By the time you read this, the Senate will no doubt have passed "fast
track" legislation, forfeiting its right under the Constitution to set
trade policy to the executive branch. This ought to be of grave concern to Americans.
It is the Constitution that sets us apart from other nations, not the fact that
we have elections. If it is routinely violated, then we become no different
from any other country. Our lives and our liberty will then exist, in reality,
only by the leave of the government ó not as the Founding Fathers believed
and intended, because we have God-given rights no government on Earth can legitimately
take away from us.
A keystone of that Constitution, designed to ensure the liberty of the people,
was the principle of separation of powers. The Constitution denies the president
the power to set trade policy; it denies the president the power to commit this
nation to war; and it denies to all but Congress the power to coin money and
set its value.
But what is the reality? Despite the many wars this country has fought, there
hasn't been a declaration of war by Congress since 1941. The power to set trade
policy is handed over to the president with fast-track legislation. The power
to coin money and set its value has been delegated to a private central bank,
deliberately mislabeled as the Federal Reserve System. The American people have,
in reality, been betrayed by the people they elected, who have in turn betrayed
their oath of office ó which is to the Constitution, not to the party
or the president.
What fast track does is authorize the executive branch to negotiate a multi-thousand-page
document of special-interest trade deals that Congress must then vote "yes"
or "no" on without alteration or amendment. It parades under the false
banner of free trade, which is a code name for corporate colonialism.
True free-trade legislation could be written on one page. It would simply say
that tariffs are designed to produce revenue and therefore the tariff on all
imports is such and such a percentage. What these 20,000-page so-called free-trade
documents contain are myriad special trade deals negotiated in secret for special-interest
groups, inevitably at the expense of those with less political and monetary
clout. It is managed trade, not free trade, and it has already destroyed hundreds
of thousands of American jobs. If this practice is allowed to continue, America
will end up with a rich aristocracy, a large class of urban peasants working
for subsistence, and a middle class so small as to be virtually invisible.
Surely you are not so naive to believe that a pair of what were once called
sneakers made for $5 in Thailand are sold to American kids for $20 or $25. No,
they are sold to American kids for $100 or more. Thus, American corporations,
which move their manufacturing jobs overseas, both exploit the foreign workers
and gouge the American consumer. Americans are paying $30 to $50 a pair for
bluejeans, which cost the manufacturer about $3 a pair in some foreign sweatshop.
This is the true meaning of what is falsely labeled "free trade."
Manufacturing jobs are what allowed this country to transition from an agrarian
society to an industrialized society. More important, it was manufacturing jobs
that allowed men to transition from the bottom economic class to the middle
class.
Middle-class status in most cases allowed people to help their children go to
college and thus attain an even higher economic class. Thus, there was a flow
from the bottom up.
If we allow greedy corporations to destroy all of these blue-collar jobs, that
flow will be cut off. There will be no way for a man to get from common laborer
to the middle class, and thus no way for him to get his children into colleges
and universities.
The fact that all presidents ó be they Republican or Democrat, supposed
liberals or supposed conservatives ó adopt identical policies in this
regard tell you that real governing power in America is not the people, but
the corporations and the super-rich.
Charley Reese can be contacted at briarl@earthlink.net. © 2002 by King
Features Syndicate, Inc. - http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20020529/index.php