Fair Trade vs. Free Trade

I began recently to wonder if one can have free trade and fair trade, or is it an either/or proposition. On the one hand, I believe that in order for developing nations to improve the livelihoods there has to be some form of trade with more developed countries. I also believe that we must do as much as we can to insure that any trade agreements do not infringe on the rights and livelihoods of our citizens. How is one to reconcile these two seemingly opposite positions? I believe that they can be reconciled but first we have to have some basic ground rules.

I believe that there cannot be free trade in country where the people are not free. Globalization by its very nature requires freedom of movement of people, yet the globalization being touted today is only freedom of movement for capital. Since capital is not real or human, what they are really advocating is freedom of movement for the owners of the capital. In other words the large corporations should be able to override the will of the local people for the sake of trade. In addition, these corporations should be able to shop the world for the lowest possible wages and environmental laws to maintain their profits.

I am not a trade guru or a corporate/media talking head. I am just an ordinary working American who lives in the real world, not a world of graphs and charts. And what I know is that free and fair trade has not come about through any of the globalization treaties we have seen in recent years. On the contrary, while corporate profits are up, average worker wages have flat-lined and in some cases decreased. Jobs are being outsourced by the millions. Entire industries have shut down in the states and moved elsewhere.

“For decades we took for granted that everyone agreed with us economists that free trade is good, protectionism is bad. Somewhere along the way, that stopped being the conventional wisdom,” acknowledged U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers. “And whereas the default vote on a trade bill in Congress used to be a ‘yes’ vote, the default vote on a trade bill now in Congress is a ‘no’ vote.” Why? Because lots of people are no longer convinced that a rising tide of trade lifts all boats — and there's evidence to back them up.

For three decades, the richest 10 percent of Americans have been growing even richer much faster than everyone else. Over the past five years, real wages for all the rest of American workers have been almost flat. Many blame globalization.[1]

I have yet to hear a compelling argument of why this is happening. Normally in an economy when productivity is up wages follow, in this economy that is no longer the case. We have experienced strong growth in productivity for the last five years and yet wages have not increased. So the average American is working harder for the same or less money and they wonder why globalization is getting a bad name? I am all for developing countries becoming more developed and have less poverty, but we have to do more to help the workers in this country to cushion the blows from globalization. It isn’t like the money isn’t there. When one CEO can make over 140 million dollars a year, the money is there. The problem is we are not spending it properly; we need to readjust our priorities. Globalization that does not take into account people first is doomed to failure.

This includes not only the people here at home, but the people in the developing countries as well. We must always put people first in our negotiations, in our planning, and in our implementation. For too long we have allowed corporate interest to supersede the interest of people. We have created these oligarchic and monopolistic entities that have more power than the governments that charter them. We must not continue to watch as our corporations engage in a race to the bottom to see how low they can go on wages, on the environment, and on human dignity.

I believe that free trade and fair trade are not mutually exclusive, but that in order to institute them we must allow greater worker organization all over the world. Only by allowing the workers to organize can we begin to offset the uneven system we have in place today. One group of workers cannot be organized and protected and another group not, this would only lead to the exploitation of the unprotected workers as we have today. For decades we have allowed the trade decisions to be made by the money grubbers and the politicians, we see where that has led us; maybe it is time to allow the workers to become involved in the process. For too long we have negotiated these treaties without gauging the impact they will have on our workers or the workers in the other countries. It is time we began to consider the impact they will have on our workforce and how we can reduce the harmful effects of globalization.

I think that the union bill currently in the Congress will go a long way to bring the workers concerns into this process. We need to strengthen our organized labor; the decline of wage growth and industry relocation overseas can be correlated to the decline of organized labor in this country. All those promises of management that organizing workers would lead to outsourcing of jobs was just a smoke screen, the outsourcing happened anyway only without organization, the workers were left high and dry. Is there such a thing as fair, free trade? Yes there is but it will only happen if we demand it.

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[1] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/18562.html

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The Language of Defeat

As I was channel surfing one night I came across Senator John McCain on the Charlie Rose Show. If these guys weren’t so frightening they would be laughable. As I was listening to him speak, I couldn’t get over how he kept using the same catch phrases from decades ago. It’s as if these guys are living in a time warp, this is still 1950 in their minds and nothing can change that. The rhetoric is still the “gunboat” philosophy that has characterized our foreign policy for a generation.

