AN UNPOPULAR TRADE DEAL

[Joanne98]

The U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement that President Bush hopes to secure for his fat cat corporate cronies is, at best, a long shot to get approved by Congress.

“There are a lot more pressing economic issues, like addressing the recession, the housing crisis and rising unemployment,” according to a Senate source familiar with the leadership’s legislative agenda for the year.

The thing is Bush wants trade deals and permanent tax cuts rather than dealing with the economic collapse unfolding during his final months in office. He may need to try something different for a change, like do a deal or work out as compromise with the Democratic majority in Congress.

Bruce Raynor, general president of the UNITE HERE union, tells The Mouth that the lame duck President has little pull with his own party amid its fears that his unpopularity with the American people could hurt GOP candidates at the polls this year. Even for the Republicans, free trade deals are a mixed bag: some think they level the playing field; most others see them as job-killers for American workers.

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2008/04/an-unpopular-trade-deal.html

[readmoreoften]

1. Considering that 1 million Mexicans a year are displaced from their homes from US corporations

due to NAFTA, and that all the industrial cities of Mexico are full of the poor (which is why they are emigrating to the US), I wonder where all these displaced peoples in Colombia will go. Will Venezuela take them? Brazil (despite the language barrier)? Argentina? Chile? Will they head north and come here? Or will we send in death squads trained in Fort Benning, Georgia to get rid of the human excess?

Inquiring minds...