Bush's Great Sucking Sound

One of the dreariest spectacles in American politics is watching presidents spend Labor Day making illiberal promises and policy decisions in front of unionized crowds. George W. Bush is certainly no exception, using yesterday's holiday to announce a new Manufacturing Czar position, thump the tub for "fair" trade, and warn that he's gonna "send a message overseas." Oh dear.

Comments

[Jean Bart]

Does this mean that the Manufacturing Czar will eventually morph into the Department of Manufacturing Security? 🙂

[Steve in CO]

Department of Manufacturing Security? 🙂

We already have one. It is called Congress.

[Jim]

Just what the manufacturing sector needs to fix it's ills - more government involvement. I hope this guy doesn't act like the drug czar, and try to stamp out manufacturing!

'fair trade' is only fair if it's free. If Bush wants to help out manufacturing, how about lifting the steel tariffs. It's making it hard to compete with foreign producers because they can buy cheaper foreign steel when we can't.

[Steve in CO]

And like any other president, Bush sings one thing to whatever choir he is courting and will likely do another ... let's hope so in this instance.

[Anonymous]

Reasonoids: Tell me again how Pat Buchanan would have been worse than Bush?

[Ayatollah Usoe]

Bush could "send a message overseas" along with all the jobs we're exporting. How's this for a message: "U.S. taxes are extortionate, regulation unbearable, and better educated workforces exist elsewhere. You'd be crazy to manufacture here." I know, I know, we're a service economy. That's why we celebrate Labor Day at the shopping mall.

[joe]

Brilliant! Nothing puts a politician in the good graces of working people better than creating a patronage position for one of his millionaire CEO buddies, and giving him authority over people's jobs!

[thoreau]

I've heard of "fair trade coffee" pushed by a lot of lefty types. It basically amounts to paying more for coffee and making sure it was grown in an environmentally "sustainable" way. Maybe Bush is hoping to win some votes in Berkeley.

After all, the Greens have already established that there's currently no difference between the Dems and GOP, so if Bush comes out in favor of "Fair Trade Coffee" he'll have a chance to get a leg up on the Dems....

Of course, all of this hinges on believing what the Greens have to say, but if you can't believe the Greens then whom can you believe? 😉

(Note: The above was sarcasm. Please don't think I'm a leftist based on that line about the Greens. In most settings this disclaimer would be unnecessary, but this is not one of those setttins.)

[Jean Bart]

thoreau,

Well, there's nothing particularly wrong with private entities setting up trade networks which support what they view as sustainable, etc., right? Or is profit at all costs the only legitimate means of doing business?

[B.P.]

Sure, set up all the trade networks to support "sustainability" you want. That doesn't make such networks immune from the laughter of others.

[s.m. koppelman]

In order for American manufacturing to be competitive in today's global market and still remain party to all those free-trade agreements the GOP pushed so hard for in the 1990s, the US needs to roll back all these awful regulations and requirements that make it too expensive to make things here. If we could just get rid of burdensome fire escapes, safety goggles, first aid kits, child labor and indentured servitude laws, and let manufacturers go back to using water cannons and tear gas and the occasional brutal murder of a union rep here and there to level the field in wage negotiations, we'll be well on our way.

I can't wait to see the new czar's initial set of recommendations!

[Jason Ligon]

I will never understand why the interests of the 2 million domestic laborers who produce cars supercede the interests of the 180 million consumers of cars.

Now we not only get unnecessarily expensive manufactured goods, but we also get to pay for a buraeucracy dedicated to inflating prices out of our tax dollars.

Sigh.

[Anonymous]

Does "S.M." in s.m. koppelman stand for Straw Man?

[thoreau]

Jean Bart-

Nothing whatsoever wrong with people voluntarily buying and selling "fair trade" coffee. My main point is that it's kind of funny to see Bush using rhetoric similar to something we often hear from liberals in coffee shops.

Maybe we'll see Bush playing a guitar and reciting poetry in a Berkeley coffee shop soon? I'd pay good money to see that spectacle!

[Plutarck]

The problem with "fair trade" is only when it isn't - when it is a governmental dictat declaring what is and isn't "fair", and forcing everyone to buy or sell based upon their wims and fancies.

