Intelligence Chiefs Appointed By Trump Tell Congress He's Wrong-- About Virtually Everything

Mattis and Kelly by Nancy Ohanian

A new poll from Morning Consult offered some more bad news for Trump and his congressional enablers-- and for xenophobes in general. Just 31% of voters support shutting the government down again to force Congress to pay for Trump's vanity-wall, while 58% are opposed to another shutdown. Only 38% like TRump's idea of declaring a state of emergency to build his wall and a majority of Americans oppose it. The latest poll from Quinnipiac-- the one that shows voters trust Nancy Pelosi more than Trump, 49-42%-- shows the minority of Americans who support Trump's wall has shrunk from 43% to 41%, while the 55% of voters who oppose it has remained rock steady.

And it isn't only voters who have no stomach for another shutdown over this idiotic wall of Trump's. Miss McConnell (R-KY), who is unpopular back home and across the country-- and is up for reelection next year-- has changed the famous quote about people who refuse to learn hard lessons: "There certainly would be no education in the third kick of the mule." Yesterday, Jordain Carney reported that "Senate Republicans are signaling they will do just about anything to prevent a second shutdown after the White House was widely seen as badly losing the political fight over the closure that ended with President Trump’s retreat on Friday. Republicans are in no mood to be dragged back into another partial closure in mid-February, the deadline to get a deal on spending for roughly a quarter of the government. The Senate Majority Whip, John Thune (R-SD) characterized a shutdown as a "pox on all of our houses" and McConnell told the media that he "doesn't like shutdowns. I don’t think they work for anybody, and I hope that they would be avoided. I’m for whatever works, which means avoiding a shutdown and avoiding the president feeling that he should declare a national emergency." This comes just when Trump is doubling down and demanding a wall that now includes the coasts of Alabama and Louisiana. He also flipped out on his own intelligence officials:

Shane Harris reported for the Washington Post this week that the intelligence chiefs, testifying before Congress, all took issue with Trump's dangerous fantasies. Trump appointees Gina Haspel (CIA Director), Christopher Wray (FBI Director), Dan Coats (Director of National Intelligence) and others "threw cold water" on Trump's self-serving bullshit that the U.S. and North Korea "will achieve a lasting peace and that the regime will ultimately give up its nuclear weapons."

The distance between the intelligence community and the White House extended to areas that have ignited fierce political debates in Washington.

None of the officials said there is a security crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where Trump has considered declaring a national emergency so that he can build a wall.

Coats noted that high crime rates and a weak job market are likely to spur migrants from Central America to cross into the United States. But he also sounded optimistic that Mexico will cooperate with the Trump administration to address violence and the flow of illegal drugs, problems that Trump has said Mexico isn’t addressing sufficiently.

Officials also warned that the Islamic State was capable of attacking the United States and painted a picture of a still-formidable organization. Trump has declared the group defeated and has said he wants to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as a result.

Coats noted that the terrorist group has suffered “significant leadership and territorial losses.” But it still commands thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria, he said, and maintains eight branches, more than a dozen networks and attracts thousands of supporters around the world.

The officials assessed that the government of Iran was not trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite the Trump administration’s persistent claims that the country has been violating the terms of an international agreement forged during the Obama administration.

Officials told lawmakers that Iran was in compliance with the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as some officials had previously said privately. But Iranian leaders are discussing reneging on the deal if they fail to reap the economic benefits it was supposed to bring after international sanctions were lifted, Haspel said. The Trump administration has reimposed U.S. sanctions.

Intelligence officials largely sidestepped lawmakers’ questions about why certain White House staffers were given security clearances after problems were discovered in their background checks that might ordinarily keep personnel from obtaining access to classified information.

Officials also warned, as they did last year, about Russia’s intention to interfere with the U.S. political system via “information warfare” waged largely on social media, which stokes social and political tensions to divide Americans. Other countries are likely to employ those tactics, as well, Coats said.

“We expect our adversaries and strategic competitors to refine their capabilities and add new tactics as they learn from each other’s experiences, suggesting the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections,” the intelligence director said in his written statement.

Trump continues to equivocate on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf, contradicting the unanimous assessment of all the top intelligence officials currently serving.

At last year’s threats hearing, leaders focused much of their remarks on Russia, unanimously concluding that the country was trying to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections by sowing discord and confusion via social media, as it had two years earlier in the U.S. presidential race.

Last week, Coats emphasized in a national intelligence strategy document that U.S. spy agencies were turning their main focus away from fighting global terrorist networks toward countering Russia and other state adversaries seen as geopolitical threats to the United States.

The United States will be challenged in coming years, the strategy concluded, by nations that exploit “the weakening of the post-WWII international order and dominance of Western democratic ideals” and “increasingly isolationist tendencies in the West.”

Trump went ballistic and it didn't help any that Stars and Stripes, widely read by members of the armed forces, then reported that the intelligence agencies directly contradicted the idiot in the White House and that "their analysis stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s almost singular focus on security gaps at the border as the biggest threat facing the United States...The intelligence assessment, which is provided annually to Congress, made no mention of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, which Trump has asserted as the basis for his demand that Congress finance a border wall. The report predicted additional U.S.-bound migration from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, with migrants preferring to travel in caravans in hopes of a safer journey."

A glimmer of hope. Greg Sargent thinks Trump's hysteria and rage will give the Democrats an opening to solve this mess. Trump's childish tweeting "is actually restricting the maneuvering room Republicans will have in these bipartisan conference talks, which are focused on finding a compromise on Department of Homeland Security funding that will avert another government shutdown in mid-February. Trump is letting it be known that he will continue to define 'border security' as a 'wall' or 'barrier'-- that is, as a down payment on a large and monolithic superstructure that fulfills the fantasy he promised his supporters. That could make it harder for Republicans to accept a deal that spends billions on real border security, just not quite to Trump’s specifications, without enraging the base. But this gives Democrats an opening to go into these talks with a reality-based agenda to address the real problems at the border. And the early signs are that they are going to do just this.

• Democrats will propose hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the border, with upgraded facilities that are better equipped to deal with just-arrived asylum-seeking families and children, including additional medical care and counseling. Democrats will also push for around half-billion in money for additional judges to unclog court backlogs.
• Democrats will propose to increase the amount of border security money to a point higher than the $1.3 billion they originally offered but less than the $5.7 billion Trump wants. (I was unable to obtain the exact figure.) However, this would not be wall or barrier money. Instead, it would be for things such as increased personnel and more sensors along the border, and drug-scanning technology at ports of entry.
• That border security investment would also include more money for Homeland Security personnel who would focus on investigating human trafficking, something both sides agree is a serious problem.
• Democrats will also push to include funding in a related bill that provides more than a half-billion dollars for investments in economic aid and shoring up institutions in Central American countries, to address the terrible civil conditions prompting these migrations of asylum-seekers.

