[Mb-civic] more on CAFTA

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

The following is from a friend of Marty's who works for Public Citizen:

Dear Friends, Family, All,

I don't usually like to write about big defeats, but last week's
217-215 CAFTA vote deserves some attention.  

Please read the below email and our Public Citizen statement on the
vote.  I've also included a longer and more in-depth piece by Deborah
James from Global Exchange that gives what I think is the best 
summary of the  final vote and the issues at play.

The bottom line is that while there is now no escaping the impending
CAFTA-exacerbated crisis to farmers in Central America and to 
indigenous and environmental groups trying to curb massive resource 
extraction schemes, here in the United States CAFTA is a pyhrric 
victory for President Bush.

The overwhelming message in the post-vote press (and there has 
been an avalanche of it around the country--try doing a Google News 
Search!), is that the difficulty that President Bush had with this vote 
spells trouble for his plan (always a good thing!).

The San Franciscans receiving this email should be very proud of San
Francisco Congresswoman and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for 
playing a critical role in rounding up an overwhelming Democratic 
opposition to the agreement.  This was not only the right, moral, San 
Franciscan thing to do, but also the most strategic possible move for 
the Democratic Party. 

MoveOn PAC and the DCCC are already using the CAFTA vote to 
target a mass of Republicans who voted against the interests of their 
districts, and I am confident that this vote will be a big part of why we'll 
see a shift toward the Democrats in the 2006 midterm elections.  

Your emails to listservs, blogs, dinner table conversations, and calls to
thank or spank your congressional representatives will determine 
whether in the long run this very close vote is remembered as a defeat 
or a victory.

All the best,

David Edeli
Public Citizen
(202) 454-5111
dedeli at citizen.org

--
Email from the Public Citizen Global Trade Watch Field Team:

Dear global justice activists,

We all knew one thing last night at midnight when procedural tricks 
and arm-twisting led to a 217-215 vote to approve CAFTA:  Despite 
the two vote margin in favor of CAFTA, the reality is that we won.  We 
won the debates, we won on the merits, we won unprecedented party 
unity by the Democrats and a significant block of votes from the 
Republican side.

The Administration that thinks it can get whatever it wants, that
believes that it can roll the American public without blinking an eye,
spent the last year postponing a vote they knew they couldn't win. They
sent down the President with his entire cabinet to troll the halls of
Congress in what was his first visit to the Capitol in over two years.  
We did more than make them sweat -- we made them quake in their 
boots.

The broad and growing chorus of grassroots voices demonstrated that 
we can split a corporate two party consensus and significantly tip the 
debate to focus on workers' rights, fair trade and global justice.

We are honored to have been in the trenches of this fight with you and
with our brothers and sisters in Central America.  The CAFTA 
campaign was an inspiring "globalization from below" of citizens' 
movements and working people uniting across borders to change the 
rules of the global economy and bring us one step closer to the better 
world we all know is possible.

What happened last night?  As Republican leadership promised,
Members' arms were twisted until they were "broken into a
thousand pieces."   Threats to unseat GOP committee chairs who
didn't go with the party on this vote were rampant. Representatives
who went wrong from both sides of the aisle were allegedly promised
corporate funding for their election campaigns and pork barrel deals
to be included in the upcoming energy and transportation bills.

If they had to work this hard to pass a trade agreement that pundits
agreed was a primarily symbolic showdown, how will they ever 
manage to push forward the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) 
against the rising tide of public opinion and opposition in the U.S. and 
Latin America?


The answer is:  They won't.

We have undermined their corporate NAFTA and WTO expansion 
agenda. The dogma of free market fundamentalism has been 
irrevocably weakened and the political boundaries in Congress 
permanently altered.  Last night we witnessed a political sea change. 
We urge you to find time today or tomorrow to take one last action in 
the CAFTA fight:  Thank those courageous Representatives who voted 
with us and demand accountability of those who turned their back on 
their communities by letting them know that our anger does not go 
away the day after the vote.

The late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "The arc of the moral
universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Your work in the CAFTA fight moves us along this path towards global
justice.  We here at Public Citizen look forward to walking with you
on this journey.

Adelante,

Timi, Raúl, David and Susan
The Global Trade Watch field team

P.S. Below is a link for a Washington Post article that tells the
story of what happened last night and the statement of Global Trade 
Watch Director Lori Wallach on the vote.

**************************************************************************
***

Washington Post article on CAFTA passage
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2005/07/27/AR20050727
01195.html


**************************************************************************
*** Statement by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch Director Lori 
Wallach

For Immediate Release:  Contact: Chris Slevin (202) 454-5140
July 28, 2005

Statement of Lori Wallach on CAFTA Final Vote in the House of
Representatives

The CAFTA vote became a highly politicized referendum on whether
President Bush would be made a lame duck, but the CAFTA debate 
makes clear that a dramatic shift in U.S. trade politics has occurred 
and the  NAFTA trade model is dead.

After losing the debate on the merits months ago, passing CAFTA
required last minute procedural stunts even after weeks of the
President's personal attention, a rare Presidential visit to Congress,
months of GOP leadership threats and goodies and an army of 
corporate lobbyists to push the economically modest CAFTA NAFTA 
expansion through by a narrow margin after trying for a year.

That CAFTA NAFTA expansion, a trade deal of small economic
significance, barely passed the House of Representatives shows that
any economically significant attempts to expand the NAFTA model, 
such as the  proposed Free Trade Agreement of the America, would 
be dead on arrival.


With only 15 Democrats supporting CAFTA, the Bush administration 
and Republican Party has now officially adopted NAFTA's record of an
unsustainable deficit, downward pressure on wages and economic
instability as their own.  How U.S. trade politics has shifted was
demonstrated by the CAFTA no votes of traditional free trade 
Democrats Jim Davis (D-FL) and Harold Ford (D-TN) who are both 
seeking statewide office in their states.

With a 214-211 vote, the GOP leadership held open the vote because 
all of the  remaining GOP votes (Jo Ann Davis, Boustany, Capito, 
Fitzpatrick, Simmons, LaTourette, Jindal, and Taylor) were committed 
to oppose CAFTA - which would have brought opposition to a winning 
219. The promised breaking of arms "into one-thousand pieces," as 
Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) stated, ensued with brokered final vote 
switching and threats which ended the vote at 217-215.



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