Here's the junior senator from Illinois speaking in Pittsburgh a few days back:
"You can't spend the better part of two decades campaigning for NAFTA and PNTR for China, and then come here to Pennsylvania, and tell the steelworkers you've been with them all along." Fair enough. But he goes on:
"Not every job that has left is coming back. And not every job lost is due to trade automation has made plants more efficient so they can make the same amount of steel with few workers. These are the realities.... The truth is, trade is here to stay. We live in a global economy. For America's future to be as bright as our past, we have to compete. We have to win."
Win? Yes, but who wins, Obs, who? The transnat big boys and their rentier ragtags, or the broad flow of domestic wagery? Obbsie is ready for that one:
"If CEO pay keeps rising, while the standard of living for their workers continues to decline, that's not a win for America.... For America to win, American workers have to win, too."That "too" carries a lot of weight for a monosyllable. It implies that wagery and the CEO class can both "win" -- if we just manage things cleverly enough. Through that one needles'-eye word, tacked onto 'win', can pass the whole limited-liability cross-border camel. It's the great man-in-the-middle hope: the mutually conflicting class paths can be harmonized, made into a win-win.
More, Obs, more more more. Some clarification. Some detail. Some goddamn 'hows'. But this is the best we get:
"Any trade agreement I would support [must] contain real, enforceable standards for workers.... I believe the Permanent Normalized Trade agreement with China didn't do enough to ensure fairness and compliance. It's not just that China is following the path taken by so many other countries before it, and dumping goods into our market while not opening their own markets. It's not just that they're violating intellectual property rights. They're also grossly undervaluing their currency.... That's unacceptable. That's why I co-sponsored the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act. And that's why as President, I'll use all the diplomatic avenues open to me to insist that China stop manipulating its currency."Right on, brother Obama (though you probably lost Father Smiff with that bit about "intellectual property"). But "enforceable standards"? The words sound good, but the nit and the grit of it remains a hopeful nullity when the word 'too' is the best you got.
Me, I prefer "instead".
Comments (19)
owen, have you read that book by alperovitz, america beyond capitalism? just wondering what your take is on that approach?
Posted by yo-my-yo | April 19, 2008 1:41 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 13:41
all fine and good, but what about his homeboy goolsbee though?
Posted by dermocrat | April 19, 2008 1:59 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 13:59
Speaking of books, how about Ha-Joon Chang's, which shows the basic pattern: Use the state to fight for dominance. Once you get dominance, turn around and start lecturing others about "free trade." Then watch your overfed, overflattered "entrepreneurial" overclass lose its ability even to smell the truth and get stuck in its own loop.
The answer to the whole thing is to extricate oneself from "trade" and create a soft, egalitarian, ecological landing.
That may never reach the public agenda in this corporate capitalist subsidiary we call the USA.
Posted by Michael Dawson | April 19, 2008 2:18 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 14:18
yo
i'll prepare a garpoon
for the delight of all
thanx for the finger point
Posted by op | April 19, 2008 10:19 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 22:19
yo
i'll prepare a garpoon
for the delight of all
thanx for the finger point
his homeboy goolsbee ???
some where in father smiff's archives
is a ghouls roast
Posted by op | April 19, 2008 10:21 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 22:21
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/2007/04/obamas_econoghoul.html
Posted by MJS | April 19, 2008 10:55 PM
Posted on April 19, 2008 22:55
"The answer to the whole thing is to extricate oneself from "trade" and create a soft, egalitarian, ecological landing."
sounds like you ought to send father smiff
an outline of this :
thesis:
from uncle hegemonics industrial junk yard
to a clean sustainable prosperous
national autarky
or
how we the jobbled majority
can recapture control of our country
and rebuild
our god's little geepers' type dreams
into a self reliant
soft green
automated production machine
Posted by op | April 20, 2008 7:55 AM
Posted on April 20, 2008 07:55
You want a book to read try 'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.'