All that said, there doesn't appear to be much of a chance for an immigration deal in Congress in the next 3 weeks. The joint committee isn't getting anywhere, primarily because no one in Congress trusts Trump at all-- on anything. Everyone wants border security but Trump wants an expensive-- an opportunity for massive graft-- and ineffective wall as a monument to a presidency that will be quickly written off as the worst in American history. He seems willing to destroy the well-being of the country if he doesn't get it. And Pelosi and Nadler are still refusing to begin impeachment hearings. That new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters trust Democrats more than Señor Trumpanzee on border security, 50% to 41%, up from a 49% to 44% 2 weeks ago. And Gallup found that the Trump-contagion is spreading rapidly to congressional Republicans. The party's favorability has dropped from 45% to a dismal 37% since September.

And the worst part about this for Republicans up for reelection next year is that the largest decline in favorable ratings of the Republican Party has come among independents, from 41% to 29%. That kind of favorability rating from independents is a death sentence for congressional Republicans in any district that isn't at least R+6. Republicans just cannot win elections without support from independent voters and 29% favorability indicates they do not have it.

Sen. Warren — Signing TPP Means Corporate-Controlled Courts Supersede National Courts

by Gaius Publius

The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) "trade" agreement issue is heating up, and if you follow this subject you may have seen seen our coverage — especially the attempt to divide the left by falsely painting TPP as "progressive":

Obama Campaign Alumni–Led “270 Strategies” Form Astroturf Group to Promote TPP

More on “270 Strategies” — Paid to Play the Insider Game

That cynical messaging, by the way, comes from the same "Democratic" consultancy group — 270 Strategies — that assisted the failed Obama-alumnus Ro Khanna challenge to progressive Rep. Mike Honda.

I want to make two points in this piece. The first is to point out a floor speech by Elizabeth Warren excoriating TPP and its use of corporate-controlled "dispute tribunals" to bypass the court system of any nation that signs it. In essence, corporations (and only them, not labor unions or consumer groups) can sue governments for damages — in their case, loss of future, potential profit — caused by regulations (for example, banning dangerous additives to food) or by programs like "Buy American."

Click the video above to hear her; she's clear and good on this subject. She also explains how these tribunals are "corporate-controlled" (my phrasing, but the concept is hers).

I hope you get from this that TPP and its use of ISDS trade "courts" is a global corporate challenge to national sovereignty, because it's exactly that. Note, by the way, Warren's list of already-filed ISDS challenges (start at 4:20):

"A French company sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage."

"A Swedish company sued Germany because Germany decided to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster."

"A Dutch company sued the Czech Republic because the Czech Republic didn't bail out a bank that the Dutch company partially owned."

Naturally, these are outrages, a naked power and money grab. Yet this is the world that Money First is building. Our thanks to Ms. Warren for this excellent speech and for highlighting this important issue. If you think this kind of greed borders on psychopathic (or crosses that border), you'd not be wrong. If you think the enablers of these people deserve nothing but blame for serving the Money First project, you'd be right.

A note to people like "270 Strategies" — Warren just described the world you're helping to build.

KORUS Just Created Our Largest-Ever Deficit With South Korea

My second point is about our recent "trade" deal with South Korea (called KORUS), to hold it up as an example of the sweetened pre-sale promises — "more jobs, smaller trade deficits" — and the post-signature outcomes that contradict them. About KORUS, Lori Wallach of Public Citizen writes (pdf; my emphasis):

U.S. Exports Down, Imports from Korea Up and Job-Killing Trade Deficit With Korea Balloons 84 Percent on Third Anniversary of Korea Pact, Which Is TPP Template 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Three years after implementation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), government data reveal that the administration’s promises that the pact would expand U.S. exports and create American jobs proved to be the opposite of the pact’s actual outcomes. The post-Korea FTA decline in U.S. exports to Korea and a new flood of imports from Korea have resulted in a major surge in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea that equates to nearly 85,000 lost U.S. jobs. The abysmal FTA record deals a fresh blow to the administration’s controversial bid to Fast Track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), for which the Korea FTA served as the U.S. template. ...

• The U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea has ballooned an estimated 84 percent, or $12.7 billion, in the first three years of the Korea FTA (comparing the year before the FTA took effect to the projected third full year of implementation). In January 2015, the monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea topped $3 billion – the highest level on record.
   
• The surge in the U.S. trade deficit with Korea under the FTA equates to the loss of nearly 85,000 American jobs, according to the trade-jobs ratio that the administration used to promise job gains from the deal.
  
  
• U.S. goods exports to Korea have fallen an estimated 5 percent, or $2.2 billion, in the first three years of the Korea FTA. ...

There's quite a bit more in this packed three-page report. Or if you'd like the gist in one nice (sharable) picture:



Action Opportunity

Why show you this? Because "Fast Track" legislation, a bill that will neuter Congress in its discussion of TPP, is coming, some say like a train. If Fast Track passes, TPP will pass. If Fast Track fails, TPP won't be introduced. It's that simple. As the hash tag says, #NoFastTrack.

What can you do? Call your Senators and your Representative today; then call them again and often:

Senate phone numbers here. House phone numbers here.

The message is simple: No Fast Track. No TPP. No corporate sovereignty. Call the Republicans too — they care about sovereignty as much as anyone, sometimes more.

Remember, Obama wants this badly; the corporations he seems to serve want this badly as well. If the Clinton Global Initiative's annual conference is any indication, Ms. Clinton will want it badly when her turn comes. On this issue, it's Money versus the rest of us, and that's not an exaggeration. We can deny our elected corporate servants the pleasure and rewards of handing money to Money. But only if we act.

Operators are waiting. And thanks!

GP

Serfdom In The 21st Century-- Korea

Too big to fire

My favorite part of the on-going Korean Air scandal is how it exposed the relationship between the plutocracy and the working class. First, meet Cho Hyun-ah, an heiress-- daughter of Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho. Part of her patrimony, apparently is an executive vice presidency at the airline-- and an attitude towards the little people that would make Leona Helmsley blush. As for her very own little people, Cho flew to Hawaii last May to give birth to twin sons so that they would have U.S. citizenship-- something wealthy South Koreans like to do... just in case something goes wrong (and so that they kids don't have to serve in the Korean military).

OK, first the facts in the more recent scandal that has led to Cho be fired by her embarrassed father. She was flying-- first class, of course-- from JFK back to Korea on December 5. She flipped out when a flight attendant handed her macadamia nuts in a bag instead of in a bowl. People in first class get their macadamias in bowls, while the peasants get their bags of peanuts in bags. She went nuts! She summoned the senior steward in charge and demanded an explanation, which didn't satisfy her. So she ordered the plane back to the gate so the flight attendant could be thrown off the plane. And the plane's captain obeyed! Ah... the power and arrogance of Korea's chaebol (family-run mega-conglomerates). Cho's family is especially hated in Korea, and Hanjin, the parent company of Korean Air, got its start serving the U.S. military in the 1940s. Several years ago, Cho's brother, Won-Tae Cho, another spoiled brat and another executive vice-president of the airline and other Hanjin subsidiaries, was investigated by police for shoving an elderly woman who confronted him about his reckless driving. Earlier the patriarch himself, who is a well-known crook, was convicted, along with his own father brother, of tax evasion.

The abused flight attendant who was attacked and berated by an airline executive when he failed to serve her nuts in a bowl on a flight from New York to South Korea is sharing his story.

Screaming Cho Hyun-ah, a senior vice-president at the airline and daughter of the airline's chairman, angrily demanded the removal of the crew member, Park Chang-jin, from the flight when he gave her macadamia nuts in a bag.

