Web Letters: Dems Flunking Trade 101

The So Called Left Fiddles While America and the World Burns ... We need to scrap all these "free trade' deals and start from scratch.

These deals are being used to pillage the environment here and especially abroad by giving multi nationals carte blanche ownership of resources with recourse through the WTO to financially cripple those who would protest such a taking of national sovereignty, for example Bolivia and their drinking water.

Our country now has a $700 Billion trade deficit thanks to these deals. No credible economist will tell you these deficits are sustainable. These trade deals are the backbone of neoliberal economics and the platform for the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism.

Where is this article in Salon or the Nation?

SHOULD THE W.T.O. BE SCRAPPED?

Meanwhile we on the left chase our tail over minutia and call it debate.

Michael McKinlay

Hercules, CA

Clinton and Obama are corporate Democrats! You cannot trust them! I would not have normally voted for Kucinich, or Nader who I will vote for in the general election. I don't think Nader would not have run if the Democratic party had not become a corporate party.

There is not a lot of difference between the Democratic establishment and Republicans with regard to the economy. There is no two party system on economic questions. I have been around for along time, and I have studied the history of America. I KNOW that "Free Trade" will kill not only our economy, but the World's economy. We became a major Industrial power behind trade barriers. The industrial base that was created provided jobs, and, eventually, a middle class lifestyle for the American worker.

The American farmer feeds the industrial base, and a self-sustaining, independent American market was created that didn't depend on trade. The contribution the Progressive movement made to the American economy was the regulation of big business, along with health and safety standards that protected the worker and ordinary Americans. True Progressives regulate big business.

I voted for Kucinich and will vote for Nader because they will pull us out of NAFTA like trade deals and, I hope, institute tariffs. It is only through tariffs that our industrial base can be recreated, and the jobs that left with these trade policies. We are talking about the economic survival of this nation being decided in the next election.

We may need some new American political parties.

Pervis J. Casey

Riverside, CA

Thank you, thank you:

May I suggest A reason why Sen. Obama hasn't dealt with the free trade issue more rigorously. Look at what they did to Kerry when he just suggested that we stop giving tax incentives to offshore jobs and outsource our labor.

Most laborers don't understand the multiplier effect of a manufacturing job and most of us have trouble untangling the effect of free markets trying to compete against managed economies like china. Most of us don't understand sovereign funds. We don't have an argument against competition.

Look at how easily Sen. Edwards was distorted by the media and destroyed, more or less by the people he was trying to help.

Was it John Maynard Keynes who said, "You can never underestimate the stupidity of the people." He may have been correct.

James Pinette

Caribou, Maine