I'll admit it -- when this speculation began mounting yesterday, I wasn't remotely sold on the idea that Palin was poised jump aboard the Trump Train when so many influential figures within the conservative talk radio constellation are at long last blasting The Donald and rallying to Cruz. The Palin speculation seemed even less plausible when this rumor leaked:
Multiple little birdies tell me Jerry Falwell, Jr. is going to endorse Trump for president and come to Iowa with him tomorrow. Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) January 18, 2016
Falwell bestowed a fulsome introduction upon Donald "Two Corinthians" Trump just yesterday -- much to the dismay of many in the evangelical community -- so Deace's report made sense. Surely that's the big announcement and "special guest" Trump's been pumping on social media, right? Not so fast, my friends:
Oh my. The jet is headed to Ames, then hopping over to Tulsa? Exactly mirroring Trump's campaign itinerary? Dude. This might actually be happening. And what a splash it would make less than two weeks before Iowa. Should Palin's endorsement both come to fruition (there have been cluesalong the way), and push Trump over the top, emotionalist nationalistic populism will have officially supplanted principled, policy-driven, limited-government conservatism as the currently dominant strain within the American right-wing. I'll leave you with this, because why not at this point?
Cruz went to the floor of the Senate to publically call McConnell a liar . Cruz said that his vote for tpa was cast on the basis that McConnell assured him there was not a deal made with the Democrats to support the Ex-Im bank renewal. But McConnell made a separate deal with the emperor ,and the Ex-Im was added to the highway bill . Cruz has taken on the Washington establishment ,often by himself in the hall of the Senate .
Trump chastised Cruz for calling McConnell a liar .
Ethanol subsidies is a big deal . Cruz won't compromise his principles even if it may cost him the Iowa caucus .Trump on the other hand has no principles and is a corporatist who favors government subsidies at the tax payer expense to corporate interests.
You fear Trump like that piece of shit Eric Cantor
Unfortunately I do think that if there were to be a Trump administration the casualty would likely be trade, said Eric Cantor, a former Republican House Majority Leader and now vice chairman of Moelis & Company. Thats a very serious prospect for the world.
"Unfortunately I do think that if there were to be a Trump administration the casualty would likely be trade, said Eric Cantor, a former Republican House Majority Leader and now vice chairman of Moelis & Company. Thats a very serious prospect for the world.
Cantor is right in this case . The last businessman who became President ;and signed off on a trade war was Herbert Hoover . He did that right before the market crashed and the Great Depression began.
Nobody "forces " Congress to change laws . That is the lie you bought . The Constitution, through the Commerce Clause, gives Congress exclusive power over trade activities with foreign countries.
Nobody "forces " Congress to change laws . That is the lie you bought . The Constitution, through the Commerce Clause, gives Congress exclusive power over trade activities with foreign countries.
It has that authority. And Congress is bought by the monied interest who exploit it to beggar the American workers.
Nobody "forces " Congress to change laws . That is the lie you bought .
A corporate court has ruled that the U.S. must face $1 billion in tariff punishment because a law U.S. consumers wanted for protection of health and safety has cost foreign companies some profits. The U.S. Congress is being told they must repeal the law or we face billions in punishment. U.S. courts dont get a say. We the People dont, either.
Thats what free trade agreements have done for us lately.
COOL
The U.S. has country of origin labeling (COOL) rules for meat labels as part of rules that notify customers about the source of certain foods.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that informing consumers discriminates against Mexican and Canadian companies, thereby violating the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The court decided that American consumers might, for one reason or another, prefer to buy meat born, raised, slaughtered and packaged in the U.S. to meat from other countries that might or might not have lower health and safety standards. Since this preference would hurt the profits of Canadian and Mexican corporations, it violates the agreement.
The U.S. labeling effort began when mad-cow disease was discovered in cattle in other countries. That was pretty big news at the time. The rules also come out of concerns that some countries have lower health and standards than the U.S. So Congress passed a law requiring that meat and other foods be labeled so consumers can make up their minds about what to purchase.
But NAFTA allows Mexican and Canadian companies to sue the U.S. if the U.S. passes laws and/or impose regulations that might hurt their profits. The WTO has decided giving consumers the ability to know where their food comes from can hurt the profits of non-U.S. corporations and is therefore a violation of NAFTA.
Its Out Of Our Hands (And Sovereignty)
Ninety-two percent of the U.S. public wants the meat labeling rules. But what the WTO rules is what has to be, because we are a party to NAFTA. Congress has passed and the president has signed NAFTA, so We the People cant do anything about this not through our courts or our legislative bodies. No U.S. court can review this ruling. We cannot vote to overcome it. It is out of our hands and beyond our countrys sovereign ability to do anything about it because we signed that away so corporations can increase profits.
Congress is not required to change the law, but Canada and Mexico can now begin to impose tariffs that will hit U.S. jobs and communities. We cannot impose counter-tariffs to balance this out, so Canadian and Mexican goods will have an advantage in U.S. markets. (See: Taxation without representation.)
How did we end up here? We were promised that NAFTA would benefit our economy, bring jobs and higher wages to U.S. workers, etc. Of course, that is not what happened. Our trade deficit increased. Manufacturing jobs went south, so shareholders and executives could pocket the wage differential (while Mexicans family farms were wiped out, forcing northward migration). And, of course, now we cant even tell people where their meat is coming from so consumers can decide if they want to purchase it.
