Repug senators walk out of hearing for Colombia FTA

[rabs]

Top US Senator 'disappointed' with Republican boycott of Colombia FTA meeting

U.S. Democratic Senator Max Baucus denounced Republicans on Thursday for boycotting the meeting that was to push forward the free trade agreement (FTA) process between the U.S. and Colombia.

In response to the action, Baucus, the president of the Senate's Finance Committee, said "I'm disappointed that my colleagues have decided not to join together to consider this legislation".

The Democratic Senator added that "instead of participating in a fair and open forum to discuss these agreements, members of this committee opted to block this preliminary vote. The major disappointment is that this boycott will delay the approval of important legislation that will create work".

The session, in which the U.S. Senate Finance Committee was to consider the pending bilateral trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and hold a preliminary vote on the Colombia FTA, was cancelled when Senate Republicans boycotted the meeting.

According to Baucus, the highest ranking Republican Senator on the committee, Orrin Hatch, informed him that "no republican would attend ," in protest of U.S. President Barack Obama's insistence that the extension of trade adjustment assistance (TAA) would be included as part of the agreements.

The TAA is a pro-labor action plan which helps retrain workers displaced by trade.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/economy/17330-republicans-boycott-fta-agreement-meeting.html

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Hilarious. Repugs have been yammering for this for years. Now when they have the chance to get it approved, obama throws the TAA in their path.

JuanMa must have a severe migraine tonight, see as how his repug pals have let him down ... and obama must not be happy either, since he has been pushing this FTA.

:rofl:

[EFerrari]

1. This is what corruption looks like, with the worms chasing their tails. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

2. Crazy, isn't it? These a-holes have ALWAYS been pushing more money to Colombia,

but now Obama claims to want it, they won't let him.

This works out very well with the working class in each country. They know what they need, and they know what will make their lives worse. There's no question. They DON'T want it.

It's a thing of beauty seeing the nazis screw themselves just to be able to believe they've screwed Obama.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Yet more evidence that this U.S. Congress was not elected.

Not that you really need more evidence when almost all (80%) of the votes in the U.S. are tabulated by 'TRADE SECRET' programming code, owned and controlled by one, private, far rightwing connected corporation (ES&S, which bought out Diebold), with virtually no audit/recount controls! Who would a far rightwing corporation vote for, if it had easy--EASY!--secret power to install a U.S. Congress?

No brainer.

And these Scumbags are outdoing themselves to utterly screw the poor majority and serve the rich. In this case, they not only want transglobal corporate/war profiteer U.S. "free trade for the rich," they want NO provision for U.S. workers who are displaced by U.S. "free trade for the rich"! Not even a "re-training" program!

I repeat: Orrin Hatch was NOT elected. Nor was most of this Congress. It is so bloody obvious!

As for Obama, I think he really was elected--on the basis of the most spectacularly successful P.R. job since Reagan. People voted for Obama to end the Oil War and its horrendous costs in lives and treasure; now we have THREE oil wars and counting--JEEZ! The catch, as to the election system, is that he was also PERMITTED TO BE elected, because the transglobal corporations and war profiteers needed a "liberal" to take the blame for their godawful crimes, and to finish dismantling the "New Deal," preparatory to Bush Junta II. A "liberal" who would agree not to investigate/prosecute Bush Junta I principles. A "liberal" who would give only limp-wristed opposition to the utter looting of social programs. A "liberal" who would go further than Bush in waging the Big Oil War by not even LYING to Congress about Libya--IGNORING Congress altogether! So much for our Constitution! It's gone. It's GONE! A "liberal" who would "launder" the image of a country--Colombia--where the military, supported with $7 BILLION in U.S. tax dollars, has been wantonly murdering thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, political leftists, peasant farmers and others, and which has displaced 5 MILLION peasant farmers from their land, with state terror!

THIS is who Obama wants the U.S. to "trade" with?! Colombia?! Unfriggingbelievable! And, according to HIS plan, while transglobal corporations and war profiteers fuck over the working class in BOTH countries, he's going to "re-train" U.S. workers...for what, hm? He's going to turn U.S. blue collar workers into computer programmers--with every public school system in the country going bankrupt? Or maybe he's going to "train" them to run sweatshop sewing machines or to hack down biofuel palms with machetes, so they can "compete" with Colombia's poor?

This snake dance in Washington DC between the "liberal" far right and the fascist far right is obscene! Both want "free trade" with a country whose ground is SOAKED with the blood of workers--a country where hundreds of their bodies turn up in mass graves because their rotting corpses have poisoned the local water supply thus poisoning local children who drink the water! And one side of the far right wants to give out boondoggle private 'contracts' for "re-training" U.S. workers and the other wants to give those 'contracts' to Bible Colleges for the "training" of missionaries and thus are in a snit at the "liberal" far right because the "liberal' far right will give the boondoggle 're-training' 'contracts' to gays and abortionists.

That's the forefront of this delusional 'controversy.' A "permitted to be" elected president who told people a pack of goddamn lies about "hope" and "change" vs an anti-Congress packed with utter scumbags (s)elected by ES&S/Diebold to put up dumbshow of Mad Tea Party 'democracy'!

I feel a bit like Jonathan Swift, who became so angry at the British Empire for its policies in Ireland that he not only "proposed" that the Irish sell their babies to the English to dine upon, like roast pork, as a "fix" for the Irish economy, he had to run up and down the stairs of his house to dissipate his rage.

Here's my "Modest Proposal," Barack: Gather all Latin American babies into one place--some city you like, say Chicago-- where you start a new U.S. industry, and employ U.S. workers, to render their fat into biofuel.

No. Bad idea. The corporate rulers will surely computerize it. But hey, Mr. Obama, you can put up a big "fight" against computerization of the Baby Fat Industry and, when you "lose," hand out 'contracts' to your favorite lobbyists for 're-training' workers to boil cats and dogs for biofuel instead. So much more "humane"!

:cry: :shrug: :wow: :shrug: :cry:

[naaman fletcher]

4. What's the Orrin Hatch deal?

I have not heard that before.

[Bacchus39]

5. me neither n/t

s

[flamingdem]

6. wow! nt