Hammer Mill Days

Hand me that bottle, will you, Marvin? That's right - the one with the brownish-green liquid in it. I think it's spiked with marzipan or something. That's about as hard as it gets on this miserable pimple of a planet. Jesus Christmas. Oh, hi, friend of Big Green . Well, here we are on Aldebaran Five, soaking up the radiation, drinking gloog, making slemoth, and generally doing what living beings do on Aldebaran Five, at least when they're in between performances. As you might have surmised from our previous posts, we were hideously late for the one-week run we had booked on A-5, so we had to shuffle things around a bit. Actually, we canceled a gig on Sirius (the star system, not the satellite radio network). Can't think it bothers them much. They never take anything .... serious .... lee. My apologies. Anyway, how is it going here on A-5? Not too shabby. Our current album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick has sold relatively well here. Fact is, we would be...

We are approaching the grim milestone of twenty years after the passage of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement - a pact that is described even by bland media outlets like NPR as having benefited only corporations in the 3 countries affected. Twenty years after its passage and signing by President Clinton, the evidence is in and it seems clear that many if not all of the criticisms were justified. And now that it is well-established and that we have entered into numerous other trade deals modeled on NAFTA, mainstream news organizations can report the obvious, namely: NAFTA has fueled immigration to the U.S. from Mexico. By forcing Mexican corn farmers, for instance, to compete with Cargill, the agreement effectively destroyed large segments of rural livelihood in Mexico, sending economic refugees streaming into their cities and ultimately across the U.S. border in a desperate bid to find gainful employment. (I might add that, coupled with the high demand from the U.S. for ...