AFTA NAFTA - More of the Bill Clinton Legacy - Hoodwinking the Public - Protecting the Rich - The First Family of Goldman Sachs

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Recently President Obama put intense pressure on Congress to pass a major new trade treaty and the news media failed to give it even cursory attention.  It was twenty-three years ago the last Democrat President jammed a trade agreement down the throats of American workers and politicians and the negative consequences are still felt today.

Twenty-three years ago Bill Clinton slammed the NAFTA trade bill through congress in 1993, then implemented it in 1994, and we are just beginning to see the House of Cards it was built on and understand the Shroud of Secrecy he constructed to protect the rich.

Do you remember when Bill Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore undertook one of the most savage attempts at character assassination ever staged from the White House during the furious debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)?

The target of this attack was the very person who helped Clinton become president in 1992, Ross Perot.  In that election, Clinton won with just 43% of the vote.  Bush got 37.4% and Perot got 18.9%.  Perot's vote total kept Bush from being re-elected.

Only twice in the entire history of American politics did a third party candidate get more votes than Perot in 1992.  In 1856, Millard Fillmore got 21.5% of the vote, and in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt got 27.3% of the vote, neither won.  In fact, only three times in our history did a president a lower percent of votes than Clinton received and they were John Quincy Adams, Woodrow Wilson, and Abraham Lincoln.

I worked as a media advisor to Ross Perot during the NAFTA debates and witnessed firsthand the incredible attempts to discredit Perot.  The Clinton administration used a national debate between Al Gore and Perot on the Larry King show as the showcase using lighting, the chair placement, the camera angles, and every other trick in the book to diminish Perot and undermine his concerns.

Eventually, everything Perot warned could happen did happen and the Clinton-Gore victory in time would be among the most devastating of the Clinton years.  Democrats, the unions, all the minorities, and American manufacturing got sold out by the Clinton promise and to this day have continued to ignore the consequences.

In the end only Clinton and Gore were laughing, all the way to the bank, as both became the richest ex-president and ex-vice president in history, each raking in well over $200 million in personal wealth after gutting the nation's long term economy.

You need not take it from me, look at the analysis by NPR, a Progressive stalwart of the Democratic party, and even the AFL-CIO, whose blind faith in the Democrats has nearly destroyed all the good unions have accomplished.  Listen to their words when it comes to the economic security of America thanks to the Clinton trade initiative.

Once upon a time during the debate over NAFTA Clinton and Gore made many promises, and Perot warned the opposite would happen.  Vilified by the news media and the Clinton administration, Perot told the truth, Clinton and Gore did not, and the American public, are still paying for it.

   

Here are what others had to say about NAFTA.

AFL-CIO America's Unions

What have workers learned from 20 years of NAFTA?

·         It’s a flawed model that promotes the economic interests of a very few and at the expense of workers, consumers, farmers, communities, the environment and even democracy itself.

• While the overall volume of trade within North America due to NAFTA has increased and corporate profits have skyrocketed, wages have remained stagnant in all three countries.
• Productivity has increased, but workers’ share of these gains has decreased steadily, along with unionization rates.
• NAFTA pushed small Mexican farmers off their lands, increasing the flow of desperate undocumented migrants.
• It exacerbated inequality in all three countries.
• And the NAFTA labor side agreement has failed to accomplish its most basic mandate: to ensure compliance with fundamental labor rights and enforcement of national labor laws.

How It Is Destroying The Economy

By Michael Snyder

Global Research, 17 August 2014

The Economic Collapse 14 August 2014

NAFTA Is 20 Years Old – Here Are 20 Facts That Show

Back in the early 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement was one of the hottest political issues in the country.  When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration.  Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen.  He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound” as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country.  Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton.  Well, it is 20 years later and it turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong.  But now history is repeating itself, and most Americans don’t even realize that it is happening.  As you will read about at the end of this article, Barack Obama has been negotiating a secret trade treaty that is being called “NAFTA on steroids”, and if Congress adopts it we could lose millions more good paying jobs.

It amazes me how the American people can fall for the same lies over and over again.  The lies that serial liar Barack Obama is telling about “free trade” and the globalization of the economy are the same lies that Bill Clinton was telling back in the early 1990s.  The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Paul Craig Roberts…

I remember in the 90′s when former Presidential candidate Ross Perot emphatically stated that NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) would create a giant “sucking sound” of jobs being extracted away from the U.S.  He did not win the election, and NAFTA was instituted on Jan. 1, 1994. Now, 20 years later, we see the result of all the jobs that have been “sucked away” to other countries.

