Category Archives: NAFTA/free trade

ALEC fighting open records

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This up from PR Watch on ALEC’s latest: asserting that its communications with public legislators is private….

Isn’t it amazing how the folks who insist on the Patriot Act and having the right to examine your private phone conversations, emails, library records, bank records, etc., are the same ones insisting that they have a right to privacy….??  The story states that there are cases where the communications can be private–in some states they don’t have to make their communications public knowledge…but it stops there and doesn’t explore that point further.

So…I went on a quick search and found this resource to each state’s open door laws.  As with any law, though, it’s only as good as the people behind it.  That is, if you have a group of people bent on keeping things secret with financial resources to keep their secrets, while those that try to find information lacking in financial resources…well, the law isn’t worth much…

Living History

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Henry Ettinger was a “Monuments Men” who helped rescue stolen art work by the Nazis and spoke of his experience recently.

The article mentions that Hitler was into natural art and resented the turn towards impressionism and interpretative art, and instead of accepting that, he decided to destroy the art.  But that sentence doesn’t make sense, because they put the art into the mines to preserve them and protect them from bombs instead of outright destroying them.   Yeah, I know that some could be sold on the black market to raise money for the war….but they also had an “exhibition” of the artworks, which also makes no sense–why put them on display at all if they were disgusting to Hitler?  Why go to all of the trouble to transport them through a tour in Germany and Austria?

In addition to the Monuments Men, Ettinger’s family history is also very intriguing.  As the story goes, his family lived in Germany before being forced out by the Nazis in 1938.  The part that leaps out at me was  this simple passage:

“My family dated back 600 years in Germany,” Ettlinger said. “My father had an elegant women’s fashion store, with 40 employees. But when the Nazis came to power in 1933, it was immediately boycotted.”

The Nazis, said Ettlinger, didn’t immediately start killing the Jews. Instead they made it impossible for them to make a living.

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Am I entirely too cynical or conspiracy theorist to look at how our jobs have been shipped overseas and the ones left are poverty-level wages, making it impossible to put any money away for savings/retirement/vacations/emergencies….and that the union jobs are being replaced with low wage workers…?  Yeah, I suppose it is too conspiracy theorist…but the effect is still the same–making it impossible to earn a living…

 

 

 

Tossed aside

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The suicide rate has skyrocketed for one particular age group:  the over 50 crowd….the Boomers…

Susie Madrak has a post up on it here.

From the comments, which are really sobering:

dogjudge • 3 hours ago 

September, 2011. I get a phone call from friends of my (then) 83 year old aunt. She had just been saved by two friends. Both are nurses. She had sliced both arms about 35 times. When the dust settled, we found out that she had gotten over 10 grand in debt. Why? She and her husband had lost all of their money paying for hospital bills for his heart condition. He died about 10 years prior. Her only income was Social Security. Couldn’t afford to live on that. Long story short, she now lives with my wife and I.

And we get the Republicans wanting to make that situation worse for millions and a President who thinks that cutting Social Security is fine so that the wealthy in this country still don’t have to pay their fair share.

Isn’t this a great country, or what?

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The comments are heartbreaking.  And very telling.  There’s a lot of pain out there….and not a lot of hope that things will get better.

Are you listening, members of Congress? President Obama?

….probably can’t hear over the loud voices of lobbyists and campaign donors….

More on Rogoff and Reinhart

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Firedoglake has this up on the *cough* research of Rogoff and Reinhart.

From one of the commenters, letsgetitdone at 16:

I think, finally, that the RR study is an example of the corruption of social science in modern times. I believe that one can show that the study was not just guilty of calculation errors and errors of omission, but that these must be seen as part of a pattern of systematic bias that permeated their whole process of inquiry beginning with their selection of the problem, moving through every decision point in implementing the study, and ending with their evaluation of their evidence and their writing of the result. They made no attempt to do a scientific study maximizing fair comparison of alternative theories having policy relevance, but instead prepared what was essentially a legal brief supporting austerity policies and the Pete Peterson line. The social costs of what they did are strewn all over the globe. See this recent post at DailyKos.

