As government expands, liberty contracts
President Ronald Reagan
The foregoing foreign organizations were organized by others which our Congress approved of and placed us in those organizations. There is another group of organizations that were actually designed by our Congress and which actually included members from other countries to whom we gave membership and power to that which was equal to our own representatives. In the past any such organizations would have required a treaty being written and approval of two thirds of our Senate. That Senatorial approval has been avoided and these groups now have foreign bureaucrats exercising power over us.
NAFTA
In 1989 we signed an agreement with Canada (CUSTA) which was designed to reduce tariffs and duties between our countries. It was used and did not have a big effect because there were not great differences between our countries. That led to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) between the USA, Canada and Mexico. This agreement should more properly be labeled “the agreement to reduce manufacturing and the middle class in the USA by transferring manufacturing to Mexico.” It is called “a congressional-executive” agreement to distinguish it from a treaty and to make it possible to pass it.
Treaties require that two thirds of the Senate approve them whereas these “congressional – executive‟
agreements only need a majority to enact them. It was developed during 1990 and approved by our politicians in our Democrat controlled Congress on August 12, 1991. Its stated purpose was to reduce tariffs between the countries over the next ten years.
However, the document is two volumes thick with 97 chapters and establishes organizations concerning labor, environments, and banks as well as establishing rules over all sorts of commercial conduct.
Chapter 11 permits Mexican and Canadian companies to sue the American government (in 2004 the tribunal set up by NAFTA overturned previously settled judicial proceedings in Massachusetts and Mississippi) and chapter 19 establishes a panel from the nations involved to review anti – dumping and duties set by the countries involved. In 2004 the California Legislature passed a bill to help the state dispose of millions of scrap tires by recycling them into asphalt for road construction. Mexican rubber producers claimed this was violation of NAFTA and the NAFTA court agreed and Gov.
Schwarzenegger submitted and vetoed the bill citing the supremacy of “international law.”
The NAFTA rules restrict the amount of inspections that can be performed on goods imported into our country to less than 1%. That explains why we have recently seen pet food additives from China leading to the death of our pets and why toothpaste and other items from China were allowed into our country even though they were contaminated. It also explains why it was so difficult to determine the source of the recent salmonella scare about tomatoes and jalapenos It now appears that the source was Mexico.Thus, as with the other super government organizations that are established this one also is much more than a tariff reducing organization.
Former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger said, NAFTA,”…will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War. NAFTA is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system.” Trade analyst Thomas R. Eddlem stated NAFTA will set up “more than 30 new international government committees, sub-committees, councils, working groups, and sub groups mandated by NAFTA…NAFTA itself would establish the Free Trade Council- a continental government-in-waiting with enormous discretionary powers – with at least eight permanent committees, six „working groups‟ and five subcommittees and sub groups. A curious item is that NAFTA is shown on the organizational chart of the WTO.
We are now aware of the effect of this agreement on our manufacturing businesses for the last ten years has seen the transfer of thousands of manufacturing jobs to Mexico. The Wall Street Journal reported that,…by some estimates, roughly 1.3 million manufacturing jobs have moved abroad since the beginning of 1992, the bulk in the last three years (2000 – 2003) to Mexico and East Asia. David Broder reported in his column that “The number of factory workers has declined every month for three years.
From July of 2000 until last month (August of 2003) , industrial jobs fell from 17.3 million to 14.6
million (2.7 million) – a loss of almost one job in six. And these were, for the most part, good jobs, averaging $54,000 a year.” As one would expect the average wages for American workers has declined and consumer credit has increased by $880 billion between 1992 and 2003. (From $1159 to $2039).
That increase in consumer credit seems to be due to using credit cards to pay for normal purchases and not for luxuries.
A Harvard study revealed that approximately one-third of families who filed for bankruptcy owed an entire year‟s salary on their credit cards. Our trade deficit with Canada and Mexico has increased from $9 billion in 1993 to $111 billion in 2004. NAFTA has hurt the American worker which was no surprise to our politicians who enacted the Trade Adjustment Assistance program which provided $1.3 billion for Americans who lose their jobs as a result of NAFTA. They knew that jobs would be lost and enacted NAFTA anyway.
