<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/21/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">lfalen</b> <<a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="mailto:lfalen@turbonet.com" target="_blank">lfalen@turbonet.com</a>> wrote:
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"> Having said that it is important to realize we live in a global society and market place. We have to be willing to compete in the global market. Just do not place our laws second to anything else.
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<div>There are very problematic and apparently mutually exclusive rules governing competing for profit in a global marketplace and not placing our laws second to anything else. Getting rid of trade barriers and government regulation of business has been promoted as a benefit to most all in an open worldwide economy.
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<div>But the profit motive as a overriding rasion d'etre in the global economy with multinational corporations, will inexorably result in a disregard for some fundamental US domestic interests, US workers' wages and jobs, safety and environmental law (Bush's "Clear Skies Act." Orwell would love it!), if not the US Constitution, etc.
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<div>How can US domestic businesses compete with businesses in nations with few if any environmental or safety laws, without pressure to lower our standards that add costs to business? The EPA has lost power under the Bush administration:
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<div>Objections to Bush's "Clear Skies Act" from the National Council of Churches:</div>
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.ncccusa.org/news/04bushonair.html" target="_blank">http://www.ncccusa.org/news/04bushonair.html</a></div>
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<div>Protection of the global climate is an essential requirement for faithful human stewardship of God's creation on Earth. Our own National Academy of Sciences --- joining an overwhelming scientific consensus --- concluded in 2001 that carbon emissions from power plants are significantly contributing to the increase in global warming. Yet, your initiative pointedly does not set mandatory standards of reduction for these emissions. A multi-pollutant approach must address all significant emissions from power plants, including carbon emissions.
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<p>Clean air is as essential to life as a stable climate. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency reports that millions of Americans live in areas that have been deemed unhealthy to breathe. Power plants are the single greatest source of industrial air pollution in the nation. The American Lung Association asserts that the attainment of reductions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury that would take effect under the existing Clean Air Act will be delayed for years if "Clear Skies" is adopted by Congress.
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<p>It is becoming increasing hard to separate what is an exclusively domestic interest from an international one. </p></div>
<div>For example, are US citizens expendable as warriors to protect the multinational economic system under the guise that they are protecting US citizens from attacks on our soil? The oil in the Middle East is not being protected by our military just for US current or future consumption. Access to this oil is critical to keeping the multinational economic system functioning. It is argued that keeping this system functioning and expanding is critical for US economic benefits, but at a cost to whom?
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<div>Ron Paul comments on the "elites" hypocritical pandering to the "American way" should be at the top of the list of political ruses for politicians.</div>
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<div>Consider one issue that has been in the news recently, food safety. How can we allow free trade with other nations who may not follow our food safety and testing standards without placing our laws second? The answer is we can't, not without very creative legislation that violates the spirit of the food safety laws. It's one thing to have standards in place, but without the rigorous testing to enforce the laws, food safety is in name only:
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<div><span class="inside-head">U.S. food imports outrun FDA resources</span></div>
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<div><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-03-18-food-safety-usat_N.htm">http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-03-18-food-safety-usat_N.htm</a></div>
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<div>"The FDA has so few resources, all it can do is target high-risk things, give a pass to everything else and hope it is OK," says William Hubbard,a former FDA associate commissioner who retired in 2005."The public probably has the perception … that they're more protected than they really are."
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<div>Regarding another hot button issue that seems to defy political partisanship, US jobs and wages, both so called liberals and conservatives raise questions about the loss of good paying jobs to cheap foreign labor, replaced by lower paying jobs. Of course the business and financial "elites" that Ron Paul references pursue the cheapest labor they can find, anywhere in the world. If profit is their primary goal in competing in business, they'd be a fool not to. And even if they tried to show patriotic loyalty to US workers by maintaining good paying US jobs, their less scrupulous competitors would force them out of business.
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<div>This story at the web link below is about cheap imported labor from India into Dubai. And a Dubai company was going to take over US port security? I don't know of any egregious current examples in the US like this, but there is good data regarding lowering of wages in some professions, or loss of the whole manufacturing base in some sectors, in the USA, from the influx of cheap "illegal immigrant" labor, and/or the moving of factories and businesses that take advantage of cheap abundant labor in other nations:
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<div><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://news.aol.com/story/_a/dubai-skyscraper-becomes-worlds-tallest/20070721134709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001" target="_blank">http://news.aol.com/story/_a/dubai-skyscraper-becomes-worlds-tallest/20070721134709990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
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<div>Most of the 4,000 laborers are from India.<br><br>Toiling in slave-like conditions in Dubai's sizzling summer with no set minimum wage and working in three shifts around the clock, they are building the $1 billion skyscraper in the heart of Downtown Dubai, a 500-acre development project worth $20 billion.
<br><br>Protests against labor abuse in Dubai are regularly recorded by human rights groups but are rarely reported in local press. However, it's a prevailing belief the workers are happy with whatever pitiful salary they get to send home to dirt-poor families in India.
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<div>"...it's a prevailing belief the workers are happy..."</div>
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<div>Sounds like the old south...Or a certain local religious leader...</div>
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<div>Simulation and hyper reality indeed!</div>
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<div>Politicians who are bought by the multinational economic system, wear the flag and salute! They simulate patriotism so well it is taken for reality, and the media delivers their patriotic holograms to float in peoples' homes on their high definition wide screen monitors.
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<div>It is just as Baudrillard contends, if I can stretch his thinking onto the Procrustean bed of this theme... The simulation of patriotism for a strong and independent nation, via modern media and tactics of advertising and marketing, public opinion surveying and focus groups, is projected and respected, while the real empire (the USA as a separate and sovereign nation) is being undermined...Highly sophisticated psycho/social psychoanalytic methods are now applied with full force to the selling of politicians. Image is all. How else could Bush have won two elections for president?
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<div>Globalism will win in the end...And US patriots will have holograms of the once sovereign and proud USA beamed into their compounds for "correct think" sessions...</div>
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<div>Ted Moffett</div>