Ken Calvert (R-CA)... And Our Political Class' Mad Rush To Serve Mammon

Calvert & Cantor-- backing job growth, but not in America

Although Ken Calvert is probably best known in his Orange County, California district for when he was arrested in a public park with a young drugged-up hooker and his pants down around his ankles (see arrest record or for when Fox News exposed him as one of Congress' most corrupt members (watch Chris Wallace tell the Ken Calvert story), in DC, he has another reputation as well: the establishment shill who plays ball with every corporate lobbyist in town with a checkbook. One of Boehner's most unwavering puppets, he's always doing things like screaming about how horrible bailouts are, but them voted twice for Bush's multi-billion dollar T.A.R.P. bank bailout. (Turns out he just doesn't like bailouts for the victims of the banksters' criminal looting of the middle class, a criminal looting that Ken Calvert got a nice fat cut from. So far Calvert has scarfed up $1,159,136 in legalistic bribes from the finance industry-- and another $220,723 from some of Washington's most notoriously sleazy lobbyists.)
 
And the Obama/Boehner job-killing trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, are right up his alley. The bribes are sloshing around Washington for this one like few other bills this year. And Calvert doesn't only hire whores-- he is one. So no one could have been surprise when he gleefully tweeted this yesterday:


I was great that the Senate finally passed the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Act of 2011 (S.1619) yesterday-- and with a nice bipartisan majority, 63-35. It addresses China's currency manipulation, also a job destroyer. But the House Republican leadership, supported by goons like Calvert, is refusing to let it come up for a vote there, in effect, killing it. Instead, Boehner, Cantor-- and, of course, Calvert-- are drooling to pass the 3 toxic trade treaties. Yesterday, while the Senate was addressing the consequences of China's currency shenanigans, Alan Grayson sent a letter to his constituents explaining why he would vote against these dishonest bills Calvert and his cronies are so enamoured of.

This week, we’ll see Congress vote on three so-called “trade agreements.” Did you ever wonder why they call them “trade agreements”? So that they don’t have to call them what they actually are-- treaties.

Under our Constitution, a “Bill” requires the approval of a majority of both Houses of Congress and the President’s assent, or an override of the President’s veto. But under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2, a “Treaty” requires “the Advice and Consent of the Senate... provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

The Powers That Be know that these “trade agreements” couldn’t get the support of two-thirds of the Senate. In fact, they probably couldn’t get past a filibuster. So they just renamed them. They’re not treaties, they’re just “trade agreements.”

But they sure look like treaties, don’t they? They are agreements between our government and a foreign government. That’s a treaty.

If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck... and it quacks... it’s a duck.

But they don’t care. They can’t get the two-thirds that they need in the Senate, so they’ll just pretend that they don’t need it.

And the “fast track” treatment of these “trade agreements,” which thankfully expired in 2007? Also unconstitutional. That’s one Congress (the 93rd Congress, for those who are keeping score) purporting to dictate procedures and rules to subsequent Congresses. You can’t do that, according to Article I, Section 5 of the aforesaid U.S. Constitution.

So here we are in this mad rush to serve Mammon, not only shoveling jobs overseas, but trampling on our Constitution while we do it.

I hope that when the Panama, Colombia and South Korea “trade agreements” come before the House and the Senate this week, at least one Member of Congress (Dennis Kucinich, maybe? Ron Paul, maybe?) has the guts to stand up and say, “point of order, for the Chair. These bills are not properly before the House, and they require they concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate. I REQUEST A RULING BY THE CHAIR.”

Let’s see what the Parliamentarians say. If they end the charade, then it’s over. And if they go along with the charade, then let’s have a vote.

I just hope that if such a vote does take place, that every Member of Congress remembers that he or she swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

And, as always, House Democratic Whip and corporate whore supreme, Steny Hoyer, is leading conservative Democrats across the aisle to vote with the Republicans against working families.

“I don’t know what the numbers are-- we’re not whipping these bills, per se-- but I do expect them to pass with bipartisan support,” said Hoyer, who supports all three bills.

...Many liberal Democrats have argued for years that the trade pacts will benefit multinational corporations at the expense of U.S. workers. And on the eve of the votes, most of those concerns haven’t been alleviated simply because a Democrat has taken residence in the White House.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said the FTAs will “facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs overseas and fail to adequately protect the environment.” 

Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) has warned the deals “will undermine U.S. manufacturing at a time when we need to rebuild it.”

And Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said the agreements would lead to “phenomenal job creation-- the only problem is the jobs are being created in foreign nations.”

The votes in the House yesterday were pretty lopsidedly against the American people. The 3 trade treaties passed with big bipartisan margins-- and Obama didn't even have to hire a leg-breaker like Rahm Emanuel the way Clinton did to shove NAFTA down Democrats' throats. First up was Colombia-- where the fascists are murdering union organizers-- and that passed 262-167. Only 9 Republicans crossed the aisle to stand up for American workers... while 31 Democrats disgraced themselves by voting with Boehner and Cantor (and Obama) on this. Los Angeles area primary voters looking for a difference between Berman and Sherman, just found one. Berman sided with the murderers and corporate job outsourcers. Sherman voted with American working families. Hoyer, of course, voted with the Republicans. In fact, Berman voted for all three treaties and Sherman voted against them all. Pelosi led the Democrats against the vote.

More Democrats voted for the Panama deal and fewer Republicans voted against it. It passed 300-129. Pelosi joined the rest of the Party Establishment on this one. And the one that will probably do American working families the most severe damage, the really terrible treaty with South Korea, passed 278-151. 21 Republicans had more sense than Obama on this one. 59 Democrats, primarily a bunch of Blue Dogs and corporate whores, voted with Boehner and Cantor to pass a bill that will just ship more jobs overseas. What a betrayal of working families by our political elites!

Above you see some telling tweets from Senator Bernie Sanders. He went into it a little more fully in an e-mail to his Vermont constituents yesterday:

Trade agreements like NAFTA and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China have cost this country millions of good-paying jobs as companies shut down factories here and move to low-wage countries abroad. 
 
In the last 10 years alone we have lost 50,000 factories and it is harder and harder to buy products manufactured in the United States.  These new trade agreements are nothing more than a continuation of a failed trade policy and should be rejected.  Our demand must be that corporations reinvest in this country, create jobs here and not in China or other low-wage countries. 

In the United States today, real unemployment is 16 percent, the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. One of the reasons is that we now have far fewer decent-paying manufacturing jobs that we used to. We need trade policies that protect the interests of American workers, and not just the CEOs of large corporations.