Tapsearch Com EditorFree Trade at Ground Zero (LINK)
June 29th 2008 18:48
Bizarre Politics Reports:
Americans at war with themselves
[I] By Ray Tapajna, Editor and Artist at Tapsearch Tapart News and Art that Talks [I]
For years now, many in Cleveland Ohio have tried to find ways to restore the city's economy. Cleveland represents ground zero in terms of damage, Free Trade and Globalization have caused.
No one responds as workers are locked out of their jobs while replacement workers are hired and Company Police enforce the lock out - This is another example of Free Trade at Ground Zero
Joe Frolick a top journalist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer again recites what is possible. He cites "The Quiet Crisis" that supposedly started seven years ago. I come from an era much longer than that and the crisis has now lasted more than twenty years. I knew Cleveland as a city with miles of main streets exploding with business and where you could call all day long on top corporate headquarters in the downtown area alone. I did this for several companies in the computer industry. Most of the corporate headquarters are now long gone and all the computer companies, I represented have vanished. The Cleveland region was once a centerpiece for growing technologies and start up computer ventures, but not anymore.
Going back further when I commuted to John Carroll University from the West Side of town, it was impossible to take any of the main streets east. Carnegie Avenue which was one of the main thoroughfares was too crowded with business activity. I had to take a free way around the city to get to the college. Fourty years later, the fastest way through town to John Carroll is Carnegie Avenue. It has not only lost all the business activity but it has been depopulated too. There are places nearby where someone could have a small farm now.
The Cleveland Clinic which is now the show case of the Cleveland economy was big cause of this vast depopulation. Joe Frolick and the Cleveland Plain Dealer like to use the medical industry as the new hope for Cleveland. They never say anything about what it takes to support the medical industry. It takes tax money and tax money requires a local value added economy where workers can enjoy a living wage with something left over to support the tax base ventures. Tax payers in Cleveland also paid for the new stadiums and the new arena. Imagine a manufacturing company asking for the same help.
Back in college, I worked at several factories while going to college full-time. I made the equivalent of about $15 an hour and could make much more if I did piece work. These jobs were plentiful. In those days it was the shop foreman who took the young off the streets and taught them a skill. In turn, workers made enough money to get married, buy a home and raise large families. They made enough money to help send their children through college too.
On top of that only one spouse worked while the mother could stay home to raise the children. I also found the educators far out of touch with the factory workers and for that matter small business.
Then so called Free Trade came and our political and media channel leaders told us we had to compete in a global economy. This global economy was actually fronted by the U.S. Federal Government when they start sponsoring the moving of factories outside the USA in 1956. It was supposed to be a temporary program to help out the Mexican and Central America countries while testing the supply of cheaper goods for American consumers. This temporary program never ended and it evolved into what is called Free Trade. The U.S. has
moved more than 4,000 factories to Mexico and we all know someone who lost a job because of it. Still the massive tide of Mexican workers come to the U.S. seeking economic survival. This demonstrates that Free Trade has failed for many years. It has a history of failures that the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other media channels refuse to report about. Even Cardinal Roger Mahony refuses to get into the causes and just wants to deal with only the effects when it comes to the massive migration of workers. He like many others do not talk about the workers in America who were sacrificed at the altar of greed.
They keep talking about restoring the city just like they do in many other major cities but never cite the real causes. At the same time a working poor class has been created who need cheaper imports but they find they are at war with themselves. The more consumers
shop the cheaper imports the more there are who lose their living wage jobs. The Mayor
of Cleveland celebrated the opening of Wal Mart on land where the steel industry once prospered. It is now the grave yard of the steel industry. It is Free Trade at Ground Zero
For some of us - it is like a sacrilege. 46,000 applied for only about 1,200 Wal Mart jobs in Cleveland and Chicago. This in itself would have prompted a congressional investigation in the past. Now is it an accepted as a norm. Many retail workers need extra government support to survive no and this too is accepted as a norm while the beat goes on about restoring Cleveland.
In the 1990s while President Clinton was pushing Free Trade about twenty Arab American grocers where killed in the midst of robberies in Cleveland. This too was accepted a norm of our times. I covered many of the hundreds of small super markets during the 1960s and only a few grocers were killed during that time with the number of supermarkets numbering ten times if not twenty times more than today.
The only thing that will work is local value added economies in both large cities and small towns. There is nothing else. Any economy needs added levels of value from raw product up through the retail level and back down again in a recyling fashion. We can no longer remain silent about this. As I related in by review of Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence, he does not even mention the term Free Enterprise nor does he have the term in the index of his book. We need to redefine what Free Enterprise is and know that it does not begin from the top down. It has to be started at a grass root level. The current Federal Reserve Chairman actually committed Free Trade heresy when he spoke about the economic stimulus package. He said the best way to use the economic stimulus money is to buy "domestically produced products". With very little made in the USA, this is an impossibilty but it points to the main cause of our silent depression in the USA. And it came from the mouth of the Director of the Federal Reserve.
Workers have been muffled and trained by the media to take what they can get and not think there is more to be had. I am going to pass on this article to several at the Plain Dealer. It will most likely fall on deaf ears but it we can not give up.
The editors at the Cleveland Plain Dealer ask you for comments about how well a city like Cleveland is doing. They say they will print your repsonses on their online site at Cleveland Com Plain Dealer Letter to Editor form We invite all in the world to let them know what you think. I was suprised when a high school student in report cited Free Trade as an abuse to human nature. ( This is why I also have The Rationale Com site where I explore philosophy and religion in terms of workers dignity in the global economic arena and coined the phrase workers are the stepchildren of philosophy and religion. See The Rationale Com at therationale.com
For years now, many in Cleveland Ohio have tried to find ways to restore the city's economy. Cleveland represents ground zero in terms of damage, Free Trade and Globalization have caused.
