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).