Political Quotes

“this November, representatives from 135 Nations are meeting in Seattle to decide the all-important global trading agenda for the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately, these trade bureaucrats and their army of attorneys are not going to discuss the overwhelming need to reform the World Trade Organization before expanding it. They are not going to talk about fighting the spread of AIDS in Africa or stamping out slavery in Thailand. They are not going to talk about Mexican workers who are paid pennies an hour to work in shiny American factories or Indonesian children who work 18-hour days for less than a dollar a day to make a pair of shoes that sell in this country for $120. Rather than address the fact that so many of the world's people continue to live in grinding poverty and continue to barely survive, most of them on less than $1 a day, the trade bureaucrats in Seattle are going to discuss how to sell them compact discs and cellular phones. My colleagues can count on this, our own United States Trade Representative is not going to mention that millions of American children are growing up in poverty while their parents continue to struggle to find jobs that pay a livable wage. Our own U.S. Trade Rep. is not going to mention that, even though Wall Street is booming, 90 percent of its benefits go to the richest 5 percent of Americans, and our own United States Trade Rep.…”