CAFTA
And now the Bush administration has given us CAFTA. In 2004 our politicians started to include Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in a Central American Free Trade Agreement.
On August, 2005 we included the Dominican Republic. The agreement was passed through our Congress in late July 2005 by a very close vote of 217 to 215. In the past, with NAFTA the voting was nearly bi partisan with most of the support coming from Republicans. (WTO support was from Democrats) This vote on CAFTA was nearly all Republican with the Democrats opposing it.
As you would expect CAFTA was a reenactment of NAFTA. Once the politicians had developed an organization that suited them they naturally applied it to the next one – CAFTA. The small six countries that are involved will bring very little trade or commerce to us while setting up another organization to which we relinquish some of our sovereignty and some more of our manufacturing jobs. There are 92
pages covering legislation and 31 more pages that spell out the administrative actions the USA must take in compliance. Thea Lea of the AFL-CIO has written,
“CAFTA strengthens protections for multinational corporations, forcing draconian changes in intellectual property protection regimes, giving corporations new rights to sue governments (mainly the USA) over regulations they deem too costly or inconvenient, and limiting the ability of future legislators to place conditions on government procurement.” Guatemalan Bishop Monsignor Alvaro Ramazzini said, “CAFTA is much more than a simple trade agreement, as it includes a range of mechanisms that combine prohibitions on governments with rights for foreign investors on such issues as investment, national treatment, intellectual property rights, market services, public services and access to bidding on public contracts.”
As with the other super-national organizations our politicians have told us they are acting in our benefit while transferring our government to these other groups. We have already been told that there is more to come for now we are being prepared for the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) which will include the whole hemisphere.
FTAA
The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) already exists even though there are no countries that have joined. The bureaucrats have written the rules and are waiting for us to join. After the acceptance of NAFTA by our politicians in 1994 the FTAA was formed in 1995. Mack McClarty, President Clinton‟s chief of staff said, “This is not a trade summit, it is an overall summit. It will focus on economic integration and convergence.” That may seem surprising since it has not been introduced into our Congress but the bureaucrats that want this to become law have already been appointed and are working on the organization. It is fairly simple since they will just adopt the rules and regulations in NAFTA and include the rest of the countries in the hemisphere. The charter is now in its third draft and includes 24 chapters covering all of the government agencies that would be necessary to run a big government operation. It does not yet include some of the dictatorial rules from the EU that deprive their people of their freedoms but it is probable that we can rely on the bureaucrats in charge to include those in the future as was done with the EU. The charter does include a “dispute settlement” organization which functions as a court which issues rulings and already has a group writing laws and is able to impose sanctions. In 1995 the Supreme Courts of the Americas Organization was also formed and completes the organization that can legislate, execute and judge. It is ready to rule and govern.
It is hard to believe that we would be willing to join a group composed of the rest of the Americas but our politicians have already placed us in NAFTA which includes Mexico which is not a kind of country with which we would voluntarily choose to be joined so who knows what they may agree to next.
As we look at the rest of the countries in our continent we find Argentina who repudiated their debts with other investors and countries back in 2000 and are now wanting to repeat that again. (They will be saved by the IMF which will then pay off the banks and get more money from their members). Their problem is socialism. Chile has been slowly repudiating the free enterprise system they adopted but now have elected a more moderate president which may help stop their descent into socialism.
Brazil‟s president claimed to be Marxist but has been slow in adopting it completely. They will be electing a new president soon but the favorite candidates are socialists. In Columbia we have the hemispheres largest drug cartel and in Venezuela we have the avowed Marxist Hugo Chavez who is in the process of becoming a dictator and forcing two oil companies to increase his share of their operations. In Bolivia the recently elected Marxist Morales has just told the two gas companies that they are to be nationalized.