According to an article by the Economic Policy Institute on 1/3/14:

“Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring “good-paying American jobs,” a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Considering that thousands of kids are pouring over the border as we speak, well, how’d that work out for us?

Many Americans like to remember Bill Clinton as a “great president” for some reason.  Well, it turns out that he was completely and totally wrong about NAFTA.  The following are 20 facts that show how NAFTA is destroying the economy…

#1 More than 845,000 American workers have been officially certified for Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost their jobs due to imports from Mexico or Canada or because their factories were relocated to those nations.

#2 Overall, it is estimated that NAFTA has cost us well over a million jobs.

#3 U.S. manufacturers pay Mexican workers just a little over a dollar an hour to do jobs that American workers used to do.

#4 The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States has more than doubled since the implementation of NAFTA.

#5 In the year before NAFTA, the U.S. had a trade surplus with Mexico and the trade deficit with Canada was only 29.6 billion dollars.  Last year, the U.S. had a combined trade deficit with Mexico and Canada of 177 billion dollars.

#6 It has been estimated that the U.S. economy loses approximately 9,000 jobs for every 1 billion dollars of goods that are imported from overseas.

#7 One professor has estimated that cutting the total U.S. trade deficit in half would create 5 million more jobs in the United States.

#8 Since the auto industry bailout, approximately 70 percent of all GM vehicles have been built outside the United States.  In fact, many of them are now being built in Mexico.

#9 NAFTA hasn’t worked out very well for Mexico either.  Since 1994, the average yearly rate of economic growth in Mexico has been less than one percent.

#10 The exporting of massive amounts of government-subsidized U.S. corn down into Mexico has destroyed more than a million Mexican jobs and has helped fuel the continual rise in the number of illegal immigrants coming north.

#11 Someone making minimum wage in Mexico today can buy 38 percent fewer consumer goods than the day before NAFTA went into effect.

#12 Overall, the United States has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

#13 Back in the 1980s, more than 20 percent of the jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs.  Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#14 We have fewer Americans working in manufacturing today than we did in 1950 even though our population has more than doubled since then.

#15 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, only 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#16 As I wrote about recently, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.

#17 Because we have shipped millions of jobs overseas, the competition for the jobs that remain has become extremely intense and this has put downward pressure on wages.  Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.

#18 When adults cannot get decent jobs, it is often children that suffer the most.  It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.

#19 In 1994, only 27 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, more than 46 million Americans are on food stamps.

#20 According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.

NPR Public Citizen February 10, 2014

NAFTA’s Broken Promises 1994-2013:

Outcomes of the North American Free Trade Agreement

Excerpts - see full post at http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf

In 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was sold to the American public with grand promises. NAFTA would create tens of thousands of good jobs here. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico’s standard of living up, providing new economic opportunities there that would reduce immigration to the United States.

NAFTA was an experiment, establishing a radically new “trade” agreement model. It exploded the boundaries of past trade pacts, which had focused narrowly on cutting tariffs and quotas. In contrast, NAFTA contained chapters that created new privileges and protections for foreign investors; required the three countries to waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American; limited regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extended medicine patent monopolies and limited food and product safety standards and border inspection.

After nineteen years of NAFTA, we can measure its actual outcomes. The grand promises made by proponents remain unfulfilled. Many outcomes are exactly the opposite of what was promised. Many U.S. firms used the new investor protections to relocate production to Mexico to take advantage of its low wages and weak environmental standards and to attack NAFTA countries’ environmental and health laws in foreign tribunals. Over $340 million in compensation to investors has been extracted from NAFTA governments via these “investor-state” challenges.

The small U.S. trade surplus with Mexico pre-NAFTA turned into a massive new trade deficit. The pre-NAFTA U.S. trade deficit with Canada expanded greatly. Overall, the inflation-adjusted U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.1 The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) estimated that the NAFTA deficit had eliminated about one million net American jobs by 2004.2 Meanwhile, U.S. food processors moved to Mexico to take advantage of low wages and food imports soared. U.S beef imports from Mexico and Canada, for example, have risen 130 percent since NAFTA took effect, and today U.S. consumption of “NAFTA” beef tops $1.3 billion annually.3 The export of subsidized U.S. corn did increase, displacing over one million Mexican campesino farmers. Their desperate migration pushed down wages in Mexico’s border maquiladora factory zone and contributed to a doubling of Mexican immigration to the United States.

