ABC’s Jake Tapper reports:
Appealing to union voters in a dry wall manufacturing plant in this crucial primary state, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Sunday afternoon said that even though he has repeatedly said the passage of NAFTA was bad for the country, he would not try to repeal it.
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He argued arguing that because the trade deal had been passed more than a decade ago, it was entrenched in the economy, and any attempt to repeal it “would actually result in more job loss … than job gains.”
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Said Obama, “One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet, 10 years after NAFTA passed, Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America — and I never have.”
The only thing worse than NAFTA is not having NAFTA. No hope of change for you blue-collar workers.
Hear that giant sucking sound? That’s Obama trying to talk about trade policy.
That’s kind of a cool trick! Beating-up on HIllary for it, yet saying you’re not gonna do a damn thing.
I was against it before I was for it.
Er, so why even bring it up?
Yup, Nafta cost millions of jobs here in the US which resulted in all of those Mexican immigrants fleeing all of those new jobs taken from American workers…
Um…
Let me get back to you that…
Obama, he sounds pretty mainstream. I wouldn’t worry.
I’d also worry about the old age vote. Me dad he’s hating Republicans but as a veteran he’s hot for McCain.
Illegal immigrants are entrenched in the economy too. So is executive pay and cocaine and outsourcing and lobbying and carbon dioxide. He doesn’t sound very bold about the changey, really.
Whiny is really what he sounds.
NAFTA is horrible, horrible I tell you, but I promise to do nothing about it whatsoever. Great position to take there, Barry O.
Well I knew Bill Clinton, Obambi. And you’re no Bill Clinton.
Oddly enough, and I don’t know if he meant to or not, but Obama couldn’t have made a more correct statement.
To repeal NAFTA now probably would cost us jobs, cetainly in the short term it would. The man is sharp.
The incongruity goes deeper. Remember these are the same folks bitching about “American exceptionalism”, “hegemony”, and the like. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. That’s the mechanism for ending “hegemony”.
Country A gets rich and powerful. Its citizens get fat, lazy, and decadent, and no longer want to do for themselves, so Countries B, C, etc. step up to the plate. They make the things and do the work the people of Country A are too elite to do — and get paid for it. They use the money to build their own wealth. After a while it’s hard to tell the difference: B, C, and the rest are just as rich as A, and their citizens just as fat, lazy, and decadent as A’s, so A is no longer “exceptional”. It then becomes the turn of X, Y, and Z. When the whole world is fat, lazy, and decadent, and not before, it’s time for the Revolution.
This is bog-standard Marxism. What’s remarkable is two things: One, “conservatives” are cool with it. Two, people trying to short-circuit the process (“true Socialism in our time”) cannot truly be considered Marxist, because they’re denying a fundamental tenet of the philosophy. People bitching about NAFTA are the same sort of soreheads who bitch about traffic. All those cars on the road, blocking your way, belong to people who are (often for the first time) rich enough to buy a car, and all the ticky-tacky houses destroying your view of the beautiful hills belong to people whose parents back to Adam couldn’t afford a house and now can. Demanding that they be shoved back into poverty so you can have an uncluttered Nature to play in and an open freeway to drive on is not “advancing the cause of the poor”. It is elitist capitalism of the worst sort.
People like datadave are continually confounded that, e.g., devaluation of the currency leaves us tranquil. That’s because we understand, as DD does not, that that’s the way it’s supposed to work. You want the end of American Exceptionalism, support free trade. When the people of Iraq — not to mention Mexico, Moldovia, and Madagascar — are just as rich, lazy, and decadent as we are, America won’t be exceptional. That’s the fucking point. That’s the end game. The only reason for blocking the road to it is because you’re a bloodsucking capitalist exploiter of the Proletariat, and if you don’t see that a Union whose position is “Git back in yer ditch, Paydro, I got SUV payments t’make” belongs in that category, it’s because you’re sailing the Egyptian river.
Regards,
Ric
Buuuuuttttt….. RIIIICCCC!!!! I’m supposed to be offended that some guy somewhere makes more money than I do!!!!
“Comment by datadave on 2/25 @ 8:40 am #
Obama, he sounds pretty mainstream. I wouldn’t worry. ”
Mainstream if “mainstrean” translates into English as flaming reactionary leftist.
And I am worried.
“…HEAL!!”
That giant sucking sound was originally the wind between Ross Perot’s ears.
