Posted on 08/30/2006 9:28:44 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
Ben, like other saps on this forum, you can't fathom that some truths don't change over time.
You flatter yourself that you are ahead of the curve, and fail to realize you're behind the last one.
"For example" is not a definition. What does it mean?
Sure Ben, what this means is that traffic through that lane will not be inspected prior to going across our border. And this will sooner or later be used to attack the United States. And when that happens, some folks like you will come to forums like this and support our elected officials who state that nobody had any idea this could be a threat to our nation.
As I said Ben, you haven't even caught up to the last act of terrorism that cost us so much. Now you're off supporting the next avenue that can be used against us.
I realize you think you're so damned smart, except there are people out there other than me that think you're an idiot. And those folks won't just come at you with words. They'll come at the nation with something far worse.
It only takes once time big fella. And that one time could cost us more than decades worth of trade in dollars, and wipe out the futures of many U.S. citizens.
Trade has never modified the behavior of participants. It never will. When nations decide to do things, they'll cast trade concerns aside and do whatever deeds they want to.
It's a Neville Chamberlain game you're playing. You should know better, but then as I stated, you're still behind the curve. Frankly you're behind a number of them.
Counting all the trailers and containers that enter the country each and every day, how many men will it take to inspect them?
If we had to cut our imports through our southern border by 95% I'd rather know that your family and mine, as well as our home towns and regions would be safe.
Our nation became second to none without this insane drive to abandon all concerns other than increased trade.
Please explain to others on the forum and me what a failure our nation was prior to 1990, which was roughly to turning point of our new trade insanity.
I seem to have forgotten those terrible bad old days.
Second, the amount of people and product entering the country via Canada, the coastal ports, and air ports exceeds what is entering via the southern border. Depending on whose stats we use, between a third and a half of the illegals enter the country by means other than the southern border. And as the southern border enforcement increases this number will increase.
Third, while inland ports, such as the one in Kansas City and others, that will service product entering via ground transportation are hot topics, the inland ports that now service and will service the coastal ports goes ignored.
Fourth, while you complain about "pushing out" the southern and northern land borders, the coastal borders are already pushed out and will be further pushed out.
For you, it is a big conspiracy to destroy America. In reality, it is the policies that you advocate that will destroy America.
Ben, from what I understand NAFTA came into being with a massive document some 30,000 plus pages in volume. Senator Bob Dole stated that he hadn't read the thing, and that he didn't think anyone else had before voting for it. That's the type of leadership we have these days and it doesn't seem to bother you at all.
Your implication seemed to be that Reagan was responsible for NAFTA. In truth I don't think many of our elected officials had much to do with it. I think it was drafted by NGOs outside the loop, with some tinkering by our officials on certain points. If Ronald Reagan had sat down and written the whole thing, I would not be in favor of the agreement. And saying that, the subsequent rounds of agreements are going to be much worse. Now we're talking about creating governing bodies. In an FTAA world, many of the laws that affect our nation will be decided by an international governing board. So as not to allow one nation to dominate, that board will have an equal set of representatives from each participating nation. On that board Columbia and Venezuela will have an equal vote to our own on issues of importance. What causes addition concern is when it comes to South America, the United States government isn't all that popular. I do not find the prospect of our nation going up against the Latin American nations on matters of importance, to be a particularly good thing, when it comes to developing governance for us all.
Picture decisions made where the United States has one vote and each other nation in our hemisphere has one vote. Do you expect Mexico to vote with us? Do you expect Brazil, Venezuela and Columbia to? Do you expect other nations to vote with us. IMO, a number of those nations will be heavily influenced by their neighbors. Does that bode well for the United States? What border policies, labor policies, security policies and other policies do you see improved by this environment? I see absolutely nothing of benefit from it.
Your comments on what enters through the southern ports today is meaningless. Under the new plan to allow rapid transit over our borders, we are laying the foundation to devalue our own ports. Labor constructs will see Mexican ports fluorish as our own recede. Massive amounts of imports will begin to flow across our southern border. Not only will the containers not be subject to our own port protocols, it will then be subject to Mexican port protocols. Then it will be driven across our border by trucks that won't even have to slow down on the way through. And what gave you the idea that inland ports weren't on my radar? The whole thing is rotten from the top to the bottom.
Pushing out our borders is not a good thing. We are exposing ourselves to tremendous dangers by doing what we are. Picture the Trojan Horse times millions and you begin to get the idea. Only a miscule amount of containers have to have something bad in them for this nation to be destroyed. Twenty well-placed containers could reduce our population by one hundred million plus people. We are also importing so many foreign nationals that it is a certainty that they could position themselves in compromising places.
This comment of your is so damned revealing that it must be restated and commented on directly. "For you, it is a big conspiracy to destroy America. In reality, it is the policies that you advocate that will destroy America." Bud, the policies I advocate made our nation the most powerful nation on earth. We had reasoned mostly balanced trade until around 1992. Please explain how a continuation of those policies would have destroyed America. Since 1992 we have blown out our trade deficits by around 600%. We have also seen illegal immigration escalate from around one hundred thousand people per year to around three million per year.
