The New York Times Editorial Board claims that the Trump administration will empower China if it walks away from the TPP. Here’s my response:
Ratifying the TPP would have empowered the Beijing Communists without question given their profound influence over southeast Asia. Increasing our dependence on products manufactured by sub-$1 hour Vietnamese laborers would mean ever more American dollars ultimately cycling through China. Meanwhile our manufacturing and tax base would continue to weaken as jobs would flee overseas. In the binary world which we currently inhabit, weakening the US helps China and strengthening China hurts the US.
Another point which establishment Democratic organs, like the NYT editorial board, always ignore is that that the TPP would be an absolute disaster for the environment. While Trump is a dangerous and ignorant know-nothing denier, his insistence that we stop with all the foreign trade could lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of container ships churning up the Pacific while gulping and belching filthy diesel fuel and cargo jets spewing contrails filled with carbon dioxide directly into the atmosphere.
halginsberg
The Lesser Rusty
OMG! 1st no Blue Wave. Bad enough, but w/Trump’s threat 2use SCOTUS 2stop the votecount the shit has really hit the fan. What is the basis 4this? R we now a banana republic? Trump is treating r election like he is
aji chili lover
Bird
Well said, Hal. I hope you sent this to the NYTimes as a letter to the editor.
Thanks Arlen. Maybe I’ll go ahead and send a letter to the editor.
Now that Trump won, is it time to stop reacting to him and his latest outrageous appointments? Could we put our efforts into pure blinding creativity building alt-economic, community resource total sharing, less daily organized traffic snarls, sharing housing, rooms, real recycling (ResourceFullRecycling℠), computer directed and routed buses which pick up people where they are, on approved streets, and public lifts (MST bus #3 can lift 2 bicycles at a time to top of Huckleberry Hill but you can’t go into DLI without enlisting with Commander Trump), can climb to the top of accessible parts of hills (generic concept, any hill or half a hill works) could lift bikes, skateboards, to the launch platform area and a choice of curvy paths down to almost any point around the bottom of the hill, or take a moped pathway, to where they might live. A Modern State Transportation (MST) system would be where the clients do get on, they walk right past the farebox, which has a black sack over it, and find seats next to their community friends. There is no interrogation, how old, how disabled, how student, how bus passes with photo ID (Does it match? You can’t be too secure!), no blockage at the door with fumbling for the right coins, wrinkled bills that don’t go thru on the first time, the cost of collecting, straightening, counting, safegarding, precisely accounting for every penny in supposed hi-tech computerized systems with offices of accountants and others, the bus pass picture cards, the other discount cards, the struggle of some who get on with carts, carriages, etc., who try to pay with one hand and guide their cart or baby with the other, the dispersed MST offices and their employees interrupted closed-door lunch hours every weekday making customers wait or come back later, and their elaborate telecommunications and large screen computer displays in the little offices which no one there to do business even looks at! There are other reasons: The bus is Earth’s resource given to us all by either a mindless, randomly acting totally mechanistic material universe which has no note of us . . . or a Deity of your choice(s), and the labor of those who built the bus should benefit the community as was intended (by Him, Her, It), not just generate additional cash for a bus “agency” because of bureaucratic policy, not when they are already 80% funded by taxed persons standing outside the bus they can not enter without paying more than they have, and have already funded as taxpayers and shoppers and are not likely to be employed with the salary, benefits and assured retirement that the people on the inside of MST have. Even bus drivers don’t mind driving mostly with few payers and occasionally alone (look thru the tinted windows, people. Jump on a bus noting time of day and date, bus number, and number of passengers besides the happy driver in the large bobbing buses clogging up traffic on the Penisula and report that data to HomelessHelpers@sonic.net (phone tree coming soon). “Monterey Sucks Transit: If you don’t have the dough, you can’t go!”. I say close the fare boxes, let community members board the bus freely at the stops and the driver can enjoy greeting people he gets to know more and more and enjoy driving for the community again without all the distractions of multiple screens that the driver has to keep punching codes in order to get the passengers admitted by the “system”. And it’s time for really productive recycling computer aided and end the boatloads of large steel containers and dumpsters which go directly to bulldozed areas of the dump and covered at day’s end — depriving the slough wildlife of nourishment! coming alt-Monterey Super Transit. Occupy the buses! Ciao, Flower Child, Monterey Peninsula California, USA