The Boston Globe quotes Nancy Pelosi:

“It is a step backward for workers,” Pelosi said. “If the president wins this vote, he will have expended enormous resources to do so. He has all the power of the presidency, and all we have on the House Democratic side is the fact that we are right.”

CAFTA, like NAFTA, is a step backwards for workers in all the countries covered by CAFTA—no worker will come out of this deal earning a living wage.

But all it would have taken is for one Democrat to vote in opposition for the Democrats to have stuck by their words and possibly to have blocked CAFTA from passing. But again we see how corporate owned and operated this “opposition” party is.

Progressives hate CAFTA. Will progressives remember this when election time rolls around?

Update: There is some controversy about the CAFTA vote (skip to 47m38s into the show), but Democracy Now! did a particularly poor job of explaining why the 15 Democrats should not be held to their line about standing with the workers. Instead, the interview focused on a few Republicans whose votes were not counted properly or who were not able to reach the floor for the vote. The self-satisfied interviewee, Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, spent no time describing how these 15 Democrats sold out the public image of their party (note, the image of their party, not the reality which is right in line with multinational corporate interests to exploit the cheapest labor the world has to offer).

Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader, had an interestingly self-destructive quote which DN! failed to explain:

“The Republicans turned the floor of the House of the Representatives into a “Let’s Make a Deal” set that was reminiscent of what happened at the time of the medicare prescription drug legislation that evening and again this time they kept the vote open a long time. But many of the overtures that were made to members was made before even going to the floor. So this is about again an abuse of power, an unethical way of passing legislation and depending on what members decide to do, may require further attention.”

This vote was reminiscent of a previous contentious vote. This vote’s “overtures” were made prior to going to the floor. So, why, exactly, didn’t the Democrats see this coming? Why didn’t they complain about this behavior last time it occurred?

Again, I have to wonder if this really considered to be important by the Left. Given the discussion the Left is making of this bill, will they vote in line with their stated ethics? Or will this be yet-another-issue to blow over come election time?

Do find the time to read Liza Grandia’s summary of congressional debate on CAFTA.

A couple of interesting articles:

• David Sirota on the Democratic Leadership Council’s support of corporate policy and sponsorship of Democratic Party campaigns and how this hurts the Democratic Party and thus provides no real opposition to the Republicans.
• Ralph Nader echoes Rose Ann DeMoro’s “Top 10 Problems with the Current Debate in the Labor Movement”

Tim Robbins is quoted as using sexist and strong language to denounce the Democrats and Sen. Kerry (D-MA) in particular in this Winnipeg Sun article:

“For Embedded [Robbins’ new DVD], he sat down for an hour one-on-one to talk about a citizen’s responsibility, the pressure on celebrities, what he perceives are the evils of the Bush government and his disillusionment with “the pussies” in the Democrat Party, including John Kerry, who refused to oppose Bush over Iraq.”

Before the election, Robbins lent his support to the Vote2StopBush.org campaign which sought to get former Nader supporters to rally votes for Kerry instead. Unfortunately for their audience, the Vote2StopBush.org supporters chose to give Kerry support without demanding anything of Kerry or explaining why Nader was inadequate in 2004 given that the major parties had offered the US two pro-war choices. The Vote2StopBush.org crowd failed to explain the confusing position of lending one’s support to a candidate one “strongly disagree[s] with […] on Iraq and other issues”.

Look for a similar tactic in 2008: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) versus some Republican (perhaps Jeb Bush, governor of Florida). Progressives will support the Democrat even though she, like her Republican counterpart, supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the Democrats have a history of squelching progressive policies.

On a recent Democracy Now! (transcript) about 26m04s into the show, Norman Solomon, co-founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and Vote2StopBush.org signatory and, therefore, squelcher of presidential competition in 2004, helps keep the Karl Rove scandal in perspective:

“It would be a big mistake for social movements to pin their hopes and their futures on what a court or prosecutor does. I think it’s also important for us to remember that the news media themselves, as major institutions, are framing this. They are themselves participating in the spin, and a lot of what we are getting now is this notion that there’s nothing more crucial for U.S. national security than protecting the identity of a C.I.A. agent. And hat’s a perspective, I think, that’s rather warped. National security involves, among other things, making sure that the United States government does not create enemies around the world by dropping bombs on innocent people. It also involves as national security, broadly defined, making sure that we don’t continue with the decimation of communities around this country, where we have schools and clinics, and social services being damaged severely. So I think what we’re seeing here, while it’s very interesting palace intrigue and certainly has great historical and political importance, the kind of recasting of what is on the front burner, and ironically, public concern about Iraq itself and the implications of the U.S. war there, are to some degree being shunted aside by this controversy which, in fact, has its roots in the lies about this war.”

