 Byron Dorgan, a leading Senate protectionist, will not run for re-election in 2010. |
WHEN SENATOR BYRON DORGAN of North Dakota announced his support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign early in 2008, he told reporters that a key factor in his endorsement was that Obama "has always opposed NAFTA" – the North American Free Trade Agreement linking Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Dorgan is a strident protectionist, so there was nothing unusual about his slap at NAFTA. Except this: The same week that Dorgan came out for Obama, the US Commercial Service reported that North Dakota had ranked first in the nation for export growth the previous year. And the top destinations for the North Dakota merchandise exported in 2007 went to Canada and Mexico.
International commerce has been good to Dorgan's state. According to the International Trade Administration, exports sustain one-seventh of all manufacturing jobs in North Dakota, and foreign companies employ another 8,300 people there. In 2008, nearly 900 North Dakota firms, the great majority of them small- to medium-sized, earned revenues of $2.8 billion from sales to customers in other countries. Why would a senator whose state has benefited so handsomely from trading across borders believe that opposition to free trade is somehow in his constituents' interest? Or a quality to seek in presidential candidates?
Dorgan – who announced on Tuesday that he will not seek re-election this year -- is far from alone in his antipathy to the free movement of goods and services across borders. In a cab from the airport to my office recently, I listened to a cabbie complain bitterly about all the Toyotas and Hondas on the highway. I tried to assured him that most of the "foreign" cars he was looking at were assembled in the United States, but there was no mollifying him. Americans, he told me, had no business buying cars from Japan.
In my e-mail inbox, meanwhile, the subject line of a new message exhorts me to "BUY AMERICAN!!!" When I open it, I am reminded that "every little thing we buy or do affects someone else -- even their job," and that I should therefore avoid products manufactured abroad and buy only those made in the United States. Among the items to be shunned: Bounce dryer sheets (allegedly made in Canada), GE lightbulbs (Mexico), and Apache hose fittings (China).
Now, it is certainly true that people's jobs are affected by consumers' choices. If customers stay away in droves from the hose attachments made in China, it might well mean more work for an American hose and belting manufacturer. But if that's a sensible approach, why not take it further? In addition to boycotting goods and services made in other countries, let's also avoid spending money on products from other states. Those of us who live in Massachusetts should refuse to buy dryer sheets from California, Ohio lightbulbs, and hoses made in California. My Boston cabbie should be curling his lip at cars made not just by companies headquartered in Japan or Germany, but by those based in Michigan, too.
Crazy? Of course it is. Refusing to trade across state lines wouldn't make us economically stronger. It would make us weaker, condemning us to higher prices, less variety, reduced purchasing power, and inferior quality. Granted, such protectionism might work to the advantage of a few local producers. But it would do so only by depriving everyone else of economic opportunities and improved quality of life. To turn state borders into trade barriers would be irrational and self-defeating.
 'Foreign' cars on US highways are mostly made in America |
What protectionists never seem to grasp is that it is no less irrational and self-defeating to treat the borders of countries as barriers to trade. Free trade isn't a battle that countries (or states) win or lose. It is a human right -- an aspect of liberty: the liberty to engage in voluntary transactions that leave both participants better off. If John wants to sell something that Mary wants to buy, it should make no difference to the lawfulness of their exchange whether they are residents of different neighborhoods, different states, or different nations.
"Trade barriers," writes the Cato Institute's Dan Griswold in Mad About Trade, an astute and absorbing new book, "rob people of the rightful fruits of their own labor, distributing the spoils to other people with no moral claim to the confiscated wealth other than political power."
Protectionism, an old delusion, enriches the few at the expense of the many, diminishing freedom and eroding choice. The blessings of free trade, by contrast, uplift all of us -- even the departing senator from North Dakota, whether he knows it or not.
The protectionist delusion
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
January 10, 2010
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6775/the-protectionist-delusion
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
******************************************************
BARRY SOETORO aka BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
IS A
USURPER
He is not eligible to be
President of the United States
because he is not a Natural Born Citizen
as required by Article Two, Section One, Clause Five of the United States Constitution.
This is a fact REGARDLESS of
where he was born (Mombassa, Hawaii, Chicago, Mecca or Mars).
He is not eligible
because he was not born of
TWO PARENTS
BOTH OF WHOM WERE UNITED STATES CITIZENS
AT THE TIME OF HIS BIRTH
as required by the Constitution.
Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is not eligible to be President of the United States because – according to public admissions made by him – his “birth status was governed” by the United Kingdom. Obama further admits he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at birth.
Since Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was, if born in the state of Hawaii, a dual citizen, who – according to his own State Department – owed allegiance to the Queen of England and United Kingdom at the time of his birth – he cannot therefore be a “natural born” citizen of the US according to Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the US Constitution.
His father, who did not live in the United States for more than a couple of years, was a subject/ciitizen
of Kenya/Great Britain at the time of Barack’s birth and afterwards, AND further, as Barack himself admitted on his website during the 2008 campaign, Barack was therefore born SUBJECT TO THE GOVERNANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.
Here is a direct quote from Obama's "Fight the Smears/Fact Check" 2008 website:
‘When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children…’ “
The FACT that he was not born of TWO US CITIZEN PARENTS is all that matters. The question of his birth certificate is a distraction (a distraction fostered by Obama’s supporters?) that ought not to occupy our time and resources. BUT if you are really convinced of the value of the COLB (certificate of live birth) that Obama posted on his website, see this:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9830547/Sun-Yatsen-Certification-of-Live-Birth-in-Hawaii
Also, it is possible that he is not a United States
citizen at all through his mother if he was born in Kenya, as three witnesses have testified. The reason is because his mother could not pass her US citizenship on to her son because she did not live continuously in the United States for five full years after her fourteenth birthday as required by the US immigration law in effect during that period of time.
Check it out:
http://www.TheObamaFile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm
Also, an excellent introductory primer on Obama Presiidential Eligibility is to be found at:
http://people.mags.net/tonchen/birthers.htm
His usurpation can only be corrected (1) by Congress through his Impeachment and Removal [something which will never happen in a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid], or (2) it can be
corrected by his resignation, which could happen if the public presssure on him to resign becomes great enough, or (3) by his removal by the United States Supreme Court affirming a Quo Warranto decision of the United States Federal District Court for the District of Columbia [which process Attorney General Eric Holder would never allow to even begin] or (4) by an amendment to the Constitution,
which will never happen because that again would require the agreement of a Congress controlled by Pelosi/Reid.
_
HERE IS THE QUESTION WHICH EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN SHOULD BE ASKING HIS OR HER CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS
“During the 2008 election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was ‘governed’ by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell me, and the American people, how a person governed - at birth - by British law, can be a natural born citizen of the United States and thus constitutionally eligible to be President of the United States?”
---
- Leo Rugiens
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