Poker and peas
May 22, 2008
Our lawsuit against the govament is getting some traction in the poker world. According to Poker News:
Public Citizen contends that President George W. Bush's administration is illegally withholding details of its agreement with the European Union, which gives the European Union access to more business sectors in the United States as compensation for the country closing off its borders to online gambling...
They aren't the only ones concerned with the details of the trade concessions. Representatives Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) joined forces in late March to send a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab requesting the information be released as well.
Another gaming site asks:
Personally, I find it interesting that Public Citizen would find this issue so important. If anything they appear to be against the WTO and globalization in general, but they apparently hate secret trade agreements even more. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but at this point, we'll take any help we can get to keep this issue in the news.
Yep, Public Citizen is first and foremost a good government group. Once we get some transparency and democracy, we can haggle over what's good policy. And of course by our count, the WTO has been awful for public interest legislation, with U.S. public interest policies rules against 5 out of 5 times (the global figures are 28 out of 30).
In other news, is CAFTA leading to food smuggling of unsafe peas? Here's the Miami Herald:
Redland fresh-produce importer Fresh King used fake importers, false invoices and rigged lab tests to evade a pesticide alert on imported [Guatemalan] peas, according to a recently revealed federal grand-jury indictment...
Mary Bottari, director of the Harmonization Project at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, said voluntary food safety testing was ''totally subject to abuse'' because there were no accreditation standards for the labs and no requirement that the results be sent to the FDA.
''The issue of how these folks can currently buy their own laboratory is one of the single most important things being discussed on Capitol Hill with regards to food safety,'' Bottari said.
this is so crazy to think about.
Posted by: pokerstars marketing code | March 17, 2009 at 02:52 PM