The Bar Set At Sea Level

The bar has been set so low it's almost underground.

Charlie Pierce has dubbed Politico "Tiger Beat on the Potomac" because it "manages on a regular basis to cover the worst of our politics through the worst of our political journalism."

It should be no surprise, then, that many months ago it assembled "The POLITICO Caucus-  a panel of activists, operatives and strategists in 11 key battleground states" to tell us what to think.

Today's takeaway of the Trump moment in Mexico City is "a majority of Republicans" believes "Trump appeared presidential and diplomatic in the foreign capital."    One Republican from Pennsylvania remarked “Trump finally looked presidential, calm and assured. The voters he needs to win dislike him not on message, but on his approach and demeanor; Mexico and Phoenix will start to allay their concerns."

For the GOP nominee for President, it is now a qualifying attribute for leader of the Free World that he not always appear as if his head is about to explode and he is not preposterously offensive to a wide swath of individuals.

Still, looks can be deceiving. Nonetheless, at a news conference after the meeting Trump stated "Who pays for the wall." Responding, President Enrique Pena Nieta tweeted "I made it clear that Mexico will not pay for the wall."

This is not a case of "he said, she said" (an awful saying, derived from "he said, she said"). Nor did Trump lie; it's unlikely they discussed the wall.  Pena Nieto said Mexican payment is a non-starter, and Trump obliged.   A fellow with a 23% rating in his own country immediately stands up to the self-promoted tough guy who, in Antonio Villaraigosa's words, "comes out barking like a pit bull, goes down to Mexico and turns into a Chihuahua.”

But Trump's statement on the podium with Pena Nieto gives us a flavor of what happened in the meeting.  Rapists, drug dealers, and assorted criminals were a thing of the past now that

the United States first, second and third generation Mexicans are just beyond reproach. Spectacular, spectacular hard-working people. I have such great respect for them and their strong values of family, faith and community.

Trump excoriates the North American Free Trade Agreement is the "worst trade  deal in history," compains the nation "become more dependent on foreign countries than ever before,".and implores us to "declare our economic independence once again." We now find the "America First" candidate wants merely to tweak the agreement, now that he has

shared my strong view that NAFTA has been a far greater benefit to Mexico than it has been to the United States and that it must be improved upon to make sure that workers, and so important, in both countries benefit from fair and reciprocal trade.

The once- anti- NAFTA crusader expressed mainstream views that could have come from Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton, the latter a signatory to the NAFTA after he secured enviromental and labor concessions. Trump maintained the two nations have many "shared goals' and "a common interest in keeping our hemisphere safe, prosperous and free."

"A picture is worth a thousand words." it is said. Sometimes those pictures are misleading. But Donald Trump is adamant that  "Mexico will pay for the wall- believe me," frequently pokes his finger to make a point while he plays the alpha dog before every audience and calls his opponents "little Marco," "lying Ted," "low-energy" JEB, and "corrupt Hillary."

Then he faces a head of state, shuts his mouth about his "big, beautiful wall," and looks like he he got his rear end whipped (photo from Rodrigo Cruz for The New York Times).  And the political media says he "looked presidential." What  would it  take for him not to look presidential?

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Keeping Him Honest, Maybe


What has gotten into Harry Reid?

Whatever it is, it should be bottled and forcibly fed to Barack Obama.  Salon's Elias Isquith on Thursday wrote

Democrats think 2014 is shaping up to be a tough year for them politically. So instead of trying to persuade the public that they’ve got the best answers to the problems we face, they try to shut everybody else out of the political process, they try to shut them up,” McConnell said. He went on to accuse the president of wanting “to use the IRS to drive conservatives right off the playing field.”

Isquith continued

Reid wasn’t having it, and pointed to the conservative billionaire Koch brothers — who directly and indirectly fund many of these organizations — as a prime example of how the rules are being disregarded or abused by outside political actors. “Because of a United States Supreme Court decisions called Citizens United, there’s been some really untoward stuff going on in the political world,” Reid said. “We have two brothers who are actually trying to buy the country.”

“What they’re doing is spending their … dollars on governors races, and on the state level and, of course, spending huge amounts of money around the country attempting to defeat Democrats both in the House and the Senate,” Reid continued. “The Koch brothers hide all their campaign efforts. They disguise themselves with rare exception as social welfare organizations, with all these fancy names going after people who are trying to improve the country.”

