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Regarding China

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Free Trade And The Corporations

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Free Trade, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly:

Elementary economics teaches us that when there is free and open competition, the consumer is the ultimate beneficiary; this is called the law of comparative advantage. Free Trade is an integral componant of this philosophy, and is generaly beneficial to all parties involved. Also taught in the law of comparative advantage: countries should specialize; if one country is good at growing corn but not wheat, and another is good at growing wheat but not corn, then they should each grow what they are best at and trade for the rest. This then frees up workers to engage in other more productive tasks that they would not have been able to do otherwise. The economists are right when they say this, that's why they call it a law; but there is an inherent problem.

When a country decides to specialize, it "frees workers to perform other tasks"; this is a euphamism for "throws people out of work, forcing them to struggle for survival". This is where economics, that sterile number oriented "science", starts grasping at straws. Workers, far from being human beings, have always been considered to be just another resource to be managed and bid for; economic thinking holds that any worker who does not have a job in one industry will logically be working in another. Since people are merely resources, it then follows that whenever people are put out of work, some entrepreneur will notice that a resource is lying idle and will immediately find a way to utilize this resource. This is the most cruel, cold, inhuman, truth that you will ever find in the universe, but it is a truth.

History has shown time and again that any significant improvement in trade, technology, or society has caused somebody somewhere to suffer; but that society as a whole has always been better off in the long run. Before anyone pretends to fully understand this issue, it is nessessary to ask yourself: "Who's more important? My friend, Mr. Smith, who will lose his job if I keep buying tennis shoes from China; or somebody in the distant future who I will never meet?" This is the essence of the issue: everybody knows that jobs are leaving the country- good manufacturing jobs, jobs that provide benefits and feed families.

We in the Reform Party do wish to promote trade, but we put an emphasis on fair trade. I believe that the important thing to remember about this issue is that we import goods like mad from countries that could concievably become our enemies (and countries, like China, who are already acting like our enemies). Other countries have done a very good job of looking out for their own interests; they manufacture goods for export to the US, grow very rich, and import whatever they need and can't produce themselves (which is how a country should be run). We on the other hand are treating our economy like a branch of foriegn policy, trading away bits and pieces to a country in exchange for empty promises and vague, short term assurances.

Treaties such as NAFTA, GATT, The WTO, and the recently defeated "Fast Track" legislation are all examples of our governments attempts to make the world a better place at the expense of our own country. Currently working it's way through Congress is a bill known as the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, which is aimed at further eroding our borders, curcumventing our national soveriegnty, and accelerating the loss of American manufacturing jobs. An end to these treaties, and to the thinking which inspired them, is nessessary if we expect to remain the great nation that we are.

Campain Finance Reform:

The following paragraph is quoted from "Save Your Job, Save Our Country" by Ross Perot:

In June 1990, the United Nations-sponsored Economioc Commision for Latin America and the Carribean published a handbook for it's members about how to lobby the U.S. government. It serves as an interesting analysis of how the government of the United States really works. The Commision reports that in other nations "attempts by foreigners at influencing decision-making processes are commonly understood as interference in internal affairs." But in the United States, the Commision says,"lobbying constitutes a lawful opportunity available to [foreign] interest groups to exert influence and to have an impact on policy."

The political system in our country is based on one thing: money. Those in power need money in order to stay elected, and frequently find that personal wealth is soon to follow. For these reasons, politicians ally themselves with those that have money: the corporations, the investors, other countries. China disseminated $2 million in our country during the last election,is it any surprise that China gets such preferential treatment? The people are no longer represented in our country, only that top 1% that's got the dough has any say in Washington; it is time for Reform

to follow the money, check out my link to Common Cause

China:

Everyone has a hobby, a personal pet-peeve that they believe is bent on their destruction; for me, it is China. This is because China, an authoritarian regime with no respect for human rights, has been gearing up for war for quite some time now. The money which they earn by selling us Fisher Price toys is being used to buy Russian guided missile destroyers, an aircraft carrier, old Soviet tanks, new American supercomputers, and is being sunk into a nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program that makes our military look like amatures. I truely believe that they are preparing to destroy America. We know that they attempted to buy influence with president Clinton. We know that they have been selling AK-47s to street gangs in L.A. We know that they have been supplying contries such as Iran and Pakistan with technology for their nuclear weapons programs; they even sent Iran some nuclear scientists! We know that they run the world's largest chemical weapons market, selling chemical and biological weapons to countries throughout the Middle East. We know that, in 1996, they literally threatened to nuke San Fransisco!

The People's Liberation Army has begun harvesting the organs of living political prisoners and selling them on the black market.

I could not write about China without including a paragraph on the China Ocean Shipping Company, so here it is. COSCO is an intelligence gathering front for the People's Liberation Army of China. They have purchased the closed Long Beach Naval Station in California (amid much protest from local citizen action groups) and are building a massive port facility that will allow them to spy on a great many important military instillations in the area. COSCO has a cooperation agreement with the GRU, Russia's primary intelligence gathering organization, and may be colaborating with Russia in the Long Beach deal (unconfirmed rumor). COSCO has recently gained control of the ports on both sides of the Panama Canal through another Chinese owned company, Holdings ltd. This gives them bases close to a very strategic area; one of the USA's seven global command facilities is located in Panama, very close to the canal. They have been caught smuggling AK-47s into our country. They have been caught smuggling grenade launchers through our country for sale in Mexico. They were caught smuggling 87 pounds of Heroin into our country. The ship that crashed into a New Orleans bay-side shopping mall in early 1997 was a COSCO ship. COSCO's board of directors were invited to the White House were allowed to sit in on the president's weekly radio address

There will be a formal protest against the sale of Long Beach Naval Station to China on Wednesday, January 14! Click here to find out more!

Fun Fact:

Former presidential candidate Bob Dole is now a lobbyist for, amoung other things, the governments of Chile and Taiwan

If you agree with anything I have said here, or you wish to know more about where I got my information, please email me. If you are interested in finding out more about the The Reform Party , follow my link to our website.

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