With the immigration debate being pushed to the fore by Arizona's racial profiling law, many of us have been thinking about Mexico lately. Most of the undocumented immigrants come from that country as well as nearly all the undocumented drugs. So to help us all out, Thomas Friedman gave us his take on Mexico in last Sunday's New York Times.
I like to joke that Thomas Friedman is Milton Friedman's mentally challenged cousin. His wacky non sequiturs and the carefully chosen, misleading anecdotes that he deploys in defense of globalization are the definition of what Jim Hightower calls "globaloney". But this time he goes too far. He has crossed the line into flat-out misrepresentation.
The authority he cites for his piece on Mexico is a Mexican economist named Luis de la Calle. No doubt de la Calle works at the Mexican Enterprise Institute or the Fundación Patrimonio. Amazingly, but predictably, Tom and Louie recommend more privatization, more union-busting and more NAFTA as cures for what ails our neighbor to the south.
The gimmick Friedman hangs his piece on is identification of three alliteratively named groups in Mexico.
Three groups are now wrestling to shape Mexico's future. I'd call them "the Narcos," the "No's and the Naftas." Root for the Naftas
Hey, I'm intrigued, tell me more.
First he tells us that:
... Wal-Mart de Mexico is expected to open 300 new stores, thanks to growing Mexican demand for consumer goods.
Well, not exactly Tom. The demand for cheap plastic crap from China could just as easily be unchanged, Wal-Mart would open the stores anyway to make sure they, and not someone else make the sales. That's what they do.
Next he tells us about his three groups. First there's the Narcos. We know about them. Tom claims that:
President Felipe Calderón is bravely trying to take them on, ...
Of course, some believe that Calderón is only taking on one of the cartels and that he may have some connection to the other.
The Naftas are, get this:
... people who came from the country to work in new industries spawned by NAFTA.
Can you believe that shit ? According to Crazy Tom, NAFTA created lots of high-paying middle-class jobs in Mexico, just like it did here. So the farmers who were put out of business by American agri-business corn imported under NAFTA didn't end up in the slums of Mexico City, nor are they sneaking into the US for low-paying work here. They actually make up a prosperous new middle-class in Mexico. I told you he crossed the line with this one, that's a damned lie.
Then there are the No's, and what a bunch of scoundrels these are. They include:
... teacher's unions, national electricity company workers, farm unions, state employees and Pemex workers.
Tom calls them the No's because:
... they are the primary force opposing any reform that would involve privatizing state-owned companies, like Pemex, opening the oil or electricity sectors to foreign investors ..., or bringing ... accountability to Mexico's schools, where union control has kept Mexico's public education among the worst in the world.
So there it is, it's simple. Mexico's problems have nothing to do with a ridiculously skewed income distribution or a tiny, filthy-rich oligarchy. It's those greedy public sector workers. Just like here at home, it's those damned teacher's unions with their six-figure salaries and their aversion to accountability. How dare they refuse to drink Friedman's Free-Market Kool-Aid ? Who are they to resist the Washington Consensus that has ruined every other country that has gone along with it ? Why don't they want more NAFTA ?
Thomas L. Friedman, I'm not laughing anymore. You're no longer just serving up amusing idiocy. You're spewing toxic right-wing propaganda. You make me puke.