Now that sound comes from the candidates servicing every political base they can pander to.
Country A gets rich and powerful. Its citizens get fat, lazy, and decadent, and no longer want to do for themselves, so Countries B, C, etc. step up to the plate. They make the things and do the work the people of Country A are too elite to do  and get paid for it.
When I was a little hillbilly kid, the migration was from Appalachia to Detroit and Cleveland and such. They needed raw labor and we needed jobs. After high school, it was Houston and Charlotte and later Atlanta, because of economic growth that exceded population growth, and the fact the growth encouraged upward mobility of the existing work force, there was a shortage of unskilled labor that the mountains had in abundance. The influx from Mexico just seems to me to be the next step, which is one of the reasons I think an expedited guest worker program needs to be part of any immigration reform package. Or you parents need to start raising more kids with low expectations. One or the other.
I would want to have a full debate abot a “guest worker” program, given how they have played out in Europe. It could be argued that the upfront declaration of a subclass brings certain risks that a de facto requirement of assimilation and citizenship (or permanent residency) does not.
It could be argued that the upfront declaration of a subclass brings certain risks that a de facto requirement of assimilation and citizenship (or permanent residency) does not.
I don’t have time to fully flesh this out right now, but not being upfront about subclasses is part of the problem, I think. For decades in this country we have taught our children that working with your hands is undesirable. Everybody pretends to respect the working man, but nobody really wants their kid to be one. I know college graduates who would prefer to work for less pay as bank tellers or assistant retail managers or a multitude of low paying sales jobs than consider getting more pay for a job that might require callouses and getting a bit dirty. The subclass is already there, it’s called blue collar, and not enough people want to do it these days. Not saying it is a good or bad thing, just sayin’.
B Moe has an excellent point – for a people who seem to fetishize the working class as a whole, we sure do seem to look down upon them as individuals.
(Unlike me, a typical “symbolic knowledge” worker”: sometimes I look at my plumber, and think that he made the smarter career choice.)
Karl:
I think we need a guest worker program, unless of course you know Americans who have a flaming desire to pick lettuce for a living. The truth is there are jobs out there right now that Americans could take, but they do not want them. I know people who would rather live with their parents and beg gas money than a get a job working at a car wash or as a hotel maid. That is just a fact.
I don’t. Do you know the value of a good tile setter? Mon Dieu!
Perhaps I was unclear. I am saying that a “guest worker” program with no possibility of citizenship will only reinforce the lefty multi-culti non-assimilationist philosophy, creating a potential situation similar to what you have in Europe — ghettoized immigrant colonies that periodically erupt into civil disorder.
I should also clarify at the outset that I see the issue as separable from the general debate over illegal immigration.
But if you are going to legally have people here doing the jobs fat and happy Americans won’t do, it can at least be argued that it is better to have those people come here as immigrants traditionally have, with the expectation that they will assimilate, become citizens, with the benefits accruing over future generations of their kin.
I know people who would rather live with their parents and beg gas money than a get a job working at a car wash or as a hotel maid. That is just a fact.
And the shame of that is that their parents will let them do it. Perhaps THAT is the issue. Why is work beneath people? People think they are entitled to high-paying jobs.
Ric, you’re a f-ing genius.
No global proletariat: No Global Revolution! It’s so obvious….even the Federal employees’ unions can’t see it.
The contradiction you point to should be fatal to the “No-Free-Trade” movement, if only its members would allow themselves to consider it. (I’m still mourning the fate of CAFTA, its demise was comic tragedy.)
Good post, Karl. Intriguing and snarrrrky…just like I like ’em.
Karl, you’d like to debate that here? Because I’ve got a whole plan worked out. I even know the private industry guys who could implement the key parts of it.
But if you are going to legally have people here doing the jobs fat and happy Americans won’t do, it can at least be argued that it is better to have those people come here as immigrants traditionally have, with the expectation that they will assimilate, become citizens, with the benefits accruing over future generations of their kin.
Absolutely, if that is their choice.
RTO,
I don’t know if I want to have that debate here now. But when immigration becomes a hotter topic generally, sure.
And when I used the phrase “full debate” at the outset, I really meant it. It is a topic on which my own thinking is not fully set. My suggestion is based largely on my perception that the Euro-approach to immigration has not served Europe very well. And that’s what I tend to think of when I hear the term “guest workers.”