TPP
This ruling is a particular concern now, because the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is coming before Congress for approval. TPP has similar corporate court provisions, and would open up our country to lawsuits from corporations in many more countries including subsidiaries of U.S. corporations.
Giant multinational corporations and Wall Street stand to benefit from TPP, because it will enable even more offshoring so shareholders and executives can pocket the wage difference. Their lobbyists (both in and out of government) will tell you that TPP cant make us change our laws. For example, in May President Obama gave a speech at Nike headquarters to promote TPP. He said that warnings that TPP could undermine American regulation food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations was just not true. He said: Theyre making this stuff up. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.
This is technically correct but just barely. Congress doesnt have to change the law. But the COOL case shows how we face tariff penalties that cost jobs and hit communities if Congress doesnt. Perhaps billions of dollars of economic damage that we cant do anything about wont force Congress to change the COOL law.
We should not sign way our sovereignty to corporate courts concerned only with corporate profit.
This would be a good time to call your representative and senators and tell them you do not want them to vote to approve TPP.
P.S.: Just last month the WTO ruled that our dolphin-safe tuna labels are a technical barrier to trade. So consumers wont have information that lets them decide if they want to purchase tuna that is caught with or without killing dolphins.
Note: The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in favor of Canada and Mexico against the United States regarding the labeling of meat. This follows a recent decision on labeling of tuna. The US will be forced to change their laws or face large payments for these trade violatins.
WTO now stands for World Trade Outrage rather than its original name, World Trade Organization. The WTO just ruled that the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda can freely violate American copyrights and trademarks in order to punish the United States for our laws prohibiting internet gambling. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006 after finding that "internet gambling is a growing cause of debt collection problems for insured depository institutions and the consumer credit industry." The social and financial costs of gambling would be greatly increased if we permit internet gambling.
The WTO ordered this punishment because it says U.S. laws interfere with free trade in "recreational services." The foreign tribunal ranks free trade as more important than the intellectual property rights Americans have enjoyed since our Constitution was written.
The WTO's 88-page decision issued in December contained the panel's remarkable admission that "we feel we are on shaky grounds." But that didn't stop the Geneva tribunal from issuing its ruling anyway.
We have every right as a nation to protect our people against the corruption and loss of wealth that result from gambling on the internet. It is shocking for an unelected foreign tribunal to tell our 435-member House of Representatives, our 100-member Senate, and the President of the United States that they lack the power to protect our people.
Even American supremacist judges would not have the nerve to authorize stealing copyrights and trademarks as a remedy for one side in an unrelated dispute. But the WTO granted what has been called a "piracy permit" that allows a small Caribbean nation to "pirate," or steal, U.S. property rights.
The response in Washington was to announce an attempt to revise the conditions under which we joined the WTO in 1994. That's a non-starter because these changes in the WTO treaty would require the approval of all 151 members, most of whom don't like the U.S. anyway.
The WTO has ruled against the United States in 40 out of 47 major cases, and against us in 30 out of 33 trade remedies cases. After the WTO ruled that the U.S. cannot divert tariff revenue to U.S. companies that are injured by foreign subsidies to their competitors, Vice President Dick Cheney provided the tie-breaking vote in the Senate on December 21, 2005 to kowtow to the WTO.
For many years, opponents of the WTO have predicted that this foreign bureaucracy would massively interfere with our sovereignty. This new ruling is crazy, unjust and impertinent, but without a lot of public protest, it looks unlikely that our "free trade" President or Congress will do anything to protect us from the WTO.
How is a foreign tribunal in Geneva able to put the United States in such a box? It's because the internationalist free-trade lobby cooked up a sleazy deal to force the WTO on us back in 1994 during the week after Thanksgiving when Americans were preoccupied with Christmas shopping and festivities.
The deal to lock us into WTO consisted of three parts. First, the 14-page WTO agreement was surreptitiously added, without debate or publicity, to the 22,000-page revision of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) implementing legislation, and was voted on under "fast track" rules which allowed no amendments or changes, severely limited debate, and forbade any filibuster.
Second, the Treaty Clause in the U.S. Constitution for ratification of treaties was ignored, and WTO was declared passed by Congress as a non- treaty. Third, the GATT/WTO agreement was passed in the December lame-duck session with the votes of dozens of Congressmen who were looking for lucrative jobs representing foreign interests because they had already been defeated in the Republican landslide of November 1994.
The WTO is not "free trade" at all, but is a supra-national body in Geneva that sets, manages and enforces WTO-made rules to govern global trade. The WTO includes a one-country-one-vote legislature of 151 nations (we have the same one vote as Cuba), an unelected multinational bureaucracy, and a Dispute Settlement Board which deliberates and votes in secret and whose decisions cannot be appealed or vetoed.
WTO is a direct attack on our sovereignty because it claims it can force us to change our laws to comply with WTO rulings. Article XVI, paragraph 4, states: "Each Member shall ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations, and administrative procedures with its obligations." The WTO has the final say about whether U.S. laws meet WTO requirements.
In this presidential season, the WTO should make easy target practice for any candidate to speak up and defend our sovereignty against the globalists who, under the mantra of "free trade," willingly allow the WTO to tell us what laws we may or may not adopt.
The World Trade Organization has just given Europe the right to hit the United States with $4 billion in tariff sanctions to punish us for giving tax breaks to U.S. exporters like Boeing, Microsoft and GE.
Under WTO rules, we are not permitted to retaliate. We must stand and take the EU sucker punch, however hard it wants to hit.