Reid is blowing the whistle on the complex web of organizations (graphic, as well as the passage below, from The Washington Post) funded by the right-wing and horrifyingly mainstream Koch Brothers, whose

funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.

But they have substantial firepower. Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports.

No Democrat- publicly- will defend the Koch brothers, who would like to put every one of them out of business. But the day before, Reid boldly had taken on the President of his own party. The Huffington Post reported

"I'm against fast track," Reid told reporters Wednesday on Capitol Hill, before suggesting a fast-track bill introduced by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) may not get a vote.

"We'll see. Everyone knows how I feel about this. Senator Baucus knows, [potential backer] Sen. [Ron] Wyden knows. The White House knows."

Indeed, Reid cautioned the president and his allies to back off.

"I think everyone would be well advised just to not push this right now," the majority leader said.

Reid may be aware that since passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the share of national income captured by the 1% has shot up and real income barely increased as productivity has grown substantially.  Far more corporations than previously have shut down and gone abroad while the threat to do so by many employers has stymied union drives.  The U.S.A. trade deficit- especially with Mexico and Canada, the other parties to the NAFTA- has climbed dramatically.  And much of this has taken place under the nose of the man who as both a candidate and President promised to renegotiate the agreement.

Still, the President isn't satisfied, and at his State of the Union address promoted the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, stating

Let’s do more to help the entrepreneurs and small business owners who create most new jobs in America. Over the past five years, my administration has made more loans to small business owners than any other. And when ninety-eight percent of our exporters are small businesses, new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific will help them create more jobs.  We need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped “Made in the USA.”  China and Europe aren’t standing on the sidelines.  Neither should we.

Keith Ellison, chairperson of the Congressional (really, the House) Progressive Caucus,  responded "How can you say on one hand you want to address income inequality, you want to make this economy work for everyone, and on the other hand, say you want trade promotion authority so you can pass these NAFTA-style trade deals? It doesn’t make any sense."

Indeed. Additionally, Richard Eskow notes

Here are some of the words and phrases that did not appear in President Obama’s speech: “Wall Street,” “bank,” “regulation,” “fraud,” “settlement,” “investigation,” “too big to fail,” and “Glass-Steagall.” He didn’t mention the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or the Dodd/Frank financial reform bill. He didn’t discuss the cynical attempts to roll back financial reform in Congress – attempts that are supported by members of both parties – much less insist that those attempts be defeated.

Although the president discussed the economic plight of the majority of Americans, he made no mention of the financial industry’s central role in the devastating 2008 financial crisis, which made that plight so much worse. He talked of wage stagnation, but did not explore the financial industry’s role in the increasingly unjust economic redistribution of recent decades. Inequality doesn’t just happen. It’s produced by many forces, most of which either originate on Wall Street or are heavily influenced by it.

We can’t create a newer, fairer economy without talking about Wall Street. Building that economy begins with preventive measures. The last bank-fueled crisis robbed the nation of millions of jobs and trillions in wealth. Preventing the next crisis means stronger financial regulation, a breakup of the big banks, and rock-solid walls between customers’ money and bankers’ gambling funds.It also means prosecuting the fraudsters who helped perpetrate this crisis, no matter how prominent they may be in the banking community. There’s no sign that those prosecutions are imminent, even as the statute of limitations runs out.

On that score, it’s noteworthy that the president didn’t mention the enormous fines and settlements banks have paid in the past year as the result of the fraudulent behavior. Leaving aside the issue of whether those payments were sufficient, one would think the president might have touted them – if only as a modest first step. But they weren’t mentioned. Even JPMorgan Chase’s record payouts for fraud – $20 billion in a single year – went unremarked.

Some people, most notably the Senate Majority Leader, have been paying attention to what's going on with the American economy  Perhaps if they don't back off, President Obama can evolve on trade and the crimes of the banking industry as he has on the legitimacy of same-sex marriage and the need to raise the minimum wage. But probably not.



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Progress (?) On Trade

In Racine, Wisconsin on Wednesday, June 30 at what Reuters termed "a campaign-style appearance," President Obama explained

For example, if China has a currency that's undervalued, that makes our exports more expensive. It makes their imports cheaper. So we've been putting pressure on them to say, you know what, let's make sure that we're not favoring one side or the other in this trade deal.