If you want to buy a half empty box on the idea that it's healthy, or a $200 bra because it's sexy (even if it is absolutely identicle to a $25 one), or give a 30% tip to a waiter, then you know what? It's your god-damned money, and it is - or should be - damn near an inviolable right to do whatever it is you fucking please with it.

But it is not the right of the government to declare whatever bullshit line they've bought today The Standard, and seek to stamp out anything that doesn't quite fit with their lunacy. The effect of Cost Accounting on the medical industry and colleges/universities, amongst others, are examples of just what happens when the government declares that it has somehow had a vision of brilliance and knows better than everyone else.

[s.m. koppelman]

Strawman? You think?

You can't have all three of these at once:

• "free trade" with countries that have lower living, pay, environmental and workplace standards
• continuing to have some sort of manufacturing take place in the US
• a standard of living and level of citizenship for manufacturing workers high enough that they and their families can live fewer than 8 to a room, with hot running water and no fear of being beaten by their employers

Since the current Congress and Administration seem at least as keen as their predecssors on (1) global and regional free trade agreements with less-developed countries, and since (2) the appointment of a "Manufacturing Czar" implies that they want to have some manufacturing go on in the US, that seems to leave #3 as the only place to trim fat. Am I missing something?

[Plutarck]

I don't see how you can't have all three. There are a "few" things, after all, that require the kinds of things you don't much get in third world countries - like, say, proximity, experience, infrastructure, various services and goods that might not be so easy to come by in third world countries, etc.

After all, I don't think if Japan had free trade - assuming they don't - that suddenly all the electronics and car manufacturers would go 'poof'.

Now if they were constantly tightening grips on emissions, pollution, and similar such regulation that shoved the pendulum far enough in the direction of "get the hell out of dodge", then perhaps you'd get even less manufacturing jobs - but it's not exactly as if there are throbbing masses of people who want to stand in a line all day and cut the heads off of chickens or Insert Industrial Tab A Into Industrial Slot B.

But then...I'm thinking you must have been joking just a weee bit 😉

[Anonymous]

>>"free trade" with countries that have lower living, pay, environmental and workplace standards>continuing to have some sort of manufacturing take place in the US>a standard of living and level of citizenship for manufacturing workers high enough that they and their families can live fewer than 8 to a room, with hot running water and no fear of being beaten by their employers

[Anonymous]

Yes. It's a global economy and standards of living within national borders no longer matter. You have to admit that your third point is simply luxury items; a majority of people on the planet have always lived without them. Prosperity is no one's birthright.

[Disappointed Porn Surfer]

Man, I hate Google! Type "bush" and "sucking" in, and you get some loonies talking about politics.

[Jim Walsh]

Happy belated Labor Day. Anyone for a National Right To Work bill?

http://www.right-to-work.org/

[Tom - Boston]

What does free trade mean;

African countries being able to sell farm products on an open market and feed themselves.

US manufacturers having lower steel prices so they can compete overseas.

Milk prices being allowed to float ? the people?s state of Massachusetts has fixed the lowest price milk can be sold for. In the words of knee jerk liberals ?But the children??

Sugar prices crash ? and in the Caribbean sugar cane farmers being allowed to export to the us and feed themselfs.

Purchasing wine across state lines.

[Russ D]

I don't see Bush appointing a "programming czar", protecting programming jobs from moving overseas. But I doubt most programmers in India and Russia are being unfairly exploited; they're taking the jobs for peanuts willingly and I doubt they're being "beaten" by their employers.

Of course, living standards are relative.

[Brian]

No one's actually surprised that GWB is appointing a manufacturing czar, are they? This is par for the course with this administration.

Are there ANY Republicans out there that still want to tell me why this statist deserves my libertarian vote?

[thoreau]

But Brian, the Democrats are even worse. Honestly. Trust the Republicans. Would they lie to you? 😉

I still maintain that as long as we're stuck with Democrats and Republicans the best way to keep the federal gov't in check is to put a Democrat in the White House and give the GOP control of Congress. When we have a Republican in the White House, the Congressional Republicans just act as cheerleaders for whatever big government proposals he makes, and the Congressional Democrats already like Big Government. By contrast, with a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans are convinced that the "wrong sort of people" have their hands on the levers of Big Government, so they reflexively mount effective opposition.

The Republicans may not be any more libertarian than the Democrats, but they are better at putting up a fight when the other side tries to expand the powers of the Executive Branch. This is not to say they do a perfect job of it, just that the least-worst situation is a GOP Congress and Democrat President.