The U.S. public’s view of NAFTA has intensified from broad opposition to overwhelming opposition to NAFTA-style trade deals. According to a 2012 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, 53 percent of Americans believe the United States should “do whatever is necessary” to “renegotiate” or “leave” NAFTA, while only 15 percent believe the United States should “continue to be a member of NAFTA.” Rejection of the trade deal is the predominant stance of Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.4 NAFTA has drawn the ire of Americans across stunningly diverse demographics. A 2011 National Journal poll showed strong rejection of the status quo trade model from both lower-educated and higher-educated respondents,5 and a 2010 NBC News – Wall Street Journal survey revealed that a majority of upper-income respondents have now joined lower-income respondents in opposing NAFTA-style pacts.6 In addition, a 2008 Zogby poll found majority NAFTA opposition across nearly every surveyed demographic group, including independents, Hispanics, women, Catholics and Southerners.7

U.S. Job Loss, Not Gain

Projections on trade balance, jobs prove wrong. In 1993, Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) projected that NAFTA would lead to a rising U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which would create 170,000 net new jobs in the United States.8 This figure was trumpeted by the Clinton administration and other NAFTA proponents. Hufbauer and Schott based their projection on the observation that when export growth outpaces the growth of imports, more jobs are created by trade than are destroyed by trade.9 Instead of an improved trade balance with Canada and Mexico, however, NAFTA resulted in an explosion of imports from Mexico and Canada that led to huge U.S. trade deficits. According to Hufbauer and Schott’s own methodology, these deficits meant major job loss. Less than two years after NAFTA’s implementation, even before the depth of the NAFTA deficit became evident, Hufbauer recognized that his jobs prediction was incongruent with the facts, telling the Wall Street Journal, “The best figure for the jobs effect of NAFTA is approximately zero…the lesson for me is to stay away from job forecasting.”10

Huge new NAFTA trade deficit emerges. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada of $29.1 billion and the $2.5 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993 (the year before NAFTA took effect) turned into a combined NAFTA trade deficit of $181 billion by 2012.11 This represents an increase in the “NAFTA deficit” of 580 percent. These are inflation-adjusted numbers, meaning the difference is not due to inflation, but an increase in the deficit in real terms. The U.S. deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada has worsened considerably more than the U.S. deficit with countries with which we have not signed NAFTA-style deals. Since NAFTA, the average annual growth of the U.S. trade deficit has been 45 percent higher with Mexico and Canada than with countries that are not party to a NAFTA-style trade pact.12 Defenders of NAFTA argue that the NAFTA deficit is really only oil imports. Although oil accounts for a substantial portion of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico, the oil share of the trade deficit with Canada and Mexico actually declined from 77 percent in 1993 to 55 percent in 2012.13

Services and manufacturing export growth slows under NAFTA. A key claim of supporters of NAFTA-style trade pacts is that they create jobs by promoting faster U.S. export growth. By contrast, growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the last decade.14 Manufacturing and services exports in particular grew slower after NAFTA took effect. Since NAFTA’s enactment, U.S. manufacturing exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the rate seen in the years before NAFTA.15 Even growth in services exports, which were supposed to do especially well under the trade pact given a presumed U.S. comparative advantage in services, dropped precipitously after NAFTA’s implementation. During NAFTA’s first decade, the average growth rate in U.S. services exports fell by 58 percent compared to the decade before NAFTA, and has remained well below the pre-NAFTA rate through the present.16

One million American jobs lost to NAFTA. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the rising trade deficit with Mexico and Canada since NAFTA went into effect eliminated about one million net jobs in the United States by 2004.17 EPI further calculates that the ballooning trade deficit with Mexico alone destroyed about seven hundred thousand net U.S. jobs between NAFTA’s implementation and 2010.18 Moreover, official government data reveals that nearly five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost overall since NAFTA took effect.19 Obviously, not all of these lost U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four of our manufacturing jobs – is due to NAFTA. The United States entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, China joined WTO in 2000 and the U.S. trade deficit with China soared thereafter. However, at the same time, given the methodology employed, it is also likely that the EPI estimates do not capture the full U.S. job loss associated with NAFTA. Service sector jobs have also been negatively impacted by NAFTA, as closed factories no longer demand services. EPI estimates that one third of the jobs lost due to the rising trade deficit under NAFTA were in non-manufacturing sectors of the economy.20
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American Elections 4 - Tips for International Followers - Who is the Dreaded Establishment in the American election?

