A Conversation With VP Biden on Trade

Senator Hollings, you nailed all the high notes with your commentary on the Huffington Post. Thanks for your insight and persistence. I wish voters could catch your drift and quit buying into this business about free-markets and free trade.

Since May, I've been working way too much (a blessing) to read your posts, but I'm catching up now.

I have to quote a few key sections of your post, so they appear on my blog...they need emphasis.

"After adopting a seal, the first bill to pass the Congress in its history on July 4, 1789, was a protectionist tariff. And we financed and built these United States into an industrial power with "protectionism." We didn't pass the income tax until 1913. In 1900 the colony was richer than the Mother Country by $25 billion and had a GDP double the GDP of Germany and Russia combined, causing Teddy Roosevelt to exclaim: 'Thank God I'm not a Free Trader.'"

"The Obama Administration says the solution for jobs is educate, educate. We in South Carolina need a lot more education, but we have enough to create jobs -- producing the "ultimate driving machine" for BMW and the most advanced aircraft, the "Dreamliner," for Boeing. It's Washington that needs education."

And yes, bring on the VAT to promote domestic industry and exports.

Now, they're blaming President Obama for being anti-business and for not paying down deficits. He should eliminate the corporate tax and replace it with a 2% VAT. This will make him pro-business; bring in more revenues to pay down deficits, and promote exports. The vote in the Senate against McCain's VAT was an increase in taxes. The corporate tax beginning at 39% averages at 27%. A 2% VAT cuts corporate taxes for production 25%. And please call it for a vote. Now! Don't worry about a filibuster. Any voting against a 2% VAT to replace the corporate tax will be voting against the major reason to off-shore jobs; be voting against jobs; against cutting taxes; against promoting exports, against paying down the deficit, and against business. 

All truth, as far as I can tell. Why can't truth ever get traction in the morass of our political and media environment?

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

No, NAFTA Was Not President Clinton's Idea

(A reply to a comment on an article, "Rebuild America, Don't Sack It," by Robert L. Borosage, at the Huffington Post.)

Yes, Clinton signed NAFTA into law, but it was largely an initiative by Republican politicians, with George H.W. Bush out in front signing the initial draft. Republican politicians then positioned NAFTA as do or die for the American economy, and anyone who opposes it is an un-American, big government, anti-jobs, socialist.


I'll quote a bit of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAFTA):

"In the U.S., Bush, who had worked to 'fast track' the signing prior to the end of his term, ran out of time and had to pass the required ratification and signing into law to incoming president Bill Clinton. Prior to sending it to the House of Representatives, Clinton introduced clauses to protect American workers and allay the concerns of many House members. It also required U.S. partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own."

And this was after the private equity, leveraged buyout, asset stripping frenzy of the tax and tariff-cutting Reagan years during which much of the U.S. industrial base was sold off for pennies on the dollar, and its jobs sent overseas by capitalized investors, who tend to vote Republican.


(And no, not everyone who votes Republican should be demonized, but it mostly Republican politicians who legislate in favor of a minority: capitalized investors; at the expense of the majority: hourly workers)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Republicans and the Deficit Reduction Tragedy

     Since President Reagan's days, Republicans have capitalized on the disasters they've created, and our national debt disaster will be no different. Reagan laid the groundwork for our collective bankruptcy with his "starve the beast" tax cuts, and leveraged-buyout, manufacturing job off-shoring, pro-sweatshop, tariff cutting, import-everything, union-breaking, pseudo-free-trade initiatives. Through these means, Reagan managed to blithely foster the sell off of our proud, thriving industrial base that was built with the blood, sweat, and tears of union labor. These venal initiative enriched bankers a hundred times over, but shattered unions, wage-growth, and future prospects for the middle-class. This was trickle down economics.
     Now, Republicans will trot out the same old, tired war horses: more tax cuts for the capitalized rich, and more off-shoring of the anemic remains of our manufacturing infrastructure (private equity funds, anyone?), while singing the praises of a free-market economy that never existed, and the virtues of free-trade that depends on the silent complicity of overseas, penny-a-day, wage-slaves working amidst environmental degradation that recklessly afflicts the entire planet with deadly toxins.
     As long as Republican campaign contributors can make a quick buck in the sell out of our hard won middle-class avenues of prosperity -- manufacturing jobs and fair home mortgages; and as long as bought and paid for Republican politicians can secure the promise of bonus-padded sinecures when they bail out of politics, it's all good to them. They'll be safe in their gated communities, right?

Why Bankers Love Bonuses

I'll poach one more story from the DailyKos, which gives an outstanding historical perspective on the current financial predicament of the United States and Europe. It neatly clarifies the migration of funds out of the industrial base and into the coffers of financial firms over the last thirty or forty years, and the inciting de-regulation initiatives by vested politicians.

Anyway, here 'tis if you're so inclined toward feasting on anti-free market elucidation:

Goldman Sachs Vice-Chair: Tolerate the Inequality

by NBBooks