22 October, 1993

Editor

Wheeling News-Register

1500 Main Street

Wheeling, WV 26003

Dear News-Register:

I am enclosing some thoughts about the NAFTA treaty. You can probably tell that I am not in favor of the agreement, but there are specific reasons why I feel that way and they are outlined as follows.

No NAFTA!

The man on the street fully appreciates the situation concerning the NAFTA treaty, but who wants to listen to him. The fact that our current leadership appears to be prepared to ram it down our throats once again, just as they did the 1993 tax and spend package, should have everyone making notes and taking down names in their 1994 election notebooks. It is becoming highly apparent that a large percentage of our political class is, as usual, highly intertwined with, and once again deep in the pockets of yet another special interest group, the pro-NAFTA bunch. Our political classes do not have the interests of the citizenry of the country in mind, they have the usual, "what's in it for me" approach going full speed with hands extended under the tables. But when did they ever have the interests of their fellow citizens in mind?

Some key points about the NAFTA:

1. If the truth could ever be known, I have serious doubts that even 10 % of the congress has even bothered to read the whole of the NAFTA agreements. I could be overestimating even with that figure.

2. I doubt if Mr. Clinton is any better informed than any other Washington insider, but he is prepared to bluff it out as long as some special interest group holds out their promise of a comfortable old age for the first family.

3. Every lobbyist worth buying is on the Mexican payroll - right now. This affair is obviously a big budget item to somebody, but I seem to have doubts that the real money is coming from Mexico. You can let your imagination figure out where the big bucks are really coming from, but just keep in mind the fact that everything is for sale by our political classes. Watch out.

4. Looking back in time, you have to realize that the same people who are behind the NAFTA are the same ones who made the deals that sent the U.S. auto industry down the tubes. They are the same people who were behind the downfall of the U.S. transistor and integrated circuit industry. They are the same people that arranged the complete eradication of a U.S. consumer electronic industry. And I must add that they are the same mysterious people who destroyed the U.S. machine tool industry. Remember how a certain Japanese industrial conglomerate sold our submarine propeller secrets to the Soviet Union a few years back? That probably occurred as a result of the fact that there was not a viable machine tool company left within our borders who could even produce the machine tools to make the propellers. The U.S. submarine propeller production was probably subcontracted out to Toshiba Industries, but we will never know the truth. Yeah, they were also involved in that.

5. The major interests behind NAFTA are, in order, the major multinational corporations, some of which probably originated in the U.S.A. once upon a time. Next come our friends, the British, closely followed by German and Japanese multinational corporations. Mainland China is in there, too. The reason for all this interest is simple: once we are dumb enough to let our politicos pass it, these other guys get to set up phony Mexican corporations that will give them unrestrained access to the U.S. markets. Whatever gets produced anywhere else in the world is all of a sudden going to be completely legal as an export to the U.S. of A. from good old Mexico. Do you really think NAFTA will do anything for the average Mexican?

6. The tear jerkers expound about how this will help those poor Mexicans. Well, right now, the Mexican worker has no rights, and nothing in the NAFTA will change that one iota. He can't influence his government (sort of like here in the U.S.A.). He has no protection from multinational corporations, no job rights, no union representation, nothing. We always hear about the horrors of child labor in our old days, right? Well child labor still exists in Mexico, and I can't see them doing anything about it - in spite of NAFTA.

7. NAFTA means our borders are open. While we might not see too many Canadians flooding our job markets, you can bet that a whole lot more Mexicans are going to be rushing north for those cushy jobs we seem to have in abundance. Once we start seeing the multilingual street signs in the Ohio Valley it will be too late to change anything.

8. The legalese of the NAFTA is really an abortion. As an example, while a Mexican can own 100% interest in a U.S. company, or in that company's real property (LAND) on our side of the line, the same circumstances apparently do not apply for the average gringo. There are restrictions placed on how much a U.S. citizen can own as a percentage of a Mexican corporation for starters (49%). The gringo can also just forget it if he thinks he can own any of a Mexican corporation's real property (land). Another example: Mexican lawyers must be employed as front men at just about every turn of the page when it comes to a U. S. citizen, or corporation for that matter, doing business in Mexico. In truth, it was this way even before anyone ever thought of the NAFTA. NAFTA is essentially a boon to Mexican lawyers, but hardly any other Mexican gets any breaks.

9. You don't even want to know about the particulars when it comes to how much U.S. taxpayer money we are going to have to ship to Mexico to set up required international banking schemes, and to supposedly begin cleaning up the industrial pollution that presently exists because our public spirited multinational corporations shipped their plants south of the border. This is great! We get to pay for our own eco-geek's environmentalist agenda for Mexico! Can you remember any news about Mexican eco-geeks making waves? The beaches of San Diego are polluted by rivers draining northward from Mexico. It would be much cheaper to just dam them on our side - even if the dam had to be made higher every few years. Besides, the flooded areas would make the illegal border crossings easier to spot if they all had to come in boats.

10. The Mexican government has basically defaulted on billions of bucks in loans. They have no intention of repaying these loans. The Mexican fast buck operators are amazed at how stupid our leadership is and how easy it is to buy all the influence they need on the open market in Washington. The Mexican government is really a Mafia-like family affair. This makes influence peddling a bit harder on their side of the border, and has some potentially serious consequence for the ones doing the peddling.

11. Over the last twenty years this country has lost millions of jobs as manufacturing and technology was slipped out of this country by the multinationals and their little brothers, the average U.S. corporation looking for the eternal fast buck. The political classes that sat back and allowed this to happen then are the same political classes who are willing to experiment with the unknown potentials of NAFTA for the current U.S. job market. What ever happened to the old saying: "Fool me once...".

12. Why is our political class so anxious to rush this deal through? Why are they so anxious to make sure Mexicans have minimum wage jobs at Mexican rates while ignoring the chronic unemployment that is the scourge of the younger citizens of this country?

The answers to any of these questions is really very simple. Greed. Our political and economic goals are all based on profits for the multinational corporations and their smaller fellow riders. Everything revolves around profit, greed, more profit, and more greed. If our political class can't get it right this time, or at least once in a while, we should be making notes and taking names for the 1994 elections. Any politician lining up for NAFTA, as it is currently written, should be removed from office as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have any mechanisms for more serious retribution, so denying them their political offices will have to do until something better comes along.

R. E. Brossman. D.D.S., M.S.