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I agree that if R and R purposely left out data (and the concensus is that they did), then what they did was fraudulent and a deliberate attempt to persuade public opinion towards austerity.
This should be *sounding the bells*  as to how very, very important our public education system is….from  kindergarten through four year colleges….the public needs to be able to understand this stuff in the most basic terms.  And the financial gurus purposely make it difficult to understand for the Jane/John Does of the U.S., to give themselves the upper hand.  Like I said about the university I attended, they made math more difficult than it had to be –the only conclusion one can come to is that they were doing it on purpose to “weed out” people.  This, in turn, means fewer graduates with Math degrees to compete in the job market, enabling them to be paid more $$.  It also means that financial gurus can bullshit people and no one will be the wiser.  When the Wall St. meltdown happened, there were econ people who could not figure the mess out…how are Jane/John Doe supposed to?
With the Liberal Arts degree, I have a basic understanding of statistics from a political science class. We were taught to look for the reasons behind conclusions of research.  Who funded it?  What other work have these researchers done (looking at other work for biases)?  Who benefits from it (will a corporation use the data as an asset or use the data to knock down a competitor)?  If it was a poll, we were taught that anything more than 2% plus or minus of the margin of error was a flawed study–the questions asked were biased in some way or not thorough enough.
That is why one should always question absolutes in science or absolute truth that anyone espouses.  If more people were less intimidated and asked “why” and to say “I don’t understand” to someone trying to buffalo them, the financial gurus and others like them would not be able to get away with the stuff that they do.  Thank God for people like Herndon and the others who seek the truth and are not afraid to speak out.
I followed the link that letsgetitdone had in the comment to dailykos, which in turn had the link to the cepr.net website.
This quote from the cepr website says it all:
This is a big deal because politicians around the world have used this finding from R&R to justify austerity measures that have slowed growth and raised unemployment. In the United States many politicians have pointed to R&R’s work as justification for deficit reduction even though the economy is far below full employment by any reasonable measure. In Europe, R&R’s work and its derivatives have been used to justify austerity policies that have pushed the unemployment rate over 10 percent for the euro zone as a whole and above 20 percent in Greece and Spain. In other words, this is a mistake that has had enormous consequences.
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Minor quibble—as everyone is leaning to, this was not a “mistake”…but a deliberate attempt to misconstrue data to suit their political ideology, and that of Pete Peterson.

Thatcher

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Protests at her funeral here.

On the Mirror site, someone commented that they should put her in a black bag and put her out with the rest of the trash.  Okay, that’s a little harsh.  But spending  10 million is too, too much, especially for someone who promoted austerity.

Funny how people who advocate austerity measures never include themselves as recipients.

In harmony with nature

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Bhutan is the first country to go entirely organic.  Good for them!  Note that they see this as not only a practical idea, but they incorporate their spirituality in their reverence for nature.  It’s not easy, as the article states, because it’s hard to reorient oneself to farming without chemicals.  Chemicals are just too, too easy.  It takes creative thinking and hard work to do the right thing.

<sigh> I wish the so-called progressive America did the same.  (Remember when the United States used to lead the world?)

No, we’re not the leaders anymore….

…we’d much rather do stupid stuff like genetically engineer a life form and then persecute farmers into bankruptcy for using that technology unknowingly.

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In other environmental news, Canadian Prime Minister Harper is being urged to walk away from yet another trade agreement.

From the article:

The Australian government decided in 2011 it would stop including these rights and investor-state dispute settlement in its trade and investment agreements. Many countries, including South Africa and India, are rethinking their investment treaties because of the way corporations and law firms have abused them to undermine democracy and public policies globally. Several Latin American countries are cancelling their investment treaties for the same reason.

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Again, I ask, “remember when the U.S. used to lead the world….?”  Why are other countries doing the right thing while America lists like a battered ship in the sea?

