We don't here a lot about it, but we experience it every day.  The U.S. infrastructure is crumbling.  Potholes multiply, certainly.  And bridges are in disrepair.  But our electrical transmission lines lose gargantuan amounts of electricity between generation and consumption.  Our internet lines do not reach rural citizens, who struggle with 1994-era dial-up access.

Here is a good piece in the WaPo about infrastructure.  The topic is fundamental, but not yet sexy. 

Forgive my repetitive focus on the NY Times editorial board, but they are really a study in inconsistency.  Bipolar perhaps, in a vague metaphorical way.  

The board pushes free trade agreements that are a substantial factor causing manufacturing loss.  In other regular written forays, the board complains of Asian environmental devastation and U.S. income inequality - without causally connecting them to the current flavor of free trade policy.

Today, the board has a very insightful editorial, "Down and Out in Connecticut." 

Over the past two decades, of all the 50 states, income inequality increased the most by far in Connecticut — and not only because of the outsize gains of the state’s many hedge fund managers. ...

Over the last 20 years, Connecticut has lost a third of its manufacturing jobs, replacing them with lower paying service-sector jobs. Virtually no additional jobs have been created. ...

Connecticut’s schools are big underperformers. The gap between the educational performance of low-income and middle- and high-income pupils is the widest in the nation. ...

The loss of manufacturing jobs, coupled with an achievement gap, is a recipe for perpetually worsening poverty.

I have lived in Connecticut.  That which they say is true.  It is fundamental, economically and societally.  The inequality and squandering of opportunity is happening across the country.  The trade policy they espouse causes that which they decry.

The role of agriculture in rural America is the similar the positive manufacturing dynamic in a more urban community.  Agriculture founded upon millions of independent entrepreneurs is a great wealth generator, a great class and wealth equalizer, and a great community builder.   

This is not to argue for eliminating service jobs.  It is an argument for balance, and for recognition of how to preserve and build an economy.  And a society.

Duly noted:

Counterfeit products are a routine threat for the electronics industry. However, the more sinister specter of an electronic Trojan horse, lurking in the circuitry of a computer or a network router and allowing attackers clandestine access or control, was raised again recently by the F.B.I. and the Pentagon.

The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States.  ...

 Arrests have been made in China as part of the investigation, she said.

Hillary Clinton has developed good talking points on trade and China.  She hits China currency manipulation/misalignment head on.  She wants a pause on trade agreements, which is sensible because those agreements miss the mark of what is wrong with trade. 

Obama recently said that free trade is good, but we need labor and environmental protections.  Fine, as far as it goes.  And is free trade, as practiced for the last 20 years, good?  The economic results have been horrendous, from trade balance, to foreign debt, to job loss, etc.  Trade is good when conforming to the national interest, which it did for about 200 years before running off the rails with Fast Track, NAFTA and their progeny.  But free trade in its current form?  Good?  Not so much.

McCain is still a wacko free trader.  Don't call me partisan, look at his record.  Duncan Hunter, the Republican candidate that dropped out, was very good on many core economic trade issues.

Both Obama and Clinton, last week, agreed to co-sponsor S. 796 which is a currency manipulation bill introduced by Senators Bunning, Stabenow and Bayh.  That is very good news.

But what to make of Hillary?  Is she for real?  She is behind in the nomination race and must be aggressive in courting the blue collar voters in Indiana and North Carolina... people who rightly think trade agreements just benefit the outsourcing multinationals and the Wall Street international finance guys.

She supported NAFTA and refuses to admit it now.  She could say that she supported NAFTA and was wrong, but she has not. Bill Clinton, in 2005, promised Colombia President Uribe that he supports the Colombia FTA that Hillary opposes.  Mark Penn, her former campaign manager and current pollster, works for the Coloumbia government to lobby for the FTA here in DC.

Today, we find out, from McClatchy, that Bill Clinton has a multimillion dollar stake in a company controlled by the Chinese government. 

He also received $2.6 million, some of it in ``guaranteed payments,'' from the Cayman Islands-based Yucaipa partnership, which invested in Xinhua Finance Media Ltd., China's leading, government-controlled financial and entertainment media company.

I want to believe Hillary.  And I want Obama to be stronger on sensible trade change that addresses the fundamentals.  And I want McCain to convert.  And I want a pony.  But can we believe Hillary?

The U.S. Constitution allocates power among three competing branches:  legislative, judicial and executive.  The power over foreign commerce was bestowed on the legislative branch.  Fast Track Trade "Promotion" Authority - which is import/outsourcing promotion authority - was transferred from Congress to the Executive.  Now we are stuck again with considering the Colombia FTA which entrenches the NAFTA model and ignores the fundamental problems of VAT tariffs, currency manipulation, product standards, rules of origin and outsourcing.

George Will today wrote about how conservatives used to dislike unchecked power in the federal executive - i.e. the President. 

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, only one delegate (from ever-bellicose South Carolina, naturally) favored vesting presidents with an unfettered power to make war. Presidents, it was then thought, could respond on their own only to repel sudden attacks on the nation. "The Founders," says former representative David Skaggs, a Colorado Democrat, "counted on the competitive ambitions of the three branches to make checks and balances work." Instead, we have seen Congress's powers regarding war "migrate ignominiously to the executive."...

Because contemporary conservatism was born partly in reaction to two liberal presidents -- against FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society -- conservatives, who used to fear concentrations of unchecked power, valued Congress as a bridle on strong chief executives. But, disoriented by their reverence for Reagan and sedated by Republican victories in seven of the past 10 presidential elections, many conservatives have not just become comfortable with the idea of a strong president, they have embraced the theory of the "unitary executive."

The point applies to trade policy.  Congress should free itself from the Fast Track shackles, reject the Colombia FTA, and get on with addressing the trade deficit, currency manipulation, outsourcing and the un-reported phenomena of trading partners replacing tariff reductions with import tax hikes (value added taxes).

I have criticized Thomas Friedman for supporting every trade agreement he has ever seen, despite not reading one of them.  His past (and continued?) lemming-like support for trade agreements has pushed America into these troubles.

"We got this free market, and I admit, I was speaking out in Minnesota--my hometown, in fact, and guy stood up in the audience, said, `Mr. Friedman, is there any free trade agreement you'd oppose?' I said, `No, absolutely not.' I said, `You know what, sir? I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn't even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade."  

But he makes some good points today, in an op-ed on whether America is still strong.  

Traveling the country these past five months while writing a book, I’ve had my own opportunity to take the pulse, far from the campaign crowds. My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America. 

Nation building in the U.S. is a good idea.  But we are following the U.K. trajectory of decline.  Giving away the riches of the realm for foreign policy reasons on trade, pursuing expensive military action in pipsqueak countries, allowing our production to be shipped overseas, and financing it all on credit cards and subprime mortgages.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.”

Here is a good visual metaphor - our infrastructure as a measure of our current prosperity position.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin’s luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II. 

Singapore has a national strategy.  We do not.  

How could this be? We are a great power. How could we be borrowing money from Singapore? Maybe it’s because Singapore is investing billions of dollars, from its own savings, into infrastructure and scientific research to attract the world’s best talent — including Americans.

If you don't have a strategy, you don't win.  You shuffle and sputter and decline.  We still have the assets to deploy in a focused strategy to reclaim prosperity for everyone.  We just don't have as much margin to survive distraction by the Colombia FTA or tabloid issues in the presidential race.