Happily Ever Forever

(D)ude: Man! The United States Department of Commerce and the Clinton Global Initiative and the Congressional Republicans are coordinating a jab at President Obama via the plight of American steel and manufacturing workers facing layoffs and reduced work hours as a result of the U.S.-Korea Trade Agreement enforced on March 15, 2012 with the intension of eliminating all tariffs within the course of a decade and the unintended consequence that is being felt a year later, that being South Korea dumping inferior quality steel into the United States, which is being utilized in building United States transportation infrastructures.

(M)an: Dude! What ties the Congressional Republicans and the Commerce Department to the Clinton Global Initiative specifically? Regarding the Korean market and free trade agreements, I am concerned too because the Office of the United States Trade Representative Michael Froman is not addressing anything about keeping the countries on the receiving end of our Free Trade Agreements accountable ethically, economically and socially too.

D: Man! United States Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker spoke at a recent 2014 CGI event in Denver, Colorado, addressing the issues surrounding workforce readiness and on the job training opportunities in the new millennium for America’s workers. However, the Department of Commerce blog mentions Charting a New Course: Education and Employing America’s Future Leaders and, two paragraphs later, enable a number of communities to train workers for careers in cutting edge industries, such as advanced manufacturing, IT, and healthcare. What about the rest of US who are not destined for leadership positions but depend on our non-advanced manufacturing jobs to sustain not just ourselves but our entire families?

M: Dude! What are we to do in the face of South Korea not respecting the terms set forth in the contractual agreements with US and, moreover, our International Trade Administration’s functionally defunct Industry and Analysis and Enforcement and Compliance units, responsible for, respectively, strengthening relationships with manufacturing and services industries to increase U.S. exports and enforcing U.S. trade laws and ensuring compliance with trade agreements negotiated on behalf of U.S. industry.  

D: Man! George Herbert Walker Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement but President Clinton enforced it with more Republican supporters than Democrat in the House on November 17, 1993 as well as in the Senate. Likewise, George Walker Bush signed the free trade agreement between the USA and Korea, or KORUS FTA, on June 30, 2007 but President Obama renegotiated several of the specifics in that trade agreement before signing on in December 2010 and sending it to pass both houses of congress on October 12, 2011.   

M: Dude! Wednesday’s guest column in Virginia, Minnesota’s Mesabi Daily News written by U.S. Steel Corporation’s Chris Masciantonio and United Steelworkers’ John Rebrovich, co-chairs of the Iron Ore Alliance, address the issue of South Korea and eight additional countries violating the trade laws of the United States summarily:

About one year ago, U.S. Steel and other domestic steel companies filed a trade case against the countries, based on an intense surge in underpriced steel products imported into the U.S. market.  We strongly believe these products are being illegally dumped into our country at prices below market value and in ways designed to circumvent U.S. trade laws. U. S. Steel’s trade case is currently pending with the U.S. Department of Commerce, and a decision is expected in mid-July.

Our country has trade laws that serve as the last line of defense for American companies and workers threatened by illegal trade activity. When these rules are not effectively enforced, American jobs are placed in jeopardy.

If the federal government doesn’t aggressively enforce our country’s trade laws, Minnesota mining operations will become vulnerable and jobs will be threatened, including the 583,000 steel-related jobs across the nation.

The steel products that are being dumped into the U.S. market are called oil country tubular goods (OCTG). These steel pipe products are used in energy production and play a critical role in our nation’s progress toward energy independence.

D: Man! Has the United States been dealt this issue of free trade agreement ethical practices before?

M: Dude! According to Masciantonio and Rebrovich the United States was dealt the same situation with China six years ago:

In 2008, Chinese steel companies aggressively dumped these same products into the U.S. market, causing pipe mills across the nation to close or operate at less than 30 percent capacity. Thousands of steelworkers were left without jobs. The unfair dumping in 2008 hurt Minnesota’s iron mining operations as well.

The industry fought against the illegally dumped Chinese imports and won, and we now need to achieve the same result in 2014. Chinese imports of OCTG dramatically declined from more than 2 million tons in 2008 to trace amounts in 2013. This is proof that our economy prospers when domestic companies and steelworkers have a fair chance to compete in a rules-based market.

D: Man! Talking about rules-based markets and the United States, what about John Roberts’ SCOTUS deciding unanimously against the safety barriers between patients seeking women’s health resources such as abortion counseling and services and protesters outside such healthcare clinics?

M: Dude! What about the Green family in the Hobby Lobby case still to be decided by John Roberts’ SCOTUS? Isn’t there a perverse double standard in perversion here?

