress without delay by calling 1-877-762-8762

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, in turn, can point out that your "logic" is rather dubious, as the U.S. ITC (International Trade Commission, a U.S. agency) has computed the results of implementing CAFTA on our trade balance, and concluded it will exacerbate the imbalance, increasing the trade deficit to that area.

Here is just some of the insame horse-trading as regards Agriculture trade:

"For instance, while the White House and Johanns" claim CAFTA will boost trade between the U.S. and the deal's six Latin American nations, an August 2004 analysis by the U.S. International Trade Commission shows the U.S. trade deficit with the CAFTA countries actually growing from about $2.2 billion in 2003 to $2.4 billion when implemented.

The analysis also notes that the American Farm Bureau's estimate of $1.5 billion in increased ag exports to CAFTA countries is nearly five-times greater than ITC's more truthful forecast: just $328 million.

But even that modest news is less so because while "exports of corn and rice... are likely to increase substantially," estimates the ITC, the overall impact will be "negligible on total U.S. production and employment.

Indeed, according to the ITC, "After full phase-in of tariff elimination," - a 15- to 20-year period for many ag products - U.S. exports to CAFTA countries "as a whole would increase by $2.7 billion" while U.S. imports"as a whole would increase by $2.8 billion."

And also consider that the U.S. manufacturing sector is also damaged heavily.

After reviewing these two analyses, it is manifest your summary of CAFTA is simplistic and misleading. It suggests you have not really read any good summaries of the bill, let alone the actual document, and hence you..and many other proponenet of it... don't really comprehend what CAFTA is doing. You want prosperity? Then don't vote for CAFTA...our own ITC concludes it is harmful...and will only get worse as the phaseouts end.