Your Weekly Rush - Boys Don't Cook

I should say at the beginning I love to cook; hence there may be profanity ahead.

How many of you parents out there -- stick with me on this -- have little boys that are say, seven, six, five, and four? I know a lot of you do. How many of you have gone out and bought little play kitchens for them to play in? This is an Associated Press story, and it's a chickified news story, written by Melissa Kossler Dutton. "William Batson knows firsthand that when friends visit, they're likely to gather in the kitchen. The 6-year-old regularly invites guests into his play kitchen to prepare pretend meals, wash dishes or stow food in the refrigerator." We are raising the next generation of girlie men. In the kitchen, now!

Even with the transcript, it's hard to convey how boneheaded and dumbass Rush sounded. Basically he's disgusted with the idea of boys/men being encouraged to cook. I don't go to Rush for meaningful gender analysis but this is a new low.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Wayne Wilson

I can't find Wayne Wilson's position on Free Trade/Fair Trade. I know. I'm disappointed too. But let me give you Mr. Wilson's background as compensation.

Wayne Wilson grew up in Knoxville, a small town in northwest Illinois, lettering in football and track. He helped his father in the summers building apartments. After marrying his college sweetheart, he worked as a carpenter, private school teacher, warehouse manager, and contractor. Lately, he's been hauling milk and livestock feed as a truck driver. He has two married sons, one 7-year-old daughter, and three grandchildren with more, hopefully, on the way. He and his family live in northeastern Indiana and enjoy museums, tractor pulls, swimming, symphonies, and shooting sports.

So Wilson enjoys museums and symphonies, eh? Sounds like a metrosexual!

You know it is surprising that Wilson isn't allowed to participate in the debates. I mean surely his experience as a carpenter, private school teacher, and truck drive qualify him to run the entire country! Come on Republicans; bring in Wilson.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Rudy Giuliani

Giuliani is in favor of Free Trade in a big way; in fact he wants to tear down walls that keep Free Trade out. Or in.

Bringing more countries and people into the global marketplace will make America safer and create new markets for our products worldwide. America must promote higher living standards around the world, help reform the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to encourage pro-growth policies, and distribute foreign aid in ways that reinforce good governance and economic freedom, similar to the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

. . . Rudy will tear down the walls to free trade and create new markets for American-made products. He will protect America's innovations and intellectual property by enforcing our trade agreements aggressively.

I just have an image of Giuliani with a baseball bat knocking down unfair trade agreements, Teddy Roosevelt style. At any rate, I suspect that what Giuliani is talking about, by promoting higher living standards, is making sure that American Corporations are allowed to continue exploiting whoever they want.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson doesn't address Free Trade or Fair Trade, on his issues page. But a Google search reveals that he did give a speech in which he touched on Free Trade (which he prefers to fair trade) enough to give a pretty clear sign of where his thinking is.

Some people are saying that in effect after this war in Iraq is over we need to come back home and close the doors and lock them and pull down the shades and build up walls of protection and trade protection and raise taxes and redistribute the income.

. . . . On globalization we aren’t afraid of America; it’s a good thing for America. We do more things better than anybody else. We have more innovation; we invest more in innovation in this country and in our service economy than anybody in the world. Free trade and free prosperity have done more things and caused more prosperity in the world than anything any central planner ever could have come up with and America is the best example of that.

If we want to help our friends in South America and Africa for example and other places, we need to lower our trade barriers, we need to have more trade.

Pretty straightforward; but pretty shallow at the same time. Still I think it's clear, at this point, that Thompson is better at playing a politician than actually being one.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Dr. Alan Keyes

Alan Keyes follows Tancredo's lead, but is a bit more conflicted. He seems to realize that the business community, which he is trying to court as well, will have different attitudes on this issue.

I have always been a staunch defender of free enterprise and an opponent of the domineering bureaucracies, both national and international, which try to suffocate it. But I cannot stand with those so-called conservatives who believe that "free trade" is more important than free government, or the "fiscal conservatives" who seem to believe that money and economic advantage matter more than our right to constitutional, elective self-determination. Trade socialism must be defeated root and branch, even when it is called "free trade."

I think we gave away a portion of our sovereignty that we should never have surrendered when we entered the WTO. It violates the fundamental principle of our way of life: no legislation without representation. I’m not interested in protectionism or withdrawal. But folks ought to be paying a premium price to enter this market, or else giving us something concrete in return that’s of tangible benefit to the American people.

I believe we need to move away from negotiating multinational trade agreements, and ought to focus instead on cutting better deals by bargaining one-on-one with individual countries. I also believe we should impose tariffs on countries that undercut American farmers and manufacturers with cheap products.