D: Man! Yes, there is a perverse double standard here! If religious employers’ perverse whims, such as in the case of the Green family that is choosing to hide behind descriptors like conservatism and religiousness, to delve into their employees’ sexual health issues, specifically refusing healthcare coverage regarding contraception, isn’t thwarted, then what’s the future going to be like for women in a country that is the leader in male impotence drugs like Viagara and Cialis?

M: Dude! Former Republican Tea GOP Senator Robert Dole came out and addressed his erectile dysfunction somewhere in the nineties. But if the Green family from Hobby Lobby can make contraceptive care a religious issue and a matter of conservatism, then men should be banned from considering their erectile issues matters of healthcare and Viagara and Cialis ought to be considered just as religiously and conservatively inappropriate as female contraceptives.

D: Man! These free trade agreements originating from the Bush eras are errors and John Roberts’ SCOTUS is only making life in the United States unimaginably difficult and ushering in a new error in American law enforcement concerning defining assault and battery. The syndicated American columnist George Will’s June 6th article about progressivism’s ills, particularly the stringent insistence of law and order that has created a culture of sexual victimhood on college campuses in the United States, as he shamelessly admits to his own perversions by placing all the blame on the victims through theoretical scenarios he formulates and then derides, like the case of the woman who claimed date rape although she had consensual sex many times with the man she later identified as her rapist.

M: Dude! George Will could well be a sexual tourist and sexual opportunist, like that fictional character that Anthony Hopkins portrayed in that Jodie Foster film by the director Jonathan Demme. I also believe the same can be said of a lot of the Republican Tea GOP membership. These predominantly male sadists, like Anthony Hopkins’ character at the end of that Jodie Foster film by director Jonathan Demme going off to the island of Bimini in the Bahamas, venture to foreign lands where there is no law and order restricting exploitation and prostitution of women and children.

D: Man! Didn’t Anthony Hopkins’ character go to Bimini in search of his physician   jailer’s whereabouts for the intent and purpose of killing him?

M: Dude! Perhaps, but I remain convinced that these free trade agreements and the Congressional 

Republicans’ deliberate inactions only blur the lines between our human trafficking crisis and the exploitation of women and children worldwide. If South Korea can cheat and get away with dumping inferior steel in the USA, then what guarantees have we that South Korea is not cheating and getting away with lax regulations concerning its human trafficking crisis?

D: Man! I want to hear more from Alexandra Pelosi, the brilliant journalist and filmmaker who happens to be the daughter of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California. Alexandra was on MSNBC Live this morning and spoke incredibly to the point about the influx of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border between Mexico and Texas since October, over 52,000 being granted government protection by the United States of America thus far. According to the Bloomberg Review’s Francis Wilkinson, President Obama should have taken on immigration reform sooner, but what Wilkinson is overlooking in declarations about the Republican Tea GOP criticizing the President’s Administration for having responded later to the immigration crisis, is that the Obama Administration has been keeping the children from harm’s way, including deportation to those Central American countries where they were already living on the edge when promised the American Dream by smugglers in exchange for what could be upwards of five thousand dollars.

M: Dude! United States laws regarding assault and battery keep everybody entitled to their personal space and physical safety. Have American Press Corps representatives like George Will and the John Roberts’ SCOTUS not learned of the horrors associated with invasion of personal space in societies which do not legally protect against assault and battery as harshly as US?

D: Man! Doesn’t anyone remember the plight of the women during the Arab Spring in Egypt, especially the high incidents of sexual misconduct by male spectators despite women wearing conservative burqas in Tahrir Square? And what about the trial of the twelve males suspects suspected of sexually victimizing females during Al-Sisi’s election and inauguration as recent as this past June Third and June Eighth? 

M: Dude! That’s why laws are so paramount to human decency! George Will seems to suggest that the United States be able to follow an honor system with regards to sexual assault, which is how he defines rape. But I think rape as sexual battery, assault being defined as the threat of violence and battery being defined as physical violence.

D: Man! God willing and United States laws standing, we can enjoy the ball drop in New York City on New Year’s Eve on television knowing that Americans still have reverence for each other’s  personal space and that the live audience in Time’s Square can still mingle without assault.

M: Dude! Living in the United States should be without insult too! Unfortunately, even though there are cyber-bullying laws in effect in the United States and campaigns like It Gets Better, there is no serious protection from being verbally targeted, except if you can prove that there is some overt intent to do physical harm that is causing the victim’s apprehension and whether the victim had an awareness of danger.

D: Man! Attempted battery assault versus aggravated assault? Remember that unstable character that Michael Douglas played who threatened the entire police force with a plastic water gun for the entire length of the film and then was shot in crossfire when he withdrew the plastic water gun from his pant pocket finally? Well, that’s what the Republican Tea GOP must be held accountable for doing to US and why Americans  must vote on Election Day Tuesday, November 4, 2014.