Thread: BUY AMERICAN - Or Bye-Bye America

'Buy American' – or bye-bye America



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Posted: February 10, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009

"British jobs for British workers!" thundered Gordon Brown, as he emerged from the shadow of Tony Blair to become prime minister.

His populist sloganeering has now come back to bite him.

Across Britain, thousands laid down tools in wildcat strikes in solidarity with a walkout from a French-owned oil refinery in North Killinghome – to protest a $300 million contract to an Italian company that plans to bring in 400 Italian and Portuguese workers to fulfill it.

As Brown pleaded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Britain must not retreat into "protectionism," strikes spread to Scotland, Wales and Ulster.

Britain's commitment to let foreigners buy up its utilities and industries and bring in foreign workers to run them has backfired. Brown's own Labor Party is now angrily demanding that he live up to his pledge: British jobs for British workers.

"The Return of Economic Nationalism," wails the alarmed cover of The Economist. And understandably so.

For the stimulus bills of both Houses have a "Buy American" provision mandating that in "public works" only U.S. iron, steel and manufactures be used. The provision came out of the appropriations committee of the House on a 55-to-0 vote.

(Column continues below)




The Senate watered it down by declaring the Buy American provision must be consistent with all U.S. trade commitments. But Congress is sending a message: The rebuilding of America is to be a project of, by and for Americans, not outsourced. Sen. McCain's free-trade amendment, to strip all Buy American provisions from the bill, was routed 65 to 31

The reaction of Barack Obama, a NAFTA skeptic in 2008 with bumper stickers that read, "Buy American, Vote Obama," was to genuflect to the gods of globalism and recant his economic patriotism.

"I think it would be a mistake ... at a time when worldwide trade is declining, for the United States to start sending a message that somehow we're just looking out after ourselves," he told Fox News. We don't want to "trigger a trade war," he told ABC.

Apparently, Obama was unnerved by rumbles from Europe, which is threatening to drag us before a World Trade Organization tribunal and have "Buy American" banished forever.

But there is no easy way out now for a Democratic Party where economic nationalism is rampant. If Congress drops or Obama refuses to enforce the Buy American provision, and billions of stimulus dollars are spent on foreign iron, steel and cement, Middle America will know whom to blame. But if Americans get the contracts, and Europeans get nothing, Europe will have to decide whether to retaliate and start a trade war with a populist and nationalist America.

We may be at a turning point in history. For we are about to choose whether to fully and finally cast our lot with globalism, or to become again a nation and people who put Americans first.

We are about to decide, perhaps for all time, whether we believe in a deepening interdependence leading to one world government, or we restore the independence won for us by the men on Mount Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

All four were economic nationalists. All would today be decried as protectionists. For all believed that the nation's independence and prosperity hung upon its ability to stand alone in the world, and that foreign goods should never enjoy as privileged access to America's markets as American goods made in the USA.

All four put America first. And it was they who created out of 13 rural colonies the greatest manufacturing power in history. Is not their record superior to what Bush-Clinton-Bush left us: a hollowed-out industrial nation dependent on foreigners for the needs of our national life and for the loans to pay for them?

Even John Maynard Keynes came around in 1933 to believe in "national self-sufficiency."

Those who prattle about the perils of protectionism need to be asked: What has free trade produced, but a bankrupt America that must go hat-in-hand to Beijing to borrow the money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure? Are we also to use Chinese iron, steel and cement because they, with their Third World wages, will work for less than our fellow Americans?

As for Europe's threat of a trade war, bring it on!

We would eat their lunch. As analyst Charles McMillion writes, in eight years of Bush, Canada ran up $500 billion in trade surpluses at our expense, Japan ran up $600 billion, the European Union $800 billion.

These three trading partners, often by imposing value-added taxes on U.S. imports, and rebating those taxes on goods sold here, racked up $1.9 trillion in trade surpluses, sucking jobs, factories and technology out of the United States. These trade deficits, and the even larger ones with China, says Paul Volcker, are behind our present crisis.

America is bust. It is shameful to have to go to China and Japan to borrow the money to rebuild America. But to go to China and Japan and borrow billions, and not spend the money here, makes zero sense.

We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look where it has gotten us.


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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php? ... geId=88467

Quote(We have indulged in free trade for a quarter century. And look where it has gotten us.)quote


Those who worship at the feet of free trade have long ago doomed America and it's workers, the greed of making $40 coffee pots in China for $2.00 was just too mouth watering for those who worship the dollar, simply we have no patriot's in corporations and our government they have sold us out long ago.

Love globalism!
The only problem is that while the "patriotic" US corporations keep exporting work to cheap countries, the consumer nation that snarfed down everything from toxic toys and tainted food to cheap Christmas ornaments, is now no longer able to consume and is in debt up to the top of the scalp. And unfortunately, the producers of those goods have used our money to buy our debt obligations, which means we need to pay them interest to be able to buy their garbage. I fear that, as GWB did his best not to PO these countries (currently suffering because of our lack of consumerism), they could very easily dump those Treasury notes on the market, i.e., turning our dollar into nothing of value, except as souvernirs of the fall of this empire. After the last eight years of bully politics, there are plenty of countries just waiting for the chance we lick their boots.

The combination of illegal immigration, free trade treason, mandated tax codes, the War on Drugs, and bans on oil and gas drilling have collapsed the US economy.

We need to do 5 things urgently to save our country:

1. stop illegal immigration
www.alipac.us

2. pass the FairTax
www.fairtax.org

3. restore Protected Trade Policies
www.paa-tx.org/node/1395

4. end the War on Drugs and replace the illegal drug trade with a legalized, regulated, taxed trade enforced under a civil code instead of a criminal code run by Americans instead of foreign criminal illegal drug cartels, use part of the taxes to educate the public about the risk and consequences of use and provide free rehabilitation without stigma for those who want or need it.
www.leap.cc

5. end the bans on drilling and "drill baby drill" while we explore and develop viable alternatives for the future
www.pickensplan.com

I have to share this, it's from one of my all time favorite movies 'Network' made in 1980:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Yen, Rubles, Pounds, and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.~ Arthur Jensen

So you see we were warned.

Here is the quote, the full version, that most people associate with from the movie 'Network'.

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We know things are bad - worse than bad, They're crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone!' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone! I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a HUMAN BEING, GODDAMNIT! My LIFE has VALUE!!" So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!" I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!~ Howard Beale

It's a bit dated but still relevant. We here are already 'Mad as Hell'.