Free Trade now has a long history and it is a history of failures which has led to wars and terrorism. It has deflated wages everywhere it has touched.

It is time to prepare for the post globalization era. It is a natural process that will correct the turmoil so called Free Trade and Globalization has bred. We need real jobs and not wars.

For more untold stories behind the stories of Free Trade and Globalism, see Tapart News and Art that Talks at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews
http://tapsearch.com/globalization/id5.html
http://www.experiencedesignernetwork.com/000636.html or search under Tapart News for hundreds of more untold stories about the race to the bottom

And Harkin not only believed in the idea, he saved it from extinction from Bush’s cowardly, shameless, greedy hands and made sure it was not out of funding. You see we already have this Institute (Department if you will-but if not just have a heart attack), though it is not appreciated by negatively zealot thinkers who believe in nothing more than shallowness, hatred and money, and likewise are too cowardly to rise to the streets, schools, churches, and anywhere too take back our democracy before its foundations are beyond repair.

http://www.usip.org/

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0724-08.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0801-12.htm

I find most thinking people like a good argument, and that in turn sometimes leads to flames or whatever you wish to call it. Ah well, it’s better to flame and think than be silent and ignorant, in my opinion.

Richard, I suspect the Candidate’s schedule is keeping him from making his entry any more quickly. He’s had quite a bit of traveling to do, and seeing that this most recent entry was time-stamped at 4:22am, he’s probably very tired. And no I’m not being defensive, just offering an explanation. I took a look at his schedule for this week, and frankly I can’t imagine not being jet-lagged for a month from it.

Under today’s so-called “free trade” regime, corporations can operate internationally, but labor unions can’t — so there’s no way for workers to fight back against the internationalization of production. The resulting loss of worker bargaining power has had the predictable effect of reducing labor’s share of corporate income.

Actually, the percentage of corporate income going into payrolls has been steadily declining for decades, and that trend accelerated dramatically under NAFTA. Since 1973, union membership has dropped from 24% to 14% and the ratio of the pay of corporate CEO’s to the hourly wages of production workers has soared from 93 times that of workers in 1988 to 419 in 1999 (Note that NAFTA was passed in 1993 and the WTO came into existence in 1995).

Well, if you shrink labor’s slice of the economic pie, then the slice going to shareholders and corporate executives must increase — that seems to be a natural corollary. One might fairly ask if that was not the real point behind NAFTA to begin with.

What’s taking place in the international economy right now is unprecedented: corporations and investors have gained an overwhelming advantage over labor by playing one national workforce against another, going wherever labor is cheapest and thereby driving wages and living standards down all over the world.

Rhetorical flourishes aside, the only Presidential candidates (I’m aware of) seriously addressing this issue are Gephardt, Kucinich, and Dean. Gephardt has proposed an international minimum wage; Kucinich wants to abolish NAFTA and the WTO; and Dean has said that he’ll enforce international labor standards abroad.

Dean’s proposal is probably the weakest in terms of efficacy. “Enforcement of international labor standards abroad” is also pretty vague. Clinton said similar things just after the NAFTA vote in 1993, but take a look at what happened: immediately after the vote, General Electric and Honeywell both fired workers for trying to organize unions in their plants in Northern Mexico.

The Teamsters union protested to the Clinton administration and the issue went to a U.S. Labor Department panel, which was supposed to decide if there had in fact been a violation of labor rights. Robert Reich’s labor department basically said that the fired Mexican workers still had recourse under Mexican law, and therefore there was no issue for the U.S. Labor Department.
Mexican labor law? What a joke. Dean gives a nice speech and says all of the right things to warm the hearts of progressives, but his actual proposals don’t inspire a great deal of confidence.

The Gephardt proposal is more concrete, but also more difficult to evaluate since nothing like it has ever been tried before (to my knowledge).
Practical questions arise: Which countries would participate? Who decides? Who set’s the minimum? What would prevent corporations from moving production into non-participating countries? If the international minimum is less than the $5.15 U.S. minimum, then what would prevent capital flight?

Kucinich has taken the courageous stance of calling for the cancellation of NAFTA and the WTO. That’s the right thing to do. Progressives should stop focusing on his bad hair-cut and start paying attention to the issues that really matter.

Indeed it would. And I’m gonna bet that the war would have gone easier if we had Invisibility Cloaks as well.

Your sarcasm and idiocy does nothing more than to firmly put in place your reputation as a wiseass and someone looking to pick an argument, instead of someone who adds to a productive discussion. It’s sad to watch, actually, you being an adult and all.