HOPE: just talked to far right dad, disgusted with Bush on CAFTA

[yurbud]

Over CAFTA of all things.

He is that angry paranoid person that one shrink wrote about being attracted to the GOP.

But tonight he told me he's had it with both parties because they look out for big business and chase cheap labor with trade deals like CAFTA.

If you recall, conservatives like Pat Buchanan opposed NAFTA because it would hurt workers (and it did).

This should be shooting fish in a barrel for the Dems if they weren't bowing and scraping for corporate dollars like the GOP.

Why don't they get their head out of their ass and start taking labor issues seriously again?

[Jim Sagle]

1. Because they're gatekeepers?

:shrug:

[unkachuck]

2. we need more like your Dad....

....who has 'seen the light'....and he's right about the Dems and big-business....like 'deep-throat' said, 'just follow the money'....

....maybe he would like help us turn the Dems into a real 'peoples party' again?....

[yurbud]

4. he still hates "queers"

but I ran Howard Dean's four things 95% of people agree on by him:

good schools
affordable health care
good jobs
safety

In other words, the bare minimums for a civilized society. Of course he agreed those were important, AND that neither party is doing a particularly good job on any because they got their nose too deep int he corporate ass.

[necso]

3. We (Dems) can potentially score big points if

we can (get and) stay more or less united and (help) kill CAFTA.

Big points. (IMO, of course.)

CAFTA is just another deal that benefits everyone in the involved countries only in the hypothetical -- and benefits the elite (some of the elite, anyway -- others are just being played for suckers, neocon style) in these countries with certainty (but that's the point in no small part). What good does it do a working person to save a buck on a package of underwear, when it costs him in terms of hourly wages (multiplied roughly times 2000) -- or costs him his living? Indeed, one might even imagine that some business owners would prefer to be able to stay in the US and to be able to compete domestically, at least... but only maybe.

We have tried "free" trade -- and it ain't working out well for us. It's past time to start the pendulum moving in the other direction. (Energy independence also looms large here.)

And any talk of correcting trade problems by screwing with the value of currencies is madness -- ivory-tower hallucinations and extremist dogma taking the place of reason and realism -- and masking the true objectives of our overlords, to further marginalize (and rob) those without great wealth.

But before we can expect (that is, have as an expectation) Dem legislators to wean themselves totally from the corporate teat, there must be a ready supply of (roughly equivalent) alternative funds... Survival is the first rule of the species, after all. And we can hardly expect (generally) ambitious, successful people to forgo their own interests. They didn't get where they are by neglecting their interests -- or forgetting where the big bucks come from.