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I have been following throughout the election the media focus on "The Establishment," the true villain to the "outsiders" running for president.  There are some interesting conclusions one might reach in discussing such a Dark Force.

For one, the absolute lack of historical perspective by the reporters is depressing to anyone hoping to find high journalistic standards in the reporting.  If one were to believe all the various stories one might think this is a new phenomenon in this election cycle and that is false.

Quite the contrary, the lack of definition by the media of what is the establishment results in a total failure to identify who is the establishment.  As a result, I say shame on a media that claims to be your source of information, and implied truth, yet operates without the benefit of historical perspective when writing about the establishment and the impact on the election.

Defining the Establishment

So let me define the establishment.  They are the people, organizations, political parties, corporations, bankers, and institutions whose own special interest is more important to them than what is good for the people.

Make no mistake this villain has been around since the dawning of civilization.  Since then there has been a continuous war of words, and even arms, as in the weapons type, between the power seekers and the people.

Our nation was born in a revolution against the establishment at the time, the British Empire, and has been a continuous struggle for control between the people and the establishment ever since.  Many of those perceived as the establishment change from time to time although there is a core that has perpetrated their power as long as there has been a nation.

Greed for power, the audacity for knowing what is right for the people, control of the institutions, manipulation of the government, an insatiable appetite for wealth and money, all characterize the foundation of the establishment.  This group sees themselves as the sole judge of what is right and best for the people.

More often than not, they harbor a disdain for the people casting them off as ignorant and uninformed.  Thus, we begin to see the complexity of the establishment and difficulty one may have in identifying them.

The establishment can be a group, a corporation, advocates of a social cause, political partisans, even individuals provided they are billionaires.

The Ruling Oligarchy

However, the core and foundation for the establishment reflects the prestige of the blue bloods who have survived for generations, to wit, the Goldman Sachs, Rockefellers, Lehmans and Kuhn Loebs of New York; the Rothschilds of Paris and London; the Warburgs of Hamburg; the Lazards of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seifs of Rome.

It is this group and their network of banks that effectively control all major corporations and banks in America and most of the civilized world.  The same group has been fighting for control of American assets and wealth since the American Revolution.  You hear not a word from the media about the power, reach, and control of this group because they hide their holdings in a complex ownership maze and use far removed agents to do their bidding.

Control of arms, energy, transportation, finances, diamonds, gold, even economies of most governments of the world are the tools of this group used successfully not just for generations, for centuries.

Here you have the core foundation of the establishment that has tormented presidents for nearly 250 years from Washington to Jackson, Lincoln to Kennedy, Reagan and beyond, through their banking maze and Federal Reserve control.  .  

This oligarchy controls the world and the American public is beginning to understand how powerful the establishment has become in exerting control over our institutions, and becoming aware of the self-serving greed of said oligarchy.

The Agents, Institutions, and Special Interests

I noted the wealth and reach of the oligarchy reaches into the mainstream of our society through the many ways we spend money.  Thus, the special interests that lobby, pay off, and even own our elected officials and political personalities can be extensive.

Lobbyists for special interests and the special interests themselves like the banking, financial, pharmaceutical, health care, insurance, transportation, energy, automobile, food, arms, and other major institutions are card-carrying members.

Even groups like the Chamber of Commerce, Labor Unions and Teachers, and Lawyers are hardcore members of the establishment though with far less political clout than those previously mentioned.

A major institution is the bureaucracy of government at the federal, state, and local levels, as distinguished from the workers for the bureaucracy covered by the unions.

Colleges and Universities as a whole, and in particular individual institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton of the Ivy League are major players because they have been educating the children of the rich and powerful for over two centuries.  As a result, their alumni are the rulers of the world and the children of the alumni receive legacy status assuring them a place in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League without competing for limited openings.

