Via the Western Confucian: Anchor Lou Dobbs resigns from CNN

What is he thinking of doing? Running for office? Starting a third-party, or perhaps strengthening an existing one? He has been criticized for being racist and deliberately stating falsehoods on the air, but he may be able to show some how to win the votes of MARs.

Lou Dobbs has a radio show now--I found out about it just tonight, so I haven't had a chance to listen to it. Locally his show is supposedly broadcast by 910 AM - KNEW, but I don't see him listed on the station's weekday schedule. You can listen to it online from 2-6 PM ET. (There is also the option of downloading the show.)

New url for Lou Dobbs

http://loudobbs.tv.cnn.com/

Candidates Agree: More Cheap Foreign Labor

Transcript of tonight's show, which featured Ralph Nader and Bob Barr. If a video becomes available later, I will post it.

60 minutes interview with Lou Dobbs

here

Ron Paul videos

Via Lew Rockwell--Congressman Ron Paul Visits My Dorm Room:


The Complete Interview, pt 1


pt 2


pt 3


pt 4


Also via Lew Rockwell:
Ron Paul on Lou Dobbs
A better qualty vid:


Ron Paul on Red Eye, pt 1


Pt 2

Lou Dobbs testifies before Congress on free trade

Lou Dobbs testifies before Congress on free trade

POSTED: 1:30 p.m. EDT, March 28, 2007

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Lou Dobbs testified today before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. The hearing was entitled "Trade, Foreign Policy, and the American Worker." Below is the transcript of Lou's testimony.

There's Nothing Free About Free Trade
"The United States has sustained 31 consecutive years of trade deficits, and those deficits have reached successively higher records in each of the past five years. The trade deficit has more than doubled since President George W. Bush took office. The U.S. trade deficit has been a drag on our economic growth in 18 of the 24 quarters of George W. Bush's presidency.

The current account deficit in 2006 reached almost $857 billion, also a new record, and now represents 6.5 percent of our total GDP. Since 1994, the first full year in which the North American Free Trade Agreement was in effect, the United States has accumulated more than $5 trillion in external or trade debt.

The United States has been a debtor nation for almost three decades now, and with our trade debt now rising at a faster rate than the national debt, the United States could be consigned to international debtor status in perpetuity. That is, unless the U.S. government adopts a pragmatic and responsible new direction in its fiscal and trade policies.

Congress is being called upon this year to renew fast-track authority, and the Bush administration, as it did five years ago, is insisting that Congress continue to cede its Constitutional power and responsibility of trade policymaking and to renew so-called "fast-track" trade promotional authority, which diminishes Congressional prerogative and reduces representation of domestic interest in the name of so-called "free trade."

As I've already pointed out, free trade has been the most expensive trade policy this nation has ever pursued. There is nothing free about ever-larger trade deficits, mounting trade debts and the loss of millions of good-paying American jobs.

Since the beginning of this new century, the United States has lost more than three million manufacturing jobs. Three million more jobs have been lost to cheap overseas labor markets as corporate America campaigns relentlessly for "higher productivity, "efficiency," and "competitiveness," all of which have been revealed to be nothing more than code words for the cheapest possible labor in the world.

Corporate America and our country's political elites have combined to put this country's middle-class working men and women into direct competition with the world's cheapest labor. Salaries and wages now represent the lowest share of our national income than any time since 1929. Corporate profits have the largest share of our national income than at any time since 1950.

The pursuit of so-called free trade has resulted in the opening of the world's richest consumer market to foreign competitors without negotiating a reciprocal opening of world markets for U.S. goods and services. That isn't free trade by any definition, whether that of classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo or that of current propaganda ministers who use the almost Orwellian term to promote continuation of the trade policies followed for the last three decades.

How important is it that we reverse the course of these short-sighted and destructive policies? More than six years ago, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System had this to say about what happens when trade deficits exceed 5 percent of GDP: "We find that a typical current account reversal begins when the current account deficit is about 5 percent of GDP." Again, our current account deficit now represents 6.5 percent of GDP. The authors of the study go on to say: "In general, these episodes involve a declining net international investment position that levels off, but does not reverse, a few years after the current account begins its recovery."

It is important to note that no recovery is underway, and that most importantly, the United States last year suffered negative investment flows. The cumulative effect of more than three decades of trade deficits and mounting external debt has produced our first investment income deficit on record. This is the first time that Americans have earned less on investments abroad than foreigners earned on their investments in the United States since 1946, when the Commerce Department began keeping records.

