ustxtxb_obs_2006_08_11_50_00030-00000_000.pdf

The shocking truth the mainstream media has not covered about the electronic voting systems used by 80% of America. Book available Sept. 1 on www.paperballotshandeounted.org High Tech Election Theft in America 11 Experts Expose the Truth Edited by Abbe Waldman DeLozier & Vickie Karp HACKED! Byrd writes poems like a novelist. Epic ones. His lines are fill of fiction, bullshit, and beauty. 7; 1 11/[1,/eS www.cincopuntos.com or your local bookstore $13.95 that the drive for competitiveness came from somewhere outside this country that “we” did not control; and that competitiveness was good for us. But “we” did control ruthless and ruinous competition for a very long time through regulation and tax policy. This was possible because the most vicious competitors in the world are right here in the United States. Nike Inc., for example, is a competitive U.S. corporation with 245 factories in China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Indonesia. Since Reagan, the government has subsidized these competitors rather than stopping them. One of the best chapters in this book is “A Green Light from Clinton.” President Clinton, whom U.S. labor helped to elect, pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement without incorporating labor standards. The agreement opened U.S. markets to goods imported from Mexico without addressing the difference in wages between the two countries. In the United States, the minimum wage is $5.15 an hour; in Mexico it’s less than $4 a day. U.S. manufacturing capital fled to Mexico in 1995; the Economic Policy Institute estimates that this single agreement cost the U.S. more than a million jobs. “[Clinton] also abandoned a campaign promise to stop corporations from hiring permanent replacements for workers on strike, so they could lay off strikers.” Clinton and his people talked of more humane layoffs rather than no layoffs. Under Clinton, we all became familiar with the “socially responsible corporation.” These were companies that provided child care and mental health counseling to former employees now transmogrified into enterprising new job seekers and self-employed subcontractors relieved of their sick leave, medical insurance and pensions. Some especially caring firms provided coaching in resume building and interviewing. Contrary to what John Kenneth there is no countervailing force left in America to curtail the savage globalization of U.S. corporations. With sickening irony, the AFL-CIO itself laid off over 160 of its staff members in May 2005. Somehow, somewhere, resistance has got to organize. But so far there is no sign of it. On June 8, the United 30 THE TEXAS OBSERVER AUGUST 11, 2006