Thread: U.S. Professor Rallies the Political Left on SPP Agenda

After reading "More Unions Favor Legalizing Workers" here, I googled "U.S. labor unions and the political left" and found the following article reprinted by "The Council of Canadians". It does not bear on unions specifically, but on the SPP Agenda in general. Although it's a February article, I believe it is worth posting. "Integration" is U.S./Can/Mex. "government speak" for the planned North American Union.


U.S. professor rallies the political left on deep integration

February 7, 2008

Katherine Sciacchitano, a former labour lawyer and organizer who currently teaches at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, has just published an insightful, in-depth critique of the Security and Prosperity Partnership from an American perspective in the January/February 2008 edition of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice. Here are a few excerpts (all emphases ours):

On energy

"World demand is growing as traditional sources from the Middle East, Russia, and South America are becoming less secure; and the resulting price increases and realignment of power threaten a redistribution of wealth and power in favor of the oil and gas producers, many of them in the Global South. The Prosperity Agenda aims first and foremost at consolidating U.S. control over North American energy supplies, first by expanding production in Canada and Mexico, and second by increasing U.S. access to that production by deregulating energy markets… In a fully integrated, privatized North American energy market, U.S. users would buy the lion’s share of energy resources; at the same time, demand would increase for Canadian production, and so would prices. Not surprisingly, fully integrating North American energy markets figures prominently in the hopes of both U.S. and Canadian elites. But the same mechanism would make energy more expensive for Canadian consumers, who will be in direct competition with U.S. buyers. In addition, easily-tapped Canadian conventional reserves are dwindling rapidly. Raising oil production accelerates their depletion and risks Canadian energy and environmental security. The huge quantities of gas and water needed for production from the oil sands increase environmental risks even more, and also make economic feasibility dependent on continued high oil prices."

On regulations

"Prosperity Agenda activities include a tri-national framework for 'minimizing' regulatory 'barriers'; special committees on the auto and steel industries; removal of constraints on movement of capital and financial services; and expanded and streamlined cross-border transportation networks—networks that will facilitate not only trade within the continent, but more outsourcing to Asia… Meanwhile, a common regulatory scheme would make 'harmonized' (read: lower) North American standards the default approach to new regulations, and countries would have to justify more stringent requirements… In terms of daily governance, the SPP privatizes the regulatory functions of government on an international scale not seen before in industrialized democracies."

On labour

"'Full labor mobility' would be preceded by greatly expanded guest worker programs tying immigration status to employment. 'Development' funds for Mexico would translate into transportation and energy infrastructure to help foreign investment push past the maquila zone on the border into central and southern Mexico where poverty is greatest and wages lowest… Like NAFTA and the Canadian U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) before it, the SPP is a Trojan horse aimed at trapping Canadian workers into a downward spiral of global competition and neoliberal policies… The North American labor movement desperately needs a democratic Mexico where independent organizing and labor rights can be exercised without threat of violence. Instead, the SPP will intensify exploitation of Mexican labor and deepen the low wage neoliberal model in both the United States and Canada, as well."

On social services and health care in Canada

"Both NAFTA and CUFTA were sold to Canadians on the grounds that increasing trade would boost employment and productivity; that would in turn solidify the economic base for Canadian social spending, including the deeply popular single-payer health insurance program. Instead, elites used the logic of competition to tighten first monetary and then fiscal policy—much as Reagan did in the United States in the 1980s. As in the United States, recession followed. Canadian exports, particularly of raw materials, increased, but overall competitiveness came largely from pushing up unemployment and driving down wages. Meanwhile, budget politics were used to squeeze rather than support social spending. The resulting deterioration in services became the pretext for experiments in private health care provision that could jeopardize the entire single-payer system. In many cases, it is Canadian divisions of U.S. transnationals that are profiting."

On Plan Puebla Panama

"SPP negotiators are discussing funds to address 'uneven development.' In practice this means connecting Central and Southeastern Mexico—regions which have some of Mexico’s highest poverty rates and lowest wages, but also some of its richest gas reserves—to U.S. markets. The region is also the target of former president Vicente Fox’s 2001 Plan Puebla Panama, an $8 billion infrastructure program aimed at integrating southern Mexico with the CAFTA countries. The overall vision: stepped-up development of energy and gas reserves, an even lower-wage workforce for maquila production than on the U.S. border, and transportation and energy networks needed to produce and carry finished goods to U.S. consumers."