Amazingly, even our own top trade officials admit that U.S. free trade policies aren't working, unless they consider trade surpluses for our trading partners to be the objective of U.S. trade policy.

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab appears to understand the consequences of the past few administrations' free trade policies, but she's shown little willingness to shift that policy. Schwab said, "...Our trade deficits are too high. We can't...pretend that the trade imbalance can just keep getting bigger with no cost."

And Ambassador Schwab's Deputy Trade Representative, Karan Bhatia, said outright, "From Chile to Singapore to Mexico, the history of our [Free Trade Agreements] is that bilateral trade surpluses of our trading partners go up."

Because I seek balance and reciprocity in our trade policies, I've been called a "table-thumping protectionist," and the Bush administration has hurled at me its favorite public epithet, "economic isolationist." Nothing could be farther from the truth. I believe, as I hope you and the majority of all members of this Congress believe, irrespective of your political party, in the importance of an international system of trade and finance that is orderly, predictive, well-regulated, mutual and fair.

Reciprocity does not in any way connote protectionism. Mutuality does not in way connote economic isolationism. But both terms when applied to our trade policy require a pragmatism and a commitment to the domestic and national interests of this country in all international agreements. And I believe, as I hope you do, that no international agreement of any kind should ever again be signed by this government without clear, honest understanding of the potentially awesome impact that such agreements have on the lives of our working men and women, our environment, and our quality of life.

I salute and commend you, Mr. Chairman, and this committee for beginning the process of achieving that understanding, and for the first time in a very long time, I am encouraged that this branch of our government is looking upon the United States first as a nation and secondarily as an economy, and is choosing to represent Americans first as citizens, rather than consumers or units of labor.

You have my thanks, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you. I wish you all the best in what I hope becomes a turning point in our great country's history."

Dobbs: We're on a 'fast track' to bad trade policy

POSTED: 11:18 a.m. EDT, April 4, 2007

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The powerful chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charlie Rangel, and I sat down together last night to talk about, among other things, his new book, "And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since."

For 36 years, Rangel has served the constituents of Harlem -- what the new Ways and Means chairman calls "the capital of black America." The chairman's new book is a terrific read and tells the fascinating story of his rise from the impoverished streets of New York to the corridors of power on Capitol Hill.

You'll love the book and the story of Rangel's life. And I suspect you'll have the same thought I did when you finally set the book down: How many more Charlie Rangels will be denied their shot at the American dream because Capitol Hill's corridors are now filled with corporate America's lobbyists, who are working to assure that our middle class and those who aspire to it have as little representation as possible?

Chairman Rangel and other House and Senate leaders face an early test of the Democratic Party's commitment to restoring the vigor of the world's most successful political economy. The test will come in the form of the mind-numbingly dull piece of legislation called Trade Promotion Authority, or "fast track." But there is nothing dull about the impact of the legislation, through which Congress cedes its constitutional authority on trade policymaking to the White House (as cited in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution).

Thirty-one years of consecutive trade deficits and the loss -- in just the last six years -- of millions of manufacturing and good-paying middle-class jobs to outsourcing have been the result of what I consider this unconstitutional ceding of power to the executive branch in the form of fast-track authority.

Last week, I testified to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade that our failed "free trade" of the past three decades has been the most expensive policy the U.S. government has ever pursued.

I also told the committee: "The pursuit of so-called free trade has resulted in the opening of the world's richest consumer market to foreign competitors without negotiating a reciprocal opening of world markets for U.S. goods and services. That isn't free trade by any definition, whether that of classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo or that of current propaganda ministers who use the almost Orwellian term to promote continuation of the trade policies followed for the last three decades." Extending fast-track authority assures that continuation.

I'm not alone in the view that free-trade-at-all-costs has harmed American workers. Princeton University economist and former Federal Reserve Board vice chairman Alan S. Blinder has joined Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson and Joseph Stiglitz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as skeptics of the benefits the faith-based economists in this administration love to tout.

Blinder is now stating loudly that a new industrial revolution will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. Blinder has said, "Economists who insist that 'offshore outsourcing' is just a routine extension of international trade are overlooking how major a transformation it will likely bring -- and how significant the consequences could be. The governments and societies of the developed world must start preparing, and fast."

