Here are a few odds and ends from this trip to China.  The more time you spend riding this dragon the more you find out that many things you assumed were far from true.

Cross posted on La Vida Locavore

Bigger is always better, isn’t it? Big cars, big houses, big business, big farms. If you were big, you made more money. Clearly, that is the way of the world. When Europeans colonized the Americas, they wanted more land — not some of it, all of it. Napoleon wanted more land. Nothing stopped him until Waterloo.

So, do you think that the human race, has reached it's Waterloo? Have we finally hit the wall with our never-ending desire for "bigness"? I decided years ago that I didn’t want my farming operation to get bigger. I liked milking 45 cows, raising their feed and doing a little direct marketing.

I liked being small.

America is being sold piece by piece. Much of our Federal and State infrastructure is now owned by foreign governments and multi-national corporations so that they can turn around and make a profit off of Americans using them. America has become little more than a flea market for the rest of the world, who are awash with American dollars because of the "unregulated" free-trade policies of the Republican party.  

Below the fold is an Article written by Thom Hartmann in 2006. I was going to write a diary myself on this subject, but found this article that says it better than I ever could. I have included it in it's entirety. I take no credit for anything Mr. Hartmann wrote, but I DO completely agree with this well written article and his sentiments.

Immediately following the attacks of 9/11 there was a moment when it appeared as though the US was prepared to engage in some serious self-reflection and look at their part in the events and history that led up to those attacks.

Clearly world trade had been lopsided for decades. The US enjoys an "exorbitant privilege" as Charles De Gaulle put it. They rack up trillions in world debts priced in the world's reserve currency the US dollar and whenever debts are due, they just print more dollars. Pressure builds. Bad things happen.

  There is a very obscure--obscure to most people, I think--event going on this week in Geneva that won't get the attention it deserves. And it should get attention because it is an amazing example of what people power can do to stop the worst kind of abuses to working people everywhere.

Activists in Canada have wrung some changes from the government in regard to Bill C51 ithttp://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/07/19/natural-health-advocates-defeat-gove rnment-power-grab.aspx?source=nl

but the bill is so draconian that it stands as a warning to all of us of what corporate/government agencies will do to destroy alternative movements that are growing, whether in health or in food, and the means that they are using.

http://articles.mercola.com/...

Dear friends,

I write you as a burdened Cassandra, someone who has begun to see too much of what is going on, and needing to warn good people to be careful, to make plans to protect yourselves.  i have believed as you do in the wholeness of things and in the inherent goodness of people, and from that in the growth of millions of small efforts to improving our world that would coalesce bit by bit into a better and healthier and lasting world.

http://www.aflcio.org/...

Excerpts from the AFL-CIO website, with much more at the link:

"McCain ‘Would Negotiate a Free Trade Agreement with Almost Any Country.’ "If I were president, I would negotiate a free trade agreement with almost any country." (Speech to National Press Club, 5/20/99)

Rising Chinese Trade Deficits Resulted in 2.1 Million Displaced Jobs. "The rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs....Between 1997 and 2001, trade deficits displaced an average of 101,000 jobs per year.... Since China entered the WTO in 2001, job loss has increased to an average of 353,000 per year." ("Costly Trade With China," Economy Policy Institute, 10/9/07)

McCain Believes Human Rights Should Have No Bearing on MFN Trading Status. According to Project Vote Smart, McCain does not think a country’s record on human rights should have any bearing on awarding Most Favored Nation trading status. (Project VoteSmart, 1998)"

There is a tentative agreement between AAM and UAW, not many details as of yet. Buffalo Cheektowaga facility to stay open, Tonawanda Forge to close, don't know much more yet, details will be released Sunday morning. WSBT DTV reports "A spokesperson who was briefed on the agreement says the auto part supplier has boosted its wage offer and increased payments it will give workers to take a wage cut."

Not much else is known, there is a running news feed of the American Axle strike in the original story at Joe's Union Review, I'm sorry I cant get it to work here

I made several trips to India and Pakistan between the late-1960s and the early-1980s. The ‘Green Revolution’ was just emerging during my first trip in 1967-68, when I spent 6 months collecting agricultural data for my Ph.D. dissertation near Allahabad, on the fertile Gangetic Plain of northern India. I later lived for 1-½ years in Pakistan during the mid-1970s, as an agricultural economist with the U.S. Agency for International Development. By the time of my stay in Pakistan, the Green Revolution pace of change in the subcontinent had begun to slow. During and immediately following my various trips, I was always struck by the contrast between the prevailing U.S. view of ‘markets’ and the views of Indian and Pakistani governments. It seemed to me that India and Pakistan needed to place more reliance on markets and the U.S. needed more regulation of markets.