An unsavory bunch if I ever saw one. The only countries we should be involved in would be Belize and Costa Rica. El Salvador is rated fair but their criminal gangs are even present in our country. Naturally, Haiti is not included although the Dominican Republic on the other end of their island is in CAFTA.
Haiti is as close to anarchy as you can get and is ruled by criminal gangs and so should not be included in any organization.
An examination of all of these super governments leads us to wonder why we would be in any organization where we share authority. All of their charters and rules and regulations have been written by bureaucrats who have not necessarily been friendly to us. We have not been involved with their selection of personnel nor with their compensation practices. In the past these kinds of organizations obtained the loyalty of their personnel by overpaying them for their work and granting vacations, benefits and pensions which keep them loyal forever and even lead them to forget the country that they may supposed to be representing.
Our own system of government has been to separate the executive, legislative and judicial functions to prevent the concentration of power in any one group. These super governmental organizations combine all of these functions and thus should be considered despotic and dictatorial. We have no control over their expenditures and very little control over how much they charge us for their operations.
The European Union has once again failed a financial audit. Does it bother them? Do they take action to see that it doesn‟t happen again? They are responsible only to themselves and so do not have to take any action but can continue to be incompetent or maybe even dishonest.
Therefore, in theory, we should not belong to any of them. They are alien to our beliefs about governments. In addition, we now know the results of belonging and that should convince us to withdraw. The International Monetary Fund has wasted our money and has aided dictators and tyrants to remain in power. They have encouraged banks to loan money improperly and then protected the loans those banks made. Coupled with the World Bank they have imposed rules and regulations which have harmed the countries they are supposedly helping. As a socialist organization they have caused countries to increase taxes and to accept big business while reducing their own small business operations. They have also assessed us lots and lots of money ($ billions) and we have not received any assistance from them. Why have we accepted this?
The World Trade Organization almost seems anti - USA. One wonders if there are any Americans in the organization. All of the other members would like to have freedom to come into our markets without restriction and without changing their own protectionist practices. Two thirds of the time disputes have been decided against us and we have agreed to grant them power over us which is not to our benefit.
Why are we supporting them and providing them with funds to harm us?
We now know the results of NAFTA and it has really hurt our manufacturing base which is now in Mexico. That manufacturing provided excellent income and work for our citizens and many of them have suffered as a result. Is that what a government is supposed to do for its citizens? Send their jobs to some other country?
In addition, as with the other super governments cited before we have granted it powers which no country should give away and we support these groups at our expense. We have voluntarily agreed to be in organizations which were conceived by others and has rules and regulations from others but in which our politicians voted to place us. We have agreed to abide by those rules even if they are different than our own laws. California Governor Swartzenegger vetoed a perfectly good bill passed by his legislature in compliance with a NAFTA ruling.
Are we going to see other state or federal officials or judges accept international laws in favor of our own? Two of our Supreme court justices, Ginsburg and Breyer, have cited international law in their rulings.
The US, Canada and Mexico have established eight trinational groups to work out the details of an agreement between the three leaders of those countries to implement the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). Mexican President Fox has indicated that, “…our long range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union.”
NAFTA and CAFTA were the start but the SPP would take this process to the next step for President Fox told an audience in California that his government would, “use all our persuasion and talent to bring together the US, Canada and Mexican governments so that in five to ten years, the border is totally open to the free movement of workers.” This explains why our government has been so slow in implementing the Secure Fence Act which was passed in 2006 and requires building a 700 mile fence along our southern border. That fence would seriously impede having a totally open border and would interfere with the plan to have a North American Union.
There is a solution. We should withdraw immediately from any foreign organization that is not subject to and under the control of our Congress. Can any loyal American object to that?
However, those are not the only questionable groups we have. Open the web site on government and look at all the agencies and bureaus and organizations that exist. Are even half of them identified in our constitution? Our government is completely out of control. It is too big. Present employment is estimated to be 2.1 million and that is probably twice what we need.