I hope that Chairman Rangel and the Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate will refuse to renew fast-track authority and demand their constitutional power over trade policymaking and begin representing working men and women in all future trade negotiations.

I'm sure Charlie Rangel would agree with me that every American deserves the right to better days, a promise that is the foundation of our country and the American dream.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.

Go here for the link to the video of Mr. Dobb's interview with Rep. Rangel

Dobbs: Democratic hacks embrace lunacy of amnesty

Via Conservative Times

Dobbs: Democratic hacks embrace lunacy of amnesty
POSTED: 5:12 p.m. EST, March 7, 2007

By Lou Dobbs

Editor's note: Lou Dobbs' commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- This new Congress was supposed to be different. Instead, it is being led by a gaggle of partisan hacks pandering to the same special interests and corporate masters as the previous Republican-led Congress.

So-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation is about to take a privileged position on the Democratic agenda in the Senate. It will likely succeed, just as it did in that august chamber last year, when 38 Democratic senators sided with the president to pass the bill and tried to slam amnesty down the throats of the House of Representatives and their 300 million constituents.

And the now Democratic-controlled House is likely to embrace rather than combat the lunacy of amnesty.

The same characters are already shoveling the same nonsense that overwhelmed reason in the Democratic Party and the Bush administration last year. Front and center in their march to madness: The bill's sponsor, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force Rep. Luis Gutierrez and House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren.

Also meeting with Sen. Kennedy this week is the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahoney. The good senator is rounding up all of the usual suspects to lead the charge in advance of his introduction of the amnesty legislation, expected within the next week or two.

Cardinal Mahoney has said point blank that his followers should disregard laws on immigration as a matter of Catholic conscience. This is the same Cardinal who fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep secret all documents related to pedophilia among priests. But the Cardinal and other Catholic leaders are quick to embrace the laws of bankruptcy protection in order to not compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy and keep them out of the U.S. judicial system. So far, five such dioceses have done just that.

The same corporate lobbyists and dominant special interests that drove last year's legislation are even more energetic this year, and they're enthusiastically helping Senator Kennedy write the new legislation. The biggest business lobby in the country, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its associated organization, the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, are actually writing parts of the bill, presumably so that none of our other senators would be unfairly burdened by actually doing their own work. Or perhaps in Senator Kennedy's estimation, they simply don't have the intellectual wherewithal to tackle the required mental heavy-lifting.

Senator Kennedy and his staff claim they're not being secretive about the details of the so-called comprehensive immigration reform, but they're just not willing to tell the public or other senators how the bill is being constructed. Notable Republicans are growing increasingly frustrated by their exclusion from the process, taking some umbrage at the immigrant advocacy groups replacing them in that process.

The Chamber of Commerce itself is feverish with expectation, confident their reform bill will certainly keep wages depressed. The Chamber claims there's a labor shortage in many of these industries: construction, housing services, leisure and hospitality. And that's where the cleverly named Essential Worker Immigration Coalition comes in. Founded, staffed and supported by the Chamber itself, the coalition is made up of the same industries claiming they desperately need more workers.

But there is a non-trivial disconnect here: In each of those industries, a labor shortage leads to higher wages. Unfortunately for the EWIC and the Chamber, and really for American workers, real wages in those industries have been declining, suggesting a very real surplus, not a deficit, of unskilled labor. Yet this President and this Congress continues to push the adoption of a guest-worker program. It's no wonder they have matching approval ratings in the low 30s.

Real wages in the overall construction sector have fallen nearly 2 percent since the start of the decade and nearly 4 percent since the recent wage peak in 2003. Construction workers in 2006 were making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1965 (measured in 1982 dollars). Landscaping workers have also seen real wages fall by nearly 4 percent since 2001. For the leisure and hospitality sector, workers are making the same per-hour salary as they did in 1972.

I've said for years that we cannot reform immigration if we cannot control it, and we cannot control it unless we secure our borders and ports. Once again it is clear that corporate America, special interests and the out-of-touch elites of the Senate have little regard for truth, working Americans, the common good and the national interest.

The Democratic Party is now putting working Americans and their families in the exact same position as the Republicans: last.

This Democratic-led Congress and this Republican President seem intent on pushing middle-class Americans, and truth, into the shadows. We asked for bipartisanship. But I don't think we can stand any more of it.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer.