Obama Goes Soft on Free Trade

[Joanne98]

by John Nichols
Republican John McCain is a most militantly pro-free trade presidential candidate. That fact, alone, should guarantee his defeat in Ohio and other industrial states where his strategists entertain hopes of surfing a “Reagan Democrat” crossover of working-class Democratic voters to the GOP column this fall.

All that is required is that Barack Obama campaign as a critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other deals that have battered workers, farmers, communities and the environment in the US and abroad.

Unfortunately, Democrat Barack Obama, who sent smart signals on trade issues when he was competing with Hillary Clinton for his party’s presidential nomination, is backtracking toward the insider territory occupied by McCain.

Obama’s interview with Fortune magazine — headlined “Obama: NAFTA Not So Bad After All” — is the best news the McCain camp has received since Mike Huckabee folded his run for the Republican nomination.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/19/9753/

[still_one]

1. From the Supreme Court to almost every other issue, the difference between mccain and Obama is HUGE

Just compare the voting records between them

It really comes down to this, if you want someone who has voted 98% of the time with bush, mccain is your person

If not then its Obama

THIS ISN'T ROCKET SCIENCE

[sam sarrha]

2. he has a Milton Friedman disciple as economic adviser.. is there any doubt what's come'n..??

http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213879230&sr=8-1


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?ref=books
snip"..., but for Klein the larger lessons are clear: “Countries are shocked — by wars, terror attacks, coups d’état and natural disasters.” Then “they are shocked again — by corporations and politicians who exploit the fear and disorientation of this first shock to push through economic shock therapy.” People who “dare to resist” are shocked for a third time, “by police, soldiers and prison interrogators.”

In another introductory chapter, Klein offers an account of Milton Friedman — she calls him “the other doctor shock” — and his battle for the hearts and minds of Latin American economists and economies. In the 1950s, as Cameron was conducting his experiments, the Chicago School was developing the ideas that would eclipse the theories of Raul Prebisch, an advocate of what today would be called the third way, and of other economists fashionable in Latin America at the time. She quotes the Chilean economist Orlando Letelier on the “inner harmony” between the terror of the Pinochet regime and its free-market policies. Letelier said that Milton Friedman shared responsibility for the regime’s crimes, rejecting his argument that he was only offering “technical” advice. Letelier was killed in 1976 by a car bomb planted in Washington by Pinochet’s secret police. For Klein, he was another victim of the “Chicago Boys” who wanted to impose free-market capitalism on the region. “In the Southern Cone, where contemporary capitalism was born, the ‘war on terror’ was a war against all obstacles to the new order,”...snip

what Milton Friedman did to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, el Salvador was later declared "GENOCIDE" by the UN

[bemildred]

3. Nobody knows what Obama will do.

Remember how cool it was when Pelosi got the Speakers seat? But we all know what McCain will do. If you are really worked up about this, you need to go after Congress, both houses. That is where REAL change can come from.

[jwirr]

4. Someone who can afford it should give Klein's book to Obama as

reading material on those plane rides.

[AdHocSolver]

5. When using this term, put "free trade" in quotes, as it is a label for something that doesn't exist.

NAFTA, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank are institutions and agreements designed and implemented by corporate cartels to CONTROL trade for their exclusive benefit and profit.

They are agreements to ensure that actual "free trade", in which economic competition would occur, cannot exist.

The only venues in which what is referred to as "free trade" still exists are rummage sale, flea market, and local farmers' market.

The phrase "free trade" is a right wing, corporate buzzword that describes a figment of the imagination just like the term unicorn.