He continually used the buzz words, “Israel” and “projection of American power”. Is it just me or have these guys been cryogenically frozen for the last 60 years? The world has changed their view of it has not. As long as our foreign policy is being conducted by those who are still living in some “glorious past”, we will never be safe or free. We must adjust our foreign policy goals to reflect the real world and not some false assumption provided by “analysis” that haven’t seen the real world in who knows how long. The more we continue to bang the same song on the same drum the sooner we escalate our descent into irrelevancy. We are becoming nothing more than the sandlot bully, gone are the principles and credibility of democracy. They have been replaced by the tenets of greed and racism.

I think what shocked me the most was an exchange between Mr. McCain and Charlie Rose when Mr. McCain was talking about the Chinese building aircraft carriers and how that was something we needed to watch closely. According to Mr. McCain the aircraft carrier allows the host nation to project its power around the world. Charlie Rose retorted that we have aircraft carriers why shouldn’t the Chinese, it was at this point the hypocrisy became unbearable. Mr. McCain said that the difference was that the US “didn’t have a history of imposing its power on other nations”. Charlie Rose then asked if the Chinese had such a history and Mr. McCain said no, but they still had to be watched carefully.

First of all the line about the US not having a history of imposing it’s power on other nations by the use of aircraft carriers was ridiculous. I think Mr. McCain is suffering from selective amnesia, so just in case let me just refresh his memory. Obviously he has forgotten about Iraq, Grenada, the whole southern hemisphere, Cuba and the list goes on and on. For our leaders to go on television and make these types of statements, it is no wonder the credibility of the US is at an all-time low.

This rhetoric of good versus evil has to stop. The politics of the cold war must be replaced by the diplomacy of the new world. We can’t continue to kill those who don’t agree with us. At the same time we silence dissent at home by violating the very document that is supposed to stand for democracy. Before we start trying to repair what’s wrong in the world, maybe we should spend a little time righting what is wrong here in this country. With this shoot first and ask questions later foreign policy, it is we who have the rest of the world leery. Is America the source of all that is wrong in the world? No, but we have to accept our culpability where applicable and strive to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The current crop of politicians and media types appear to have learned nothing from the past and are dead set on repeating the same mistakes. Mr. McCain and others, the world has changed and continues to evolve, it is a shame that you people have not. If my truths do not evolve, but remain steadfast in false premises then I have learned nothing. Worse than the fact that I have learned nothing is that with this mindset I am incapable of learning, which is not only foolish but dangerous. It is this mindset that will cause us to be defeated in Iraq as it has caused our defeats in the past.

There's no principles in what you say
No direction in the things you do
For your world is soon to come to a close
Through the ages all great men have taught
Truth and happiness just can't be bought-or sold
Tell me why are you people so cold

I'm...... Going back to Saturn where the rings all glow
Rainbow, moonbeams and orange snow On Saturn
People live to be two hundred and five
Going back to Saturn where the people smile
Don't need cars cause we've learn to fly On Saturn
Just to live to us is our natural high

We have come here many times before
To find your strategy to peace is war
Killing helpless men, women and children
That don't even know what they're dying for
We can't trust you when you take a stand
With a gun and bible in your hand
And the cold expression on your face
Saying give us what we want or we'll destroy

Saturn
Stevie Wonder

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Teach A Man To Fish

MALELA, Kenya — CARE, one of the world’s biggest charities, is walking away from some $45 million a year in federal financing, saying American food aid is not only plagued with inefficiencies, but also may hurt some of the very poor people it aims to help.

CARE’s decision is focused on the practice of selling tons of often heavily subsidized American farm products in African countries that in some cases, it says, compete with the crops of struggling local farmers.[1]

There is a saying that goes, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” When I read this story I was reminded of this saying, because the saying is not contrasting a good and an evil. The saying is contrasting two goods and the better of those two options. I have always been conflicted by our efforts to feed the starving in foreign countries, not because I don’t believe in feeding starving people or in helping those less fortunate. I, like many of you am just heart broken when I see those images of starving children in those commercials and infomercials.