Posted by David D | April 20, 2008 11:00 PM
Posted on April 20, 2008 23:00
ahh i'm always filled with glee with dems start eating each other alive:
link
although, it's amusing that obama has started running ads attacking clinton for taking special interest money...especially since the wall street journal recently reported that both have outraised mccain in even the republican leaning sectors. funny that the debate has been reduced to
Obama: "YOU take more corporate money!"
Clinton: "NO! YOU DO!"
Obama: "No, You Do!"
and on and on ad infinitum...
Posted by dermokrat | April 21, 2008 8:49 AM
Posted on April 21, 2008 08:49
"It's not just that they're violating intellectual property rights"
its very sinister this ...
then again
maybe there's just
a bootleg
audacity of hope selling like wantons
over there
in a bad translation
into a blend of yinglish
and yanglish
running up and down
page after page
in hanish ideographics
Posted by op | April 21, 2008 9:41 PM
Posted on April 21, 2008 21:41
OP, you disillusion me tremendously. Sure,
there's not thing one inspiring about a PRC
that seeks only to be first among equals in
the family of capitalist nations. But Obama is
serving up the usual hypocritical hogwash,
angling for US imperial advantage, as Michael
Dawson sagely notes. Why don't we agitate for
our forces to take state power in the US
before we endorse _any_ proactive foreign
policy, eh?
Posted by gluelicker | April 21, 2008 11:12 PM
Posted on April 21, 2008 23:12
*sigh*
link
Posted by dermokrat | April 22, 2008 12:01 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 12:01
There exists in the archives an O'bamania snuff film that could spoil your dinner too. It's kind of insulting, as an American, that supposed Cheeky exhibition is an attempt to connect with the blue collar family. Why didn't they just have 'Macho Man Randy Savage' read it and work in a 'Slim Jim' spot. Putting the candidates in face paint and over glorified swim wear with Ultimate Warrior bicept tassels and Howard Dean announcing would've been a final touch of genious. Whats next McCain as Ronald McDonald and Hillary as the Hamburgurlar? Will Obam go for his home town White Castle to the White house? Sigh
is right
Posted by David D | April 22, 2008 3:36 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 15:36
Does it hit anything on the Fascometer!!!???
Posted by David D | April 22, 2008 3:39 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 15:39
Is it unseemly to gloat?
Posted by Al Schumann | April 22, 2008 9:55 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 21:55
glue
u may mistake my view
its ob's worship of the IP idol
that is sinister here
i'm all for rampant piracy
on the spanish main of the memery
unseemly al ???
like blue velvet
let
the identity clash
cluster fuck continue
Posted by op | April 22, 2008 10:18 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 22:18
Owen, given the utter lack of material and meaningful improvements offered by either, I'd say the pwogs are meagerly better off with Clinton and should vote for her -- out of spite. The right wing nuts' freudian apocalypse and emasculation fantasies need some stoking, and she's the one to do it.
Posted by Al Schumann | April 22, 2008 10:42 PM
Posted on April 22, 2008 22:42
The only interesting thing in that tabloid is harold hillary, "...conceded to not actually landing under sniper fire in Bosnia as first lady even though she said several times that she had..". No fuckin' shit. She probably landed in 'Tuzla Main.' She'd be more likely to take sniper fire in Toronto. And well as for blue collar whities taking it home, sigh, after 22 beers, 8 shots of Yeagermister, and the fuel of WWE's pile driving melodrama, Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs looks good. For anything. When he tucks his cock between his thighs and hums...maybe our best candidate.
Posted by David D | April 23, 2008 1:16 AM
Posted on April 23, 2008 01:16
"The right wing nuts' freudian apocalypse and emasculation fantasies need some stoking, and she's the one to do it."
the black man in the clean white shirt
is no match i suspect ... alas too 19th century
but trying to predict the chaotic themed
mind bendings braidings and eurekas
of the broad
white male middle of amerika
on the other hand
older job class
rust bowled
white
stain glassed catholic
women .....
the lumps around certain attractors
emerge
the economy has to get much more stupid
for the reaaly kool
large piebold flock effects to occur
obvious
but always worth repeating
Posted by op | April 23, 2008 9:06 AM
Posted on April 23, 2008 09:06