Reuters commented

China has announced plans to allow its currency to be more flexible, and Obama said at a weekend Group of 20 meeting in Toronto he believed the yuan would rise significantly.

This would be very big news, indeed. Our trade deficit "is mostly oil and China now" and the NYT reported in May

The U.S. trade deficit rose in March for the first time since last July as the global recession cut sharply into sales of American exports, The Associated Press reported Tuesday from Washington. The politically sensitive deficit with China increased.

Apparently committed to a robust export sector,

Obama said he’d instructed U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk “to begin discussions to resolve outstanding issues” on a free trade agreement with South Korea before Obama’s visit to Seoul in November.

He said he hoped to resolve that agreement, as well as agreements with Panama and Colombia, for Congress to consider as soon as possible.

“We’re working to resolve outstanding issues with the free trade agreements with those key partners, and we’re focused on submitting them as soon as possible for congressional consideration,” Obama said.

Nonetheless, the AFL-CIO reports, worldwide 101 trade unionists were murdered in 2009 and "Colombia- where nearly half (48) of the murders took place—continues to be the most dangerous place to belong to a union."

Moreover, Michael Whitney of Firedoglake notes

Forty-eight union members were killed in Colombia in 2009, 49 in 2008, and another 49 in 2007. All in all, more than 4,000 union members have been killed in Colombia in the last twenty years.

That was considered a worthy issue back in 2008 when

Sen. Barack Obama promised to stand firm in his opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement on Wednesday–days after President Bush asked Congress to quickly pass the trade deal–in a speech to rally the union vote at the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO’s annual convention.

The Illinois senator said he would oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement “because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.”

President Obama would do well to remember those words, and the sentiment it reflected, before he reaches final agreement with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia. Even before this severe recession, middle-class jobs already were in decline for reasons which included an obsession with free trade, reflected in passsage of the NAFTA. We cannot sanction violence against unionists, nor neglect to include provisions which would safeguard American jobs, when negotiating trade agreements.

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Where's John McCain?

By way of STLtoday.com comes an article this week on the largest takeover bid ever in the beer industry. Jeremiah McWilliams reports

InBev of Belgium has launched an unsolicited bid to take over St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Cos., the brewer of Budweiser and the country's biggest beer maker. The $46.3 billion bid — amounting to $65 per share, in cash — would transform the industry, creating a global brewing behemoth selling about one-fourth of the world's beer.

Apparently, Missouri politicians, including Governor Matt Blunt and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, are not amused, unsurprising given the probable impact on the metropolitan region.

Neither is Lou Dobbs. On the 7/7/08 edition of "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Dobbs noted, following a report by CNN correspondent Carrie Lee, "the madness created by free trade and the millions of jobs that have been lost. I hate what they call free trade. I prefer desperately fair trade." Lee's report included video of Senator Barack Obama commenting

I don't think that we can pass a law to prevent Budweiser's shareholders, Anheuser- Busch's shareholders from selling their company. That's part of the free market system. I do think it would be a shame if Bud is foreign owned.

Like most of Obama's relevant remarks these days, that's bland and inoffensive. However, it would be fascinating to hear a reporter, any reporter, asking John McCain his opinion of the takeover attempt. As Lee explained:

And that's the interesting thing. We hear from Obama and not a peep out of McCain. Keep in mind that his wife, of course, a very large shareholder in Bud stock, also owns a distributorship. He's been a free trade advocate. He also has some financial gain and he also has the tradition of patriotism, though, to contend with as well. So a little bit of a tough fight to be with.

That's right. McCain can support the causes of patriotism and of American workers- or of free trade and Cindy McCain's enormous fortune. It's his choice- if someone dares ask him about it.

McCain Happy For The Canadians

"Let them come to Berlin."

And what would John McCain have in common with these words from John F. Kennedy in West Berlin, Germany on June 26, 1963?

Really, nothing, but that's the problem. Senator McCain recently traveled to Ottawa to deliver to a receptive audience at The Economic Club of Canada a paean to the (1994) North American Free Trade Agreement and unfair trade. But instead of fleeing to another (albeit friendly) country, perhaps McCain should have brought his ironically named Straight Talk Express to the midwestern U.S.A.