She then forced the Incheon-bound flight to taxi back to the terminal at New York's JFK Airport to kick the junior flight attendant off the plane.

Now, Chang-jin has revealed that several officials from Korean Air asked him to deny the incident ever happened.

'People who haven't experienced will not understand that feeling of being insulted and shamed,' Chang-jin told a South Korean television station on Friday.

He said after being berated by  Hyun-ah, he and a fellow flight attendant actually dropped to their knees in front of the woman begging for forgiveness, this as she 'poked the back of his hand with a corner of the flight manual book several times.'

Because she is the daughter of the chairman, he says he had no choice but to follow her orders, returning the plane and deboarding, taking a separate flight home.

  When he got home however, 'five to six officials from Korean Air came to visit his home every day and asked him to give a false account to authorities of what happened.'

What's more, they 'asked him to tell investigators that Cho did not use abusive language and that he voluntarily got off the plane.'

There was talk about Cho being arrested and the family firm did all it could to paper over the whole incident and contain the damage. The Straits Times was eager to give their side of the story.

While it is easy to write her off as another hoity-toity power-abusing chaebol heiress, the hotel management-trained Ms Cho undertook initiatives to improve Korean Air, which she joined in 1999.

Under her charge, the airline had a major image overhaul, complete with new uniforms, redesigned cabin interiors and improved inflight service and duty-free offerings. In 2005, it achieved US$158 million (S$207 million) in duty-free sales, reportedly the highest-ever by any airline at that time.

This figure is expected to hit US$190 million this year, according to travel retail magazine The Moodie Report, which described Ms Cho as a "highly driven individual by her own admission" in a 2006 interview.

Ms Cho was also credited with revamping the inflight magazine and giving it a much-needed feminine touch. She also spent three years convincing La Mer to join the airline's duty-free offerings-- a first for the luxury skincare brand.

"I try to be an ambassador to introduce new and great brands to Koreans who travel," she told Moodie Report.

Cho hasn't been arrested yet but... that could actually happen. A transport ministry official has been arrested for helping with the family coverup. I'm sure he assumed that was part of his job. He's in jail now. The relationship between government functionaries and the families that run the chaebols is, at best, unhealthy and the Cho incident is an opportunity for reform groups to shed light on the sleaze that permeates the whole system.

A local civic group asked the prosecution Friday to look into suspicions that government officials got free upgrades from the country's top airline, Korean Air Lines Co., which is at the center of controversy over an air-rage incident.

...The civic group's move came after allegations surfaced that several ranking transportation ministry officials were bumped up to business class regularly for free.

"Such allegations could be interpreted as bribery," People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy said in a press release, adding that Korean Air executives suspected of giving such privileges to ministry officials could face breach of trust charges.

The ministry said it will launch an internal inspection into the mounting allegations and will take appropriate disciplinary measures against those who received free upgrades.

We just updated this post at my travel blog with a piece by Tim Wu on why the U.S. airlines go out of their way to make their customers suffer. Sure, it's for profit... but there's even more. Worth the click.


UPDATE: Prison Sentence

On February 12, Cho Hyun-ah, the spoiled Korean Air heiress was sentenced to a year in prison, possibly a message to out-of-control elites in that country.

A Seoul court said Cho, 40, was guilty of forcing a flight to change its route, obstructing the flight's captain in the performance of his duties, forcing a crew member off a plane and assaulting a crew member. It found her not guilty of interfering with a transport ministry investigation into the incident. Cho pleaded not guilty and prosecutors had called for three years in prison.

...Cho's high-and-mighty behavior, dubbed nut rage, caused an uproar in South Korea. The incident was a lightning rod for anger in a country where the economy is dominated by family-run conglomerates known as chaebol that often act above the law. The sentencing did not entirely douse that outrage: One year in prison is a "bit short," said Jo Young-sang, 24.

Chaebol chiefs convicted of white collar crimes have typically received suspended prison sentences and later on, presidential pardons. Courts have often acknowledged the contribution of such industrialists in transforming South Korea from an economic backwater into a developed economy.

But the Cho case indicates South Korean society is less indulgent of the second and third generation members of high-profile business families. Heirs to fantastic fortunes such as Cho quickly ascend the executive ladder but few believe their rise is based on merit.

"Most second or third generations of chaebol in South Korea think of themselves as members of royal families or in the special aristocratic class. So they think they can do whatever they want," said Yonsei University psychology professor Whang Sang-min.

...The court sentenced Yeo Woon-jin, a Korean Air executive who pressured employees to lie about the nut rage case, to eight months in prison.

Who Remembers Republican Congressman Jay Kim?

Former U.S. Congressman renounces American citizenship, defects

Much to the embarrassment of Korean-Americans, the first person elected to Congress from their community was Jay Kim, a Seoul-born crooked conservative. A former mayor of suburban Diamond Bar, Kim was elected to Congress from the just created 41st CD in 1992. His campaign and his entire sleazy political career were financed by Korean corporate interests. He was chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's subcommittee for Public Buildings & Economic Development. The story of how he lost his 1998 primary to Arkansas Confederate war reenactor and multimillionaire real estate wheeler-dealer Gary Miller is instructive.

When Republican Congressman Jay Kim and his wife June pleaded guilty to federal charges that they accepted hundred of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions, one might have thought Kim's political career had ended. But the anguishing tale of Jay and June Kim is far from over.

...When the Kims pleaded guilty they knew Jay could face up to three years in prison and that June could get two years. They also faced fines large enough to bankrupt them.

But they also seemed to think Jay could stay in Congress.

...Working under the motto: "Hard work pays off," Jay quickly caught the eye of the Republican Party Leadership and steal fundraisers Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour and was tapped to address the Republican National Convention in 1992 so he could project to Korean-based corporations that the GOP leadership would do them favors in exchange for big soft, hard and illegal donations to Kim-- and perhaps the Republican Party itself.

In a rousing speech, using himself as an example, Jay extolled the virtues of personal responsibility and hard work to realize the American Dream. Unexpectedly, Jay was cast as the "role model" for American immigrants, saying, "Hopefully, they can look at me and say, "He made it. [He stole it.] Why can't I?"

Jay's rapidly growing reputation also cast him into the national media spotlight. Time magazine profiled candidate Kim as one of the political "outsiders," who was a "new broom to sweep a dirty Congress clean."

...[C]onservatives like Jay Kim have insisted that Korean-Americans have fundamental economic and political differences with key members of the Civil Rights Coalition and that Korean-Americans can better meet their interests through the Republican Party and its commitment to fiscal conservatism, law and order, and the "dismantling of the welfare state." Before Kim pleaded guilty to federal crimes, if was unclear whether the liberals or conservatives would win the debate within the Korean-American community.

...When the Kims pleaded guilty US Attorney Nora Manella underscored that Kim's wife June and his campaign committee had also been charged with the campaign finance violations that include accepting donations from corporations and from a foreign national.

"The charges demonstrate that Congressman Kim, his wife and his campaign committee, over a period of years, knowingly and willfully disregarded the campaign finance laws applicable to all candidates for federal office," Manella said in a statement. "Congressman Kim and his wife have acknowledged their criminal conduct and accepted responsibility for it."

