(editorial cartoon and commentary from Cleveland Plain Dealer by Ray Tapajna)
President Bill Clinton, Sen. Bob Dole and Rep. Newt Gingrich joined together in passing the unfair trade agreements- NAFTA and GATT. When it came to Globalism, they acted as one. Soon after NAFTA was passed by a Democrat led Congress and a Democrat President in bed with the free-trader Republicans, President Clinton bailed out the Mexican Peso funding Mexico over $20 Billion dollars. The workers not only lost their jobs but actually paid out money as taxpayers to ship their jobs outside the USA.
Corporate leaders like "Chainsaw" Dunlap slashed workers in order to show a better bottom line. As we know now in 2002, many corporations fired workers and cook their books for the sake of stock values. The stock market thrived on workers getting fired instead of hired in an artificial paper economy.
At the same time, the governmetnt cooked their books too showing a surplus where there really was none. President Clinton used the Social Security Trust Fund to support his "Wag the Dog" wars. Today, we have President Bush doing much of the same.
Millions are now "un-netted" , "missing in action" from any kind of reporting as the unemployment stats were "cooked" too. Only about 33 to 40 % of all workers qualified for unemployment insurance and so the Bureau of Labor Statistics bypassed the unemployment offices to get their statistics by calling 50,000 households a month with dubious questions.
In the end, the stock market lost trillions of dollars in value while the American Worker slipped into a silent depression with a new working poor class created. The American Dream faded away as many lost everything they worked and save for their entire lives. And a church bulletin in our city read, "Success is reaching Social Security age before having to declare bankruptcy." as personal bankruptcies broke records almost every year.
Many are "un-netted" and no longer a part of any "network" - they no longer exist in our Global economy. They are invisible while the Global economy now breeds war, too.