On U.S. economic desperation

"The wishes of Canadian and Mexican elites notwithstanding, the SPP’s primary purpose is to buoy U.S. capitalism’s flagging international position, from its trade deficit to its energy deficit. U.S. security, energy and transportation needs are the touchstones, and the draft agreement aligns the policies of Canada and Mexico—and appropriates natural resources—to meet those needs. Economic integration is conditioned on military integration, which in turn aims at consolidating the U.S. position in the hemisphere."

On a unified front against the SPP

"U.S. activists need a democratic Mexico with strong labor rights and a Canadian welfare state that survives the ravages of neoliberal globalization. We need to build an environmental agenda based on conservation and renewable resources and an economic agenda based on diversity and human rights. We need a progressive voice that can drown out right wing cries that the problem of globalization is the loss of U.S. dominance and power. Most of all, we need an international, powerful, and organized response from the left, and popular forces to challenge the more deeply coordinated and increasingly militarized forces of international capital. Reasoned opposition is no longer enough."

http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/ ... /Feb7.html

700-170 Laurier Avenue West Ottawa, ON, K1P 5V5 CA; Tel: (613) 233-2773; 1-800-387-7177 Fax: (613) 233-6776; inquiries@canadians.org; © The Council of Canadians, 2006

More Unions Favor Legalizing Workers:
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-151610.html

To keep our soverignty we must demand if Canada or Mexico pushes the NAU we will boycott all trade and close the borders if possible and America will tighten the purse and boycott all access we can to the U.S. They would stop this right here and now.Buy American by Americans for Americans. Start American only business proudly fly the flag on or in front of your business and it must be certified by the city to only hire and have americans or legal immigrants and USE E-Verify
The rest is up to us to support these types of business.
They cannot win if we refuse to buy foreign goods. POWER TO THE PURSE.

We need to rise up and terminate NAFTA and every other Free Trade Treason Agreement regardless, and we need to do that now.

This professor is wrong. You can not move America forward by keeping Mexico backward economically.

Well I can see that the ALIPAC Neomercs are restless. Read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" What the NAFTA situation needs is not abandonment it is investment in Mexico.

We have nothing to do with the forwardness or backwardness of Mexico. It's the responsibility of the Mexican people to invest in their country not ours. Maybe you need to buy a book on the "Wealth of the United States" so you realize we no longer have any because we've already given it all away to Mexico and other nations who can't figure out how to fend for themselves.

Using the same faulty logic as you America should not be producing cars or steel because the underlying technology and much of the market originated or is located overseas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile

Originally Posted by Judy

We need to rise up and terminate NAFTA and every other Free Trade Treason Agreement regardless, and we need to do that now.

Fixing NAFTA is another one of Obama's lies. Remember when he said he would change the fees/tariffs and make them more equal? Then he went to Canada and came home with his tail between his legs. He's quite the wimp and the other nations will walk all over us. He tried to suck up to Iran and now they have NO RESPECT for him.

Wait till he goes to the G20, most are against his plans there too. I hope they stick with it and take his *ss to task!

While he's over there he should drop in on his birthplace in Kenya, and say "yo" to the relatives. Perhaps he could take Illegal Auntie home to her country while he's at it!!!!

And I thought Bush was bad.....................

I don't give a shit about Mexico!! Americans were doing fine until NAFTA!
But the Elites in the US wanted more money because they are swine. and also pieces of shit.

We obviously have the proverbial "Boston MBTA Red Line" effect in play here.

http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/ ... ?route=RED

Originally Posted by Richard

Using the same faulty logic as you America should not be producing cars or steel because the underlying technology and much of the market originated or is located overseas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile

Sorry Richard, but it's your logic that is faulty not mine. We had protected trade through the entire history of the automobile, the development of the steel industry, the acquisition of the underlying technologies.

When we imported something we paid a tariff, when we exported the receiver paid a tariff. When we imported something that seriously threatened our producers, we not only paid tariffs, we had quotas on the number of items that could enter our country.

If you want to invest in Mexico, have at it. It's a free country. You can pack up all your dollars, trade them in for pesos and invest in whatever project you want to invest in in Mexico or any other country.

I don't, and I don't want my tax dollars invested in Mexico. I want to invest in my country to help my people.

I have no objection to our companies investing in Mexico. They've always been free to invest in Mexico. And last time I looked, they've invested heavily in Mexico. Protected trade doesn't prevent our companies from investing in Mexico. It prevents them from closing plants here to invest in Mexico, laying off our workers, then hiring Mexican workers in their plants in Mexico and back-hauling that foreign made product back into the US tariff free.

When we had protected trade, our nation was strong, healthy, wealthy and smart and the world respected us. Now we're a weak, unhealthy, bankrupt, stupid Free Trade country that even socialist and communist countries are worried about our failures and warning us to the wise.