Yet a spokesman for the US Attorney's office said it would recommend no more than six months jail time for the Kims, although the judge will have the final say.

After he was convicted, the Washington Post did a story on the uncomfortable life he was forced to live, complete with electronic ankle bracelet and very restricted movement-- which included the halls of Congress and his Faifax apartment (and nowhere else.)

In the past 200 years, at least two House members have kept their seats while serving in prison: Rep. Thomas Lane (D-MA) went to jail from May 7 to Sept. 7, 1956, for tax evasion and Rep. Matthew Lyon (R-VT) was imprisoned for violating the Sedition Act in 1798 but returned to Congress after a mob broke him out of jail. No lawmaker has served in Congress after being sentenced since the creation of the ethics committee in 1968, former House counsel Stanley Brand said.

According to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, Kim has admitted to committing the largest amount of campaign violations ever by a member of Congress. More than one-third of the contributions to his 1992 primary campaign, where he eked out a victory by 889 votes, were illegal.

"Jay Kim probably stole a congressional election in 1992 by this fraudulent campaign financing scheme. If the House is serious about the meaning of elections and democracy, they'll expel him, and soon," said Gary Ruskin, who directs the public watchdog group Congressional Accountability Project. "In my view, Jay Kim's presence cheapens the moral authority of every other member there."

Kim is undeterred in his bid for reelection, even though he originally pledged to serve only three terms and is barred by his sentence from traveling to his district just east of Los Angeles before the June 2 primary. He faces two primary opponents and a national Republican leadership that has signaled it would be just as happy if he loses.

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct recently announced it has expanded its investigation of his activities to include all four of his elections as well as whether he lied to the committee in January.

Then there is Kim's recently estranged wife, June, who is cooperating with the ethics committee and seems intent on informing voters of the shortcomings of her husband of 36 years.

"He is a congressman. He should be clean. He should be a role model," argued June Kim, who also pleaded guilty to accepting illegal campaign donations last year and who has filed for divorce. "In fact, he is the most crime-committing person I know."

But the 59-year-old Kim is nothing if not resilient-as well as audacious. He recently sent a mailing to the voters of his heavily Asian and Hispanic district emblazoned with the image of a dead woman and child, alluding to his family's flight during the Korean War. "Has his dream become a nightmare?" the mailer asks. "It's up to the voters in the 41st District." He has also begun seeking campaign donations by advertising in Korean-language newspapers, touting his connection to Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

Republicans love braying about how more Americans have renounced their U.S. citizenship since Obama was elected than under any other U.S. president-- 7,988 by February, 2014. I guess we can make that 7,989 since the GOP crook, Jay Kim, has renounced his citizenship and is moving back to South Korea, where he's already a part time resident, to run for Congress there. He keeps a home in McLean, Virginia as well. Since being booted out of Congress, Kim has become an honorary citizen of Jeju Province, an international advisor for Gosung-Gun in Kyung-Nam Province, an honorary ambassador for Gyeonggi Province and a public relations advisor to the Office of the President of Korea. He also serves as the chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum.

South Korea Found Guilty Of Illegal Dumping In U.S. Markets-- Who Could Have Guessed!

Last week, we looked at the continuing saga of NAFTA and other so-called "free trade" agreements on America's deteriorating standard of living. One of the most recent of those new agreements-- October, 2011-- was the Korea Trade Agreement. For all the knee-jerk obstructionism offered by congressional Republicans for any and all Obama proposals, the vote on this bill was very different. It passed 278-151, 219 Republicans and 59 mostly Big Business-owned conservative Dems voted for it, and 130 Democrats and 21 Republicans voting against it. The roster of Democrats on board for this destructive, anti-worker bill reads like a roster of the New Dem caucus:

• Jim Clyburn (SC)
• Jerry Connolly (VA)
• Joe Crowley (NY)
• Susan Davis (CA)
• Norman Dicks (WA)
• Colleen Hanabusa (HI)
• Jim Himes (CT)
• Jay Inslee (WA)
• Ron Kind (WI)
• Rick Larsen (WA)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (NY)
• Gregory Meeks (NY)
• Jim Moran (VA)
• Bill Owens (NY)
• Jared Polis (CO)
• Mike Quigley (IL)
• Cedric Richmond (LA)
• Steve Rothman (NJ)
• Loretta Sanchez (CA)
• Adam Schiff (CA)
• Kurt Schrader (OR)
• Allyson Schwartz (PA)
• Terri Sewell (AL)
• Adam Smith (WA)
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL)

So how's it been going? Predictably terrible. Last year the Alliance for American Manufacturing reported that a year after implementation the "free frade" agreement with South Korea was proving as harmful as people feared it would be.

According to an analysis by the United Steelworkers (USW), U.S. car sales to South Korea increased by a mere 942 vehicles-- from 4,184 to 5,126.  Meanwhile South Korean companies sold more than 1.26 million cars in the U.S. in 2012 alone.

Imports of passenger vehicles from South Korea totaled $10.9 billion in 2012, up from $9 billion the year before-- a $1.9 billion increase, while U.S. exports increased a tiny $180 million to $546 million.

Overall, the total U.S. trade deficit with South Korea grew faster during the first nine months that the FTA was in place-- than during the entire year.

Bottom Line: There must be benefits to open trade. Unfortunately, it looks like the U.S. has gotten the short end of the stick. Issues like currency manipulation must be addressed.

It’s hard enough to open closed markets like those of South Korea and Japan. But allowing countries to manipulate currency makes it even harder.

But currency manipulation isn't the only instance where the South Korean are guilty of massive cheating that is costing American jobs. Yesterday, the International Trade Commission voted 5-0 found that South Korean companies are dumping Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) into the U.S. market at prices below fair value and in deceptive ways designed to circumvent international trade laws. These pipes are made exclusively to be exported since Korea has no domestic oil drilling and therefore no domestic market for OCTG pipe.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing congratulated the ITC for their ruling. "Steelworkers and manufacturers have clearly suffered. We hope this decision will boost the prospects for steel jobs and companies in this important market serving America’s energy independence efforts. It’s a shame that so much damage has to be done before America’s workers and companies can secure a level playing field. That needs to change, and it’s one thing AAM will be working toward as we move forward… The vote is a big victory for American manufacturing. It will help level the playing field for our steelmakers and steelworkers, who were forced to play by a different set of rules against products that were heavily subsidized and priced below fair value. Unfair trade contributed to layoffs in places like Lorain, Ohio and idled plants in Bellville, Texas and McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The ITC’s ruling will give steelmakers and workers a fair chance to compete in a strong market for the steel tube used to extract oil and natural gas."

This victory comes in the wake of a very strong letter Sherrod Brown and 56 allies sent to Obama's mobster Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker:

We write to express our concerns with the Commerce Department’s preliminary determination in the antidumping investigation of Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) imports from Korea. This case has nationwide economic implications, and any final determination must be based on accurate data and objective methodologies. As the Department continues the investigation, we ask that you fully consider the domestic industry’s allegations and take action against any unfair dumping to the fullest extent of the law.

