Mitt Romney’s comment about China in the first debate was no doubt intended to capitalize on American concerns about the U.S.-China economic relationship
Romney’s Debate Zinger About China Provides Opening for Constructive Policy Debate
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Labor, Trade, & Finance
The TPP: A Quiet Coup for the Investor Class
It would be a relief to report with any certainty that the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a massive proposed free-trade zone spanning the Pacific Ocean and all four hemispheres—are definitely empowering corporations to the detriment of workers, the environment, and sovereignty throughout the region. Unfortunately, the secretive and opaque character of the negotiations has made it difficult to report much of anything about them.
Dodd-Frank’s Cardin-Lugar Amendment Undermined by Weak SEC
Without enforcement by a strong regulatory body, the Cardin-Lugar Amendment will represent nothing more than the formalization of good intentions.
Global Problems for the New Gilded Age
Worried critics decry the similarities between the corruption-laden late 19th-century American Gilded Age and the crony capitalism of today, but similar historical lessons surrounding the problems of global trade and foreign policy have gone neglected.
Hunger Striking for Labor Rights in Colombia
Minutes before he started to sew his mouth shut, Jorge Alberto Parra Andrade explained his rationale to me: “Essentially GM gave us a choice: to die of hunger or to die waiting for them to solve this problem.” Parra is one of 68 injured workers fired by General Motors Colombia who started a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá one year ago, on August 1st, 2011.
Remembering Alexander Cockburn
It was fitting that writer and critic Alexander Cockburn’s funeral should include a passage from Milton. For more than 50 years, Cockburn combined polished, erudite writing with fierce political insight in the tradition of the great 17th-century English polemicist. Cockburn died July 20th in Germany at age 71, following a two-year struggle with cancer. He was buried July 28th in his beloved Petrolia, California.
Destroying the Commons
Down the road only a few generations, the millennium of Magna Carta, one of the great events in the establishment of civil and human rights, will arrive. Whether it will be celebrated, mourned, or ignored is not at all clear.
Don’t Expand NAFTA
The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region. On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese legislators are defecting in droves to try to stop the country’s entry into the negotiations. But the situation is much different in Canada and Mexico, which were admitted to the table with much fanfare during the G20 summit in June.
Iran Navy Reassures West It Won’t Block Strait of Hormuz
Iran has no immediate plans to block the Strait of Hormuz on response to sanctions.
Only Connect
Kaganga John and I were huddled around my computer in the food court of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20. We were checking our emails to see if anyone had agreed to meet with us. I felt the brush of suit jackets as people rushed by us.
“We aren’t leaving this conference without a concrete step toward sustainable development for your village,” I told Kaganga, “even if that means we don’t sleep.”