It is no accident these three Ivy League schools are in a league of their own as Harvard has produced six presidents, Yale three, and Princeton two, eleven of our forty-four presidents from just three schools.

In fact, Yale and Harvard have now controlled the United States presidency 28 straight years, and with Hillary Clinton from Yale and Ted Cruz from Harvard, the streak may extend another eight years. 

  

Political Parties and Social Causes

Beyond the membership already outlined in the establishment, there are the political parties, the Democratic and Republican national and statewide organizations, along with the political action committees (PACS), who provide the dollars to maintain the political agendas of the two parties.  In truth, no political agenda articulated in a campaign is implemented once someone is elected as both parties are beholden to the same Core Establishment controlling the wealth and finances of the nation.

PACS can be party affiliated or Super PACS who can support any party, cause, or person they want who will best protect the establishment.

As for the Social Causes, many have become so institutionalized and powerful over the years that they now represent tentacles of the establishment.  Money has no opinion, no favorite cause nor bias, it is the people who control the wealth who do.

Most powerful among the social cause institutions is the National Rifle Association.  Others who yield lesser degrees of power are Planned Parenthood, the Right to Choice, Prolife, and well down the list are the various groups involved in civil rights, equality, anti-discrimination, and others.

There you have it, a definitive identification of the Establishment, perhaps missing a few players, but far more inclusive than anything the media has done to date.  Of course the bottom line is this.  The New World Order is the Old World Order.

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Obama Caught Between Two Masters - Goldman Sachs & SEIU - Part 2. SEIU

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First Published September 24, 2009

Obama Caught Between Two Masters - Goldman Sachs & SEIU - Part 2. SEIU

Radical even among unions, the Service Employees International Union has staked a name for itself building it's two million members not just by organizing the workplace but by stealing members from other long established unions.

The genius behind this radical labor movement is Andy Stern, yet another of the many Obama backers who were youthful members of the most radical organizations of the 1960's. Andy was in the socialist SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, before setting off on a life of organizing. To his credit, SDS was rather radical but never endorsed the use of terrorist bombings like other socialist groups.




Stern, perhaps the most loved and most hated member of the labor movement in modern America, began his career as a community organizer and never looked back. During his years as recruitment coordinator for the President of the AFL-CIO he consistently pushed for revitalization of the labor union movement and refocusing American unions to consolidate and gain bargaining power.

By 2005 he was head of the SEIU and was pushing his boss, John Sweeny, President of the AFL-CIO to make reforms or he would lead a walkout from the union federation. Sweeny balked and Stern made good on his threat. Within a year he formed the Change to Win (CTW) Labor Federation, getting the powerful Teamsters and five other unions to join forces with the SEIU. It was the first new labor federation in America in 50years.



Meanwhile he targeted other unions in a radical move to build his SEIU and his membership soared to 2 million this year, the largest labor union in America, with nearly 1 million health care workers. Parlaying the millions of dollars in membership dues and lack of unions in the health care industry Stern claims he spent $60.7 million to get Obama elected. It would be the largest union and special interest campaign financing ever given to a single candidate.

What was the price of the financing for Obama? Perhaps it is most obvious in the actions by the new president. Within ten days of becoming president, on January 30, 2009, Obama signed the first three Executive Orders wanted by the unions.

The first executive order requires employers with federal contracts above $100,000 in value to post a notice in the workplace informing their employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), including the right to join a union. This order also repeals Executive Order 13201, issued by President Bush in 2001, that required federal contractors and subcontractors to post so-called “Beck notices.” Such notices, named after the Supreme Court’s decision in Communication Workers v. Beck, 487 U.S. 735 (1988) informed employees covered under the NLRA that they could not be required to join a union or maintain union membership in order to retain their jobs and that employees who are subject to a union security clause and choose not to be union members may object to the purposes for which mandatory union dues are used.

The second order applies to federal contractors who provide services to government buildings. While there are several exemptions, under this new executive order, when a federal agency changes contractors, the new contractor will be required to offer jobs to the non-supervisory employees of its predecessor. This order is designed to try to ensure that when a unionized contractor is replaced, its successor will be obliged under existing labor laws to bargain with the original contractor’s labor union.

