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McCain: Out of Touch on Trade |
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At a speech in Florida yesterday, Sen. John McCain made a baffling pronouncement: The rising discontent in our country is not due to job losses, home foreclosures or the health care crisis, but rather the fact that we aren’t passing a bad trade deal with Colombia.
Here’s what McCain had to say at yesterday’s event:
We have made progress toward this vision by expanding the benefits of free commerce, through [the North American Free Trade Agreement], the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and our free trade agreements with Peru and Chile. But the progress has stalled; our longstanding bipartisan commitment to hemispheric prosperity is crumbling. We see this most vividly in Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s opposition to the free trade agreement with Colombia. The failure of Congress to take up and approve this agreement is a reminder why 80 percent of Americans think we are on the wrong track.
What country is he living in?
Maybe McCain is spending too much time listening to the lobbyists who run and fund his campaign—one top backer actually lobbies for Colombia’s government. Clearly, he’s not listening to the millions of working families who are unhappy about lost jobs, shuttered factories, foreclosures and rising costs.
Nor is he thinking about the exploited Colombian workers who face intimidation, threats and even murder if they try to secure their rights at work. Last year, 39 trade unionists were killed in anti-union violence in Colombia, and 24 have been killed already this year—more than one a week.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says McCain’s comments on Colombia show he just doesn’t get it.
John McCain glossed over horrific human rights abuses and the deaths of hundreds of Colombian union activists today when he urged Congress to pass the Bush administration’s ill-conceived Colombian trade pact. Workers in Colombia are targeted for violence and blocked from joining unions to lift their lives and prevent exploitation, making fair trade impossible. In fact, Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a union member. The fact that McCain believes not passing Bush’s bad trade deal with Colombia is the reason Americans think we’re on the wrong track is a measure of how out of touch he’s become with working people’s concerns.
If McCain wants to be taken seriously by working families, he needs to listen to their concerns. They want an economy that works for everyone, not lockstep support of bad trade deals. Workers here and around the world deserve a fair trade policy that protects jobs and the freedom to form unions.
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There is no doubt that McCain is deaf, dumb and blind to the plight of the American working man who has made this country great. His policies, voting record and rhetoric point to belief that an elite rich is best. But to see just how bad inequality of wealth can hurt a country one needs to look no further than the country he wants to trade with, Colombia. Colombia has one of the highest disparities of income, not just in the region, but in the world. They are the leading producer and shipper of cocaine. For years they have held the number one spot for murder of union members and are far ahead of the rest of the world already in 2008. A recently released international Global Peace Index shows them to be the most violent country in the Western Hemisphere. Colombian corruption, especially in the government, is legendary. This fact is mentioned in US State Department, Organization of American States (OAS) and many NGO reports. To quote a former paramilitary member no living in exile in Canada, “In Colombia there is so much corruption, so many politicians that are corrupt. If the corruption continues, so does the war and so do all of the other problems.”
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/236299
Impunity from the law remains another problem. It is not just among the deaths of union members where this is a 3% arrest rate, but among the public in general as well. The justice system is under funded and understaffed as well as being hampered in other ways by the administration. Already 31 congress members are in jail for working with the paramilitary including help in getting them elected sometimes with murders of opponents. Another 30 are being investigated. Almost all of these individuals are supporters of the President, including his own cousin. Yet in two years only one congress member has been sentenced. And the President has mentioned that the system needs to be changed to be more lenient on these congress members.
It is Colombian corruption combined with impunity for the elite that keeps labor laws and other laws to protect the citizens from being enforced. It also greatly hinders the ability of people to raise their income. Over 55% of Colombians live below the poverty level.
Citizens cannot trust their own government to help and protect them. An OAS report shows that especially for the indigenous people. http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/2007eng/Chap.4.htm
A US State Department report as well as those from NGO’s show that extrajudicial murders by the Colombia security forces are on the increase. For a personal story of how they killed one woman’s son and tried to pass him off as a FARC see this story:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/36199,features,army-murders-mar-victories-over-farc
And indeed oil does play a part in all of this. Here is an interesting article explaining the connection between the Clinton’s, Colombia and big oil.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/050500-103.htm
One must keep in mind that it was Bill Clinton who started Plan Colombia that has already cost the USA over $5 Billion to Colombia making it the largest recipient of US taxpayer money in the West. President Bush has happily kept it going. The plan has failed to decrease the supply of cocaine coming from that country. But more importantly it used $98 million of taxpayer money to protect the Occidental Petroleum line while in 2006 Ray Irani, CEO of Occidental, made over $400 million.
When the above situations exist the majority of the people are unable to make sufficient income to have enough disposable money to purchase American goods. The market therefore is very small and mostly limited to those who have made money through drugs or corruption. The conditions also make it advantageous for American corporations to send work there taking away from American jobs. Owens-Illinois has already demonstrated that with closing their Godfrey plants and moving the work to Colombia.
It should be noted that when that happened, Barack Obama petitioned the labor department to help those who lost their jobs.
http://obama.senate.gov/press/060905-obama_durbin_as_1/
The Republicans and others can talk all they want about how the FTA will add $1 billion in US sales, but the same thing happened with the Vietnam FTA, unfortunately they sent us 10 times more creating a huge trade deficit and took many American jobs.
To create the state that McCain advocates is to create a failed state.
That’s just great, another free trading partner. Another country who will flood our markets with cheap goods and another country whose business’ won’t contribute to our tax base. Another country our business’ will move to because it’s tough to compete with cheap labor and we will lose jobs. A continuing loss of tax base equals a vicious cycle that nobody ever mentions? Why hasn’t that been mentioned/thought of?
Why havn’t any politicians talked about replacing the Income tax with a National Sales Tax. This would make all goods taxed. Then these free trade buddies pay their fair share of taxes. I know Canada has a 12% GST (gross service tax) this is paid on every sales transaction.
Someone said that if the social security tax was raised 1% now the system would stay solvent for the next century. Why havn’t any of the candidates/politicians made this action now?