An interesting discussion, if only to watch Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton, squirm as he tries to avoid admitting that the Democrats are a party of collaborators in “tap-dancing while the blood continues to run” (as Solomon put it) in this “madness of militarism” (Solomon said, citing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Regardless of whether the Democrats are in power now or not, nothing prevents them from taking the right stance and speaking truth to power. The Democrats are simply more loyal to their corporate campaign funding sources than they are to what the majority of the country in their own constituencies want.

I read that the GNOME hackers are starting up an effort to market GNOME to teenagers. The GNOME Wiki has a section for this work.

But Seb Payne, who announced the effort, says:

“Many young people are stuck on Windows 98 and Office 2000. Why? Microsoft software is just too damm expensive.”

And thus falls into a common trap which the open source movement pushes in order to steer the conversation away from software freedom: talk about price, not about freedom.

When the discussion centers on price the discussion will turn to how many people can get proprietary software at no fee (either legally or illegally). This ignores the limitations to be good neighbors and recognize that you’re better off when you don’t have to beg a monopoly for support.

People see this problem when it comes to their car, their house, and a variety of other services; they don’t want to be tied down to getting the work done by only one source. Some people even want to do the work themselves, even in small measure (like changing one’s own lightbulbs, or mowing one’s own lawn). Thus, they need the information to do the work and they need the legal freedom to get the job done.

Free software is quite comparable — free software is free as in the freedom to share and modify. Free software gives you the freedom to work on things yourself, hire others to do work, and share the work with others (including charging for copies of the software). For the free software movement, proprietary software is an intolerable lack of freedom, to be avoided entirely except for writing a free software replacement.

The open source movement pitches practical solutions such as faster development, cheaper development, less buggy code, which are fine things to have but don’t go far enough to ensure that you the user of the software have what you need to be a good neighbor, build a business, or tend to your own needs. The open source movement was formed to dismiss software freedom and adopt a framing of the debate that would attract businesses. For the open source movement, proprietary software is merely less technically efficient at reaching business goals than “open source” software.

Payne continues:

“Most of them suffer with security problems – usually spyware or viruses.”

While true, this (again) is just a technical matter of writing software that doesn’t have these holes to be exploited by viruses, trojan horses, and such. Some proprietors accomplish this task, and thus is another poor argument if one is trying to frame the debate in terms of software freedom. Spyware, software that tracks what you do and reports the findings usually via a network, is a different issue entirely and has to do with running proprietary software. If you don’t want spyware, you shouldn’t run proprietary software.

Hence, I’m not an open source proponent. I’m a free software proponent.

Update: More no-freedom-talk recommendations from Christine Spang in “Free Software Without the Beer and the Politics“. She’s apparently trying to gain popularity for a message she refuses to give voice to.

See how many Leftists remember this at the next election. The Senate vote was 54-45 in favor of passing CAFTA legislation. The Miami Herald has an illuminating paragraph on this vote:

“Winning CAFTA is a top priority for Bush, who’s looking for some victories in Congress to give his domestic agenda some momentum. But the Senate vote was one of the closest trade votes in years. Voting in favor were 43 Republicans, 10 Democrats and one Independent. Voting against were 12 Republicans and 33 Democrats, signaling wariness over the benefits of international commerce and globalization.”

We know now what damage NAFTA caused by watching jobs flee the US while the corporations get to stay in the US and do business in the US. We know now, as we knew then, that NAFTA’s promises are a myth. The reality is that sub-living wage workers will not earn enough to buy the products they make.

In other words, had those 10 Democrats voted in favor of the workers instead of the corporations, CAFTA legislation would not have passed the Senate; CAFTA would have lost by one vote. The Democrats had power here and they blew it.

Update: John Nichols wrote about this for the Tuesday, July 5, 2005 Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin.