Free Trade - a letter I sent to the local paper today

Header: Compelling! One reason to stop CAFTA.

Here's my "agenda" - don't repeat history, especially terrible history! We don't have to repeat history to remember it anyway. For over 100 years the United States of America has brought, through blood, sweat, and tears, civility to the marketplace. Over this span consumers in this great country, despite all our greed, have striven to keep businesses honest about what they produce, how they produce it, and what they consume in the process. We in this country, specifically unions, have tried our level best to assure that no longer do sweat shops operate with impunity, children work 84 hour work weeks in deadly textile mills, and people aren't figuratively and literally enslaved to the "market". We've gone out of our way to see that pallets of cash don't get flown to places like Iraq on cargo planes to be handed out to civilian contractors without receipt. Over this span of time this country has legislated rules such as the Sherman Antitrust Act and many other rules to govern the marketplace.

CAFTA would see clear for multinationals to bypass all of this, blood on hands, and wreak historical havoc elsewhere in the world where such rules don't exist - all over again! Just like NAFTA has. Just like WTO would. And we have only begun to reach civility in the United States of America, my great country! We have far to go.

Here's what I'll support (for those who don't like "whiners", but instead hypocritically, conservatively stick with bloody status quo): international rules and enforcement to prevent the horrible history I mentioned from repeating. I support the higher priority setup of a United Nations "rules and enforcement body" that will govern the international "market" exactly the same or better than the U.S. Constitution and enforcement guarantees in our country. This body would be membered, and supported by dues-paying multinationals operating under its umbrella. I see no compromise on this.

CAFTA, NAFTA, WTO and any other so-called "free trade" proposal are insidious in their serious undermining of the civility we've achieved so far at great price. They should be stopped in their tracks.