Discussion

• waltc :

  Normally such comments are kept among the rich and never made for public consumption since it used to infuriate folks who actually work for a living.

  But in the age of Ann Coulter, such evil comments barely rise above the noise threshold.

  Though it used to be when the rich got real uppity like this the working class would up and kill the parasitical buggers. Its just too bad the working class doesn't realize the power they really have at their disposal. They could easily make life hell on earth for these rich pussbags.

  Posted on May 21, 2007 12:23 PM

• FLGibsonJr :

  What true grotesqueness. How the Roberts slimeballs get a national platform to speak their filth is beyond comprehension. It is almost a bigger comment on our society that people like this get a platform to speak in a national newspaper than the actual filth they write.

  Regards,
  

  Posted on May 21, 2007 1:36 PM

• Hatuxka :

  These are our sworn enemies. These insider pundits spit on us with unalloyed contempt, and by this they reveal what is at the bottom of the thinking that allowed these "deals" to happen among their close cousins the insider politicos.

  Anyway, a full-scale rebellion should be occurring in the Congress right now.

  Posted on May 21, 2007 2:00 PM

• Steven Josselson :

  I'm sure the Roberts' shilling for lobbyist-written "free" trade deals dovetails quite nicely with Cokie's famous brother and uber-sketchy DC lobbyist Tommy Boggs and his corporate clients' agendas.

  My favorite part is when they cite a Business Roundtable study (i.e. a study published by CEOs of Fortune 500 companies) is "sound", because. . .the Roberts say so! The fact remains that BR is more than an organization that favors "free" trade (as though progressives somehow are against trade), they are an organization run by execs that have a huge stake in ensuring that their companies continue to have access to slave-wage labor without having to worry about pesky things like human rights.

  It's kind of telling that the Roberts neglect to mention this.

  Posted on May 21, 2007 4:49 PM

• jsgoyburu :

  I think expressions like "Though it used to be when the rich got real uppity like this the working class would up and kill the parasitical buggers" or "These are our sworn enemies" don't help progressives very much. Preaching to the choir or falling in ad-hominem reasoning (they're millionaires, so their arguments must be wrong) is not only fallacious, but it also makes progressives seem angry and hatefult. The fact is that we don't hate the Roberts, they're just wrong.

  They might be wrong, but they may appear to make some good points, from the american perspective. Thay say that "we have long been skeptical of including labor and environmental rules in trade deals. They smacked too much of protectionism, and seemed to have one aim: Raising costs for foreign firms and making their products less competitive in the world market", which would be true if one accepted that the USA has the strongest labor and enviromental laws in the world. But the fact is that many countries around the world have stronger (much stronger) labor laws than america, and many have stronger enviromental laws.

  For example, look at Peru. The announcement of the new rules for free-trade deals was received happily there, because they aleady have the laws, and they were afraid that this agreement would take them down. Because the fact is that free-trade agreements with the USA tend to cause empoverishment and the downgrading of labor laws and rights to american standards, which are, for many latin-american countries, extremely low.

  So, the new rules proposed by democrats are, in fact, positive for developing countries. They allow them to take advantage of their lower rates of exchange without lowering their labor standards, which explains why progressive governements have welcomed this development.

  The fact remains, eventhough, that free-trade agreements with the USA tend to be negative for the signing countries. They tend to benefit only american imports, while destroying local industry, creating unemployment and turning the remaining work force from skilled to unskilled labor(since that's what is outsourced), which only pushes further the brain-drain. Since latin-american countries usually have public universities, that brain drain means a transfer of public capital from poor countries to developed countries.

  Nevertheless, the democratic rules are a step forward, they limit the outsourcing of unskilled labor, and help labor standards in developing countries, since the need for trade with the USA is the usual argument of our local right-wing.

  The Roberts think (or say) that this new rules are protectionist. That is based in a nationalistic notion that America is the best country in the world, and that american laws are the most protective of their people. But the fact is that labor has been mistreated in America more than it has been in developing latin-american countries, which have had strong labor movements in the '50s, and whose achievements have lasted (some of them) until now, even with the american intelligence and military interventions of the '60s and '70s and their subsequent bloodshed.

  The new rules have nothing to do with nations, but with class. They damage the corporations. They help the workers. That's what the Roberts don't like, and they're right to feel that way. Thay have a right to defend their interest. But they should do so on a correct factual basis.

  Hope this can be understood, since my english is not that good lately.

  Sebastián

  Posted on May 22, 2007 9:54 AM