The food crisis is not soundbite friendly, therefore it's not easy to gain a larger understanding of the issue without exploring multiple sources. Craig Mackintosh at Celsias, (which is the site that is homecourt for "The Celsias Show" which I host), did the legwork and in the process has written what I consider to be one of the most comprehensive discussions of this rapidly expanding calamity that I've encountered.

Craig has given me permission to publish his piece in full, which was originally posted at Celsias on May 5, 2008.

crossposted from unbossed

A new study by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and CareerBuilder.com provides new data on motives for sending US jobs abroad (and abroad can mean Canada) as well as which jobs are a likely target.

If your conservative friends and relatives won't read the books you recommend because they're "shrill" or "angry" or off-putting in some other way, try giving them Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. Chang is a Korean economics professor from the prestigious University of Cambridge.  He has written a very readable, understandable book explaining why everything you know about economics -- particularly the economics of developing countries -- is wrong. But he doesn't pound the table about it because, well, he doesn't have to -- the facts are sufficient.

Chang speaks both from scholarship and from deep experience: He was born in South Korea when it was one of the world's poorest countries, and he lived through its transition into a relatively advanced, wealthy nation. So he knows first-hand that Korea's story, told accurately, has a lot to do with trade -- but not free trade. He recalls, for example, import controls so severe that a tin of Spam smuggled from an American military base was something to daydream about.

With NAFTA raising its ugly head in the Democratic presidential primparies again, perhaps it's a good idea to look at another point of view...a progressive point of view!

From Dennis' campaign site:

Obama and Clinton appear to be offering parallel panders to Dem voters in their promises to change the tax code to discourage job offshoring. Here are their promises:

Obama in Janesville WI , Feb. 13:

I'll pass the Patriot Employer Act that I've been fighting for ever since I ran for the Senate - we will end the tax breaks for companies who ship our jobs overseas, and we will give those breaks to companies who create good jobs with decent wages right here in America.

   Today, I have two very specific questions for Sens. Obama and Clinton that have nothing do with whether they would choose pearls over diamonds, what underwear they might don or how much they paid for a haircut but, rather, what they would do as president in handling trade around the globe. I hope these questions advance the discussion on trade among the candidates’ partisans, from a tit-for-tat on who said what in the past because, frankly, we’re ignoring a much, deeper danger from so-called "free trade". Either the candidates do not understand the dangers to their agenda posed by so-called "free trade" or, more worrisome, they understand the dangers quite well and are intentionally glossing the threats over.

Hillary Clinton supporters must enjoy the smell of mothballs. Either that, or they're so enamored with the prosperous 90s that they can't see the forest through the trees.

One of the main reasons our economy is in the dumps right now is because President Bill Clinton succeeded where his Republican predecessors failed -- in passing NAFTA and, ultimately, WTO. Ross Perot warned us that the "large sucking sound" we'd hear would be our jobs leaving the country if George H.W. Bush were re-elected OR if Bill Clinton were elected. He was right. And Hillary is oh so wrong for this country. Every bit as wrong as Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

Want proof?

Organizations Urge Rejection of NAFTA/WTO Model and Insist on Specifics Plans for US Trade Policy During the Next Presidency

After nearly a full year of campaigning in this crucial caucus state, most of the candidates are still asking us to just trust them on trade. But over two-dozen family farm, labor, faith and environmental organizations won't let them off that easy.  They’ve put forward the Iowa Fair Trade Statement calling for candidates' concrete commitments and detailed plans for a new trade policy that truly puts working people first.  

The groups, signatories to the statement authored by the Iowa Fair Trade Campaign, urge the candidates to reject and abandon the NAFTA/WTO model of trade deals that allows corporations to challenge public interest laws and policies. These rules permit challenges to food safety and environmental laws, limit our ability to inspect imports, encourage the offshoring of millions of good American jobs and devastate family farms.