The question is whether or not we can afford a trade war with a nation such as China for example. If China threatens to close their markets to us, what is our response? Probably capitulation.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Tom Tancredo

Tancredo's position fits with his other positions; he wants to see trade treaties negotiated and approved by the Congress, not the President.

The President's fast track authority should not be renewed. The constitution gives Congress not the Executive the power to " regulate commerce with foreign nations." Those who would delegate that authority to the President argue that the complexities of negotiation in a global economy require it. But that argument has lost its force because the Presidents have abused the power. Instead of sticking to trade agreements, they make commitments on matters of domestic policy, like immigration and carbon dioxide emissions, in the guise of international accords.

It is somewhat nice to see a Presidential candidate asserting that his office should be less powerful. Certainly that hasn't been President Bush's policy.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Mitt Romney

In contrast, Mitt Romney comes down squarely on the side of Free Trade; he favors competing with Asia, not locking it out.

"We have to keep our markets open or we go the way of Russia and the Soviet Union, which is a collapse. And I recognize there are some people who will argue for protectionism because the short-term benefits sound pretty good, but long term you kill your economy, you kill the future. What you have to do in order to compete on a global basis long term is invest in education, invest in technology, reform our immigration laws to bring in more of the brains from around the world, eliminate the waste in our government. We have to use a lot less oil. These are the kinds of features you have to invest in, you have to change in order to make ourselves competitive long term."

Romney is the business candidate in a way, so this fits his appeal.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Mike Huckabee

Well Huckabee comes out in favor of Fair Trade. What's interesting is that the split between Free Trade and Fair trade is not a party line split - there are both Republicans and Democrats who think we should move towards more isolationist policies, and there are both Republicans and Democrats who favor free trade. Anyway, Huckabee is a populist, and so favors protecting American jobs.

I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that has to be fixed. Behind the statistics, there are real families and real lives and real pain. I'm running for President because I don't want people who have worked loyally for a company for twenty or thirty years to walk in one morning and be handed a pink slip and be told, "I'm sorry, but everything you spent your life working for is no longer here."

I believe that globalization, done right, done fairly, can be a blessing for our society. As the Industrial Revolution raised living standards by allowing ordinary people to buy mass-produced goods that previously only the rich could afford, so globalization gives all of us the equivalent of a big pay raise by letting us buy all kinds of things from clothing to computers to TVs much more inexpensively.

Well that's populist - I note that he doesn't spend much time considering what our trade policies are doing to other nations; but I suppose his audience isn't much interested in that.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Duncan Hunter

Duncan Hunter's issues page is one of the easier ones to use; all his issues are on one page, and the one's he doesn't care about get short shrift. Trade for example; he follows the populist isolationist line, with a side of China bashing

Further, America’s one-way-street trade relationship with China and other nations has reduced manufacturing jobs severely in the U.S. I would change the one-way-street into a two-way-street by putting the same charges on foreign goods that they put on ours.

He's also aware of NAFTA, but sees it mostly in terms of the illegal immigration issue.

I will say I mean easy to use for me; I don't think Hunter's issues page is very effective. It makes it seem like Hunter hasn't thought very hard about the issues, when you compare it to other websites that have a page or more dedicated to each group of issues.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Ron Paul

Well Ron Paul isn't as keen on Free Trade as McCain is; rather he's in favor of protectionism, it appears. His section on Free Trade appears under the heading American Independence and Sovereignty, and he links free trade strictly to free trade organizations.

So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.

The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor’s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. Alternative treatments could be banned.

The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws, yet we still face trade wars. Today, France is threatening to have U.S. goods taxed throughout Europe. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs.

NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme.

Actually just the other day I was putting some cilantro on an omelet when a WTO official came in and asked to see my prescription. It could have been a really tricky situation, but then I realized I don't like cilantro.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - John McCain

John McCain doesn't have a section on Economics, he has a section on Government Spending. The full title is "Government Spending, Lower Taxes and Economic Prosperity" which I guess does cover Free Trade. And make no mistake, John McCain is about Free Trade, not Fair Trade.

A global rising tide of economic isolationism is threatening our entrepreneurs. Opening new markets is a key to U.S. economic success. Today, despite all the defeatist rhetoric, America is the world's biggest exporter, importer, producer, saver, investor, manufacturer and innovator. Americans do not shy from the challenge of competition: they welcome it. Because of that, we attract foreign investment from all over the world. Our government should welcome competition as our people do, and not pretend that we can wall off our economy.

Neither should we fail to recognize that competition can lead to painful dislocations for some individuals. We must remain committed to education, retraining, and help for displaced workers all the while reminding ourselves that our ability to change is a great strength of our nation.