Steel produced for the U.S. energy market, such as OCTG, accounts for approximately ten percent of domestic steel production, and U.S. OCTG producers employ nearly 8,000 workers across the country. Each one of those jobs, in turn, supports another seven jobs in the OCTG supply chain. U.S. demand for OCTG products has been rising, but our U.S. producers are increasingly losing sales to foreign competitors.  Imports of OCTG have doubled since 2008 and increased by 61 percent thus far in 2014 compared to the previous year. By some measures imported OCTG products account for more than 50 percent of the pipes being used by companies drilling for gas and oil in the U.S.  One steel company has already reduced hours at three American facilities and idled another as a result of growing OCTG imports. We have been told that more reductions and layoffs could occur.



Korea has one of the world’s largest steel industries but no domestic OCTG market.  The result is that Korean producers are exporting an increasing volume of OCTG to the United States. We ask the Department to closely verify and further analyze the information submitted by the Korean producers to ensure its accuracy. We are concerned that certain information used for the preliminary determination did not fully reflect the costs of production and sales for the Korean producers, such as profit information based on lower valued pipe products and certain affiliation issues that may impact which sales are used as the basis for the dumping calculation. As this case proceeds, we urge you to ensure that the Department’s investigation is objective and accurate.

The discovery and production of shale gas in the United States is a strategic benefit for both America’s economic and energy security. Addressing unfairly traded imports is essential to ensuring that U.S. OCTG producers have a level playing field on which to compete. Strict and full enforcement of our trade laws is essential for the future of this important industry, its workers, and steel communities throughout the country.

Are the elites in Pyongyang all that different from those in DC or NYC or most anywhere else?

"Gee, I wish we had one of them Doomsday Machines."

-- Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott)

In the U.S. War Room, Soviet ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull) reveals the existence of his country's Doomsday Machine to the American security brain trust, including President Merkin Muffley and technology genius Dr. Strangelove (both Peter Sellers) as well as General Turgidson.

The execution of the uncle of Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, had its roots in a firefight between forces loyal to Mr. Kim and those supporting the man who was supposed to be his regent, according to accounts that are being pieced together by South Korean and American officials. The clash was over who would profit from North Korea's most lucrative exports: coal, clams and crabs.

-- from "Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash
Over Businesses" in the NYT earlier this week

by Ken

It's probably not the most inspired tribute to a fine actor who left behind lots of distinguished work, but when I think of the late George C. Scott, I can't help but think first of his gum-chewing, blithering Gen. Buck Turgidson. And there aren't many more cherishable moments that the one in the above clip when the general is brought around from his cynicism at first hearing about the Russians' Doomsday Machine, which will destroy all life on earth ("Oh, what a load of commie bull!") to the slavering awe and envy of his declaration "Gee, I wish we had one of them Doomsday Machines."

Not long many of us woke up to the surprising news that the uncle and supposed regent of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un, Jang Song-thaek, had been quickly tried for dastardly bad stuff and summarily executed, gone, goodby. Since we know so little about the inner workings of the government in Pyongyang, commentators were reduced to rearranging and hastily relabeling such pieces of the North Korean People's Republic puzzle as they possessed.

It was a pretty safe conclusion that somebody or bodies in the upper ranks of the North Korean government had perceived Jang as a threat to, well, something -- that something being, most likely, the continued health and well-being of those same upper rankers. Not surprisingly, even given the shroud that obscures so much of what goes on in North Korea, within a few days, the murky picture began to assume certain shapes, and the shape above all that seemed to emerge was good old-fshioned Taking Care of Bizniz.

At that stage of "knowledge," I couldn't help thinking that there were princelings of the elites all over the world drooling with Buck Turgidson-like envy at their North Korean counterparts' dramatic demonstration of their version of a Doomsday Machine, which could deal with the discovery of perceived enemies by means of swift pro-forma trial and just-as swift-elimination -- who wished, in other words, with drooling fervor that they had one of them Doomsday Machines.


Jang Song-thaek and beloved nephew Kim Jong-un, the North Korean sort-of-strongman, in happier times, when all they had to fret over (not counting their people's desperate poverty, which apparently didn't count) was a war expected to start "without prior notice"

It does appear that Uncle Jang had indeed been naughty.

North Korean military forces were deployed to retake control of one of the sources of those exports, the rich crab and clam fishing grounds that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of the country's untested, 30-year-old leader, had seized from the military. In the battle for control of the fishing grounds, the emaciated, poorly trained North Korean forces "were beaten -- very badly -- by Uncle Jang's loyalists," according to one official.

The rout of his forces appears to have been the final straw for Mr. Kim, who saw his 67-year-old uncle as a threat to his authority over the military and, just as important, to his own family's dwindling sources of revenue. Eventually, at Mr. Kim's order, the North Korean military came back with a larger force and prevailed. Soon, Mr. Jang's two top lieutenants were executed.

The two men died in front of a firing squad. But instead of rifles, the squad used antiaircraft machine guns, a form of execution that according to South Korean intelligence officials and news media was similar to the one used against some North Korean artists in August. Days later, Mr. Jang himself was publicly denounced, tried and executed, by more traditional means.

"Only a few months ago," noted the Times's Choe Sang-hun (from Seoul) and David E. Sanger (from Washington), "Mr. Jang was believed to be the second most powerful man in North Korea."

In fact, American intelligence agencies had reported to the White House and the State Department in late 2011 that he could well be running the country behind the scenes -- and might edge out his inexperienced nephew for control. In part that was based on his deep relationship with top officials in China, as well as his extensive business connections there.

His highly unusual public humiliation and execution on Dec. 12 set off speculation about the possibility of a power struggle within the secretive government. But in recent days a more complex, nuanced story has emerged.

During a closed-door meeting on Monday of the South Korean National Assembly's intelligence committee, Nam Jae-joon, the director of the National Intelligence Service, disputed the North's assertion that Mr. Jang had tried to usurp his nephew's power. Rather, he said, Mr. Jang and his associates had provoked the enmity of rivals within the North's elite by dominating lucrative business deals, starting with the coal badly needed by China, the North's main trading partner.

"There had been friction building up among the agencies of power in North Korea over privileges and over the abuse of power by Jang Song-thaek and his associates," Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. Mr. Nam's comments were relayed to the news media by Jeong Cheong-rae and Cho Won-jin, two lawmakers designated as spokesmen for the parliamentary committee.

"Given the opaqueness of North Korea's inner circle," wrote the Times scribes, "many details of the struggle between Mr. Kim and his uncle remain murky."

But what is known suggests that while Mr. Kim has consolidated control and eliminated a potential rival, it has been at a huge cost: The open warfare between the two factions has revealed a huge fracture inside the country's elite over who pockets the foreign currency -- mostly Chinese renminbi -- the country earns from the few nonnuclear exports its trading partners desire.

As the Times-men pieced the story together, the "friction" between the North Korean factions turned violent in late September or early October, "just north of the western sea border between the Koreas."

There, the North harvests one of its major exports: crabs and clams, delicacies that are also highly valued by the Chinese. For years the profits from those fishing grounds, along with the output from munitions factories and trading companies, went directly to the North Korean military, helping it feed its troops, and enabling its top officers to send cash gifts to the Kim family.

South Korea was a major market for the North's mushrooms, clams, crabs, abalones and sea cucumbers until the South cut off trade with the North after the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, forcing the North Korean military to rely on the Chinese market.