Destroy America? We'll see what destroys our nation, and it's not going to be policies I advocate. You have called it. You know where we are headed. You are as happy as can be about it. Well, I am not. I will continue to speak out against it as long as I live.
You and the policies you advocate will destroy this nation. You are within. You are the only one's who could.
While Reagan was implementing his Caribbean Initiative, he learned from US business and industry leaders that the big problem in doing business in Mexico and Latin America was that these countries would likely try to tax US business by modifying any and all particular/individual business investments with a tax masquarading as a regulation.
Consequently, the first aspect of NAFTA to be composed was the "Investor Protections" that are found in Chapter 11 and other Chapters. These "protections" would prevent these govts from applying regulations without having been considered by the "panel" and each Govt was bound to to implement the decisions of the panel. In a sense, this was called the "shield".
This was well known by pubs, dems, and everyone in govt to include Canada, US, and Mexico. Even Bob Dole.
But after NAFTA was signed and implementation began, it became apparent that the lawyers were turning the "shield" into a "sword" to attack regulations in all three countries. More specifically: environmental, labor, and social welfare regulations.
Thus, the left wing conspiracy theory was born. In this conspiracy, the conservatives were conspiring to attack all the regulatory law that the democrats had so dilligently implemented beginning with FDR. Those SOB republicans were trying to "roll-back the New Deal", trying to "roll back the 20th century".
And it just wasn't NAFTA, the dems knew that the Pubs were intent on including the "protections"/the "sword" in all the FTAs, including FTAA. If this happened, the western hemisphere would be operating on two sets of regualtory law.
And it just wasn't the western hemisphere. As the WTO sank into a state of conflict, Bush began making FTAs with other nations and other nations began making FTAs among themselves. It was a world wide plot.
But wait, there is more.
This wasn't just the ordinary, everyday vast right wing conspiracy, it was special. There was a particular conservative group that was the cornerstone of the conspiracy to roll back the New Deal and that group even arrogantly entitled one of their seminars "Rolling Back the New Deal". It was the Federalist Society.
In 1984, feddie guru Epstein published his "takings" book with the concept that a business is property just like real property and that most regulatory law on business is actually regulatory "takings". The dems percieved that Epstein's book and feddies working in the Reagan administration influenced the composition of the investor protections.
The dems were further alarmed by some of the decisions of the courts and how much influence Scalia and Thomas had. When Bush v. Gore was decided, the dems knew that Federalists on the bench were a threat.
If the hemispheric trade agreements set up a conflictive situation between US regulatory law and regulatory law applied FTA participation, it was likely that a SCOTUS dominated by federalists would find a case by which they would rule that 90% of US regulatory law is un-constitutional. And, of course, they have put great effort into trying to prevent Bush's federalist nominees from being confirmed.
Now, If I am given the option of believing the right wing conspiracy theory or the left wing conspiracy theory, I'm gonna believe Hillary.
While it may bother you that US regulatory law is threatened by NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA, I am all for it because that regulatory law is choking us to death.
How about D.U.N. Democratic United Nations
How about the concept of nation states negotiating for thier own best interests without the U.N.? We don't need a world body that wants to take over global governance. It was a sick idea from the get go.
I understand the initial reasons for it, but the idea has been proven to be a pipe dream. We should face it and move on.
Thus, I have to explain to you what the US left wing wants. And it it is not just the US left wing, I should explain also what Chavez, Evo, AMLO, and Lula want.
I also have to correct your misinfo statements. For example, your phrase: "massive tens of thousand page foreign entanglement agreements". These are legal documents requiring preciseness not just on the complex methods and mechanisms by which tariffs are gradually lowered and removed but also on how investment(which itself becomes a commodity) are handled. Plus the dispute resolution methods.
Now, in the spirit trying to help you become better informed, let me give you today's lesson.
While we commonly refer to these agreements as Free Trade Agreements, thay are actually Investor-State Trade Agreements, and they are covered by what is known as Investor-State Law.
why ain't the injun tribes invited into this thang? they oughtta be.
Ben, your sophmoronic statements aside, it's been nice talking to you. Once again, I believe it's for the third time, perhaps the fourth, I am going to ask you what was going so wrong with our nation in the 1991 to 1992 time frame, that it required us to draw up 30,000 plus page agreements to fix things? Why was it necessary to transfer our technology to China? What was it necessary for us to ignite the burner under the biggest threat we face on planet earth?
You have ignored my request to for you to explain how this nation became the might nation it was without these foreign entanglements. You either didn't know or were to embarassed to admit that the agreements weren't necessary.
We have conducted trade since our nation first came into being. We never needed 30,000 page documents before. We don't need them today either.
You guys are destroying our borders as fast as you can. You may view that as patriotic. I consider it treasonous.
Like I said, thanks for the sophmoric responses.
The advantages and benefits of NAFTA, other FTAs, the WTO, and foreign trade in general are numerous.
Like the WTO ruling that we could give our businesses tax credits for already having paid taxes in Europe?
You realize this was an infringement of our self-determination don't you?
Check it out, NAFTA is back up to 30,000 pages. I still can't believe that I can read it in its entirety in one evening. I am awesome!
When you say "our", are you saying that you paid taxes in Europe, or did you just read about it at World Nut Daily?
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