Hmmmm. But if I check page 45 of the Conservative Hymnal doesn't it say something about how it's not Governments job to take care of people cradle to grave? I mean shouldn't those workers, displaced by McCains free trade policies, pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

Oh Canada!

Michael Medved asks a very trenchant and meaningful question in his latest article, one I think we should all consider.

Those who claim that the United States has become a rapacious, arrogant, destructive, domineering and imperialistic power must somehow explain the continued independent existence of the nation of Canada.

Why haven't we invaded Canada? Why oh why?

Well cause Canada sucks. And we don't want it.

No actually Canada doesn't suck. The truth is we largely get everything we want out of Canada already, without invading it. The point to United States Imperialism in the 21st century isn't territory; if it was we would have made Iraq the 51st state. The point is control over natural resources. We are getting control over Iraq's national resources while allowing them to govern themselves (so long as they don't infringe on our interests). Frankly we largely treat Canada the same way (although we give them a lot more leeway, obviously).

Anyway the rest of Medved's article is an argument that we have always been a meddling nation, involved in wars and conflicts; this is true. Doesn't make it right, however.

Voting for Satan

I want to point you to two Salon articles that are worth watching the ad for. The first is by Michael Scherer and is about Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney and his Mormonism. Basically it tells us what we already know; a lot of conservatives aren't comfortable with his Mormonism. For a few it's a deal breaker, for others they are ok with it so long as he largely keeps it out of the campaign. Scherer explains using an interesting metaphor - Evangelicals are like Coke, Mormons are like Pepsi, and they need to team up to defeat Starbucks, i.e. secular and evil America. Many Mormons abstain from caffeinated drinks entirely, incidentally.

Those that do oppose the Romney campaign have an interesting argument; by electing him president they legitimize Mormonism, which, as a false religion, will lead more people to hell.

Keller, the televangelist, remained convinced that a Mormon president will lead to more lost souls. And his fury is no longer just directed at Romney. He calls those Christian leaders who support Romney "Judases" and clowns. "They all come back and say, we're looking for the best president. He's the commander in chief, not the pastor in chief, blah blah blah," Keller said. "What they have done is, they have totally dismissed the fact that this guy's influence is going to lead people to hell."

At any rate, I think Romney has an uphill climb in a number of ways.

The other article is an an interview with Cass Sunstein, who thinks that the internet is encouraging us to congregate with people of like minds. Liberals will hang out with liberals; conservatives will hang out with conservatives, and nobody will have their views challenged. I think there's a point to be made here, but I think he's a little too centrist here.

Liberals are sometimes defined as people who can't take their own side in an argument. I actually don't think there's a difference, though. I would say that there are many liberals who think that, in the last few elections, to vote for a Republican presidential candidate is just mindless, that there's no rational reason that people would vote Republican. If liberals are thinking that, there's probably a problem. I think many liberals think that to vote for Bush, some part of their brain is on fire and the rest of it isn't functioning, or that they've been fooled in some way, or that they're not paying attention. So I think that a lot of liberals are in an echo chamber where they share a set of views, some of which are probably wrong.

Obviously there is an element of truth in this; but and this is a big but, Conservative ideologues tolerance for different ideas is still much much less than that of Liberals. Take Rush Limbaugh, for example. He's made a mint off of telling conservatives that they are right and allowing no differing positions; and he hasn't needed the internet to do it.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Joe Biden

Well Biden's comments on Free Trade came on a page about jobs. Apparently Biden wants to support the American Worker at the international trade bargaining table.

Joe Biden believes that US trade negotiations must protect American workers by insisting on basic labor and environmental standards. That’s why he opposed CAFTA and fast track authority for President Bush. He will continue to fight for better labor and environmental standards in trade agreements and will oppose new trade agreements that don’t meet high standards.

Well sounds familiar but obviously not a bad idea at all.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - John Edwards

It Takes a Seven Nation Army to Hold Us Back!

Sorry - just swept away by the music. Anyway John Edwards has quite a long and detailed section on Trade, which is nice. It does tie into one of his campaign themes, though, which is Two Americas. Our trade polices enrich one America while hurting the other. So he proposes "Smart Trade."

Today, John Edwards proposed "smart trade" policies: insisting on pro-worker provisions in new deals, holding trade partners to their commitments, investing more in dislocated workers and communities, and ensuring that imports are safe. He believes that the U.S. should not enter any new trade deals that do not meet these tests.

Makes a lot of sense; Trade seems to be one of Edward's strengths.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Chris Dodd

Dodd's commentary on Free Trade comes in a section entitled Economic Opportunity which makes sense, more or less. He's in favor of enforcing trade laws.