My reticence comes from a different place altogether, it is based in the science of human reproduction actually. Here is the scenario, the reason most people in these places are starving is because the eco-systems are failing. Usually it is a drought or some other natural phenomenon that has caused the agriculture of these places to not be able to provide food for their populations. The land cannot sustain the people living there. Let’s look at population growth in relation to hunger or the lack of. The more people eat, the more they repopulate, the more they repopulate, the more people there are to feed. So rather than alleviating the problem, using the current methods we are actually creating more people that are going to starve. If the land cannot sustain the number of people that are there now, how will it sustain more people?

The way a lot of these feed the hungry programs work is that we take all of our surplus, subsidized products and give them to the aid organizations in lieu of donations, the aid organizations then sells them on the open market in the starving countries and use the money to fund their programs. Sounds like a win/win situation on the surface. The aid organizations get to feed the hungry and make money to continue their work. The hungry people get to purchase food at a greatly reduced price.

With these programs what we are doing is dumping our surplus agribusiness products onto their local economies further crippling their already fragile agribusiness. The local farmers cannot compete with the sheer enormity of our dumping in the market place. The good news is that the people get food; the bad news is that their agribusiness never gets to flourish and so their economies continue to falter and their agribusiness continues not to be able to sustain the people. It is a catch 22 for the local people.

The Christian charity World Vision and 14 other groups, which call themselves the Alliance for Food Aid, say that CARE is mistaken; they say the system works because it keeps hard currency in poor countries, can help prevent food price spikes in those countries and does not hurt their farmers. Not least, they argue, it also pays for their antipoverty programs.

But some people active in trying to help Africa’s farmers are critical of the practice. Former President Jimmy Carter, whose Atlanta-based Carter Center uses private money to help African farmers be more productive, said in an interview that it was a flawed system that had survived partly because the charities that received money from it defended it.

Agribusiness and shipping interest groups have tremendous political influence, but charitable groups are influential, too, Mr. Carter said, because “they speak from the standpoint of angels.”[2]

Feeding the hungry is a noble thing and a charge from God, so I completely support it in theory. The problem is when the practice will actually cause more suffering in the long run than it alleviates. It seems that instead of helping to make these local people self-sustaining the goal of the aid agencies to keep themselves self-sustaining. I believe that this practice must be discontinued for the sake of those countries long term futures. Is it our goal to keep these countries in the aid/welfare mindset or is it to help them one day to become productive and self-sustaining? The long term interest of these people has to supersede any short term aid solution, no matter how benevolent it may appear. If these people are ever to realize their destiny as free and independent people fully accepting their place in world, they must be allowed to develop their own economies and food sources. A country that can’t feed itself cannot be independent.

CARE’s idea is that a profitable business is more likely than a charitable venture to survive when foreign aid runs out.

“What’s happened to humanitarian organizations over the years is that a lot of us have become contractors on behalf of the government,” said Mr. Odo of CARE. “That’s sad but true. It compromised our ability to speak up when things went wrong.”[3]

So when you are watching those commercials or are getting out the checkbook to donate to these feed the hungry campaigns think about what it is you really want to support. We must make our feelings heard through our donations and elected officials. Let’s help, but let’s help them to become healthy and independent. So, instead of giving them our surplus fish, let’s give them our know how and support to learn to fish on their own. This would be a project well worth our support and dollars.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/world/africa/16food.html?hp

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

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Drug Wars V

Another Plan Columbia

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 7 -- The Bush administration is close to sealing a major, multiyear aid deal to combat drug cartels in Mexico that would be the biggest U.S. anti-narcotics effort abroad since a seven-year, $5 billion program in Colombia, according to U.S. lawmakers, congressional aides and Mexican authorities.[1]

After 36 years of the “War on Drugs” and billions of dollars can someone tell me what the purpose of this war is? As much as I try to comprehend its purpose I just don’t get it. The quantity and purity of illegal drugs is higher than they’ve ever been. The price of illegal drugs is the lowest in history and yet this farce continues. The body count on American streets continues to escalate due to the illegal drug trade and we continue to blindly follow an ineffective, punitive policy that has done little to stem the tide of this epidemic.

