The Difference Between Being a Good Neighbor…And a Chumph

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mexican soldiers rolled across the border in a 45-vehicle convoy and set up camp at the former Kelly Air Force Base near San Antonio. They served victims 170,000 meals, distributed 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted hundreds of medical consultations. Mexico also shipped humanitarian aid to New Orleans, and former President George W. Bush met with Mexican Marines to thank them.

Despire repeated provocations, grandstanding, and churlishness by the Chumphshit – Mexico is again taking the high road in providing help to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. It is, after all, what good, mature, and responsible neighbors do.

The Chumphshit is doing what racist loser do.

 

Abbott says Texas will accept Mexican offer of Hurricane Harvey relief

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday the state is accepting Mexico’s offer to help get Texas back on its feet in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

“Yes. I have, and we are,” Abbott said from Austin when journalists asked him about the topic. “We had a list of aid and assistance that they have offered to provide that we are accepting.”

Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, the consul general in Austin, applauded the governor’s decision. He said vehicles, boats and food will start arriving in Texas within days.

“We are very pleased with Governor Abbott’s response,” Gutierrez said. “Mexico looks forward to doing its share.”

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

With Mexico being one of the highest crime Nations in the world, we must have THE WALL. Mexico will pay for it through reimbursement/other.

6:44 AM – 27 Aug 2017

Mexico, in a diplomatic note Tuesday, provided a long list of items it could supply, including troops, convoys of food, medicine, portable showers and water.

“Texas and Mexico share more than half the border,” Carlos Sada, Mexico’s undersecretary for North American relations said. “There are families, marriages, businesses that bind our two sides. This is about being good neighbors.”

In Washington, following a meeting at the State Department, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson thanked Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray Caso for its “wide range of assistance.”

“It was very generous of Mexico to offer their help at a very, very challenging time for our citizens back in Texas,” he said.

Videgaray responded: “You’re absolutely welcome. We are here to help. We are friends. We are neighbors, and that’s what friends do.”

Donald J. Trump 

 

✔@realDonaldTrump

We are in the NAFTA (worst trade deal ever made) renegotiation process with Mexico & Canada.Both being very difficult,may have to terminate?

9:51 AM – Aug 27, 2017

President Donald Trump has not responded publicly to Mexico’s aid, though on Tuesday he accepted an offer from Singapore to lend four of its CH-47 Chinook helicopters for rescue efforts. Trump spoke by phone with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as he flew to Texas, and accepted the offer, according to Lee’s office. Singapore’s Air Force has trained since 1995 with the Texas Army National Guard.

Mexico’s offer of help comes at a crucial time for the U.S.-Mexican relations, which in many ways is largely shaped by Texas, home to nearly 11 million Hispanics, the majority of them of Mexican heritage. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, with a population of more than 600,000 unauthorized immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center.

To unauthorized immigrants seeking shelter from Harvey’s devastation, Sada said: “Don’t be afraid to come out. There is no deportation operation underway. We have the assurance of Gov. Abbott and the mayor of Houston.”

Beginning Friday, activists are set to launch statewide protests on two fronts. They plan to rally against the state’s new ban on so-called sanctuary cities, a law taking effect Friday. They also plan demonstrations to register growing fears that President Donald Trump will soon end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, created by the Obama administration to block deportation of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Moreover, negotiations between the U.S., Mexico and Canada to overhaul the North American Free Trade Agreement — from which Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. — will resume Friday. No other state has more at stake in those talks than Texas, where nearly half a million jobs depend on the deal.

“Mexico’s desire to be humane at a time of such great need contrasts the character and the churlishness coming out of Washington, D.C., and NAFTA,” said Tony Garza, a prominent Republican and former U.S. ambassador and now legal counsel with White & Case in Mexico City. “In Texas, given the Legislature’s focus these past few months on sanctuary cities sends a clear signal to hundreds of thousands of Texans, particularly Latinos along the Gulf Coast and in Harris County, that we’re not with you and in an increasingly purple state, that may mean something.”

Garza recalled Mexico taking “the high road” in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Mexican soldiers rolled across the border in a 45-vehicle convoy and set up camp at the former Kelly Air Force Base near San Antonio. They served victims 170,000 meals, distributed 184,000 tons of supplies and conducted hundreds of medical consultations. Mexico also shipped humanitarian aid to New Orleans, and former President George W. Bush met with Mexican Marines to thank them.

It’s unclear how Trump, who arrived in Texas on Tuesday to survey Harvey’s catastrophic damage, will react to Mexico’s offer to help. The president and Mexico have had an acrimonious relationship dating back to Trump’s first day as a presidential candidate, when he referred to Mexicans as rapists, murderers and criminals.

“We know that Trump is intensely disliked by Mexicans, but in the end Mexicans see us as a neighbor, a place where Americans are good, decent people,” said James Taylor, a partner at Vianovo, an Austin-based consulting firm, and chairman of the Aquila Alliance, a Texas group dedicated to promoting closer relations between Texas and Mexico. “Mexicans are demonstrating they care about their neighbor — especially their immediate neighbor, Texas.”

On Sunday, as waters rose across southeast Texas, Mexico reached out to Texas. Trump, meanwhile, bullied Mexico on Twitter to pay for his promised border wall. On Monday, he repeated his threat the the U.S. would at some point kill NAFTA.

