DC Elites Pushing Korea Trade Pact

DC Elites Pushing Korea Trade Pact
This Post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF. The way a Lobbyist argues for or against anything today is to say it will create or cost Jobs. Prohibiting Lawsuits against giant corporations that harm people creates Jobs . Making Oil Drilling safer costs Jobs . Tax Cuts for the rich creates Jobs . Just getting rid of government will create Jobs . So, of course,...

Administration Pushing South Korea Free Trade Deal
Trade hasn’t been a subject that has received much ink during the Obama Administration. They haven’t sought to overhaul NAFTA or CAFTA, nor have they signed any new major Trade deals. And in some cases, they have raised Tariffs on certain imports, bolstering domestic Manufacturing. The White House says they’d like to double exports as a means of creating Jobs and renewing Economic Growth. And they’re pitching the South Korea Free Trade Agreement as a step along that...

South Korea free trade pact back on U.S. agenda
NAPERVILLE, ILL. -- The message may have been familiar recently when the local Chamber of Commerce took up a proposed Free-trade Agreement between South Korea and the United States. This Story "Wave the flag," the speaker exhorted the audience. "This is an opportunity to stimulate the U.S. economy at no cost to U.S. Taxpayers." But the man on the podium wasn't the typical business booster. He was South Korean Ambassador Han Duk-soo, who has assumed the unusual role of a...

South Korean envoy lobbies for trade pact
EAST LANSING - The South Korean ambassador to the United States stressed the importance of passing a Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement during his visit to Lansing on Thursday. "The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement offers one of the best opportunities to create U.S. jobs by providing new export opportunities for American manufacturers, farmers and small- and medium-sized companies," Ambassador Han Duk-soo said. The ambassador spoke to nearly 100 people at the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center at...

A Pro-Jobs Measure Both Parties Should Support
There aren’t many opportunities these days for Bipartisan Agreement or for quick boosts to the flagging economy. But the passage of the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would be both. The Washington Post reminds us: For three years, since it was negotiated by the Bush Administration, the Free-trade Agreement has languished in Congress. Now Trade officials from both countries are trying to resolve the problems that have kept it bottled up, including a dispute over U.S. access to the South...

South Korean Ambassador Touts Free-Trade Pact    Pork
The Free-trade Agreement with South Korea is again struggling for life, according to a Washington Post report. The Agreement would be the most significant Free-trade pact signed by the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada was approved in the mid-1990s. The latest supporter is South Korean Ambassador Han Duk-soo, who has assumed the unusual role of a foreign official promoting U.S. jobs. "This is an opportunity to stimulate the U.S. economy at no...

Hyundai's John Krafcik isn't your typical CEO type
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — Hang around John Krafcik long enough and you're bound to hear about the time he passed an automotive legend in a freeway speed duel. It was in the early 1990s. Krafcik was a midlevel executive at Ford Motor. To hear him tell it, he was barreling down Interstate 94 near Detroit when Bob Lutz, then a top guy at Chrysler and now retired General Motors vice chairman, sped past in a Dodge Spirit R/T. Krafcik gunned his Taurus SHO for a triple-digit battle of...

U.S. business wants hearings on Bush-era tax cuts
Related Articles The biggest U.S. companies stepped up their lobbying on Monday to block Democrats’ plans to let taxes on wealthier Americans rise at year’s end, asking lawmakers not to Cut short the hearing process in Congress. The Senate is set to take up expiration of Tax Cuts on nearly all individuals enacted under former President George W. Bush when it reconvenes in September. The thorniest issue involves taxes for the top income classes — families earning at least...

Can Republicans Do Anything Besides Scare White People And Cut Taxes?
By Yashwanth Manjunath Rachel Maddow’s opening segment last night, titled “Scaring White People For Fun And Profit”, accurately sums up Republican political strategy for the past several decades months. She did a terrific Job tearing apart Republican Propaganda on recent “issues” like Van Jones, ACORN, the New Black Panthers, Shirley Sherrod, and now the Ground Zero “Mosque”. It’s clear from those fake controversies that Republicans are...

D.C. Democrats: Clueless, Condescending & Costly
NEW YORK — Why are Americans enraged? As this moribund economy limps through the third year of doldrums, Americans are sick of having their hard-earned money swiped by Washington, D.C.’s Democrat-dominated political class, which is clueless, condescending, and invariably costly. Could anything but cluelessness explain what happened when Harv’s Metro Car Wash in Sacramento owed the Federal Government precisely four pennies due to a mistaken Tax Return? Rather than shrug at a...

A Brief Primer on Stem Cell Research
The issue of Research involving Stem Cells derived from human embryos is back in the news after a Federal Judge clarified that the Government cannot use Federal funds for such immoral Research. Although the debate has been ongoing for almost ten years, the complexity of the issue and the peculiar terminology used often prevents many citizens from developing a fully informed opinion on the matter. To help, in some small way, redress that problem, I’ve compiled a brief primer, a...

Two Critiques of Obama I Don't Understand
I'm coming a little late to yesterday's Politico piece about how Obama suffers from the absence of a well-articulated worldview, which is probably true to some extent, but I think overstated in the piece. (I'm in the camp that thinks 9.5 percent Unemployment is, overwhelmingly, Obama's biggest political problem...) Whatever you think of that argument, though, the piece highlighted two smaller critiques I find mystifying. The first comes from Eric Alterman, who wrote a...

Video: Scarborough's head explodes after "making the mistake" of watching MSNBC primetime
Joe Scarborough impressively calls BS on the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson over his claims that Barack Obama is being victimized by his critics by their, er, claiming victimization from Obama’s policies and positions. No, Joe doesn’t skewer the hypocrisy of claiming victimization through victimization, nor does he remind Robinson of the Democratic Party’s pandering to victimization cliques as electoral strategy. He does, however, remind Robinson that his allies on...