We’re Not The Only Selfish Rat Bastards On The Planet

I was listening to the debate about NAFTA on The News Hour and it got me curious about a few things. There was a representative from the AFL-CIO who chirped that our trade deficits with the two countries has increased by $100 billion a year. As I’ve mentioned before that’s mostly from oil imports and, if I have my numbers right, we have a surplus x-oil and natural gas. But I’m not sure I have the right numbers (I did my best) so I won’t hold it out as true but as my best guess.

On the same program the opposition, a fellow from CATO, congratulated Canada for signing a bi-lateral trade agreement with Columbia. The EU is at an end-stage negotiation with Columbia as well. The irony is that the bases for the text came from the U.S. trade agreement that Democrats won’t bring to the floor for ratification. So we can only assume one thing; the Canadians and the Europeans don’t think all this noise about labor standards and the environment is enough of a cause to keep them from doing business.

Now that many people on the left are sure that U.S. hegemony is the reason we have lost standing in the world it seems a bit hypocritical when they pursue simply a different type of hegemony. On the one hand they contend that we should not be trying to impose democracy on theocracies that kill women after they have been raped but it’s OK to tell them that we’re going to assess punitive tariffs if they don’t live up to our labor and environmental standards.

As far as environmental standards in Mexico, I haven’t a clue, but ignoring NAFTA for the moment we should continually criticize Mexico for not cracking down on corruption as well as their almost feudal view of property rights.

As far as Canada is concerned, they take the notion that their vast resources should be exploited to create jobs in industries like wood products and oil. Can you imaging a tar sands project being allowed in the U.S.? From clear cutting to butchering the face of the earth, the Canadians make the U.S. look like environmental gods. Just take Lake Erie for example. Look off the souther shore and you see no natural gas development. On the Canadian side there is a vibrant and growing effort to pump as much gas out of the ground as capital formation can attract.

But the Canadian’s are worse yet. After years of environment saving high gas taxes their pigs, I tell you, pigs. With gas now going for about $5.11/gal in Canada those selfish rat bastards use the stuff like water. Here’s a comparison or per capita consumption:

Selfish rat bastards!

Source

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.