Tapsearch Com EditorBack to the future Free Trade 1997 - 2008 (LINK)
April 2nd 2008 21:12
Bizarre Politics Reports:
NAFTA Free Trade backfires
From the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - Nov 12, 1997 -Representative Marcy Kaptur was a lonely voice for workers dignity and has fought NAFTA, GATT, Fast Track from the beginning - Ross Perot asked her to be his Vice President running mate when he ran for President the first time.
( This from 1997. Not much has changed. Both Liberals and Conservatives backed Free Trade outside the will of the people for years. Reportedly only about 30% of all voters were ever for it. Just recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that 70% of registered Republicans no longer think that Free Trade will work. Still no one seems to be able to stop it. It is not a question of fair trade. It is not even a question about trade since so called Free Trade is based primarily on moving production and factories from place to place anywhere in the world based on the cheapest labor down to even child labor. It is even working in reverse. The U.S. taxpayers have even paid more than a billion dollars to foreign auto assemblers to build their plants in the USA after thousands of American workers lost their jobs. It is also crazy, - shipping component parts to factories outside the USA that once were in the USA are now called exports. )
The Honorable Marcy Kaptur of Ohio:
Mr. Speaker, by defeating fast-track negotiating authority, the House holds a rare and, in fact, profound opportunity - after nearly two decades of growing pleas from the American people - to define a new and responsible American free trade policy where trade becomes a two way corridor -- where reciprocity reigns; where America's trade ledgers move from deficit to surplus again; where fair treatment and a living wages is afforded by people who work, and where wages and benefits earned by America's workers rise again;
where the rules of law gains ascendancy on a global basis ------ where we as Members of Congress uphold our own sovereign constitutional responsiblities as this Nation's chief lawmaking body on trade.
( Note the following was spoken while President Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan were proclaiming prosperity and Hillary wasn't home baking cookies.)
Congress must respond to the plight of people like Ethel Tyner or David Filipiak or Griselda Rodriquez - our fellow citizens who have paid the price of flawed trade agreements. -------- Wanda Napier of Missouri, who had workedfor Lee Apparel for 14 years and whose job was terminated and moved south of the border.----- Vanity Fair Corp., parent company fo Lee Apparel --- terminated 1,650 more jobs in the United States -----.
President Clinton, after failing to acknowlege her plight for nearly two years recommended teh fast-tracker's panacea to Wanda - retraining. Well she went for retraining. In her own words,
We were humiliated by the local division of Employment Security. Even though most of us never asked the United States for a dime in their lives, we were treated like we were worthless and had our hands in the government till. We were told we couldn't go to the schools we wanted or take the training we needed. We were told that the only training we could have was the quickest, the fastest, and the cheapest.
Today Wanda works for two-thirds of her former wage and receives no health benefits or pension. ------- The President ( Clinton ) claims that fast-track trade agreements create "good", high paying jobs at home. "What jobs? The Economic Policy Institute has identified almost 400,000 more lost U.S. jobs, 19,000 in Ohio, just from NAFTA. In just the last 3 months, nearly 3,000 more jobs have been moved to Mexico alone. ----------
Just ask thousands fo American whose jobs are being fast-tracked outside the United States as we conduct this political debate ( More than a million workers in the computer industry alone lost their jobs from about 1987 to 1997 - this was the cause of the Y2k crisis . ) - the 279 recently terminated workers at Eveready Battery in Fremont, OH; or the 350 terminated at Jansport in Burlington WA; or the 1,500 workers that got pink slips at Fruit of the Loom in Louisiana this Tuesday; or the 10,000 at Kodak in Rochester, NY and elsewhere who await their layoffs this week. ( We provide a list of company close downs and job losses for 1998 at Tapart News and Art that Talks and at Bizarre Politics - it is overwhelming especially today when the Democrats are claiming the Clinton years as an economic boom time.)
----over 225 farm operations have been wiped out since the passage of NAFTA ------ The pattern is familar. Dole Pineapple closes down all its production in Hawaii, abandoning thousands of employees, moves its operations to low-wage havens such as Vietnam and Thailand whre field workers are paid with three meals a day. Dole's female processing workers earn pennies an hour, and the pineapple they can is then shipped here to the United States for sale. All the while the price-per-can increases. Dole stock rises on Wall Street, but on Hawaii's main street, workers get pink slips--- The story is the same whether it is a Japanese corporation such as Bandai, or Nike, or dozens of others who trade off people's sweat for money -- ( This is all continues even today in 2008 as sports figures like Tiger Woods and Lebron James make millions of dollars endorsing the Nike brand.)