Now in an effort to help Mexico rein in its drug cartels we are negotiating a deal to send them 5 billion dollars am I the only one that thinks there is something wrong here? I won’t bore you with a laundry list of all the underfunded and admirable programs we could fund with 5 billion dollars. Instead we continue to throw money at a criminal solution to a public health problem.

News Flash- People take drugs because either it makes them feel good or it provides an escape from our screwed up world, no amount of law enforcement can change that. Unless we are willing to lock up every drug user in America, we have to develop another strategy to this issue. I’m sorry does anyone here remember Prohibition and how well that worked? I am not writing these posts because I like or condone the use of drugs. I have seen the ugly side of addiction and continue to see it daily during my volunteer work for my Church. I know firsthand the dangers and pitfalls of drug abuse, but I also know the limits to trying legislate human conduct.

The original Plan Columbia was an idea formulated by President Andres Pastrana of Columbia as an aid package to help revitalize the Columbia economy. He believed that the illicit drug trade in Colombia was a social issue due to the extreme poverty of his countrymen. He surmised that the reason they harvested the illegal drugs was because they couldn’t make a living wage anyway else. Wow, what a novel concept! To show you how this country can take a perfectly good and just cause and twist it to meet our political objectives, the Clinton Administration decided that to win points back home with “get tough on crime crowd” completely rewrote the policy to change it from social development to a law enforcement plan.

The final version of Plan Colombia was seen as considerably different, since its main focuses would deal with drug trafficking and strengthening the military. Ambassador Robert White stated: "If you read the original Plan Colombia, not the one that was written in Washington but the original Plan Colombia, there's no mention of military drives against the FARC rebels. Quite the contrary. (President Pastrana ) says the FARC is part of the history of Colombia and a historical phenomenon, he says, and they must be treated as Colombians...[Colombia] come and ask for bread and you (America) give them stones." In the final U.S. aid package, 78.12 percent of the funds for 2000 went to the Colombian military and police for counternarcotics and military operations.[2]

The Columbians ask us for bread and we give them guns and bombs. Rather than helping them to reform their economy and help them prepare for the future, we provide them with more ammo to maintain the status quo. I hope the Mexicans are students of history, because this Plan Mexico is appearing a lot like the Plan Columbia. While it will score political points for both the Mexican government and the Americans it will do little to correct the real problems affecting the people of Mexico. The immigrants coming from Mexico are not coming here to escape the druglords; they are coming here to escape the economic poverty that has forced the poor into the arms of the drug smugglers.

Instead of arming these governments to the teeth, maybe we could actually send them some aid to help revitalize their ailing economies. No, that would mean they wouldn’t have to come to America and work for less than minimum wage picking fruit and butchering our cattle. For decades we have undermined the laborers and peasant farmers of these nations, we have supported corrupt dictator after dictator. It is time to provide these people with a true way to stop supporting the drug cartels by providing them with an honest price for their crops and an honest job to work. Until we do this, people will continue to make a living the best way they can.

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/07/AR2007080702114.html?hpid=topnews

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia#_note-4

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Mickey Mouse Killed By Israeli Interrogator

"Tomorrow's Pioneers" sparked an international furor in April when it began featuring Farfour, the Mickey Mouse look-alike who sounded more like Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than a Disney character.

Mustafa Barghouti, then serving as the Palestinian Authority's information minister, called the show a "mistaken approach" to helping Palestinians and tried unsuccessfully to force the show off the year.

The Israeli government and activists who monitor Palestinian programming accused Hamas of poisoning the minds of young children with the show.

After two months, Farfour was beaten to death on the show by an Israeli interrogator. Nahoul, a larger-than-life bee, is now carrying his message.[1]

Tomorrow’s Pioneers is a weekly television show for Palestinian children shown on the Hamas television network. On the show an 11 year old, Saraa Barhoum takes calls from other Palestinian youth concerning issues they are facing with the occupation. The show provides moral lessons, through stories and cartoons. The children call into the show and talk about how the occupation has affected their lives, they sing songs that deal with liberation, religion, and martyrdom.

