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Pres - Ohio debate on trade - Obama v. Clinton |
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Written by Stumo
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Wednesday, 27 February 2008 |
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The trade issue is heating up so that some are comparing it to abortion.
That's good because we need a high profile. That's bad because we
don't want partisanship to scuttle solutions.
The context of the comparison was one of many commentaries on last night's debates:
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers, meanwhile, have been putting out the word
that she tried to persuade her husband not to support Nafta — which
liberalized trade with Mexico and Canada — when he was running for
president. (He did support it, aggressively, and signed it into law in
1993.) “I’m not just going to talk about what’s wrong with Nafta,” she
said in Youngstown, the day after Mr. Obama had been there. “I’m going
to fix it and I have a four-point plan to do exactly that.”
But when you read this plan, or Mr. Obama’s trade agenda, you discover
none of it is particularly radical. Neither candidate calls for a
repeal of Nafta, or anything close to it. Both instead want to tinker
with the bureaucratic innards of the agreement. They want stronger
“labor and environmental standards” and better “enforcement mechanisms.”
It is a good point. What indeed will they really do? Nafta is bad, but no repeal?
A Washington Post story has this paraphrase from the debate:
The two also had a spirited discussion about trade, a huge issue
here in this working-class industrial state. Both said they would
threaten to opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless
Mexico and Canada agreed to renegotiate its terms.
And
here's the big question of the week: Why did both of them support
the Peru FTA? Neither voted for or against it last December 2007
because they were campaigning, but both announced support.
Now I'm all for giving them a respectable path to climb down from silly free
trader status, but really. Why did they support Peru
FTA - which is NAFTA lite? Ya know that was not even 3 months ago.
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In the news
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Colorado CPA member Milt Heft has these thoughts on money, wealth and the economy. Heft is the owner of Petrogen, Inc in Colorado Springs.
A few thoughts about manufacturing:
There is a great misunderstanding of the relationship- between money and wealth. The beginning principles with which we can all agree are a few and simple noble truths:
1. Money is meaningless without wealth.
2. Wealth is difficult to distribute without money.
3. Wealth is the reality of the physical things we need to survive and thrive: food, clothing, shelter, ice cream & computers. It is the product of mining, industrial production, and agriculture.
4. Money is anything that make the wheels of production and distribution go ‘round.
5. Money is easy to manufacture and control.
6. Wealth takes a lot of blood, sweat, toil and tears.
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