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Economic Justice
The Conspiracy’s Kernel of Truth
By Laura Carlsen
Public Eye, Spring 2008

The North American Union conspiracy theory grew out of a kernel of truth, called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP). But cultivated by xenophobic fears and political opportunism, the NAU outstripped its reality-based progenitor so fast that it has become hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. A little history helps.

After the North American Free Trade Agreement went into force in 1994, the three governments began to talk about expanding the scope of the agreement. Mexico, in particular, hoped to negotiate a solution to the border/immigration problem. However, the process was brought to a grinding halt by the attacks of Sept. 11th. In a 2005 summit of then-Presidents George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and Prime Minister Paul Martin in Waco, Texas plans for “deep integration” between the three countries finally progressed with the official launch of the SPP. In the post-September 11th political context, immigration was definitively off the table and U.S. security interests, along with corporate interests in obtaining even more favorable terms for regional trade and investment, dominated the agenda.

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Enter the AntiUnion NetworkThe Anti-Union Network

The Center for Union Facts is only one of many anti-labor front groups created by business. American Rights at Work tracks the worst here...


Tax Revolt as a Family Value
How the Christian Right is Becoming a Free Market Champion

By Richard J. Meagher
The Public Eye, Winter 2006

"Death Should Not Be a Taxable Event." In August of 2005, this headline appeared on the website of the conservative evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family. The accompanying article asked Focus members to persuade their Senators to repeal a federal tax on inherited estates.

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Who Would Jesus Tax?

In a radio collaboration with the syndicated weekly show "Making Contact," Public Eye Editor Abby Scher investigates how the traditional conservatives in the Heritage Foundation wooed the Christian Right to support tax cuts for the wealthy.  

Listen:http://www.radioproject.org/

When they began their campaign for political power in the 1960s, the ideologues of the New Right were outside the main branch of the Republican Party with their embrace of privatization of essential government services, tax cuts for the wealthy as a supposed economic engine, union-busting, and deregulation of environmental and other protective laws. Today this network - through their new think tanks' skillful reframing of issues, coalition building with the Christian Right, and enormous expenditure of money to mobilize voters - has significant influence in the Republican Party, and is a major force in shaping public policy debates in the United States.

In the past five years, the free marketers have forged common ground with conservative Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists similar to "fusionist" coalitions of conservatives in the 1950s; and the campaign against Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s.

By portraying "Big Government" as tyrannical; taxes as theft, and a full employment economy as a utopian heresy, the New Right defends unfair power and privilege for a tiny wealthy minority.


The Right's Attack on Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(expanded version)
By Lucy A. Williams
The Public Eye,
Spring 1996

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