Free Republic

A year ago, this organization warned that the Bush Administration was planning to do something unthinkable - they were seriously considering signing a pact with Mexico that would give any Mexican who had worked in the U.S., including illegal aliens, full U.S. Social Security benefits, paid out of your Social Security Trust Fund! It seemed so far fetched, we had trouble convincing the Congress that it could happen. A White House spokesman denied our claim that it was on a fast track, stating the ongoing discussions for Totalization were just informal and preliminary. But we knew better. We had obtained...

This is the second installment in a series of articles looking at the forces behind the scenes propelling us toward globalization through NAFTA, the FTAA and the WTO.‘‘The Battle of Seattle." That is the common name given to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial conference of November 30-December 3, 1999, where a 1960s-style generation of political street rioting was born anew. Images of tear gas, burning cars, chanting mobs, baton-wielding riot police, frightened diplomats, and millions of dollars in damage were left indelibly on the minds of those who viewed the footage on the nightly news. What started as...

On February 20, President Bush officially notified Congress that he intends to sign the recently negotiated Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). That letter of notification started the clock ticking on the president’s so-called fast track trade negotiating authority, which Congress reauthorized in 2002. Under the fast track rules, the president must give Congress a 90-day notice before signing any trade agreement. That means President Bush could sign CAFTA as early as late May, although he could decide to sign at a later date. Once the president signs the agreement and then formally sends it to Congress, the legislators are...

WHO ARE THE G7 FINANCE MINISTERS? BOCA RATON, FLORIDA - To most people the G7 Finance Ministers are just a bunch of guys who get together throughout the year and talk over the economy-but it is not just the U.S. economy-it is the global economy. In order to understand their position of power, we must go back to August 1971 when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. The Group of Seven first met in 1973, two years after Nixon severed the last attachment the dollar had to gold when he suspended the rights of foreign countries to...

< snip > Current levels of foreign aid, at some 0.24 percent of annual GDP, fall far short of the 0.7 percent target developed countries promised to meet. < /snip > The Challenges of Globalization: The Role of the World Bank Public Discussion Forum by James D. Wolfensohn President The World Bank Group Berlin, Germany, April 2, 2001 Also available: Press Release World Bank Calls for Global Campaign to Halve the Proportion of People in Extreme Poverty by 2015 It is a pleasure to address you again in this beautiful city. I would like to thank Ms. Scheel, Chairwoman...

"The Nation-State Is Finished" by William F. Jasper Robert Bartley, a closet one-worlder at the WSJ, used his newspaper’s "conservative" clout to seduce American business leaders into sacrificing U.S. sovereignty for trade. ‘‘What in blazes can President Bush be thinking?" That has been the general response — on talk radio and in media surveys, Internet postings and letters-to-the-editor — of many current and former Bush supporters angered and confused by the president’s immigration proposals. These folks would not have been surprised by the president’s outrageous announcement on January 7 or his remarks the following week at the Summit of the...