Find Waldo

The paragraph below is from an editorial in today’s New York Times and is about the blessings of free trade, and about how stupid the Democratic candidates are being when they criticize the present administration’s policies. It which has no byline, which means we don’t know who wrote it. Yeah, if I wrote this I wouldn’t want to let anyone know it was me.

In a review in 2003, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that Nafta had slightly increased growth in the United States and that any disruptive effects on employment were small. Trade opens foreign markets for American producers and gives consumers more choices, while competition spurs productivity growth at home.

Let’s count the times this paragraph fails the sanity test. Find Waldo.

Waldo #1: Quoting a review that is five years old seems a bit less than realistic. How many of you folks who are looking for work in 2008 give a flying crap about what Congress thought in 2003? Yeah, I thought so.

Waldo #2: It quotes an Office of Congress which, at that time, was controlled by business interests George Bush the Republican Party.
No one would ever think for a moment that such an august body would,
oh I don’t know, lie?

Waldo #3: …disruptive effects on employment were small. These long unemployment lines do not disrupt employment, you fool. They disrupt government; but employment, while reduced, is hardly disrupted at all. Labor unions disrupt employment (with strikes, you know), which is why government is against them.

Waldo #4: Trade opens foreign markets for American producers… It certainly does, but it also allows those foreign markets to subsidize its products and manipulate currency exchange rates to keep the American producers priced out of the international market.

Waldo #5: …gives consumers more choices… Yes, indeed, it certainly does increase the degree to which our nation becomes a consumer economy, with results that are now becoming painfully apparent.

Waldo #6: …competition spurs productivity growth at home. This is enough to gag a maggot. If the “opening foreign markets” part of this fairy tale were true in any part, there would be no “competitive spur.” Productivity growth is a whole different issue which I will address in a future post, but this Waldo consists of telling the manufacturer “I’m going to help you by making your life harder.”

Six Waldos in a mere two sentences.    Never argue with idiots...