Posted on 08/22/2007 7:13:57 AM PDT by ckilmer
You meant to direct most of your comment to someone else. In any case, a good portion (I’d still like to say “most,” but I’m on my way out the door) of our trade deficit with Mexico is in oil. One cannot point to the trade deficit figure and claim that it represents products we could be manufacturing here. And pointing-out that we imported oil before NAFTA is, well, meaningless.”
Hardly meaningless when we had a trade surplus with Mexico, and were buying oil from them, before NAFTA, and long before the current high oil prices. The subsequent deficit reached $40 billion plus before high oil prices, and higher oil prices, more oil purchases, and the movement of manufacturing jobs to Mexico have both contributed to the current $70 - 80 billion deficit level.
One can point to the trade deficit and identify numerous US brand products imported from Mexico that were once manufactured here. Something that has been done quietly: with most of their major plant closing in the US, both GM and Ford later opened new plants in Mexico.
It’s fairly amazing to be in any sort of dispute that US manufacturing jobs have been moved to Mexico. Everyone know s that, starting with the maquiladoras and accelerating with NAFTA.
Did you read my post #134 to you? I pinged you to it again above. There's proof THERE of what I've been saying, to whit: That Bush proposed back in 2004 to give illegals "temporary worker cards" AND to enable them to have a "path TO citizenship". This is how he parsed the meaning of the word "amnesty" THEN, and how he (tried to) NOW.
It's not a lie, or proof of a lie on his part. It just proves he was WRONG with his plan (yes, he was wrong) but that doesn't prove he's a liar. It proves he tells the TRUTH actually, when he "means what he says and says what he means"!
I mean really, don't you get it? If someone says the same thing for 3 years, promises to do the same thing for 3 years and then DOES do the same thing proposed 3 years ago, TODAY, but then someone accuses the first person of "changing their story" during those 3 years, that doesn't make the former person a liar, it makes the LATTER person a liar (or deluded).
I don't suppose their currency crisis (Peso dropped over 60%) might have reduced their imports and increased their exports, even without NAFTA?
Its fairly amazing to be in any sort of dispute that US manufacturing jobs have been moved to Mexico.
The dispute is not whether any jobs moved, the dispute is over your (unsourced) claim that 3 million moved to Mexico.
I have and he would certainly drink a couple with you. As for your suspicions about what he writes I can tell you about what he wrote regarding us. He wrote what he saw with his two eyes. My suspicion is that is all he ever writes about, that being what he sees going on.
bookmark
Little slow today, huh?
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No I just don’t think you’re a conservative or a republican. your arguements would be better suited at the daily kos. there’s a strong anti american strain there that would make you feel at home.
If we had the Internet back then with all the hysteria it generates, spreading lies and false rumors at the speed of light, Ronald Reagan may have never became the Greatest President of the 20th Century
I have some doubts about this quote, can you point me to a source for this?
The Internet was in it's infancy with few users back in 1979.
Wikipedia shows the original IBM PC model 5150 was introduced on August 12, 1981. I'm also guessing 300 baud modems were state of the art at that time.
If we had the Internet back then with all the hysteria it generates, spreading lies and false rumors at the speed of light, Ronald Reagan may have never became the Greatest President of the 20th Century
I have some doubts about this quote, can you point me to a source for this?
The Internet was in it's infancy with few users back in 1979.
Wikipedia shows the original IBM PC model 5150 was introduced on August 12, 1981. I'm also guessing 300 baud modems were state of the art at that time.
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Ooops, my mistake, I missread your post, I thought you were saying that Reagan said "If we had the Internet back then with all the hysteria it generates..."
It may be my fault for my not following along well enough what you and L98Fiero were talking about from posts 41 and 57 --whether Bush is abolishing the Constitution and creating a continent wide union. .
Let's get together on this. What I got with posts 66, 70, and 108 pretty much hung on the notion that we got a bad situation getting worse and you invited info to the contrary: "...show evidence that sending money will produce jobs and economic stability in Mexico... ...the country is corrupt and sending more money to a corrupt regime only produces more corruption, not less. Please show evidence to the contrary..."
The situation that Investor's Business Daily's editorial was pointing out was that decades of Americans and Mexicans buying and selling things from each other has ended up with both us and them gaining more jobs, higher pay, and a strengthening of the rule of law.
This is good news --very good news. We don't hear it much because idiot news vendors; they think that the public wants only bad news. I don't care about some popular distorted reality, I just need to know what is, even when it's good.
“I mean really, don’t you get it? If someone says the same thing for 3 years, promises to do the same thing for 3 years and then DOES do the same thing proposed 3 years ago, TODAY, but then someone accuses the first person of “changing their story” during those 3 years, that doesn’t make the former person a liar, it makes the LATTER person a liar (or deluded).”
Your #134 is from January, 2004. Bush went to congress most years with an immigration proposal and all were declared DOA in the House of Representatives until the Dems won control last year. What he proposed during 1/2004 and what he said during presidential debates in 10/2004 is not consistent. He clearly opposed a Kerry opposed amnesty during the debates. Don’t you get it? He’s playing games with the word “amnesty” to the extent that he lied in my book, or was so intentionally deceitful that the semantic debate is a waste of time, a distinction with no difference.
