Why was it when the international press reported of American failures under Bush, the US media picked up on those reports and used them to correctly illustrate the US landscape but NOW, when the international press critiques THE ONE, they are ignored by the US Media? Same for many bloggers. Bloggers critical of Bush linked international media reports correctly illustrating American missteps. But now? If the international press dogs Obama, not so much!
Read Rosemary Righter of The Times here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rosemary_righter/article5613759.ece
An excerpt as follows:
"....Is Mr Obama a protectionist? Instinctively, yes; he has never seen a free-trade deal he would actually vote for, and he talks about trade policy as a tool “to support good American jobs”. But as the election campaign wore on, he toned down his invective against foreign competition, and, because his economic team is basically free trade, the jury is still out.
The verdict, however, will be in very soon. At the behest of the most protectionist Congress in memory, Mr Obama may be about to repeat, at the dawn of his presidency, the same historic error that the much derided Herbert Hoover made just before quitting the White House in 1933. In the depths of the Great Depression, he signed into law the innocent-sounding Buy America Act. It required the US Government to use American suppliers in all public contracts. Less notorious than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, “Buy America” did huge damage. It proved a disaster for US manufacturing exports and the global economy. Other governments followed suit, and it took decades to begin to reverse the closure of markets.
Now, prodded by America's mighty steel lobby, a key congressional committee has voted, 55-0, to attach a still more rigorous “Buy America” clause to President Obama's stimulus package. It bars federal funding of any public projects “unless all of the iron and steel used is produced in the United States”. The clause could be extended to asphalt, cement, heavy machinery, you name it. US dollars, the committee intones, must be used to create “American jobs in America, not Chinese jobs in China”.
Leave aside value for money. Pass over the detail that the US does not produce enough steel to meet domestic demand. Admit that, when economic activity evaporates as precipitately as it has this winter, “saving” jobs looks more important than ensuring long-term competitiveness. Admit, further, that all governments are in the hidden subsidy game right now, whether they boast about it, as in France, or deny it as stoutly as Lord Mandelson - whose “this is not a bailout” brings to mind Magritte's famous “ceci n'est pas une pipe” painting.
Agree, finally, that when you are the newly elected US President and the money you are preparing to print runs into the trillions, the queue at the trough is bound to form pretty fast. But the scale of the temptation is precisely what makes Congress's populist “Buy America” rider an irresponsible, innumerate, pernicious bit of political and economic folly.
If Mr Obama blocks this clause, he will anger the Left. If he does not, retaliation is inevitable. That will shut American workers out of “hundreds of billions of dollars of new business”. Caterpillar, to take just one example, is actively bidding for big infrastructure projects in China; it reckons that “Buy America” would kill its prospects there.
The truth politicians need to ponder is that the financial crisis has made sophisticates of us all. Most of us understand far more about how globalisation works, how the pieces hang together, than we did before everything went pear-shaped. We have made the connection between prosperity and globalisation - at the simplest level, that cheap T-shirts from Bangladesh leave us with more money for other things. We do worry about our ability to compete; we demand clear and impartial trade rules. But we can see how beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism creates more beggars - costing, not “saving”, jobs. It is time the language of politics caught up with us."
Hhhmmmm. Chickens....coming.....home....to roost?
Caterpillar just announced layoffs. About 20,000. Read here: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-caterpillar-layoffs-090126-ht,0,2651573.story
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Nice to See Where My Money Is Going
From the Jan 30, 2009 Daily Mail on line (www.dailymail.co.uk) blog of reporter Mary Ellen Synon.
"The Democrats: packing the pork barrel with fish.
Washington Democrat pork-barrel, how its done: this just in to me from an former Senate staff member. If you want about a couple of hundred other examples of this kind of thing -- 'pork barrel' is legislation designed to pay off or buy up political supporters -- just go through Obama's so-called stimulus Bill, which the House Democrats passed on Wednesday. It is almost 90 percent pork, and not much stimulus. For details, see my piece on Obama on the Mail's Online Debate page.
So, the example of how this is done on the Hill. The wildly-powerful Speaker of the House is the Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Her home district -- that is, constituency -- includes San Francisco. The headquarters of the Star-Kist tuna brand, owned by the global giant Del Monte Foods, are in San Francisco.
Star-Kist is a major political contributor to Pelosi.
Star-Kist is the leading employer in American Samoa, employing 75 percent of the Samoan workforce. According to the Washington Times, the company has two packing plants there with 5,000 workers. More, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul holds a substantial amount of Star-Kist stock. The guess last year was $17m (£12m) worth.
In January 2007, when Congressional legislation increased the US minimum wage from $5.15 (£3.60) an hour to $7.25 (£5.10), Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase -- making it the only US territory not subject to federal minimum wage laws. This insured that that Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage -- so Del Monte products would be less expensive that those of their competitors.
Now Pelosi has added an 'earmark' to one of the Democrat bail-out bills adding $33m for an 'economic development credit in American Samoa.'
The frequently-disgraceful Republicans refused, to a man, to vote for Obama's so-called stimulus bill, just because it was loaded with this kind of thing. Which shows that the Republicans can occasionally find their spine."
OoooKaaaayyyyyy-let some of you arguing for higher minimum wages opine how this was good to exempt American Samoa? Tell me how carving them out helps them, helps me, helps the country. And Pelosi supporters, tell me how it is merely a coincidence that substantial portion of the Pelosi family net worth is being benefited by this action.
C'mon? JB, maybe you?
"The Democrats: packing the pork barrel with fish.
Washington Democrat pork-barrel, how its done: this just in to me from an former Senate staff member. If you want about a couple of hundred other examples of this kind of thing -- 'pork barrel' is legislation designed to pay off or buy up political supporters -- just go through Obama's so-called stimulus Bill, which the House Democrats passed on Wednesday. It is almost 90 percent pork, and not much stimulus. For details, see my piece on Obama on the Mail's Online Debate page.
So, the example of how this is done on the Hill. The wildly-powerful Speaker of the House is the Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Her home district -- that is, constituency -- includes San Francisco. The headquarters of the Star-Kist tuna brand, owned by the global giant Del Monte Foods, are in San Francisco.
Star-Kist is a major political contributor to Pelosi.
Star-Kist is the leading employer in American Samoa, employing 75 percent of the Samoan workforce. According to the Washington Times, the company has two packing plants there with 5,000 workers. More, Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul holds a substantial amount of Star-Kist stock. The guess last year was $17m (£12m) worth.
In January 2007, when Congressional legislation increased the US minimum wage from $5.15 (£3.60) an hour to $7.25 (£5.10), Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase -- making it the only US territory not subject to federal minimum wage laws. This insured that that Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage -- so Del Monte products would be less expensive that those of their competitors.
Now Pelosi has added an 'earmark' to one of the Democrat bail-out bills adding $33m for an 'economic development credit in American Samoa.'
The frequently-disgraceful Republicans refused, to a man, to vote for Obama's so-called stimulus bill, just because it was loaded with this kind of thing. Which shows that the Republicans can occasionally find their spine."
OoooKaaaayyyyyy-let some of you arguing for higher minimum wages opine how this was good to exempt American Samoa? Tell me how carving them out helps them, helps me, helps the country. And Pelosi supporters, tell me how it is merely a coincidence that substantial portion of the Pelosi family net worth is being benefited by this action.
C'mon? JB, maybe you?
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