Finally, the third order prevents federal contractors from being reimbursed in federal funds for money spent to oppose (or support) union organizing efforts among their employees. The First Amendment prevents government from interfering with an employer’s right to voice its opinion on the merits of unionization. Similar measures have been enacted in some states, with respect to their state contractors, but the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that California ’s law to this effect was invalid because it was preempted by the National Labor Relations Act. Although a federal executive order is different than state legislation, there may be legal challenges to this executive order’s constitutionality, including a possible violation of the First Amendment. Unless and until the order is successfully challenged, however, federal contractors who still wish to oppose union organizing campaigns will need to consider the effects of this order on their ability to continue doing so without jeopardizing their federal contracts.




In another boost to organized labor, just six days later President Barack Obama on February 6, 2009, signed a fourth Executive Order, effective immediately, authorizing executive agencies of the federal government to require every contractor or subcontractor on a large-scale construction project to negotiate or become a party to a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) with one or more labor organizations. This is the fourth pro-labor Executive Order signed by President Obama since January 30th.

A PLA is a pre-hire collective bargaining agreement between contractors and one or more unions that establishes the terms and conditions of employment for a specific construction project. The stated rationale for this Order is that a PLA can promote the “efficient and expeditious completion of Federal construction contracts” by ensuring a “steady supply of labor” and the avoidance of “labor disputes” which can delay the project.

This Executive Order, which specifically revokes contrary Executives Orders issued by former President George W. Bush in 2001 and reinstates a Clinton-administration rule, was immediately hailed by organized labor. "This is yet another reason for working families to be grateful that we have a champion in the White House," Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa stated. In the same vein, Mark H. Ayers, president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD), praising President Obama, stated: “The Bush anti-PLA executive order was exactly the type of special interest-driven politics and policy that American voters rejected overwhelmingly last November…. [Project Labor Agreements] provide maximum benefit to construction users; union and non-union workers; union and non-union contractors; lenders and insurance companies; and taxpayers.”




This was only the beginning.

Though stymied on the Employee Free Choice Act, (the Card Check Act), abolishment of the secret ballot in elections which would make it easier for workers to form unions, organized labor claimed a big consolation prize: the massive application of a law guaranteeing “prevailing wages” for hundreds of thousands of construction workers hired under President Obama’s economic stimulus program.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood implemented guidelines to expand the scope of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act, according to a department spokesperson. LaHood’s action will put a floor under wages paid for the more than 578,000 construction jobs that the White House estimates will be created by the end of 2010. It also marks a sharp reversal of U.S. policy on public works projects under President Bush, who in September 2005 suspended Davis-Bacon in the Gulf States after Hurricane Katrina.

Such is the power of Stern that Obama once said he consulted with SEIU on every major decision he makes. Proof of the power is that the White House, when it became obvious that the Obama healthcare initiative was in danger of losing support and faced with a series of contentious town hall meeting in August, brought Stern and SEIU in to manage the campaign for approval.




Stern dispatched the SEIU mobile centers to coordinate town halls for nervous members of the House and Senate all over the nation. They were to control and counteract the opponents to the Obama healthcare proposals including filming events with their own video teams and feeding footage to the media to make the opponents look bad. Some say the tactics of the purple clad SEIU operatives was like thugs and one SEIU staffer was arrested for beating up an older man.




Even House Majority leader Steny Hoyer was fearful enough to hire SEIU to manage his town hall where they limited questions from the crowd to 20 total when over 1500 people were at the meeting and several hundred more were outside. Hoyer spent over one hour spouting the benefits of the Obama plan before people were allowed to take the mike and in spite of the SEIU efforts to control things the crowd began to boo his responses.

In September another victory for the unions when Obama imposed heavy import tax duties on imported Chinese tires at the request of labor unions, an action against that threatens to spark a trade war between the US and China. China has already threatened to add a tariff to imports of US poultry and vehicles. The action by Obama increased the 4% tariff on Chinese tires by 35%.

Now Congress is back and it is time to see if the big payoff is made to the SEIU, passage of health care reform that allows, even gives favorable treatment, to allow Stern to organize the health care industry in America. Over 17 million people work in health care and related social services in America. SEIU now represents about 1 million of these workers while the Communications Workers of America represents about 140,000 meaning the pool of non-unionized health care workers is huge.