Capital Gains and Income inequality

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Attaturk has this up on the reasons behind the income inequality in this country.   Note that Clinton first lowered the 28% tax on capital gains…down from Reagan….while he was signing away the jobs with NAFTA….and there you have a huge contribution to the mess that we’re in.

Yeah, I think it’s about time that those capital gains are taxed at 35%.

 

 

Most Admired?

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Seriously?

Gallup has the “Most Admired” poll out here:  http://www.gallup.com/poll/145394/Barack-Obama-Hillary-Clinton-2010-Admired.aspx

I kept looking for the numbers, but didn’t find them until the very bottom of the story–they only asked 1,000 adults. I think I heard there were 60 million people in the U.S. now–they could only find  a thousand people to ask?

And if you look at the margin of error at 4 + or – percentage points…it’s laughable.  Anything more than 2% plus or minus is a flawed poll–it’s considered biased and invalid.

Judging from the other women chosen, with two exceptions, the poll is definitely skewed with those of the conservative views.

Things not to admire:

Whitewater.

The link to Chinese censorship. 

More stuff on Bill with his support of the war in Iraq. Oh, wait…he didn’t support the war in Iraq? /snark

And Hillary’s support of the war in Iraq…

And the stuff I brought up in my post here.

And then there’s the self-righteous, fundamentalist connection–here and here.

And personally, I know someone who knows Hillary Clinton.  I can’t go into details, but it’s sufficient to say that her behavior in at least one incident was more of that of a teenage girl and her boyfriend than an adult woman in relation to her husband.   I expect maturity and self-respect and dignity out of my leaders…I guess I’m funny that way.

 

 

No way…

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…that 90% of the Democrats endorse and support Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. (Of all the times to forget my earphones–so I can’t watch this, but I have heard parts of it.)

She actually thinks Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair and Benjamin Netanyahu are upstanding people that speak well of her integrity and leadership skills?

Kissinger quotes that are alarming:

“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

“Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power, and is often, in point of fact, useless.”

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

In other words, power turns him on–ego, ego, ego.  Intelligence is not needed when you’re trying to bomb the hell out of another country–you only need bigger bombs than they have.  And lastly, starving people will do wonders at gaining their compliance to do things they would not normally do.  And he who has the gold makes the rules….

Tony Blair and his compliance with invading Iraq.

And, of course, we know of Netanyahu’s connections to Romney and his exaggerating the Iran threat….for twenty years…

Clinton is a war hawk who would love to push that fabled “red button” at the slightest provocation….or none at all.

One of the employees bought a converter for our TV in the main room for the residents, so I get whatever our antenna picks up.  I watched ABC This Week on Sunday morning and was stunned at Carville’s statement that 90% of Dems have already decided that Clinton will be the nominee.

First of all, how dare you make such an assumption of what the voters are thinking??  I am so sick and tired of politicians and pundits using the phrase “the American people believe/want/need…” when they can only speak for themselves.

…and from where this writer sits, I’d vote for Romney before I’d vote for another Clinton in the White House.  I’m sick of Bushes and Clintons in the White House.  We can thank Clinton for NAFTA, and Bush II for No Child Left a Mind, and for getting us into two wars on false claims of weapons of mass destruction…between all of them, they’ve done a bang up job of ruining this country.  And let’s not leave out the Godfather of it all, Ronald Reagan.  I’m ashamed to say that I voted for him the first four years, but thankfully, not the second four…

Who revoked the dream?

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I’ve been reading this entry on barlett and steele’s website.  It was written in 1996, and was so prophetic of what was happening and now we see the ripple effect.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I feel like I was sleepwalking through the 80s and early 90s and am now Rip Van Winkle-ing–re-learning what was…

I was busy getting married, having babies, and going along with the babbling of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush years….well, maybe not W.’s years, but still…the country was being demolished, stick by stick…

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American made stuff (I haven’t purchased these items, so I can’t speak to their quality or the companies’ treatment of employees):

Diamond Gusset Jeans

Union label

All USA clothing

Here’s a site that encompasses many different products.

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A bright note here.  I think it’s a good sign that small business owners are giving bonuses.  Now if they could hire more people at living wages…