For almost a quarter century, the people of North America have watched the value of their lives cheapened by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), while the speculators on Wall Street have built bubble after popped bubble off their labor. NAFTA (and CAFTA, etc.) is designed to drive down the margins of profits for the family farmer, the skilled machinist, and the manual laborer, while increasing the profits of cartel arrangements in agriculture, manufacturing, and derivatives trading. Bankrupting the middle class by underselling them with cheap goods imported from sweat shops has created an economic vacuum filled by illicit black markets in narcoterrorism and addiction, mass immigration and human trafficking (including of children) in forced labor and sexual exploitation, vapid consumerism, xenophobia and racism, and dirty money laundering enabled by “too big to fail/jail” banks.
Kesha Rogers
A New Paradigm of Economic Relations Calls for the North American Belt & Road Initiative, It’s Time to Put NAFTA To Rest!
Independent Candidate for U.S. Congress (9th district Texas)
A Note To Readers
So before we get to the topic that is the most noisy this week in California-- President Trump's tweets about the California fires, we should focus our minds on what is most important. So the first item below is a summary statement of the policy proposal by U.S. Congress Independent candidate Kesha Rogers in Texas that sets out what both President Trump and the nation must do. The quote above is the opening paragraph of her statement. For it is addressing the mission of the nation that she points to that will allow us to do and build what we require today. Following that item, are a few articles on drought and the weather. Then we get to the fires in California, of which I have limited coverage this week to a few summary articles and have some damage assessments to public infrastructure that usually do not make the headlines. Then we get to the President's tweets that have some with their panties in a bunch. While President Trump in the few words of the tweets may have not been very precise in what he wrote, he does open up several areas of policy discussion that has been largely ignored for years, and brings to the forefront more fundamental questions. Some may like to focus on what he said about making water available for dealing with the fires, but really, and seriously, what great historic meaning does a few words that may be off a little actually represent? What is important is not only the years of insane water management policy that has focused on “environment” at the expense of agriculture. And more importantly, yet, that for more than 40 years no water infrastructure has been built in the state. The population of the state has more than doubled in those 40 years, and what was an adequate water management system in the 1970s cannot even come close to what is required today. That is the serious issue at hand, and the President has given us an opportunity to finally seriously address it. I shall remind you here that more than 50 years ago the last real Democratic President, John Kennedy, not only personally inaugurated more than one-half dozen water projects in the West, but his administration set out policies that were designed to provide water for the entire nation for a century to come. I have covered those plans often in these reports and thus will just mention them here. First was the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) to bring water from Alaska and northern Canada down the Rocky Mountain trench to the southwest and the mid-west. Second, was the establishment of a commission to plan and build large-scale nuclear-powered desalination plants. Both policies died in the few years after the assassination of President Kennedy. The other point the President raised in his tweets was the management of the forests, including thinning the trees, logging the millions of dead trees and prescribed burning of brush-- all conducive to alleviating the intensity of wildfires. That issue actually is now being addressed in multiple articles and actions set in motion by the President's words. The Oroville Dam Update this week has three videos and an update from the Department of Water Resources. Finally, due to the length of this report I limit the economic developments section to a few short items. So, let us begin.