B Moe,
Precisely. We’ve evolved into something much more unitary than originally envisioned, but the United States is still, to a large extent, fifty republics in a military, monetary, and customs union. If Illinois and Kentucky can trade and accept mutual immigration and tourism, without either being impoverished — in fact, to the ultimate benefit of both — and if New York and Montana can do the same and trade with with the other two at the same time, it shouldn’t be amazing at all that Japan and the U.S. can do so. And if California and Rhode Island can coexist to mutual benefit, there’s no reason the U.S. and, say, Moldavia cannot.
Regards,
Ric
And that’s what I tend to think of when I hear the term “guest workers.â€Â
I get what you are saying, I don’t mean guest worker in that sense either, I would hope the US would be better hosts. Maybe foster workers, with an option to adopt, would be a better term.
Immigration, specifically illegal immigration from Mexico, is the thorniest of issues. It’s an organic process in the sense that plants spread toward fertile ground and so do humans. There’s two basic groups of legal Americans, those that know and/or work with illegals and those who do not. Opinions within each group toward illegal immigration vary. How one forms an opinion of illegals and immigration as a whole is often reflective of exposure to immigrants. Once you come to value illegals as people it does tend to change your opinion.
I’ve worked with illegals. Some are such good people that America needs a lot more of ’em and there also exists the converse. In the end all we can do, humanely anyway, is slow illegal immigration. You can’t end it entirely unless you believe America is a fascist police state or capable of being one, e.g. former East Germany.
There’s no guaranteed solutions. As for trade, I’m not certain a controlled but open border and a shared currency with Canada and Mexico isn’t the solution in the long run. Facts are facts, resources are resources, and labor is a resource. Open, and open wide might be inevitable so why not manage it instead of fight it?
NOR LUAP!!!
Perhaps I was unclear. I am saying that a “guest worker†program with no possibility of citizenship will only reinforce the lefty multi-culti non-assimilationist philosophy, creating a potential situation similar to what you have in Europe  ghettoized immigrant colonies that periodically erupt into civil disorder.
While I was living in Hong Kong, I began to think a guest worker program similar to theirs is desirable. I still do.
In Hong Kong, you can only remain if you have a job. Your employer signs your contract for your visa, and takes responsibility for your housing. It is true that most of the guest workers don’t assimilate there (they aren’t really invited to), but they are all employed, and thus the permanent ghettoized immigrant colonies don’t happen.
All very thought-provoking. I noticed that B moe brought up a sore spot for Karl, that perhaps unregulated immigration can have dangerous effects, and there is a need for assimilation. And thus control of the situation is warranted by the national government.
And that’s a good one, b moe! “Absolutely, if that is their choice.”
USA history shows that a major reason for immigration was to supply needed labor for dynamic members of our society to facilitate their profit. Slavery comes to mind pretty quickly as forced immigration. And then the less desirable Europeans, the non-Wasps, for cheap help in factories, often needing 24/7 workers for undesirable jobs. The pograms of eastern Europe, and victims of Malthusian die backs in Ireland, Germany and Italy helped feed the ships that were often paid for by the industrialists needing quick cheap help. Immigration is often described in two factors either “Push” or “Pull”. In America unfortunately we have a major portion of the population that came here due to a involuntary “Push” factor: enslavement and forced immigration by extreme conditions in the home country. And the “Pull” factor within our nation was a need for cheap labor.
The ‘hope’ of Obama is reduction of a myth that Karl (and Darleen in other threads) worries about: “permanent ghettoized immigrant colonies”.
Due to things like the KKK and unbridled resistance to assimilation by the losers of the Civil War, assimilation of our former slaves to ‘mainstream’ members of society has been long resisted by whites. With this current generation of upstarts, teenagers, and 20-somethings, and a few of us older folks, I think Obama is helping to destroy this “permanent ghettoized immigrant” myth. At least reducing the “permanent” part of it.
And it’s only a matter of time that the problems of Europe (which are rather new for them) concerning ‘assimilation’ will be less and less a threat to the more conservative members of either of our societies.
Also, I don’t think the guest worker program was in any way a creation of the multicultural “left”. That was mostly a Republican thing.
Nafta is about immigration? NOR LUAP? (Maybe if I saw the Ron Paul blimp in the rear view mirror I would have got it quicker.) Ron lost my interest real quick after hearing his ads: rants about illegal immigrants in a racialist tone.
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