HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Sept 27, 2003 Richard Pierce and Benjamin Harris published the first newspaper in the English colonies in September of 1690. "Publick Occurrences both Foreign and Domestick" was intended to be published once per month concerning news of concern to the populace. The English government ordered them to stop publishing after only one issue. It seems that the British thought an ignorant colonial populace was much easier to control. But the Colonials were not to be denied the dissemination of information. The Boston News-Letter began publication in 1704. In 1719 The American Weekly Mercury began publication in Philadelphia and William Bradford began printing the New York Gazette in 1725. Soon dozens of papers were being published, pamphleteers like Tom Paine spread information and Americans were on their way to free themselves from their British masters. The 1735 sedition trial of John Peter Zenger, in which he was acquitted, signaled the end of the British thumb on colonial publications. That trial greatly impacted the future of law in America in the areas of libel and free speech. There were over 550 newspapers being published in America in 1820. There were over 2,300 by 1999. The United States leads the world in number of newspaper and circulation. Does our own government now threaten freedom of speech as the British once did? I see clouds on the horizon: TELEMARKETING NO-CALL LIST Yes, telemarketers can be annoying and yes, they do not always time their calls well. But a law that allows people to “shut up” all telemarketers without allowing them any recourse is simply wrong. Many states have provisions in place so that consumers can demand that individual telemarketers place them on a no-call list. Legislation that follows this course is reasonable. The telemarketing company gets one shot at that phone number and will not call again if their offering is not appreciated. My hope is that reasonable and wise judges will block the current legislation and that either a federal law is crafted that mirrors what many states now do, or decide to put it back into the hands of the states. ANTI-SPAM LAWS There are organizations that are dedicated to “spamming”, or sending unsolicited emails out across the internet. Many are sophisticated and quite prolific. Some of the spammers illegally seek to utilize other organization’s equipment to send out their offerings. It is also true that porn and get-rich-quick and plain quackery is a large part of spam. That being said, there are also plenty of organizations that have legitimate products who have chosen the internet to advertise. This remains a freedom of speech issue and the answer, again, is to give consumers the legitimate ability to be able to halt email from sources they do not wish to hear from again without stopping all advertising of any kind. EMAIL FEES I work in business and I can testify to the enormous amount of work that gets done over the internet. Part of the work is the transmittal of documents and letters via email. With the push for “free trade” in recent years, the United States has seen more and more of our manufacturing jobs fleeing overseas. One advantage our country enjoys is a general facility to use the internet and thereby increase efficiency. The second a charge is levied on email, business in this country will flee at a rate that will see the manufacturing drain seem pedestrian. This nation is not going back to depending on snail mail again, sorry; the cat is out of the bag! The following is an informative article on the subject: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm? NewsID=6287 CURBS ON INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET Hilary Clinton is one of many recently who have decried the unregulated flow of information on the internet. There are some who have attempted to find a way to tax internet usage. But largely this is not a monetary concern, but rather a political one. The explosion of information now available on the internet has vastly increased the sources from which we can all glean the news. There are many unreliable sources out there, but we in this country have the right to decide for ourselves which we choose to believe. It is ironic that access to the internet is bringing about revolution in Iran and was banned for years in Iraq while US politicians ponder ways to monitor and control that same internet here. The internet brings truth to the entire world one computer at a time. The free flow of information is dangerous, but then truth itself is dangerous. It overthrows governments and reinvents individual lives, it is dynamic. Perhaps the world is at the stage with the internet that once Colonial America was with news passed along by monthly and weekly publications. I can see the ‘net having even more influence in the coming decades. But I believe that it is the tyrants and criminals who fear free speech. “…men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19 from the Bible). The majority of us will prosper in an environment of free speech both economically and otherwise. FREE TRADE We can only blame ourselves, for in seeking to push for legislation like NAFTA, which has contributed to massive trade deficits for our country. “In a historic reversal, the U.S. has developed a trade deficit with Mexico since NAFTA. The $1.7 billion U.S. trade surplus with Mexico in 1993 has been transformed into an annual trade deficit of $25.0 billion in 2000. The U.S. trade deficit with Canada has increased from $10.8 to $44.9 billion over the same period.” (Citizen.org) We have also seen a large drain on jobs, primarily in the manufacturing sector: “The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated 766,030 actual and potential U.S. jobs between 1994 and 2000 because of the rapid growth in the net U.S. export deficit with Mexico and Canada. The loss of these real and potential jobs1 is just the most visible tip of NAFTA's impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.” (Robert E. Scott, Economic Policy Institute) The troubles are not limited to NAFTA. “U.S. officials faulted China on Wednesday for skirting commitments to import more foreign goods, while lawmakers complained the Asian giant's fixed exchange rate has fueled the record… U.S. trade deficit with China, which totaled a record $103 billion last year and could reach $130 billion in 2003. The trade gap with China accounts for about a quarter of the total U.S. trade deficit, which reached a record $435 billion in 2002.” (Reuter’s news) TIME FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO ACT President Bush and the Congress need to see this for what it is, a harbinger of a great economic fall for this country. Since President Clinton had extended “Most Favored Nation” status to the Red Chinese, they have avoided compliance with the WTO and worked to keep our goods out of their country while at the same time exporting huge quantities of goods to this country via companies like Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Let’s make sure no companies that make any goods specific to national defense can send manufacturing resources overseas. If they do, let’s get the goods made by local companies instead. Let’s impose tariffs to make up for unfair trade practices of other countries and end the farce with China concerning trade. If a Korean car manufacturer can pay 1/3 the wages to make a car, he can sell it cheaper and the American consumer will buy it. You can be patriotic as all get-out, but if an American car costs $20,000 and the Korean equivalent is $17,000, which is too many trips to the orthodontist and electric bills, etc, that can be paid out of the difference. We need some help to keep the prices from being lowered artificially or to keep our goods from costing too much overseas. Most of the major corporations are multi- national and their self interest is in making money and expanding their market without caring much about where their manufacturing or administrative resources are located. Without a government that is proactive on world trade and willing to face down countries like China, lean years loom ahead. Even as our economy rebounds, we have still lost manufacturing jobs in this last quarter. You can put a “Buy American” sticker on your bumper, but better yet, vote for politicians who understand that trade issues are essential to our economy. ------------ About the author: Kimbal Ross Binder is a husband of one wife and parent of six child units of various sizes. He is a tennis bum, karaoke singer, punster and a reformed liberal who now admires Rush Limbaugh and hates to miss Fox News in the evening. You can pass along plaudits and invectives to: radarbinder@comcast.net Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