But when Mr. Kim succeeded his father two years ago, he took away some of the military's fishing and trading rights and handed them to his cabinet, which he designated as the main agency to revive the economy. Mr. Jang was believed to have been a leading proponent of curtailing the military's economic power.

It seems, however, that on Jang's part it wasn't just a matter of taming the power of the military. He "appears to have consolidated many of those trading rights under his own control -- meaning that profits from the coal, crabs and clams went into his accounts, or those of state institutions under his control, including the administrative department of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, which he headed."

Oops! Funny thing how that happened! Probably Uncle was just safeguarding the money for the benefit of the people of North Korea. You don't suppose he was living a more, um, comfortable lifestyle, do you? For shame!

[T]his fall, the long-brewing tensions that arrangement created broke into the open. Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Mr. Kim saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border. They say he ordered Mr. Jang to hand over the operation of nearby fishing grounds back to the military.

According to accounts put together by South Korean and American officials, Mr. Jang and his associates resisted. When a company of about 150 North Korean soldiers showed up at the farm, Mr. Jang's loyalists refused to hand over the operation, insisting that Mr. Jang himself would have to approve. The confrontation escalated into a gun battle, and Radio Free Asia reports that two soldiers were killed and that the army backed off. Officials say the number of casualties is unknown, but they have received similar accounts.

"It is hard to know exactly how large a role the episode played in Mr. Jang's downfall," the Times team reported, noting, "there is more money in coal than in seafood" --

but Mr. Kim was reportedly enraged when he heard of the clash. Mr. Nam said that by mid-November his agents were already reporting that Mr. Jang had been detained. The Dec. 12 verdict noted that Mr. Jang "instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random."

Mr. Nam said the fact that such behind-the-scenes tensions had spun so far out of control that Mr. Kim had to order his own uncle's execution raised questions about the government's internal unity.

"The fissure within the regime could accelerate if it further loses popular support," the lawmakers quoted Mr. Nam as saying.

It just remains to do a bit of Kim-family and North Korean-regime head-counting.

Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Mr. Kim's father, the longtime leader Kim Jong-il. Mr. Nam told the committee Monday that Mr. Kim's aunt had retained her position in the hierarchy, even while the purge of Mr. Jang's other associates continued. But he denied news reports in South Korea and Japan that some of Mr. Jang's associates were seeking political asylum in Seoul and Beijing.

Mr. Nam pointed to Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, the top political officer in the North Korean People's Army, and Kim Won-hong, the head of the North's secret police and its intelligence chief, as the government's new rising figures since Mr. Jang's execution, the two lawmakers said.

So yes, elites in North Korea are different from elites in many other places in that they can apparently use violence as they see fit, at any level -- or at any rate at any level they can get away with. So maybe not all that different after all. What always matters is what you can get away with.

#

Remember How Much We Hated Bush's Job-Destroying "Free" Trade Agenda? Now It's Obama's Agenda

A couple days ago, progressive champion Alan Grayson (D-FL) brought up one of Obama's weakest points: his administration's determination to continue the corporatist trade policies of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and the two Bushes. The agenda has been devastating for the American manufacturing sector and for the economy in general. Obama ran for office loudly opposing NAFTA and CAFTA as harmful to U.S. (and foreign) workers and to the U.S. (and foreign) environment. As a Senator he voted against CAFTA in 2005. Since becoming President he twisted arms to pass equally awful free trade agreements with South Korea-- which has been a gigantic loser for American workers-- Panama and Colombia. Lori Wallach:

The first year of results are in for the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and it's grim. U.S. exports to Korea plunged 10 percent under the FTA and the trade deficit jumped 37 percent. That equates to the loss of tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

Yikes, what does President Obama do, given this unfortunate revelation occurred the day before the high-profile Washington visit of Korea's president, when Congress and the press would be focused on all things Korea?

He announces: "On our side, we're selling more exports to Korea." Holy Pinocchio!

Not exactly trust-inspiring, as the administration now tries to sell the massive 11-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA with the same tired promises used to persuade Congress to support the Korea FTA. That would be the promise that the Korea FTA would mean "more exports, more jobs." Right...

Sadly, the Korea FTA is not a fluke. Like the TPP, it is based on the NAFTA model. And U.S. export growth to countries with NAFTA-style pacts has been particularly lackluster; growth of U.S. exports to countries that are not FTA partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to countries that are FTA partners by 38 percent over the past decade. Yup, totally counterintuitive, to say nothing of counterproductive to the administration's manufacturing revitalization goals, but that's what the data shows.

As the Korea FTA provides fresh evidence of the job-killing nature of these deals, U.S. voters want and deserve to know why any member of Congress would buy another round of empty promises for these pacts.

And that brings us right back around to how I started... Alan Grayson. People are aware that Grayson got his law degree at Harvard. People are not as aware that he also got an Economics Degree there. And he's been an opponent of these misnamed "free" trade deals. This week he warned that the U.S. Trade Representative invited public comments on the "Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership." He asked if you agree that "even the title makes you ill."

The "Partnership" actually is a partnership between multinational corporations and their sellout tools in government. It features "investor-state" dispute resolution, which permits huge corporations to file lawsuits to prevent government actions that they just don't like, such as health and safety regulations.

This is not just a theoretical possibility. "These provisions elevate corporations to the level of nation states and allow them to sue governments over nearly any law or policy which reduces their future profits," the Sierra Club warns. The government of Canada has been sued under a similar clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for refusing to export Canada's water. Canada also has been sued for keeping a pollutant out of its gasoline supply, and for taxing windfall profits by oil companies.

Who needs these "free trade" sell-outs, anyway? Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, the United States has lost almost four million manufacturing jobs. Moreover, huge U.S. subsidies for corn have made it impossible for millions of Mexican families to survive on the farm. NAFTA accomplished something that hardly seems possible-- impoverishing both American workers and Mexican ones. Can't we learn from our mistakes? And why are our leaders treating us like sheep being led to the slaughter?

The First Amendment gives us the right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Anyone who has been paying attention to these Judas-kiss trade "deals" is feeling mighty, mighty "aggrieved."

The point of Grayson's letter was to urge people to give public comments but the deadline for that was yesterday. Now we need to do something even more effective: defeat corporate whores-- from both parties-- who support these trade agreements and elect replacements who want to replace them with FAIR trade agreements. A good place to start would be with Speak John Boehner, a lifelong "free" trade proponent-- who never met a jobs-killing agreement he didn't get behind. Because the DCCC is determined to give Boehner a free pass to reelection every cycle, they viciously attack and humiliate any Democrat with the temerity to dare run against him. That's why last year he had no opponent. This year Andy Hounshell, an Ohio steel worker and a vice president of his local union, the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), is going ahead and challenging Boehner anyway, regardless of what the DCCC says or does. He's a big supporter of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown's approach to trade.

