Bob Borosage is a labor union person, yes?
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[mbs] Not exactly. He is Jesse Jackson's chief aide and runs a liberal org that mainly dispenses information. He is pro-labor but is left of the AFL. His org is probably supported by labor to some extent.
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His real audio interview,
available at the labor union affiliated website www.ourfuture.org, has as
its two basic themes the unique perfidiousness of China and the need to
pry open its markets -- which he thinks the WTO can't do properly because
they don't understand point one.
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[mbs] I will give a listen to that and get back to you. Chauvinism and anti-communism would be the last thing I would expect from Bob. If anything, he would tend to err on the side of radical McGovernism. His whole career has been in the service of non-interventionism and anti-racism.
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There's another point of the labor union argument I don't understand,
which that "if we let in China, it will be impossible to ever have a
working labor clause." There are already 100 third world authoritarian
governments in the WTO representing 2 billion people. Why would it be
easier to get them to abide by a labor clause than 1 authoritarian
government that rules over 1 billion people? Especially one that's got a
relatively tight grip on economic regulation for a third world government.
Michael
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Politics. Symbolic events have real political effects. This tends to be lost on people (present company excepted) who see everything as controlled by a monolithic ruling class. Elites are divided and the decisions 'They' make are the creature of bargaining, jawboning, public opinion, and the workings of their own legislatures.
A no-strings admission of China is a way of saying, forget about labor/enviro standards. A denial keeps the ball in play.
mbs