The Ohio News Network, which bills itself as "Ohio's 24-Hour News Channel," reported in 2004 of a report issued by the nonpartisan think tank, Policy Matters Ohio. Evaluating job dislocation reports filed the the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, the study found that 15,000-16,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in Ohio from 1995 to October 2003 due to the NAFTA. For just the first seven years of NAFTA, according to the Economic Policy Institue, net job losses in the Midwest in the electronic equipment and automotive sectors were severe: nearly 12,000 in Illinois; nearly 17,000 in Indiana; and nearly 25,000 in Michigan in the automotive sector alone.

If John McCain were to bring his Express south from Canada to the states, he would find the engine of economic progress has stalled, due in no small part to the failed promises of trade which is neither free, nor fair, to middle-class Americans.

A McCain Fantasy

Speaking on June 20 before The Economic Club of Canada, John McCain claimed of the euphemistically-named North American Free Trade Agreement:

Since the agreement was signed, the United States has added 25 million jobs and Canada more than 4 million. Cross-border trade has more than doubled since NAFTA came into force. We have established North America as the world's largest economic market and the integration of our economies has led to greater competitiveness of American and Canadian businesses. Because of our common market, our workers are better able to compete, and to find opportunities of their own in the global economy.

After extensive study, Public Citizen in 1997 reported

If the U.S. trade deficit is plugged into the job creation formulas created by NAFTA advocates, approximately half a million U.S. jobs have been lost under NAFTA. Most of the U.S. jobs lost are high paying jobs in automobiles, trucks and auto parts. The Washington D.C. based think tank found that the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico in these areas has quadrupled since 1993.

And in December, 2003 The Economic Policy Institute concluded that the combined effect of changes in imports and exports as a result of NAFTA was a loss of 879,280 U.S. jobs. (Check out their graph here.) Further, according to the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition in June, 2007, "the U.S. textile and apparel manufacturing sector now has lost 1,001,100 jobs – a 65 percent loss of employment in the industry – since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in January 1994."

Yet McCain- apparently scolding Barack Obama- blustered in his statement "demanding unilateral changes and threatening to abrogate an agreement that has increased trade and prosperity is nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls." Given that the presumptive Democratic nominee has not demanded unilateral changes but merely said that he wants to renegotiate the NAFTA, Senator McCain is fast establishing himself on trade as a dangerous extremist.

What Could McCain Be Thinking?

Alert The Wall Street Journal (and the mainstream media, generally): I am not a knee-jerk free trader, though some people have used a portion of that phrase to describe me. Even if I were, I would wonder whether John McCain is in touch with reality. In a speech delivered on May 20, 2008 in Miami, Florida for Cuban Independence Day, the Arizona senator said

We have made progress toward this vision by expanding the benefits of free commerce, through NAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and our free trade agreements with Peru and Chile. But the progress has stalled; our longstanding bipartisan commitment to hemispheric prosperity is crumbling. We see this most vividly in Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's opposition to the free trade agreement with Colombia. The failure of the Congress to take up and approve this agreement is a reminder why 80 percent of Americans think we are on the wrong track.

Maybe there are other reasons for Americans believing our nation is on the wrong track. Consider:

-the mortgage crisis- according to USA Today, "about 2.3% of prime loans were 60 days' past due in February, the highest level in at least a decade, according to data from FirstAmerican CoreLogic LoanPerformance. That's up from 1.4% a year ago."

-gasoline costs- according to U.S. government statistics, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline on 4/21/08- after prices began to rise- was 350.8 and on 5/26/08, 393.7, a rise of 42.9 cents; the average price of all grades of gasoline over the same period rose from 355.7 to 398.6, a rise also of 42.9 cents. That's an increase of over 8 cents per week.

-Persian Gulf II- There now are over 4,000 American soldiers who have died in Iraq with no end to this war in sight.

-Corruption- At least ten (10) officials of the Bush Administration have been indicted and/or found guilty of criminal offenses; another twenty-four (24) have resigned due to investigation or because of pending investigation or allegations of impropriety.

Still, the Repub who will be nominated for president believes that failure of Congress to pass the "U.S.-Columbia Trade Promotion Agreement" (Columbia Free Trade Agreement) is a reason that 79% of Americans believe the U.S.A. is on the wrong track and only 15% that our nation is on the right track. Either John McCain is divorced from reality, or he believes that he can delude us voters. But could he really be that elitist?