Will Kennecott Copper (the worlds largest open pit mine) soon be owned by China? Per this CNN report, China has invested $19,500,000,000.00 (that’s $19.5 billion) in Rio Tinto. Per Kennecott’s web site http://www.kennecott.com Rio Tinto (a multinational corporation) became the owner of Kennecott in 1989.
CNN’s claims can easily be verified by a press release from Rio Tinto’s own web site http://www.riotinto.com
Rio Tinto announces pioneering strategic partnership with Chinalco
Joint ventures and convertible bonds to deliver US $19.5 billion in cash to Rio Tinto
Is it not a national security risk to let a foreign country buy up another countries mineral rights?
CNN reports China has so much US cash they can’t find enough places to spend it. There is also the aspect China may be putting it’s US cash into hard assets before the dollar crashes.
How did US citizens allow this to take place? People have been suckered into the policies of corporate driven organizations like the Heritage Foundation.
Myth #4: Free trade, free labor, and free capital harm the U.S. economy.
Fact: Economic freedom is necessary for economic growth, new jobs, and higher living standards.
A study conducted for the 2004 Index of Economic Freedom confirms a strong, positive relationship between economic freedom and per capita GDP. Countries that adopt policies antithetical to economic freedom, including trying to protect jobs of a few from outsourcing, tend to retard economic growth, which leads to fewer jobs.
What about protecting an entire country from being outsourced? Where do people think China got the money to buy up US and international assets?
Per a product manager I know who works for one of the largest software companies in the world, China requires a physical factory presence in China to employ Chinese workers or a company can’t sell their products in China.
Per Lou Dobbs War On the Middle Class China has a 25% tariff against most US imports, while the US tariff against China’s product is 3% (rate dropped by Bill Clinton).
The relationship the US has with China isn’t exactly free trade. Most people attribute the United States trade policy with China to Richard Nixon. Jimmy Carter gave himself credit for establishing US trade policy with China when he made an appearance on the Daily Show (January 26th 2009).
The Trade Act of 1974 allowed “nonmarket economy” countries to be granted a waiver and have their MFN [Most Favored Nation] status restored. Under the conditions of that act the waiver must be renewed every year. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter sent Congress a trade agreement with China that included a MFN waiver. Normal trade status was formally restored to China on Feb. 1, 1980.
Let’s contrast the Heritage Foundation’s claims against those of economist Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and is said to be the “Father of Reaganomics” I encourage everyone to read the entire article, but I am providing key excerpts below.
In contrast, countries such as Japan and Germany used industrial policy to plot their comebacks. By the late 1970s, Japanese auto makers had the once dominant American auto industry on the ropes. The first economic act of the “free market” Reagan administration in 1981 was to put quotas on the import of Japanese cars in order to protect Detroit and the United Auto Workers.
To get Wall Street analysts and shareholder advocacy groups off their backs, and to boost shareholder returns and management bonuses, American corporations began moving their production for American markets offshore. Products that were made in Peoria are now made in China.
As offshoring spread, American cities and states lost tax base, and families and communities lost jobs. The replacement jobs, such as selling the offshored products at Wal-Mart, brought home less pay.
“Free market economists” covered up the damage done to the US economy by preaching a New Economy based on services and innovation. But it wasn’t long before corporations discovered that the high speed Internet let them offshore a wide range of professional service jobs. In America, the hardest hit have been software engineers and information technology (IT) workers.
The American corporations quickly learned that by declaring “shortages” of skilled Americans, they could get from Congress H-1b work visas for lower paid foreigners with whom to replace their American work force. Many US corporations are known for forcing their US employees to train their foreign replacements in exchange for severance pay.
Which is more credible: Paul Craig Roberts or the Heritage Foundation? I can vouch for Mr. Robert’s claim American workers are forced to train their replacements. For two out of three years while I worked doing tech support for Microsoft I was coaching techs in India. The US support techs knew India would eventually get all of our jobs, although no one was going to tell us that.
I was recently laid off again due to outsourcing. We used to have Nortel tech support in Orem, Utah; but that was lost to India. Gateway used to have a support center in Utah, which was closed down and moved over seas. Teleperformance in Utah who handles Dell’s tech support, is starting to move jobs to the Philipeans. My house was formerly owned by someone who worked for Geneva Steel, but when the US dropped tariffs on steel imports, Geneva closed down. Now that steel is manufactured in a foreign country, as most the steel used in the US. Isn’t that a national security threat? Pick one industry that’s safe? Even the reading of X-Rays is starting to be outsourced.
As side note, I leave you with this video on H1-B Visas
In 2005 Triangle Business Journal wrote BioStratum was in trouble because they were using Pyridorin (pyridoxamine dihydrochloride) to develop prescription drugs. Pyridoxamine is a natural component of vitamin B6 so BioStratum was unable to patent it.
DURHAM – After pumping about $100 million over 11 years into a biotech company developing a promising treatment for diabetic kidney disease, investors in BioStratum discovered the drug’s only active ingredient is sold on the Internet to anybody with a credit card.
The lack of intellectual property protection surrounding BioStratum’s drug Pyridorin is scaring away many potential partners from funding the drug’s third phase of clinical trials – typically the final tests before a drug is approved and sold commercially.
Having spent millions developing Pyridorin and other drugs in its pipeline, BioStratum does not have the capital to take the drug any further. The cash crunch has prompted investors to order a restructuring.