“We’re in a critical and delicate negotiation with NAFTA,” said Ricardo Ainslie, director of the Mexico Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “Mexico has been the brunt of a lot of highly pressured, hostile rhetoric. So I think it’s very interesting that Mexico is saying in so many words ‘Hey, we’re present, and we’re critical to things that happen in Texas.’ They’re showing real political maturity.”

Texas has its own dicey issues with Mexico. The recently signed SB4 was scheduled to go into effect Friday until a federal judge blocked its implementation late Wednesday. SB4 effectively outlaws sanctuary cities — places where local law enforcement limits or refuses cooperation with federal immigration agents — and gives police the right to ask the immigration status of people they detain. Mexico’s vast immigrant population would be affected.

In 2015, Texas and 25 other states blocked the Obama administration, through a federal court ruling, from extending deferred action to an estimated 5 million undocumented parents of children who were citizens or legal residents, as well as to young immigrants who arrived between 2007 and 2010. The ruling was upheld on appeal, and last year, the Supreme Court split 4-4, leaving the lower court’s decision in place.

Texas leads a group of 10 states pressuring the Trump administration to end DACA, and in recent days Trump has signaled he may do so. A legal challenge could come as early as Sept. 5. Most affected immigrants live in either Texas or California.

“Yes, we know about Sept. 1 and Sept. 5, but our decision, our willingness to help Texas isn’t based on politics,” Sada said. “This is a spontaneous reaction to a neighbor in need, and we, based on our own experiences with natural disasters, know recovery periods can take months, years. So we’re here with one message: Texas, Mexico is ready to help.”

Already, volunteers from the Mexican Red Cross, firemen from the border state of Coahuila and rescue teams from Guanajuato began arriving in Houston to assist.

 

Understanding the War Against NAFTA

And you have to wonder why people are pissed?

Souring Chicago’s sweet treat: Corporate greed, American unions, and moving the Oreo to Mexico

Corporate executives saved $47 million by moving Oreo production to Mexico, but cost 600 in Chicago their jobs

For generations, kids from age 3 to 100 have loved munching on chocolaty Oreo cookies dipped in a glass of milk. But just over a year, ago, the tasty treat suddenly went sour.

In May 2015, bakery workers in Nabisco’s monumental 10-story plant in Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood had been expecting some sweet news from their corporate headquarters. Rumor had it that their renowned facility — after more than half a century and millions of Oreos — was about to receive a $130-million modernization investment to upgrade equipment and to add new production lines. So, the future looked bright and spirits were high on May 15 of last year when management convened members of Local 300 of the Bakery Workers Union to announce that the investment was indeed going to be made.

In Salinas, Mexico.

For decades, the Marquette Park community has been proud that the delectable smell of “milk’s favorite cookie” wafts through their neighborhood. But the noses of Nabisco’s corporate brass are clogged with greed, incapable of sniffing out anything but ever-fatter profits for themselves and other rich shareholders. Taking the NAFTA low road, they intend to move the iconic Oreo brand — and the jobs of 600 top-quality bakery workers — from Chicago to Mexico, where the minimum wage is a bit more than $4. Not per hour, but per day.

This is the tyranny of corporate globalization in action. In 2012 Kraft Foods split off its grocery business, which retained the Kraft name, and rebranded its remaining snack-food empire as Mondelez International, which includes Nabisco and its many brands including Triscuit, Planters nuts, Ritz crackers, Chips Ahoy and Oreos.

Such corporate empires now reign over millions of working families, arrogantly and even lawlessly making self-serving decisions from within the shrouded confines of faraway executive suites — wreaking havoc on workers, local economies, democratic values, and our sense of community. People affected are given no input or warning (much less any real say-so) in the profiteering that now routinely strikes us, like a lightning bolt from hell.

Worse, the so-called humans who’ve enthroned themselves with this autocratic power find it amusing to toy with those they rule over. Mondelez executives did exactly that after their sneak attack on Chicago’s bakery workers. In a crude ploy to shift blame for the loss of jobs to the union, the plutocratic powerhouse claimed it had made an offer to Local 300 to keep producing Oreos in Chicago, but that recalcitrant union officials refused.

Of course they did, for Mondelez essentially proposed that the workers commit mass financial suicide. Here’s the “offer”: Since the move to Mexico is expected to save $46 million a year, the conglomerate would graciously let the 600 ransom their jobs by paying that $46 million themselves. Just slash your annual pay and benefits (as well as your throats) by that amount, the executives told the union, and you can keep making Oreos for us.

This act was an astonishing, unprecedented insulting slap in the face of every middle-class worker in the U.S. Mondelez sapsuckers were effectively demanding that longtime, dedicated, productive employees subsidize the conglomerate and ransom their livelihoods by reducing their income to poverty. Note that Mondelez banked $7 billion in profit last year.

If its executives are so inept that they can’t find an honest way to fill a $46-million hole, they should dock the pay of their top three executives by that amount. They can damn sure afford it, for they totaled $37 million in compensation last year. CEO Irene Rosenfeld alone took a $20 million paycheck in 2015, bringing her eight-year total pay and benefits to almost $200 million.