Free trade pact a pig in a poke

By Libby

The media may be improving slightly in its coverage of political malfeasance but when it comes to acting as apologist/cheerleaders for the corporate takeover of our government, they're still up to their same old tricks. Take Fareed Zakaria's fetid farce on the behind closed doors "free" trade deal in today's Newsweek. You know where he's going to go with this right from the start.

Last week house speaker Nancy Pelosi and congress-man Charles Rangel showed genuine leadership by making a deal with the Bush administration to ease the passage of new trade pacts.

Since when is making back room pacts with the devil, genuine leadership? He doesn't say a word about the suspicious secrecy surrounding the whole process. Even worse he holds up the dismally failed NAFTA agreement as a precedent for such wholesale sellouts of the working man.

Bill Clinton's most important political achievement was to transform the image of the Democratic Party into one that was in favor of growth, markets and trade. Clinton supported and articulated a powerful defense for the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Trade Organization and commerce with China, among many such issues. He spoke confidently of the promise and opportunities of a globalized world.

Let's review those successes shall we? NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexico, wrecking their environment, disempowering the workers and leading to the meteoric rise in poverty that contributes even today to the desperate scramble across the border of illegal immigrants. And let's not forget the rise in outsourcing since its implementation and how's that China thing working out? We can now get unlimited cheap crap from China at the local Walmart including tainted food. Whoopee. But Fareed is not done with his "benefit list" yet.

..But the basic facts are incontestable: over the past 20 years, as these forces have accelerated, the United States has benefited enormously. Its companies have dominated the new global economic order; its consumers have reaped the lion's share of the resulting price reductions.

That of course should read US multinational mega-corporations now dominate the world market and make more money than a third of the sovereign nations on the planet. This comes in very handy when they want to buy favorable legislation like bankruptcy bills and Medicare "reform" but hey don't forget, Americans can now get unlimited cheap crap from China at the local Walmart including tainted food. Hell of a tradeoff there. But Fareed closer is the real zinger.

But for the past 50 years America has outsourced manufacturing jobs—and yet the economy and personal income and our standards of living have kept growing robustly. Why is it different if the person exposed to international competition now wears a tie?

Well that might be because when the blue collar jobs were outsourced the whole scam was premised on retraining workers for white collar jobs. Now that the high paying tech jobs are being outsourced, what are they are going to retrain for - nurse's aides and hotel maids to the investor class?

It's not just Newsweek that's perpetrating this corporate welfare act as a boon for the working man. The NYT gets out its pom-poms in an editorial.

A commitment to basic labor standards — including bans on child labor and forced labor and guarantees of the right to organize — will be written into pending and future trade agreements. Trading partners will be required to enforce their own environmental laws. The administration will be responsible for monitoring compliance.

Oh great. The same administration that has been responsible for monitoring compliance to rule of law from the DoJ to the FDA to the EPA? Boy don't we feel safer now?

As Sirotta points out in his latest post on this subject:

No reporter, rank-and-file Member of Congress or member of the public has seen the final language of any new trade pact that this deal purports to represent. Put another way, in reporting that this deal definitely means strong labor/environmental standards without actually seeing the legislative language, Beltway journalists are behaving just like their idol Friedman, who admitted on national television that he used his newspaper columns and television appearances to champion the job-destroying Central American Free Trade Agreement even though "I didn't even know what was in it."

We're being sold out again folks. Clearly the media isn't going to bite the corporate hand that feeds them so don't forget to send an email to your Beltway bunko artists and tell them no deal on "free trade."