"John Boehner," he told me a few months ago, "is still using the same model for the Trans-Pacific deal but it's been working out very badly in the Korean deal. Obama should abandon the approach. U.S. exports to Korea are down by 9 percent since the deal was implemented and imports from Korea are way up. And, just like many of us who opposed the deal predicted, the U.S. trade deficit when Korea is up by 30 percent. That means we're losing good manufacturing jobs. That nine percent decrease in exports to Korea since the trade deal began amounts to over $3 billion. Speaker Boehner never talks about losses like that when he pushes these policies. Our exports to Korea are up by around $800 million; there's no balance there." It's gotten even worse since Andy said that. Alan Grayson and Andy Hounshell are both endorsed for Congress by the Blue America PAC. If you agree with their ideas on trade policies and can afford to help out, both can use the help. Needless to say, neither is getting any money from the big corporate interests that finance over 60% of the candidates who run for Congress. You can find them both on this page

Andrew Hounshell Is Taking On Boehner's Toxic "Free" Trade Agenda

When I first talked to Andrew Hounshell, the Democrat running for Congress in Ohio's 8th district, the seat currently occupied by John Boehner, I was a little worried because all I knew about him is that he was a friend of Obama's and that he's a steel worker and a vice president of his local union, the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW). I soon realized that just because President Obama invited him to introduce him at the big Cincinnati campaign rally last September that didn't mean he would be parroting any of Obama's specific policies. In fact, when we talked about U.S. trade policy, Andy kept referencing Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, not President Obama. Many people see Obama's trade agenda almost as corporate and Big Business-oriented as George Bush's was and John Boehner's is. Andy talks about "fair trade," not so-called "free trade."

When we spoke a few days ago he was working out some of the problems that Boehner and Obama pushed through as part of the U.S.-Korea "Free Trade" Pact last year. "John Boehner," he told me, "is still using the same model for the Trans-Pacific deal but it's been working out very badly in the Korean deal. Obama should abandon the approach. U.S. exports to Korea are down by 9 percent since the deal was implemented and imports from Korea are way up. And, just like many of us who opposed the deal predicted, the U.S. trade deficit when Korea is up by 30 percent. That means we're losing good manufacturing jobs. That nine percent decrease in exports to Korea since the trade deal began amounts to over $3 billion. Speaker Boehner never talks about losses like that when he pushes these policies. Our exports to Korea are up by around $800 million; there's no balance there."

The big multinationals don't have any problems with this kind of imbalance. They don't care what currencies their profits come in as. Although he's no longer a Member of Congress, long time corporate whore and founder of the Congressional Trade Working Group, David Dreier made a speech in 2009 on the House floor that pleased the campaign donors who financed his long DC career. "It goes back to my education in college; and that is, the notion of the United States of America playing a leading role in global economic growth so that we can increase the number of good American jobs. That means good jobs right here in the United States of America. I believe that trade is key to that. Trade, global trade, is going to play a big role in creating jobs, jobs, jobs." Really? Joshua Holland, cut Dreier's corporate cheerleading to ribbons in his book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About The Economy.

Dreier gave that speech during the most severe unemployment crisis the United States had faced since the 1930s. It’s a stunningly counterintuitive assertion, because trade agreements facilitate the offshoring of jobs to countries with lower labor costs, which in turn beefs up companies’ profits. That dynamic is evident in executive pay—a 2004 study by the Institute for Policy Studies found that “CEOs at companies that outsource the most U.S. jobs are rewarded with bigger paychecks.” The authors found that “Average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46 percent in 2003, compared to a 9 percent average increase for all CEOs at the 365 large companies surveyed by BusinessWeek.”

As Dean Baker put it, “The truth is, we carefully structured these trade agreements-- we put great effort into it-- to put our manufacturing workers into competition with manufacturing workers in developing nations.

"That meant going to these places and asking: What kind of problems does General Motors face if they want to set up a manufacturing plant in Mexico or Malaysia or China? What can we do to make it as easy as possible? That means that they know they can set up their factory and not have it nationalized, not have restrictions on repatriating profits, etc. Then they need to be able to import the goods back into the United States, and that means not only making sure there are no tariffs or quotas, but also that there’s no safety or environmental restrictions that might keep the goods out."

The offshoring trend can only get worse as long as we stay the present course on trade. Alan Blinder, a conservative economist at Princeton University, estimated that as many as 29 percent of U.S. jobs are offshorable.

And it’s not simply a matter of jobs sent overseas. In a 2007 study analyzing fifty years of research, economist Josh Bivens argued that the current (and largely bipartisan) trade regime adds some bucks to the paychecks of America’s highest earners but keeps wages down for 70 percent of the U.S. workforce, even adjusting for the greater purchasing power they might enjoy because of cheap imports flooding the shelves of Wal-Mart. He found that corporate-driven “free-trade” agreements not only increase the gap between richer and poorer countries, but also add to inequality among citizens of wealthy states such as the United States. Bivens estimated the direct cost of “free trade” deals to families in the middle of the economic pile to be $2,135 per year. That’s about 50 percent more than the same family pays in federal income taxes annually ($1,495).

It’s tempting to focus only on the economic impacts of trade deals such as NAFTA, but it’s just as important to dig deeper into the antidemocratic nature of the “free trade” orthodoxy pushed by Big Business. All too often, progressives tie themselves up in knots discussing trade because they argue the issue on corporate America’s terms, instead of going to the root of the matter: “free trade” isn’t free, and it often has nothing to do with what most people would consider “trade.”

If the central question we’re asking is “Free trade or protectionism?” the debate is already lost. That’s how the corporate globalizers have presented it and that’s how the media-- which clearly have a horse in the race-- report it. And that’s why the so-called free traders have been able to keep the upper hand.

Here’s the truth about “free trade” agreements. When you talk about trade policy, you’re really talking about the enormous influence of corporate power over democratic governance. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the gutsy leader of the fair-trade caucus, explained the close connection during the lead-up to the vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005. “Our political system is now up for the highest bidder,” Brown told me at the time. “Energy bills are written by oil companies and environmental bills are written by the chemical companies.

"Similarly, this trade agreement-- CAFTA-- but other trade agreements, too, have been written by a select few for a select few-- and that select few is typically the drug industry, the insurance and financial institutions, and the energy companies, and the largest multinational corporations. It’s the same old song, whether it’s international or it’s domestic.

In his book The Myths of Free Trade, Brown described thousands of corporate jets stacked up over D.C. as the vote neared, carrying industry execs eager to descend on the city to lobby for the agreement. Trade policy is clearly an insider’s game.

In their book Whose Trade Organization, Lori Wallach and Patrick Woodall found that among the hundreds of “experts” who sat on the advisory boards that hammered out the thousands of pages of WTO and NAFTA rules, there were only a handful of representatives of labor. The rest were multinational execs and various lawyers, lobbyists, and sundry industry experts. There was almost zero input from human rights groups, environmentalists, or the rest of society. It’s not only that the treaties we’ve signed are flawed, but the process by which they’re created makes it all but impossible that they would benefit working people or protect our commons. These are simply not corporate America’s priorities (nor those of its counterparts in Japan or the EU).

Ohio voters were savvy enough to elect Sherrod Brown to the Senate and-- despite $18,868,809 spent by Josh Mandel against him, as well as another $13,870,821 in Dark Money from shady outfits with money from Rove, the Koch brothers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which launders illegal money into American election for interests in China) and Adelson-- to reelect him with a margin of nearly 300,000 votes. It's crucial for the whole country to have someone like Brown in the Senate when trade policies are discussed and decided on. It will be just as crucial to have a steel worker, rather than another career politician and lawyer, in on those discussions in the House. If you'd like to help Andrew Houshell replace John Boehner, please consider a contribution here at the Blue America Act Blue page. And then watch Sherrod talking about trade with China below-- something that suddenly filled U.S. Chamber campaign chests with lots of unaccounted for cash.

