Wendy Rosen's Campaign for Indelible Labeling Meets the Global State's Foreign Trade Zones.

REBUILDING MANUFACTURING & MAKING IN AMERICA by Wendy Rosen

 

We were banned from teaching others how to make this product (and others that we designed)  by terms offered by Fractured Atlas fiscal sponsorship

Wendy Rosen has been advocating for indelible labeling of imports for years. During the beginning of the Baldacci administration, Wendy Rosen sent an initiative on indelible labeling that I submitted to to "the creative economy listserve" a listserve sponsored by Maine's public-private government, and juried by its friends. 

My message asked Mainers to contact Olympia Snowe but the overlords rejected my submission.

 

I took the message to a local craft fair where people were grabbing it out of my hand before I finished my first introductory sentence. I was advised to contact Mrs. Baldacci. I did so but did not get a personal response from the Governor's wife. 

Several months later I received a demented apology from the listserve jurors, explaining that they thought my message about Wendy's Rosen's efforts to regulate the identification of the country of origin of hand-made products coming into the USA  was spam.

Years later I learned that the labels are removed at foreign trade zones. Maine receives federal money for setting up foreign trade zones. 

Corporations with shareholders are required to maximize profits, which they do by locating production where labor is least expensive. 

Large corporations make higher profits than American made hand crafts and so the state protects the interests of global markets, as is written into the Legislative treatise establishing the DECD, which manages the foreign trade zones. 

The findings section of the statute establishing Maine's Department of Economic and Community Development illuminates a philosophy in which the State’s function is to facilitate globalism and to conform to the new world order in which manufacturing takes place where ever the cost of labor is the least in the global economy.

§13051. Legislative findings (Department of Economic and Community Development)

The Legislature finds that the State's economy is linked to the national and international economies. Economic changes and disruptions around the world and in the nation have a significant impact upon the State's economy. The rise of 3rd-world and 4th-world countries as manufacturers of commodities for mass markets and the gradual evolution of the national economy to a technological, informational, specialty product-based economy have significantly affected the State and its communities. [RR 2013, c. 2, §5 (COR).] 

 In order for the State's economy to grow and gain a solid footing, it is necessary to determine the State's assets and the economic opportunities that are or will be available to the State's enterprise, municipalities and labor force. When these opportunities are determined or become apparent, state economic development policies and programs must be focused on facilitating the realization of these opportunities and removing barriers that impede the exploitation of these opportunities. [1987, c. 534, Pt. A, §§17, 19 (NEW).] (emphasis mine)

The Legislature finds that an economic development strategy designed to focus the State's economic development activities and resources on economic opportunities can significantly help the State and its municipalities realize greater growth and prosperity without adversely affecting the quality of life in the State. An economic development strategy must recognize and reflect the different needs, conditions and opportunities of the several different economic regions of the State. This strategy must be flexible and periodically evaluated to make it consistent with changes in conditions and opportunities that arise during these times of dynamic change. It is necessary to involve municipalities, regional economic development organizations and the private sector in the formulation of this strategy in order to establish a well-developed and comprehensive plan that has the support of the State's citizens and officials. [1987, c. 534, Pt. A, §§17, 19 (NEW).]

Note that in this statutory rhetoric, enterprises, municipalities, and the labor force are treated as belonging to the State. 

For argument's sake, if you take the phrase "The State" out of the sentence, it conveys a different meaning, ie" For the Maine economy to grow and gain a solid footing, it is necessary to determine the assets and the economic opportunities that are or will be available to enterprises, municipalities, and the labor force."  

The state's interest lies in managing the entire labor force in the state, which explains why entrepreneurialism is inconceivable in the bottom half of the economy which the state does not serve because it only serves "the quality jobs sector" defined as that sector offering a higher than average income"  

The entire labor force of Maine is stated as if a property of the state. 

The state gains ownership of the municipalities through regionalism, which gradually eliminates the municipal referendum as it transfers decision-making to regional boards. That is why business ownership is discouraged at the bottom of the economy. The state has created a taxpayer-subsidized top of the economy designated as the "quality jobs" sector, in which the state plays the role described in Mussolini's Doctrine of Fascism.

Conception of a corporative state
The Ministry of Corporations is not a bureaucratic organ, nor does it wish to exercise the functions of syndical organizations which are necessarily independent, since they aim at organizing, selecting and improving the members of syndicates. The Ministry of Corporations is an institution in virtue of which, in the centre and outside, integral corporation becomes an accomplished fact, where balance is achieved between interests and forces of the economic world. Such a glance is only possible within the sphere of the state, because the state alone transcends the contrasting interests of groups and individuals, in view of co-coordinating them to achieve higher aims. The achievement of these aims is speeded up by the fact that all economic organizations, acknowledged, safeguarded and supported by the Corporative State, exist within the orbit of Fascism; in other terms they accept the conception of Fascism in theory and in practice. (speech at the opening of the Ministry of Corporations, July 31, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927, p. 250) The Doctrine of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, 193239

The equivalency of "The Ministry of Corporations is  §3304. Industry partnerships, passed by the Maine Legislature in 2015.

The historical origins of the "quality jobs" sector are also found in Mussolini's writings:

Grouped According to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the sums of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity. The Doctrine of Fascism 

It is not the role of the DECD or Maine’s creative economy to protect American and Maine-made products from fraudulent imitators. 

If the local government does not protect the interest of Maine and American-made manufacturing from fraudulent imitators abroad, then who does? 

Foreign Trade Zones facilitate the foreign imitators by providing facilities where paper labels can be removed to reveal permanent American-sounding names, underneath.

Recently, I checked out the donation page of a local economic development group. Aid To Artisans, a Washington DC-based non-profit dedicated to using the crafts to help low-income people develop economic independence in "emerging countries", was at the top of the list.

Aid to Artisans website:

This new partnership will broaden ATA’s capacity to transform artisan skills into profitable businesses in emerging countries. ATA’s signature approach is centered on market driven product development, entrepreneurial training and access to ATA’s international buyer network, developed during more than 38 years of creating sustainable income for artisans in more than 110 countries. Creative Learning brings expertise in large-scale development initiatives aimed at improving infrastructure, upgrading health and education, creating jobs, and preventing or reversing damage to the environment. With support in management and program design from Creative Learning, ATA will continue to leverage its global expertise for compounded economic impact, bolstering linkages between artisans and international markets Aid To Artisans, About Us ( emphasis mine)

Non-profit global economic development organizations use hand-made crafts to stimulate economic independence/ 

 "Crafts", "making", and "manufacture" are words that describe handmade crafts.

When I applied to Fractured Atlas for fiscal sponsorship as a social enterprise, using crafts making as a way to develop economic independence in low-income areas of Maine, our application was rejected because I used the word "production" on my application, a word which the Fractured Atlas board decided means that one is only in it for the money, As it happens Fractured Atlas was at that time forming its own venture capitalists corporation.

 Andersen Design has never had shareholders and so is not obligated to maximize profits. 

Large corporations sell a mug in the same price range as we do, but have it manufactured in the global low-cost market, making a much larger profit. and so anyone in our business that is "only in it for the money" would locate production overseas.

Many years later Wendy Rosen is still an activist for indelible labels on foreign imports and still,, the government does nothing.