Agmates

News South Wales Cattle Producer John Carter writes;

“This is the second in the series of articles written after my return from the USA where I attended and was a key note speaker at R-CALF USA’s 3 day annual conference held in Omaha Nebraska. I participated and spoke as a representative of the Australian Beef Association (ABA).”

Free Trade Agreements benefit “Billionaire Thugs” and not ordinary citizens.

Conference Key Note Speaker, Lorri Wallach , Director of the 200,000 strong Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch gave Free Trade the most energetic and fact based demolition that I have ever heard.

Her description of the brainpower of those who negotiated the recent Free Trade Agreements is unprintable.

However to summarize Ms Wallach and her organization believe “the US/Australian Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is of no benefit to the ordinary people, but is of huge benefit to multi national chemical companies and other billionaire thugs.”

Ms Wallach contends that the World Trade Authority (WTO) is undemocratic and operates in secrecy, that it is controlled by big business interests who exploit cheap labor abroad and that it has begun to encroach on the rights of countries to protect their environment and restrict imports of unsafe foods and hazardous materials.

However it was the Leadership Townhall meeting following my effort that really impressed me. Sponsored by R-CALF and the Coalition for a Prosperous America, some 300 men and women sat around dinner in the ballroom of the hotel.

An old, dignified Nebraskan Senator spoke of America being brought to its knees and the need for a rebirth. We then listened to seven brilliant speakers address answers to correcting what they believe is the impending US Depression .

Leaders in manufacturing, the trade unions (Union Boss Richard Trumka addressing the conference in the photo below) and farming attacked the de-regulation and free trade policies of the past 20 years.

A man from Paul Revere’s 1801 Revere Copper Products, explained how China was putting them out of business.They could manufacture a Revere silver plated bowl for $20 but China could do it for $14.28, not because of cheaper labor but because of their currency.

Colorado apple farmers are being put out of business by China for the same reason. Free trade just doesn’t work with different currency regimes.

The Union official spoke brilliantly on jobs being lost , health care becoming unaffordable. This was an inspiring coalition.

It was a privilege to be part of a general panel for questions. It was a privilege to be a part of this most inspiring gathering. Photo of me (seated centre) with Judith McGeary of the Farm & ranch Freedom Alliance and R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard answer questions from those at the conference on the Animal ID and Trade Panels.

I wished that anyone with influence in Australia was listening. Here is the policy platform for a new Australian party to take.

This was the heart of America rising against Globalization greed and distortion.

Belatedly Americans are realising that China has outsmarted them. One speaker said “We put the small crooks in yellow suits and send them to gaol and the big ones in pin stripe suits and send them to Washington”.

They see both major parties as multinational stooges. There is a grass-roots mood for change in the USA and these people are serious about getting the de-regulation and Free Trade policy’s of the last 20 years reversed.

New South Wales Cattle Producer John Carter writes:

“This is the third in a series of articles written after my return from the USA where I attended and was a key note speaker at R-CALF USA’s 3 day annual conference held in Omaha Nebraska. I participated and spoke as a representative of the Australian Beef Association (ABA).”

The US Economy Is in Deep Trouble

Radio legend, Derry Brownfield, a friend of ABA’s Christenson family, made a great lunchtime speech at the conference which I think conveys what is happening in the US economy.

In it , he held up a silver 1923 dollar and a paper 2008 one.

He explained that the 1923 dollar is now worth $17 and the 2008 one is worth $1 if he could find someone to pay it. Brownfield believes that the US is now in recession and headed for a repeat of the 1930’s Depression.

(The photo below is of me speaking at the conference. I was there at the invitation of R-CALF USA, the sister organization to ABA, to speak on how our NLIS is performing. Contrary to Australian propaganda of five years ago they don’t have one.)

The US now owes China $1.5 trillion and the Chinese Government is buying huge slices of US private business and public infrastructure.

Debt is seeing the land of free enterprise being socialised by a communist Government in the same way I believe that Australia is being taken by the Singapore Government.

Earlier, on my flight to Dallas, I had read The Economist’s list of indebtedness and interest rates for 43 countries.

The US, Britain, South Africa, Pakistan, Mexico and Australia (in a mineral boom!) are now the basket cases of the developed World.

For nearly six years Australians and Americans have been told that we have a strong economy! The reverse is true.

A TV interview I saw gave me an insight into the depth of the division between rich and poor in the USA. In the interview a big Afro-American female Senator with her white eyeballs gleaming on the screen said ” The Sub Prime Loans are transferring $190 billion from poor and upwardly mobile black people to billionaire bankers and enslaving them for another two generations”.

This made me reflect on something Union speaker Richard Trumka said during his talk at the R-CALF conference “the US average yearly wage was now achieved by the average US CEO in less than one day !”. This is a recipe for revolution.

Barack Obama is capturing a new mood of hope in the US but the American people I meet at the Convention are working for a major change in how Washington treats its electoral masters -the people- as opposed to Wall St and the 92 billionaires in the US.