As stated later on in this article, BioStratum’s solution was to petition the FDA to declare pyridoxamine (a form of vitamin B6) a pharmaceutical drug, limiting access to the substance.
Intellectual property law does not allow BioStratum to own patents on pyridoxamine, but the company has a pending patent application on its method of obtaining pyridoxamine from vitamin B6.
Steiner says BioStratum officials wrote individually to companies that were selling the supplements, asking that they halt sales. The targeted companies agreed, Steiner says.
Fearful that other competitors would pop up in the future, BioStratum filed a “citizen petition” in July [2005] with the FDA seeking to disallow such sales. It claimed:
Pyridoxamine was not sold as a drug supplement prior to the enactment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 and hence was not “grandfathered” in as a dietary supplement.
Internet sales began after July 1999 when BioStratum submitted an “investigational new drug” filing for Pyridorin, and once a substance is part of a clinical trial it cannot be sold as a nutritional supplement, the company believes. “In our mind this is very clear,” says Steiner. “Before clinical trials, this substance was not sold … (so) in the U.S. it is illegal.”
The Triangle Business Journal claims pyridoxamine is derived from vitamin B6, where Wikipedia claims pyridoxamine is a component of vitamin B6, so some further investigation is warranted.
You can see all information submitted to the FDA on pyridoxamine at their web site. Notice the the FDA started calling pyridoxamine a drug before even determining whether or not it was a drug for BioStratum. The title of this docket is “2005P-0305: Remove Dietary Supplements that Contain the Drug Pyridoxamine“
At any rate, BioStratum has won this battle. They couldn’t get a patent on a substance occurring in nature, so they have managed to get the FDA to prevent companies from using it.
If you would like to contact your representatives and ask them to pass laws baning the FDA from declaring natural supplements drugs, you can find their contact information at Congress.org.
Perhaps the FDA’s cozy relationship with drug companies is one reason why Congressman Ron Paul wants to eliminate the FDA.
I don’t expect to see many news reports on this issue by the mainstream media, but I hope to be proven wrong. When you watch TV who pays for more ads than anyone else? How often do you sit through a commercial break where you don’t see at least one drug company ad?
On February 2nd 2009 Provo Police assaulted a man by the name of Chris Lauridsen.
Chris Lauridsen had the nerve to be be annoyed by an Animal Control agent with a chip on her shoulder harassing him for leaving his dogs in the car for 10 minutes on a 40 degree day.
Any Animal Control Officer with common sense would not have harassed Lauridsen, but this Office obviously did not have any common sense. Perhaps it was a slow day for Animal Control.
“At one point I attempted to explain to her that I was being mistreated and that she worked for me,” he said. “She said no, she didn’t, she worked for the city of Provo and I lived in Woodland Hills.”
Lauridsen explained that he owns a business in Provo that brings in $1 million a year and employs 15 people.
“I don’t deserve to be treated like that,” he said.
And that’s when she called for backup officers.
A person should get equal treatment whether or not his business brings in $1 million into Provo each year. A bagger in a grocery store shouldn’t have to put up with police brutality either.
Do people really think it’s Constitutional for a man to be beaten with night sticks, if he gets angry at police for harassing him?
We know this isn’t an isolated incident since we have the little old lady in Orem who was brutalized for not watering her lawn during our ever lasting drought.
Mike has also started a campaign on Youchoose.net called Free Chris Lauridsen. The purpose of the campaign is to collect signatures to get the charges dropped against Chris Lauridsen and to bring attention to other cases of police brutality in Utah.
What else can be done? Who else is responsible for the conduct of these public employees? Why haven’t the names of the police officers and the animal control agent been released?
The only way police will start to respect people’s rights is if they lose their jobs when they do things like this. This means who ever is responsible for the Police Officer’s jobs has to be eliminated if he/she won’t do something about their abuse.
The way to handle an unresponsive politician is to eliminate them in a primary. People have to get together and decide what candidate in a primary they are going to back.
Although I like the views of third party candidates, supporting one as a solution is a waste of time. Here’s why:
No matter how high your ideals are the reality is the majority of Utahns are going to go to the General Election and vote straight Republican. The exception is Salt Lake who does just the opposite and votes straight Democrat. In Salt Lake it would be a good idea to volunteer for better Democrats in Salt Lake.
Maybe it would be too much effort for people to actually research candidates before they vote ***sarcasm***
Salt Lake is outnumbered by the rest of the state however so even if they vote straight Democrat, they’re not going to be able to knock out a senator like Robert Bennett who’s up for reelection in 2010, or Orrin Hatch who’s up for reelection in 2012.
You can combine the Libertarians and the Constitution Party (although they don’t agree on what liberty means), and they still don’t add up to the numbers the Democrats voting in Utah. The number of Democrats voting in Utah is almost half the numbered by Republicans voting.
Clearly the Libertarian and Constitution Party members would have more success getting involved at the caucus and primary level with the Republican Party.
One answer for people in Utah County, and the rest of Utah, is to join the Campaign for Liberty.
It takes so much time to volunteer and get involved to prevent the country from becoming a police state. Any amounted of money can be defeted by volunteers if there are enough of them. That’s one reason why as a woman, I think women have been suckered into working. Women used to be a much greater political force, but they (we) don’t have time to get involved if they are working full time, trying to take care of a family and a home. Women have been convinced they are some how inferior, or being cheated if they aren’t out in some crappy job slaving away like their male counterparts. How gullible they are.
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