While reading this story I was torn for a number of reasons, but because I haven’t actually seen the show my comments are speculative at best. The show has been criticized by Israel and the American Government for inciting anti-Israeli sentiments. While Saraa was being interviewed an Israeli missile exploded in the building next door causing the crew and Saraa to run for cover. So, it isn’t the occupation, assassinations, or indiscriminate violence that is fueling these anti-Israeli feelings among the Palestinians, it is the kid shows. You know I never did trust those damn cartoons, I always thought there were some subliminal messages being sent and now I know.

From what I can tell the show is propaganda, but is it anymore so than say Captain America or Superman; fighting for truth, justice and the American way? And what about all those Disney and WB cartoons during WWII, those were definitely sending a message to support our troops and our vision. So, besides the obvious of the pot and the kettle thing, I do find it a little disturbing when an 11 year old is talking about becoming a martyr. There are so many other things her young mind should be focusing on; instead because of her circumstances she does not have the luxury of dreams and fantasies. For many Palestinian children the dream is as simple as a safe place to grow up in and the opportunity to lead normal lives free from coercion.

Instead of focusing on the programming on the Hamas network, maybe if the Israeli and American governments focused more on changing the apartheid policies being waged against the Palestinian people the Hamas programming would change. How many more Palestinian children have to die before there is a real effort at peace? How many more children will have to give up their future and their dreams before the International community will call Israel on their land grab and refusal to negotiate in good faith?

It’s not the cartoons that are fueling this, it is the results of the cartoon. The mouse dying at the hands of an Israeli interrogator and its real life lessons, this is what is inflaming the Palestinians. Should children be used to promote violence? No, but should children be given the truth of their circumstances and about the perpetrators who are carrying out the policies responsible for these circumstances? Absolutely!

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[1] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/18887.html

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The Kiss Of Death

You know you’ve lost your groove when the “so-called” leading country of democracy supports a group in elections and that group consistently loses. These loses are not just in one country or region, but all over the world. There is no political group in the world today that wants its party or movement supported by the US. It seems that having the support of the US is the worse endorsement you can get. I remember a time when the world looked to America as the beacon of hope and worthy of emulation, I guess those days are long gone.

“It’s the kiss of death,” said Turki al-Rasheed, a Saudi reformer who watched last Sunday’s elections closely. “The minute you are counted on or backed by the Americans, kiss it goodbye, you will never win.”

The paradox of American policy in the Middle East — promoting democracy on the assumption it will bring countries closer to the West — is that almost everywhere there are free elections, the American-backed side tends to lose.

Lebanon’s voters in the Metn district, in other words, appeared to have joined the Palestinians, who voted for Hamas; the Iraqis, who voted for a government sympathetic to Iran; and the Egyptians, who have voted in growing numbers in recent elections for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “No politician can afford to identify with the West because poll after poll shows people don’t believe in the U.S. agenda,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, until recently the director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. Mr. Hamarneh is running for a seat in Jordan’s Parliament in November, but he says he has made a point of keeping his campaign focused locally, and on bread-and-butter issues. “If somebody goes after you as pro-American he can hurt you,” he said.[1]

This should show the neo-cons that even if they try to promote democracy at the end of a gun it won’t work, whoever they support is going to lose in a free and fair election. It looks like we are back in the puppet regime, dictator mode again. You know that it is so much cleaner and just requires bribe money. Free elections are so messy and you can’t predict the outcomes. There is nothing worse than to expend all that money and all those lives only to get a government that will be hostile to you anyway. That ole dictator ain’t looking so bad right about now.

In part, regional analysts say, candidates are tainted by the baggage of American foreign policy — from its backing of Israel to the violence in Iraq. But more important, they say, American support is often applied to one faction instead of to institutions, causing further division rather than bringing stability.

The problem is not necessarily the support itself, Mr. Nassif said, but that it invariably skews conflicts, worsening rather than easing sectarian and ethnic tensions.

“When the U.S. interferes in favor of one party, their interference leads to an explosion,” he said. “The U.S. openly says it supports the Siniora government, but it should say we support the Lebanese government.”[2]

If I didn’t know better I would say he was advocating even handed treatment, but that couldn’t be right. Whether you support Barack Obama or not, the one thing I have to agree with him is that we have to begin to do things another way. The same old rhetoric and business as usual politics is not working, it is not working here or abroad. The world is tired of the same old crap coming out of Washington no matter who is espousing it. If whoever comes into office is not willing to change how we do foreign policy then it won’t matter who wins.

