SOME ECONOMIC ISSUES

Farm aid getting hit from left and right: "Among the groups working to convince Congress to rein in farm subsidies are the liberal Environmental Working Group and the conservative Club for Growth. Former Club for Growth President Stephen Moore told the Chicago Tribune for a January 8 article, 'Farm subsidies are one of the most expensive forms of corporate welfare in the federal budget. Most Americans believe it goes to the small family farmer, but the truth is that the lion's share goes to large agribusiness.' Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, told the Tribune, 'If you lay off a factory worker in Chicago because you outsource the job, we give them $10,000 and a hug and a certificate for retraining. What we give these guys [farmers] is $150,000 for cotton year after year that keeps them in the game internationally.'"

The latest excuse to slug the consumer "The US multinational establishment, having successfully championed free-trade orthodoxy for decades, may now be flirting with protectionist heresy--a stiff tariff against China to stanch America's hemorrhaging trade deficits. Fred Bergsten, the multinationals' leading economic authority, warns that the United States is in "big trouble," taking on foreign debt beyond anything any industrial nation has experienced and comparable to Mexico and Thailand just before they crashed in the 1990s. Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics, is lobbying elite circles to demand decisive action by the Bush Administration--an "import surcharge" as high as 50 percent on all Chinese imports--to avert financial meltdown".

Leftist hatred of economic success in evidence: "As Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., tries to plant dozens of new Supercenters in California, lawyers aligned with opposition groups the company calls fronts for labor unions and competitors are using California's tough environmental laws to stall the nation's largest retailer. From rural Northern California to the crowded south, a handful of lawyers have sued more than 30 cities that approved the 200,000-square-foot combination grocery and department stores, claiming that local officials hungry for sales taxes have miscalculated their environmental consequences.... In many cases, these suits have been filed on behalf of obscure, often-secretive, community groups that have few known members. Some of them have been backed by the labor unions leading an anti-Wal-Mart fight in California, while others have few apparent sources of money. They're delaying the opening of some stores by months or years and slowing Wal-Mart's plan to build up to 40 new Supercenters ... The suits haven't stopped the company from opening any stores, said Peter Kanelos, a company spokesman. "All they've done is delay the stores."

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