Kerry called his plan amnesty and Bush opposed it during the debates. But Bush’s plan was as extensive, or more extensive than anything Kerry proposed. Totally dishonest to oppose an amnesty plan Kerry was honest enough to call amnesty, and then for Bush to have proposed, and proposed again later, plans that rewarded those who came here illegally, but just not be honest enough to call it amnesty (which you have acknowledged).
Our only disagreement is that you say Bush was honest and consistent in his immigration proposal. I say he wasn’t, and what he said during 10/2004 debates trump anything he said in a 1/2004 press conference or before.
I expect voters consider the last thing said on an issue to be the most important. If not, man do we have some confusion about where several Republican candidates stand on several different issues this year.
Yes, it is fully constitutional:
Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
Or you saying, that you don't wear s tin foil hat.
This is like Clinton saying “ I did not have sex with that woman”.
Or you saying, that you don’t wear s tin foil hat.
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I live inside the beltway of Washington DC.
Where do you live.
Ah, therein lies the rub.
What Bush has done, in the form of the Partnership for Prosperity, New Alliance Task Force, Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico has nothing to do with commerce and everything to do with giving Mexican illegal aliens a foothold in the US by changing the banking laws to allow them to obtain US bank accounts and US banking goods and services and US Govt. retirement benefits while being here illegally.
Mexican illegal aliens do not increase pay to Americans. They lower wages because if Americans want to compete for the same American jobs, they must accept Mexican illegal alien wages.
The rule of law is weakened because Bush has looked the other way at violations of our immigration laws, thus allowing millions more Mexican illegal aliens to flood across our borders to obtain the services he set up to specifically benefit them.
Hardly meaningless when we had a trade surplus with Mexico, and were buying oil from them, before NAFTA,
I don’t suppose their currency crisis (Peso dropped over 60%) might have reduced their imports and increased their exports, even without NAFTA?
Its fairly amazing to be in any sort of dispute that US manufacturing jobs have been moved to Mexico.
The dispute is not whether any jobs moved, the dispute is over your (unsourced) claim that 3 million moved to Mexico.”
The peso devaluation took place in 1994, less than a full year after NAFTA’s passsage. So, since the deficit or surplus was around one billion then, that devaluation does not distort the grown to a $70 billion deficit in the years since.
Your earlier statement that the deficit is mostly oil is far from accurate. This site breaks goods traded down by commodity, and the 2005 figures show oil is much less than half the total. The annual numbers don’t seem to be totaled, but eyeballing it makes the point clear:
http://www.usmcoc.org/eco2.html
It’s fairly amazing for you to mention anything as being unsourced since you’ve source one table and it had no relevance to the conversation. Here’s a table that attributes the loss of 1 million jobs to NAFTA and 1.7 million to trade with China over the past ten years, and 4.7 million lost pre-1994, or pre-NAFTA:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2005/rasmus0705.html
I don’t recall what number I posted, I thought I said millions of lost jobs. But the numbers are there both before and after NAFTA. These trade agreements has sent millions of jobs overseas and are our biggest unacknowledged foreign aid. Look what it’s done for China.
Here’s another article on the total loss of factory jobs, this one since 2000.:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OKGR480&show_article=1
“No problem. Just publish the notes of the meetings”
Hold not thy breath :-)
I am confident that Reagan would be mortified by this invasion, and the daily crimes these illegals commit.
He would have a fence, and add 20,000 to the border patrol.
In 1994 our surplus was $1.3 billion. In 1995, our deficit was $15.8 billion. You think that might have something to do with the devaluation?
Your earlier statement that the deficit is mostly oil is far from accurate.
Clean your glasses. That wasn't me.
Its fairly amazing for you to mention anything as being unsourced since youve source one table and it had no relevance to the conversation.
My table showed that 7 years after NAFTA, we had more manufacturing jobs than we did the day NAFTA passed. That's one slow sucking sound ya got there Ross.
Heres a table that attributes the loss of 1 million jobs to NAFTA
Well, 1 million is almost 3 million. LOL!
Z Magazine?
Z Magazine was founded in 1987, by two of the cofounders of South End Press. The name was inspired by the movie Z, directed by Costa-Gavras, that tells the story of repression and resistance in Greece. Comrade Z (a leader of the resistance) has been assassinated and his killers, including the chief of police, are indicted. Instead of the expected positive outcome, the prosecutor mysteriously disappears and a right-wing military junta takes over. The security police set out to prevent a mildew of the mind, an infiltration of isms or spots on the sun.
As the closing credits roll, instead of listing the cast and crew, the filmmakers list the things banned by the junta. They include: peace movements, labor unions, long hair on men, Sophocles, Tolstoy, Aeschylus, strikes, Socrates, Ionesco, Sartre, the Beatles, Chekhov, Mark Twain, the bar association, sociology, Becket, the International Encyclopedia, the free press, modern and popular music, the new math, and the letter Z, which has been scrawled on the sidewalk as the films final image, symbolizing the spirit of resistance lives.
Fight the man. Don't bogart that joint. LOL!
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