Enforce Trade Laws at Home and Abroad. Chris Dodd will insist that every trade agreement America enters into is fair, by ensuring that workers in those countries are guaranteed fair wages, fair working conditions, and strong environmental protections. Above all, Dodd will insist U.S. trading partners open their markets to American products.

Seems pretty bland, actually. More platitudes than a demonstration of genuine understanding about this issue.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Barack Obama

Obama doesn't seem to have a solid position on Free Trade yet; but he did make some revealing comments that were reported at his website.

"We're not going to draw a moat around the United States' economy. If we do that, then China is still trading, India is still going to be trading," said Obama, who voted against the recent Central American Free Trade Agreement and opposes the current pending trade deal with South Korea.

"I think that NAFTA and CAFTA did not reflect the interests of American workers but reflected the interests of the stock owners on Wall Street, because they did not contain the sorts of labor provisions and environmental provisions that should have been embedded and should have been enforceable in those agreements. ... You got the stock market sky-high. Corporate profits going up, but those workers who get laid off as a consequence of displacement, there's some sort of weak retraining program that trains people for jobs that don't exist in communities all across the country."

So he seems more in the reform of NAFTA and other trade program, rather than the elimination of said programs. Which makes sense.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Bill Richardson

Bill Richardson's stance on Free Trade is hard to find - it's near the end of his detailed economic plan which has some other bits worth commenting on (hopefully we will get back around to them). At any rate he does reference Fair Trade, and he makes a certain amount of sense.

We need to move beyond tired debates of 'free trade' versus 'protectionism,' and instead roll up our sleeves and pursue better trade agreements: agreements which enhance rather than erode U.S. jobs, and which are socially just, environmentally responsible, and politically sustainable.

When trade agreements ignore labor, social, and environmental objectives, they can lead to a 'race to the bottom,' as companies displace production to countries with weak labor and environmental protections. But if trade agreements truly prioritize social and environmental objectives, they can raise living standards and expand opportunities for both American and foreign workers.

Our trade agreements must expand markets for U.S. exports and encourage job-producing investment. But they can and must do more than merely expand markets. They also must improve governance worldwide, so that strong and enforceable rules protect the rights of workers, indigenous communities, and the global commons. Such rules must be central and integral to all future bilateral and multi-lateral trade agreements.

That makes a lot of sense, particularly the bit about moving beyond "free-trade" and "protectionism." Frankly they are poles that don't add anything to the discussion; most people are in the middle. We need trade, but we need to negotiate better in how we set it up.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Mike Gravel

Well Mike Gravel is also not a fan of Free Trade - and, like Kucinich, calls for an end to NAFTA. His issues page simply refers to NAFTA under the illegal immigration section (which he describes as being caused by NAFTA). However, he has a PDF that goes into more detail.

Any discussion of immigration must include NAFTA and the concept of “free trade.” The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been a disaster for the working class of both the U.S. and Mexico and a boon to the international corporate interests. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that over 1 million U.S. jobs were lost as a result of NAFTA, a third of them manufacturing jobs. In Mexico, 1.3 million farm workers lost their jobs in the same period. This has led to a wave of immigrants looking for work in the U.S. Reforming unfair trade policies spawned by measures like NAFTA will stimulate job growth on both sides of the border.

I'm not sure what to make of this; does he intend to fix NAFTA? End it? Or does he simply want to go on record as understanding that NAFTA is bad?

The latter, I guess.

Candidate Review - Fair Trade - Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton doesn't highlight her position on the economy - rather she talks about helping support the middle class, which I suppose is a bit better way to frame it. But she does have a Modern Progressive Vision - which does address free trade; both the problems and a solution.

Globalization and economic policy dynamics are generating rising income inequality. In 2005, all income gains went to the top 10% of households, while the bottom 90% saw their income decline – despite the fact that worker productivity has increased for six years. In 1970, the top 1% of households held roughly 9% of our nation’s income. In 2005, they held 22% -- the highest level since 1929.

. . . Eliminating incentives for American companies to ship jobs and profits overseas. Specifically, the tax code rewards companies for offshoring jobs by enabling them to defer paying American taxes for as long as they hold the money abroad. The current policy puts companies that create jobs in America at a competitive disadvantage. We must pursue tax policies that reward the decision to create jobs in America, rather than abroad.

I'm usually pretty down on Clinton, but this isn't bad at all. She has a good diagnosis and a good treatment.

That said, there are other incentives besides tax breaks that induce American Corporations to move over seas. Such as the opportunity to pay their workers considerably less, and the relaxed environmental standards. I'd obviously like to see her plan address those issues as well.