DEAR CONGRESSMAN, ABOUT Your CAFTA VOTE

[Guest guest]

Phyllis Spivey

August 5, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

 

It was a sad day for America. Some say it was the day America died, for the

events of July 28 portend the end of America as a sovereign, independent nation.

And you, Congressman, who swore to defend the Constitution of the United States

against all enemies, foreign and domestic, betrayed your country in the

disgraceful post-midnight, vote-buying debacle that delivered the Central

American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

 

It’s not as if you didn’t know what the passage of CAFTA would mean for the

United States. The agreement, after all, has been widely touted as an extension

of NAFTA and we all know what that has brought: drugs, gangs, disease, and a

never-ending invasion of illegal job seekers and dependents, not to mention

record trade deficits.

 

CAFTA-crats even followed the NAFTA script, making the same deceptive promises

they made for NAFTA eleven years ago. NAFTA will bring greater prosperity to

member countries, they assured. It will knock down trade barriers and create

expanded markets for U.S. goods. Sure, we might lose a few low-paying

manufacturing jobs, but those would be replaced with higher-paying, better

quality service sector jobs.

 

Sounds ridiculous in the face of reality, doesn’t it, Congressman? We’ve watched

NAFTA suck up nearly a million U.S. jobs even as the trade deficit with Canada

and Mexico ballooned to a whopping $111 billion last year. And, how about those

claims that NAFTA would raise Mexican living standards and keep workers at home?

 

The ink on the accord was barely dry when Mexico declared bankruptcy and the

peso collapsed; Mexico sank into its worst depression in 60 years and U.S.

taxpayers underwrote a mega-billion dollar bail-out. Turning a flood of illegal

border-crossers into a tsunami that shows no sign of abating, NAFTA has

literally moved the Third World, with all of its problems, into the First World,

overwhelming U.S. law enforcement, job markets, schools, and hospitals.

 

Perhaps you remember, Congressman, how NAFTA zealots embraced Mexico’s (then)

president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, praising him for reversing socialism and

unleashing a market-driven economy. Post NAFTA, they went mum as he went on the

lam from murder and drug charges, and slunk into exile in Cuba.

 

Mexico’s current presidente, whining and petulant one minute, demanding and

arrogant the next, is so disliked by his own people that his political party

currently rates third with the electorate. Pollsters say the people’s main

concerns are the economy, unemployment, insecurity and the influence of

narcotraffickers, all things NAFTA was supposed to fix.

 

Most of Mexico’s banks are owned by foreign interests now, the Mexican economy

is still in the tank, and Mexican peasants are poor as ever. Humiliatingly

dependent on U.S. dollar remittances from Mexicans residing in the U.S., the

NAFTA-emboldened Mexican government not only encourages illegal border-crossers,

it helps them get here and, once here, insists that U.S. policies favor them.

And many now come carrying drugs.

 

Today – as you surely know, Mr. Congressman – Mexico is little more than a

narco-state, responsible for 92% of the cocaine sold in the U.S. in 2004 and

wracked by warring drug cartels. Law enforcement officers on both sides of the

border are increasingly attacked by paramilitary units, aka " Zetas, " escorting

drug shipments into the U.S. and reportedly offering a $50,000 bounty on Border

Patrol agents and police officers.

 

Rampant lawlessness throughout Mexico prompted a U.S. State Department travel

advisory, warning Americans about the violence; it has just been renewed. In

Nuevo Laredo, the busiest border entry into the U.S. and where neither the

military nor the federal police have been able to stop the killing, the U.S.

ambassador announced – two days after your vote for the border-opening CAFTA –

that he was closing the consulate for security reasons.

 

Congressman, the drug gangs in Nuevo Laredo are fighting for control of the

lucrative route into the U.S. CAFTA promises to enhance it.

 

http://www.newswithviews.com/Spivey/phyllis7.htm

 

In fact, CAFTA will build on all the problems produced by NAFTA and extend its

failures to the poverty-laden countries of Central America and the Dominican

Republic. But all these things you know, Congressman, just as you know that

modern trade agreements are less about trade than about redistributing people,

power, and wealth.

 

Still, you voted for CAFTA, and it was approved by a paltry two votes. Were you,

like many of your colleagues, bought off or blackmailed? Or did you simply

decide to cast your lot with the corporate elite and the international

socialists intent on destroying American sovereignty?

 

 

 

" Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit

are like men who are so afraid of being murdered

that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. "

President Harry S. Truman