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To: MSI who wrote (20934)	12/22/2003 4:45:55 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793694

Here is more good news you won't want to believe, MSI. Free-Trade Successes Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial editor, has been a writer and editor at the Post since 1978. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, Central Europe and the Middle East. washingtonpost.com Monday, December 22, 2003; Page A25 The most troubling aspect of Latin America's economic malaise is that most of the region's current leaders misdiagnose its cause. They blame the free-market economic reform policies of the 1990s, which they call "neoliberal" and attribute to Washington; as a remedy, many propose a return to the populism and statism that failed so often in the past. Most are willfully blind to the fact that Latin America's only success stories are moving in the opposite direction -- embracing not just free markets but the element the failures neglected: free trade. Argentina's Nestor Kirchner strikes poses against the outside world even as neighboring Chile quietly rolls in the riches it has earned in international markets. While Argentines ride the old Latin American roller coaster of boom and bust, live through riots and revolutions and grow steadily poorer, Chile has reduced its poverty rate by 50 percent and has surpassed Argentina in wealth for the first time in history. Its democracy is stable and its free-trade agreement with the United States takes effect in 10 days. A similar transformation is taking place in Mexico -- though protectionists and ideologues on both sides of the border are doing their best to obscure it. Since it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement 10 years ago next week, Mexico's poverty rate has also declined, even while Latin America's has risen: Compared with 1989, it has dropped 15 percent. An in-depth study released last week by the World Bank estimated that Mexicans, are, per capita, 4 to 5 percent richer than they would have been without NAFTA. Exports are 25 percent higher and investment is up 40 percent because of the deal. The study found "little evidence of adverse impacts of NAFTA on workers"; on the contrary, it concluded that those parts of Mexico most exposed to trade and foreign investment have higher wages, higher employment and lower rates of migration. The World Bank didn't mention it, but another fact is this: During the decade of NAFTA, Mexico has joined Chile as a full and stable democracy. Maybe Argentina and Venezuela can afford to keep denying such facts -- but four of Mexico's desperately poor neighbors have concluded they cannot. Last week the democratic governments of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras all settled on the terms of a free-trade agreement with the United States, one that could allow them to follow the one regional model that actually has worked. "It's very simple," said Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños shortly after concluding the pact. "The United States can buy from Mexico products we produce, with no tariffs. If we do not get into the same agreement, we will not grow. We either get in, or get left aside." Devastated by civil war and Sandinista socialism, Nicaragua now has a per capita annual income of about $700, less than $2 per day and about one-ninth of Mexico's. Like its neighbors, Nicaragua produces coffee, sugar and textiles -- and has been hammered by declining coffee incomes. Thanks to the free-trade agreement, foreign investors are starting to look at it seriously for the first time in decades. Bolaños was hurrying home to preside over the groundbreaking for a factory that will produce automotive harnesses. Democracy has survived its first decade. Sandinista Daniel Ortega has now accepted the loss of three elections, and the Nicaraguan system has proved strong enough to try and convict Bolaños's corrupt predecessor. Its modernizing course is extraordinarily good news when seen from the perspective of the 1980s, when Central America's chances for stability and democracy were rated about as highly in Washington as Iraq's are today. That's why it is so remarkable that a coalition made up largely of liberal Democrats, trade unions and left-wing advocacy groups would be coalescing around a campaign against the Central American democracies. Their cause is grimly small-minded: Central America, after all, hardly represents a China-like juggernaut. The total economic output of all four countries is about one-half of Maryland's. If Congress ratifies the free-trade agreement, sugar exports to the United States will rise by a total of 90,000 tons, or one-quarter of one percent of U.S. production. Though the Central Americans would gain thousands of jobs, there would be virtually no impact on U.S. workers. The opponents answer with falsehoods and distortions, many of them drawn from Mexico. They argue that NAFTA has cost the United States jobs (another recent study, by the Carnegie Endowment, concluded that the effect was "negligible"); they claim that Mexican workers haven't benefited (the World Bank study demonstrates the opposite). Like the Latin Americans who rant about the failure of "neoliberalism," they cling to old ideologies and blow smoke at increasingly obvious facts. They, too, can afford it. Enrique Bolaños and the poor people he governs cannot. washingtonpost.com

To: MSI who wrote (20934)	12/22/2003 7:59:36 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793694

The Democrats' Dean dilemma December 22, 2003 BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Before a single vote has been cast anywhere, thoughtful Democrats across the country are reaching a melancholy conclusion. Howard Dean is close to clinching the nomination. The question is not merely whether he can be stopped but also whether he should be stopped. This poses a dilemma that was discussed during a small, private dinner party last week attended by people actively engaged in politics for much of the last half-century. They viewed Dean's increasingly probable nomination with loathing and fear that it benefits George W. Bush. But to try and stop him now, they agreed, may open a bloody split in the Democratic Party not seen since the great divide of 1972. This situation is made possible by Democratic reforms following the tumult of 1968. In 1972, at least, the party establishment fought to the bitter end attempting to block the nomination of George McGovern, because his loss of 49 states was widely anticipated. The final touch to the reforms has been added in this cycle by Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe, whose front-loading of primaries was designed to pick an early nominee. The Dean dilemma was spelled out to me by a sage Democratic practitioner whose views I have sought since 1968. He has felt for months that the former Vermont governor faces horrendous defeat against President Bush. Last week, this party loyalist said he felt Dean will be nominated unless an act of intervention stops him. He added that he is sure Dean can be stopped but at the cost of unacceptable carnage. Implicitly and reluctantly, therefore, he is swallowing Dean. The hope inside the Democratic establishment has been that once Dean perceived himself on the road to the nomination, he would pivot sharply toward the center. He may be unable to perform or even attempt this maneuver. He is no ideologue, but he has not outgrown being the smart-aleck kid from Park Avenue with a hard edge. The Democratic savants I have contacted can only shake their heads over his stubborn insistence that Saddam Hussein's capture has not made the country safer. This discomfort was behind the Democratic group that last week put on television a tough ad depicting Dean as unable to cope with terror or ''compete with George Bush on foreign policy.'' Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi immediately sent out an open letter to the party's other presidential candidates assailing this relatively restrained TV spot as ''the kind of fear-mongering attack we've come to expect from Republicans.'' The ad was pulled off the air, suggesting limits to how far Democrats will go in confronting Dean. If nominated, he can expect much worse from the Republicans. Most Americans and, indeed, most Democrats are hardly aware of Howard Dean's existence. The national polls that have propelled him well ahead of any other candidate still give him support from only one of four Democrats (slipping slightly after Saddam's capture). He runs far behind Bush in any one-on-one poll. However, the McAuliffe-shortened primary campaign is all in Dean's favor. If Dean is the clear winner in Iowa and New Hampshire, he would seem assured of the nomination. Even if he is upset in Iowa by Rep. Richard Gephardt, it is hard to imagine Gephardt with enough money in the bank to battle Dean down the long primary election trail. Sen. John Kerry is seen as the only Democrat with the potential wherewithal to contest the money-heavy Dean, but Kerry's performance has been one of the year's great political disappointments. As the economic outlook brightens, Democrats depend on the situation in Iraq to defeat Bush. That only deepens the party's dilemma. Surveys taken after Saddam's capture for the CNN/USA Today/ Gallup poll show just 37 percent of Democrats think Iraq was worth going to war. But among all other voters, such support reached 70 percent (amounting to 61 percent nationally if Democrats are included). Trippi last week said the anti-Dean ad on foreign policy ''panders to the worst in voters.'' Actually, the Democrats and Dean are out of step on the issue they think will move the nation. That makes it even more difficult to stop Dean. suntimes.com