Why aren't those darned North Koreans more cooperative with our intelligence gatherers?

After the 51-hour Window of Cluelessness in Washington and Seoul, the departed Dear Leader was abundantly on display Monday in this Seoul electronics emporium.

In Kim's Death, an Extensive Intelligence Failure
By MARK LANDLER and CHOE SANG-HUN
For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up clues right away about Kim Jong-il's death attests to the secretive nature of North Korea.

-- item in Monday morning's NYT "Today's Headlines" e-mail

by Ken

There's going to be a certain amount of making fun of the New York Times in a moment, but I hope that doesn't detract from a fairly interesting story. As Don Rickles might say, I kid because I care -- well, that plus it's fun. It did strike me, though, that the paper seemed the least tad uncertain about where the real story was: crappy intelligence operation or gosh-darned impenetrable intelligence target.

What caught my attention Monday morning was this NYT "Today's Headlines" e-blast:

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development -- panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim's train -- attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.

I don't think it's my imagination that the head and the blurb don't seem to be telling quite the same story. The head suggests that the story is about our intelligence failure, while the blurb speaks to the confounded inscrutability of those dastardly North Koreans. That was enough to get me to click through to the story -- and regular readers know how parsimonious I am with my allotted NYT free clicks.

Well, my gosh! The story itself displays the very same bifurcation. The head is exactly the one we've already seen in the "Today's Headlines" post -- son of a gun, it actually turned out to be one of the day's headlines! But then, after an only moderately scrutable opening paragraph, delineating the 51-hour Window of Cluelessness concerning the death of Kim Jong-Il at the highest levels of officialdom in Seoul and D.C., the NYT's Landler (reporting from Washington, with additional contributions from David E. Sanger) and Sang-Hun (reporting from Seoul) wrote:

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development -- panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim's train -- attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.

We were quickly reminded that this isn't the first time those sneaky North Koreans have hidden out from prying intelligence eyes.

Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.

Apparently North Korean inscrutability would be of little interest or concern if not for that confounded nuclear capability.

As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea -- a failed state with nuclear weapons -- the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North's capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.

"We have clear plans about what to do if North Korea attacks, but not if the North Korean regime unravels," said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser in the Bush administration. "Every time you do these scenarios, one of the first objectives is trying to find out what's going on inside North Korea."

For intelligence-confusion fans, it's a throwback of sorts to the days when the whole damned People's Republic of China was as closed and mysterious to Western intelligence, which seemed reduced to trying to extract from wall posters in Hong Kong clues as to what might be happening, and especially who might be making it happen, and to whom, inside that vast country. (Now, of course, we often seem to know more than we wish we did about goings-on in the PRC.)

And while the NYT report undoubtedly only skimmed the surface, it was interesting for its setting out of the general hows-and-whys of all that we don't know about what goes on inside the "Democratic People's Republic" of North Korea. For example, the story I heard Monday morning on Morning Edition about the under-cover transfer of power taking place in Pyongyang made the point that this is only the second such transfer in the half-century-plus history of the North Korean state. The underlying reality is that we haven't known any more about what was going on between the transfers of power.

It's been convenient to personalize all lines of power in the persons of North Korea's two previous leaders, the newly departed Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, and his father, North Korea's founding father, the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, who ran the show from 1948 until his death in 1994. But while it's obviously true that there's a fanatically tightly controlled as well as all-controlling state apparatus, as far as I can tell we've known astonishingly little about how power has actually been concentrated and exercised -- and presumably even less during the reign of the Dear Leader than during that of his Great father.

Now we seem to have only vague clues, perhaps more accurately described as wild guesses, as to the nature of the power struggle going on. The NYT reporters note that even though we do have some spy-plane and satellite surveilance of the country,

remarkably little is known about the inner workings of the North Korean government. Pyongyang, officials said, keeps sensitive information limited to a small circle of officials, who do not talk.

"This is a society that thrives on its opaqueness," said Christopher R. Hill, a former special envoy who negotiated with the North over its nuclear program. "It is very complex. To understand the leadership structure requires going way back into Korean culture to understand Confucian principles."

Confucian principles, eh? Oh, I'll bet our intelligence people are great at applying those! Meanwhile, a former CIA official ("speaking on condition of anonymity about classified matters") told the Times team:

What's worst about our intel is our failure to penetrate deep into the existing leadership. We get defectors, but their information is often old. We get midlevel people, but they often don't know what’s happening in the inner circle.

Ah yes, the inner circle. Whatever and whoever that may be. It appears that we don't have much more than a scattering of names, and don't even know whether we have many (any?) of the right names, and certainly not who has the power to do what to whom.

So naturally our wisefolk busily imagine scenarios.

None of the situations envisioned by American officials for North Korea are comforting. Some current and former officials assume that Kim Jong-un is too young and untested to step confidently into his father's shoes. Some speculate that the younger Mr. Kim might serve in a kind of regency, in which the real power would be wielded by military officials like Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law and confidant, who is 65.

Such an arrangement would do little to relieve the suffering of the North Korean people or defuse the tension over its nuclear ambitions. But it would be preferable to an open struggle for power in the country.

"A bad scenario is that they go through a smooth transition, and the people keep starving and they continue to develop nuclear weapons," said Jeffrey A. Bader, a former Asia adviser to President Obama. "The unstable transition, in which no one is in charge, and in which control of their nuclear program becomes even more opaque, is even worse."

You'd think the South Koreans might have better intelligence. As already suggested, they don't.

[I]n the 51 hours from the apparent time of Mr. Kim's death until the official announcement of it, South Korean officials appeared to detect nothing unusual.

During that time, President Lee Myung-bak traveled to Tokyo, met with the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, returned home and was honored at a party for his 70th birthday.

A hint came when North Korean media announced Monday morrning that there would be a "special announcement" at noon. South Korean officials, we're told, "shrugged when asked whether something was afoot," even though the last such advance warning of a special announcement in Pyongyang turned out to be for the announcement of the death of the Dear Leader's dear daddy the Great Leader.

Regarding Monday's 51-hour-old bombshell, the Times team quotes "a government official who monitored the North Korean announcement" as saying, "'Ohmygod!' was the first word that came to my mind when I saw the North Korean anchorwoman's black dress and mournful look."

At least in the old days of trying to divine doings inside the mysterious People's Republic of China we had those wall posters in Hong Kong. Now apparently we get our information from the outfits worn by North Korean telepersons.

Far be it from me to beat up on our beleaguered intelligence folk. Actually, I wish we had more frequent reminders of how, er, incomplete our "intelligence" may be regarding the rest of the world, even as we blunder so often into trying to remake it according to our wishes. Of course far too often in the Clinton, Bush II, and Obama administrations, it has turned out that better intelligence was available; we just didn't use it because we didn't like it. (I believe the technical term is Cheney Syndrome.) But that's another story. Sort of.

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