We must get to the place where we are once again viewed as the country that supports the rights of the people and not a divider of the people. Promoting division and factionalism in the long run only hurts our interests and our standing. I don’t really hear that from the current crop of candidates; it seems that they disagree more with how it was done, more than what was done. This would be a dangerous omen to the rest of the world.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/world/middleeast/10arab.html?hp

[2] Ibid.

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Big Tobacco vs. Kids

Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said, “Today’s debate comes down to this: Do you favor big tobacco or children?”[1]

This quote was in reference to the Children’s Health Care Bill recently passed by the House. This is what I don’t like about politicians, Republican or Democrat, here they have an opportunity to do something worthwhile and beneficial for many of the nation’s children and to redirect our priorities and they do it how? As usual by raising taxes, I don’t have a problem with paying taxes. I believe that in order for our society to provide a safety net and to provide vital services we have to pay taxes. The problem I have is that right now we pay enough taxes, having the money is not the problem in Washington. The problem in Washington is how those tax dollars are allocated. So rather than moving some of that money from the bottomless military budget, the corporate subsidies, or any other program that would actually signal a change, they just raise more taxes.

Now of course because they are taxing the evil tobacco companies it should be done without much resistance. The tobacco companies are an easy target and are always good as a whipping boy for politicians, but this belies the problem. The problem is how the money is being raised, not from whom. The taxes you levy against tobacco will not be paid by the tobacco companies; it will be paid by consumers. Since most poor people are under stress, guess who smokes more? So you are taxing the poor to pay for health care for the poor?

By a vote of 225 to 204, the bill passed, with support from 220 Democrats and 5 Republicans. Ten Democrats joined 194 Republicans in voting against it. The bill would provide coverage for more than four million uninsured children in low-income families, prevent cuts in doctors’ Medicare payments scheduled for Jan. 1 and raise the federal cigarette tax 45 cents a pack, to 84 cents.[2]

There is such a lack of courage in Washington today. If I thought there was a snowballs chance that big tobacco would have to pay the increase I would be all over it, but the truth is they won’t and these guys know it. In this way they can look tough on corporations and yet not be doing anything. Everybody knows people are going to smoke regardless, it is an addiction. Raising the cost of it is only putting a hardship on the consumers, not the tobacco industry. But isn’t it a good thing, it will make people quit smoking? No, it is a bad thing just like all the other laws that infringe on our right to choose. I don’t use seatbelts and I shouldn’t have to, if I want to drive that way it is my choice. As long as my choices do not infringe on the rights of others, so be it.

When it was created in 1997, the children’s program focused on families with incomes less than twice the poverty level. But many states have obtained federal waivers to cover children with somewhat higher family incomes, because those families cannot afford private insurance.

More than eight million of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries are in plans offered by companies like Humana and United Health. Since December 2005, enrollment in private plans has shot up 40 percent.

On average, the Congressional Budget Office says, Medicare pays the private plans 12 percent more than it would cost to cover the same people under the traditional Medicare program. The House bill would eliminate the differential, saving $50 billion over the next five years and $157 billion from 2008 to 2017.[3]

Here are the good parts, it will expand the coverage for children and it will stop the over payments that the privatization of Medicare that Bush and his cronies tried to expand. Its funny how with all the talk of private insurers being more efficient and cost effective, that it costs more to use a private insurer than Medicare. This is a case of more “sound bite” logic that doesn’t pass the smell test. The reason we want to privatize is not for efficiency or savings, it is to give more of our tax dollars to the corporate whores who patrol Capitol Hill. What happened to free enterprise and capitalism? These are the same guys who berate the developing countries for not allowing free enterprise and they get more government handouts than anyone. Sometimes the hypocrisy with these guys gets to the point of the absurd.

Yes, let’s give health insurance to more Americans especially children, but let’s do it with the funds we already have. You’re telling me we can give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest, but we can’t find any money for health insurance for our kids? No Mr. McDermott the question isn’t big tobacco or children, the real question is tax cuts and corporate welfare or children? Stop picking on the little guys and go after the people you were elected to watch over.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/health/policy/02health.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

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