SEIU expects to be the primary beneficiary of the health care reform using it to open doors to unionizing this massive prize. The union dues and lobbying wealth it would generate would dwarf current spending by the unions. A public option would make it even more desirable as public workers would be much easier to organize.

Unfortunately, the more SEIU has tried to function like a well oiled corporation the more difficulties it has encountered so it remains to be seen if Stern can wrap up the gigantic payback. If anyone can he can. However, his aggressive tactics have alienate many other unions and even some of the unions he has swallowed up are now protesting their treatment and threatening to withdraw from SEIU because of his heavy-handed tactics.

Corruption in SEIU is extensive, especially in California where battles between unions and between union leaders, most instigated by SEIU, threaten to tear apart the move to grow the unions. One union official in California calls Stern a "threat to the soul" of the union movement. Claims that members dues are being used to foster socialism and other causes not approved by members, even funding programs like the disgraced ACORN program, are a source of concern.




But the most serious threat to SEIU controlling the union movement in America may be the lavish spending to buy politicians, like the $60.7 million spent on Obama. Ironically, Obama and Congress may be the only thing standing between the union and bankruptcy. Stern led the condemnation of the greed and mismanagement on Wall Street. Now he stands to fall into the same trap as his Wall Street enemies.

According to the New York Daily News, in spite of the fact Stern undertook a bitter campaign against the Bank of America and even got the CEO thrown out last spring he was borrowing an astonishing $87.7 million from the bank at the same time. In another industry it would probably be called protection money. He borrowed another $15 million from the only union owned bank in America, the Amalgamated Bank. SEIU recently reported $33 million in assets and $102 million in liabilities.

The SEIU cannot afford delays in the payback by Congress and Obama, they need money and they need it fast. There are times the investor better have the money to invest before making the big jump. If SEIU spent $60.7 million on Obama and health care yet had to borrow $102 million to cover it the accounting does not seem to add up. It will be interesting to see if Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats can maintain the sense of urgency they need to approve the bill and help SEIU or if the public discovers the truth first.

In the tale of the two Masters, the SEIU has no chance against Goldman Sachs when it comes to deciding which master will win out with the Obama administration. Goldman has billions to manipulate while SEIU must borrow money to play the money game. So far the return to Goldman has already been in the billions of dollars while the token victories given to SEIU have not even made a dent in paying their debts.

Nor can SEIU match the vast army of former Goldman executives strategically placed throughout the Obama administration and throughout the world of finance and politics. No one has ever questioned the loyalty of this massive force. Andy Stern may have attended the Wharton School of Finance but Goldman wrote the course and probably financed the school's endowment fund.

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Obama Caught Between Two Masters - Goldman Sachs & SEIU - Part 1. Goldman Sachs

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First Published September 24, 2009

Obama Caught Between Two Masters - Goldman Sachs & SEIU - Part 1. Goldman Sachs

President Obama has taken on one of the most difficult jobs possible, trying to please two master with very different agendas. On the one hand is Goldman Sachs, the undisputed king of Wall Street and his long time corporate sponsor. On the other the more traditional sponsor of liberal Democrats the SEIU labor union, the Service Employees International Union. Of course there is nothing normal about either of these two contenders and so far they are leaving all their competition in the dust when it comes to benefitting from the actions of the new president.

One is the epitome of corporate excess with over a billion dollars in bonuses paid even in the worst of times. Goldman not only is the only financial institution to actually improve their position during the world economic collapse but actually wiped out competition in the process while making money every time money flowed from the federal spigot during the bank bailout, the AIG bailout, the housing crisis and bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the economic stimulus and even the cap and trade bill making it's way through Congress.




Long before Obama became a household name, before he was even elected to a federal office, Goldman was shepherding his meteoric rise through the ranks of political wannabes. Of course it helped that Obama's closest advisor and mentor, Rahm Emanuel, was on Goldman's payroll before Obama ever thought about running for office. When he was raising money for the Clinton presidential run in 1992 he was also on the Goldman payroll and investigations were launched that stopped the illegal corporate subsidy.




After serving as a White House aide during Clinton's term, in 2000, just before leaving office, Clinton then appointed Rahm to the Board of Freddie Mac where the sub-prime mortgage plot was hatched that triggered the economic disaster years later. A major player in this market was Goldman Sachs who was to make billions of dollars before the sub-prime market dried up and the Obama Administration had to bailout the banks and mortgage companies.