Free Trade at Ground Zero by Ray Tapajna
No one responds as workers are locked out of their jobs while replacement workers are hired and Company Police enforce the lock out - This is another example of Free Trade at Ground Zero
Joe Frolick a top journalist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer again recites what is possible. He cites "The Quiet Crisis" that supposedly started seven years ago. I come from an era much longer than that and the crisis has now lasted more than twenty years. I knew Cleveland as a city with miles of main streets exploding with business and where you could call all day long on top corporate headquarters in the downtown area alone. I did this for several companies in the computer industry. Most of the corporate headquarters are now long gone and all the computer companies, I represented have vanished. The Cleveland region was once a centerpiece for growing technologies and start up computer ventures, but not anymore.
Going back further when I commuted to John Carroll University from the West Side of town, it was impossible to take any of the main streets east. Carnegie Avenue which was one of the main thoroughfares was too crowded with business activity. I had to take a free way around the city to get to the college. Fourty years later, the fastest way through town to John Carroll is Carnegie Avenue. It has not only lost all the business activity but it has been depopulated too. There are places nearby where someone could have a small farm now.
The Cleveland Clinic which is now the show case of the Cleveland economy was big cause of this vast depopulation. Joe Frolick and the Cleveland Plain Dealer like to use the medical industry as the new hope for Cleveland. They never say anything about what it takes to support the medical industry. It takes tax money and tax money requires a local value added economy where workers can enjoy a living wage with something left over to support the tax base ventures. Tax payers in Cleveland also paid for the new stadiums and the new arena. Imagine a manufacturing company asking for the same help.
Back in college, I worked at several factories while going to college full-time. I made the equivalent of about $15 an hour and could make much more if I did piece work. These jobs were plentiful. In those days it was the shop foreman who took the young off the streets and taught them a skill. In turn, workers made enough money to get married, buy a home and raise large families. They made enough money to help send their children through college too.
On top of that only one spouse worked while the mother could stay home to raise the children. I also found the educators far out of touch with the factory workers and for that matter small business.
Then so called Free Trade came and our political and media channel leaders told us we had to compete in a global economy. This global economy was actually fronted by the U.S. Federal Government when they start sponsoring the moving of factories outside the USA in 1956. It was supposed to be a temporary program to help out the Mexican and Central America countries while testing the supply of cheaper goods for American consumers. This temporary program never ended and it evolved into what is called Free Trade. The U.S. has
moved more than 4,000 factories to Mexico and we all know someone who lost a job because of it. Still the massive tide of Mexican workers come to the U.S. seeking economic survival. This demonstrates that Free Trade has failed for many years. It has a history of failures that the Cleveland Plain Dealer and other media channels refuse to report about. Even Cardinal Roger Mahony refuses to get into the causes and just wants to deal with only the effects when it comes to the massive migration of workers. He like many others do not talk about the workers in America who were sacrificed at the altar of greed.
They keep talking about restoring the city just like they do in many other major cities but never cite the real causes. At the same time a working poor class has been created who need cheaper imports but they find they are at war with themselves. The more consumers
shop the cheaper imports the more there are who lose their living wage jobs. The Mayor
of Cleveland celebrated the opening of Wal Mart on land where the steel industry once prospered. It is now the grave yard of the steel industry. It is Free Trade at Ground Zero
For some of us - it is like a sacrilege. 46,000 applied for only about 1,200 Wal Mart jobs in Cleveland and Chicago. This in itself would have prompted a congressional investigation in the past. Now is it an accepted as a norm. Many retail workers need extra government support to survive no and this too is accepted as a norm while the beat goes on about restoring Cleveland.
In the 1990s while President Clinton was pushing Free Trade about twenty Arab American grocers where killed in the midst of robberies in Cleveland. This too was accepted a norm of our times. I covered many of the hundreds of small super markets during the 1960s and only a few grocers were killed during that time with the number of supermarkets numbering ten times if not twenty times more than today.
The only thing that will work is local value added economies in both large cities and small towns. There is nothing else. Any economy needs added levels of value from raw product up through the retail level and back down again in a recyling fashion. We can no longer remain silent about this. As I related in by review of Alan Greenspan's book The Age of Turbulence, he does not even mention the term Free Enterprise nor does he have the term in the index of his book. We need to redefine what Free Enterprise is and know that it does not begin from the top down. It has to be started at a grass root level. The current Federal Reserve Chairman actually committed Free Trade heresy when he spoke about the economic stimulus package. He said the best way to use the economic stimulus money is to buy "domestically produced products". With very little made in the USA, this is an impossibilty but it points to the main cause of our silent depression in the USA. And it came from the mouth of the Director of the Federal Reserve.
Workers have been muffled and trained by the media to take what they can get and not think there is more to be had. I am going to pass on this article to several at the Plain Dealer. It will most likely fall on deaf ears but it we can not give up.
The editors at the Cleveland Plain Dealer ask you for comments about how well a city like Cleveland is doing. They say they will print your repsonses on their online site at Cleveland Com Plain Dealer Letter to Editor form We invite all in the world to let them know what you think. I was suprised when a high school student in report cited Free Trade as an abuse to human nature. ( This is why I also have The Rationale Com site where I explore philosophy and religion in terms of workers dignity in the global economic arena and coined the phrase workers are the stepchildren of philosophy and religion. See The Rationale Com at therationale.com
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