To be continued - see list of 1998 job losses and company closedowns at Expert rated ezine articles or at Tapart News and Art that Talks page
This was the real world back then - It was frightening just as it is today in 2008. Hillary wasn't home baking cookies during this time. She was there. The Clintons and the Bush family are one when it comes to Free Trade and Globalization.
( This from 1997. Not much has changed. Both Liberals and Conservatives backed Free Trade outside the will of the people for years. Reportedly only about 30% of all voters were ever for it. Just recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that 70% of registered Republicans no longer think that Free Trade will work. Still no one seems to be able to stop it. It is not a question of fair trade. It is not even a question about trade since so called Free Trade is based primarily on moving production and factories from place to place anywhere in the world based on the cheapest labor down to even child labor. It is even working in reverse. The U.S. taxpayers have even paid more than a billion dollars to foreign auto assemblers to build their plants in the USA after thousands of American workers lost their jobs. It is also crazy, - shipping component parts to factories outside the USA that once were in the USA are now called exports. )
The Honorable Marcy Kaptur of Ohio:
Mr. Speaker, by defeating fast-track negotiating authority, the House holds a rare and, in fact, profound opportunity - after nearly two decades of growing pleas from the American people - to define a new and responsible American free trade policy where trade becomes a two way corridor -- where reciprocity reigns; where America's trade ledgers move from deficit to surplus again; where fair treatment and a living wages is afforded by people who work, and where wages and benefits earned by America's workers rise again;
where the rules of law gains ascendancy on a global basis ------ where we as Members of Congress uphold our own sovereign constitutional responsiblities as this Nation's chief lawmaking body on trade.
( Note the following was spoken while President Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan were proclaiming prosperity and Hillary wasn't home baking cookies.)
Congress must respond to the plight of people like Ethel Tyner or David Filipiak or Griselda Rodriquez - our fellow citizens who have paid the price of flawed trade agreements. -------- Wanda Napier of Missouri, who had workedfor Lee Apparel for 14 years and whose job was terminated and moved south of the border.----- Vanity Fair Corp., parent company fo Lee Apparel --- terminated 1,650 more jobs in the United States -----.
President Clinton, after failing to acknowlege her plight for nearly two years recommended teh fast-tracker's panacea to Wanda - retraining. Well she went for retraining. In her own words,
We were humiliated by the local division of Employment Security. Even though most of us never asked the United States for a dime in their lives, we were treated like we were worthless and had our hands in the government till. We were told we couldn't go to the schools we wanted or take the training we needed. We were told that the only training we could have was the quickest, the fastest, and the cheapest.
Today Wanda works for two-thirds of her former wage and receives no health benefits or pension. ------- The President ( Clinton ) claims that fast-track trade agreements create "good", high paying jobs at home. "What jobs? The Economic Policy Institute has identified almost 400,000 more lost U.S. jobs, 19,000 in Ohio, just from NAFTA. In just the last 3 months, nearly 3,000 more jobs have been moved to Mexico alone. ----------
Just ask thousands fo American whose jobs are being fast-tracked outside the United States as we conduct this political debate ( More than a million workers in the computer industry alone lost their jobs from about 1987 to 1997 - this was the cause of the Y2k crisis . ) - the 279 recently terminated workers at Eveready Battery in Fremont, OH; or the 350 terminated at Jansport in Burlington WA; or the 1,500 workers that got pink slips at Fruit of the Loom in Louisiana this Tuesday; or the 10,000 at Kodak in Rochester, NY and elsewhere who await their layoffs this week. ( We provide a list of company close downs and job losses for 1998 at Tapart News and Art that Talks and at Bizarre Politics - it is overwhelming especially today when the Democrats are claiming the Clinton years as an economic boom time.)
----over 225 farm operations have been wiped out since the passage of NAFTA ------ The pattern is familar. Dole Pineapple closes down all its production in Hawaii, abandoning thousands of employees, moves its operations to low-wage havens such as Vietnam and Thailand whre field workers are paid with three meals a day. Dole's female processing workers earn pennies an hour, and the pineapple they can is then shipped here to the United States for sale. All the while the price-per-can increases. Dole stock rises on Wall Street, but on Hawaii's main street, workers get pink slips--- The story is the same whether it is a Japanese corporation such as Bandai, or Nike, or dozens of others who trade off people's sweat for money -- ( This is all continues even today in 2008 as sports figures like Tiger Woods and Lebron James make millions of dollars endorsing the Nike brand.)
To be continued - see list of 1998 job losses and company closedowns at Expert rated ezine articles or at Tapart News and Art that Talks page
This was the real world back then - It was frightening just as it is today in 2008. Hillary wasn't home baking cookies during this time. She was there. The Clintons and the Bush family are one when it comes to Free Trade and Globalization.
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