Emanuel spent three years as an investment banker after his Clinton years making $16 million and then ran for Congress, with the generous help of Goldman and the Wall Street community. Making a name for himself as the most prolific Democratic fund raiser ever Emanuel rose to #4 in the party hierarchy before being tapped by Obama as his Chief of Staff.




While Emanuel was a Congressman from Illinois Obama was to get a tremendous shot in the arm in his presidential ambitions with the help of Goldman, starting from his first campaign for federal office, the US Senate, in 2004. In the Democratic primary Obama was a distant underdog to millionaire Blair Hull who was caught in a scandal and forced to resign from the race. Interestingly, Blair Hull's company was purchased by Goldman Sachs shortly afterward.




In the general election Obama was again a distant underdog to millionaire Republican Jack Ryan who was also forced to resign from the race because of a scandal. Ryan was a partner in Goldman Sachs. This cleared the way for Obama to be the new Senator from Illinois and launched his presidential bid. In 2006 Obama secretly met with Goldman Sachs executives in Chicago and soon after, thanks to the fund raising of Goldman, his presidential bid was launched.




In 2008 Goldman sponsored a secret meeting at the Metropolitan Museum where Obama was prepared for debating by none other than former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who would moderate the final presidential debate of the campaign. Of course this was not disclosed to the media or public either.




Goldman was the leading contributor to Obama while the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed, while the oil futures market prices skyrocketed for no good reason, and for the economic collapse of the USA when the multi-billion dollar bank bailout was enacted. The bailout legislation was prepared by Bush Treasury Secretary Paulsen, a former Goldman CEO, steered through the House by Rahm Emanuel, a former Goldman Executive, and even approved by Senator Obama.




Once elected Obama immediately appointed Emanuel Chief of Staff and the AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts, and Stimulus bill were approved with Goldman benefitting with billions of dollars in revenues. Far outperforming everyone in the financial sector in the first 6 months of the Obama rein, the Goldman dominance was so great that at one week in the spring Goldman's program trading on the New York exchange was greater than the combined total of the next 14 traders worldwide.




Goldman has the inside track for controlling the "cap and trade" energy market, the bizarre centerpiece of the Obama Green energy program that will create immense wealth for Goldman, Al Gore and whoever else they decide to include. Gore's partner in his financial schemes which have already made him $100 million as the Green King is also from Goldman. What real benefit to the environment from cap and trade remains to be seen.




Now Emanuel is heading the White House efforts to regulate Wall Street and the financial markets and draft the necessary rules and regulations to tighten controls. Perhaps that explains why no action has been taken in nine months. If Obama does not know what the legions of former Goldman executives are doing in his administration he is merely a puppet. If he does know then he has a lot of explaining to do to the American public. I'd say to the media and Congress as well but they have ignored the Goldman factor for years. Perhaps the millions in campaign contributions from Goldman and Wall Street have influenced this ignorance by Congress.




Although Obama and Treasury have sternly criticized Wall Street and the investment banks for the manipulation of the stock market, sub-prime mortgage market and oil futures market, Obama has been silent on Goldman and their role in these activities. He has also never answered questions as to the role Goldman played in his Senate campaigns, his presidential campaigns and the extent of his contacts and those of the many former Goldman executives on his staff with current Goldman executives.

Obama promised transparency and gave us a brick wall. He promised reform and gave us more of the same.  He promised to penalize the violators and he gave them unlimited wealth. Now he is trying to complete his deal and deliver to them the cap and trade and even health reform legislation on top of the trillion plus already given through the bank, insurance, auto, and housing bailouts and the stimulus bill. Just today the White House announced that the financial reforms are being scaled back from expectations. Imagine that?

In the tale of the two Masters, the SEIU has no chance against Goldman Sachs when it comes to deciding which master will win out with the Obama administration. Goldman has billions to manipulate while SEIU must borrow money to play the money game. So far the return to Goldman has already been in the billions of dollars while the token victories given to SEIU have not even made a dent in paying their debts.




Nor can SEIU match the vast army of former Goldman executives strategically placed throughout the Obama administration and throughout the world of finance and politics. No one has ever questioned the loyalty of this massive force. Andy Stern may have attended the Wharton School of Finance but Goldman wrote the course and probably financed the school's endowment fund.

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