[Anonymous]

Give me liberty or give me hot running water.

[Brian]

Thoreau--

I'm sold. If the LP can't put forth a halfway decent candidate worthy of my protest vote this year (no sign that they will, just yet), I'm voting for Dean. Seriously.

Now I have to go take a shower.

[thoreau]

Brian-

There's another factor to consider: Whether your state is a swing state. If you live in a safe state, might as well cast the protest vote for the LP or whoever (or write-in Mickey Mouse or something). If you live in a swing state, then a vote for the Dem in the Presidential race and votes for the GOP in the House and Senate races might make sense.

Since I live in CA (guaranteed to go Dem in the Senate and Pres. races) and in a safe district (guaranteed to re-elect the incumbent to the House, just like 95% of all districts) I normally cast protest votes. In 2000 I actually voted GOP in the Senate race because the candidate was sort of a "libertarian-lite" Republican. He wouldn't pass any of the purity tests on this forum, but he wanted to significantly downsize the federal gov't.

[Jason Ligon]

I dunno guys. PATRIOT and all, I've seen nothing that terrifies me as much as a Gore or Hillary presidency. Those guys aren't joking. They really believe that they know, in Al's words, 'the central organizing principle of humanity' on the one hand and feel no compunction about nationalizing a very large fraction of the domestic economy on the other. Nothing was more important to me than 'Not Gore' in the last election.

I've always seen the libertarian choice between Elephants and Donkeys as the choice between the the person who would prefer not to hand out goodies but too often caves to populist pressures vs. the person whose fundamental beliefs are antithetical to living in a free society.

Liberals would all be communists if they could. I suspect even neocons would only look like hawkish federalists if they had their way. Not ideal, but it has always been less frightening to me, somehow.

[Kevin Carson]

s.m. koppelman,

Sure you can have all three. You make the mistake of taking the AEI's mercantilist, globally regulated and subsidized "free trade" as equivalent to REAL free trade.

REAL free trade means the U.S. national security state doesn't prop up corporate-friendly regimes overseas, and give SOA training to death squads that torture or disappear labor organizers. It means that the U.S. government doesn't act as (subsidized) rent-a-cops for American capital overseas, but rather the latter get to pay the full cost of protecting their investments. It means that the IP provisions of GATT are no longer used to give American capital a deadlock on production technology and shut out the emergence of native-owned competition in the Third World. It means not subsidizing long-distance shipping, so that U.S. taxpayers underwrite the cost of inefficient competitors overseas. It means withdrawing from global government agencies like the IMF and World Bank, that impose Western supervision on Third World government policies.

And domestically, a free market means, among other things, repealing Taft-Hartley's restrictions on general strikes, sympathy strikes, etc.

REAL free trade is the giant corporations' worst nightmare.

[Karly]

Jean, if you hate America and its presidents so much, why do you continue to visit American web sites? How come you're bashing the U.S. and its policies, and not that of, say, murderous Algiers, Libya, or Korea? Surely they have English or French-speaking web sites, too, non?

And since you can apparently receive any broadcast on the planet in France (via the internet, cable, shortwave, and dish) it shouldn't be too hard to do. We just can't understand why you keep hanging around the object of your ire.

[nm156]

Karly: Isn't the subheading, "Free Minds and Free Markets?" Why so defensive? I didn't know that the web stopped at the border. If I remember correctly, Jean Bart is an ex-pat. But even if I'm wrong, so what? I live next door to you, in a national sense, so what those jokers in D.C. do has some effect on me and my family. That gives me the right to express my opinions in this (free) marketplace of ideas.

[nm156]

Besides, Dubya invites abuse. I t would be impolite not to accept.

[Jean Bart]

"I want you to understand that I understand that Ohio manufacturers are hurting, that there's a problem with the manufacturing sector," the president told a union gathering in Ohio on Labor Day.

Why does this sound like "I feel your pain?"

[joe]

"Nothing was more important to me than 'Not Gore' in the last election." And now Ashcroft is Attorney General, and Jack Van Impe gets invitations to the White House. Those men's "fundamental beliefs" aren't "antithetical to living in a free society?"

You seem to think that people devoted to a free market and a small government constitute a substantial bloc of the GOP. Where on earth did you get that idea?