The Obama Adminstration announced today it intends to move to Congress a NAFTA-style trade deal with Colombia (better known as Colombian “Free Trade”). The hold up for the last five years has been the little issue of union members being assassinated in Colombia. Specifically, 2,850 trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia in the last 25 years, including 52 murdered in 2009.

Good news! The Obama Administration and Colombia have agreed to an “Action Plan” to reduce those assassinations in the next 3 months before Congress ratifies the NAFTA-style trade deal. As Marcy Wheeler noted, those checkpoints are essentially “assassination stress tests” – a meaningless series of goals without real enforcement, and without a requirement that the number of murders is actually, you know, reduced.

UAW President Bob King tells a more revealing story about the union’s curious support for the NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade deal. In an interview with labor reporter Mike Elk for In These Times, King makes the shocking admission that the union endorsed the deal simply to “reward the [Obama] Administration for good behavior” just for including the unions in the discussions.

It takes guts to get out in front of this when the White House is trying to strong arm people while they take bows with the Chamber of Commerce and Jamie Dimon. High marks for the Sierra Club for showing leadership and being willing to do so.

In the 14 hours since the White House dumped the news of a NAFTA-style Korea Free Trade agreement on a Friday night, labor unions are deafly silent in opposing this job-killing agreement.

FDL has learned that the UAW, which was bailed out by American taxpayers two short years ago, will endorse the South Korean Free Trade Agreement and act as the liberal “postage stamp” for the deal. UAW President Bob King decided to endorse it despite strong opposition from his staff. This is a terrible, terrible deal for America, at a time when unemployment is soaring and the White House has zero plans for creating jobs — unless you’re in the international bank looting business. Everyone involved should be deeply, deeply ashamed of their participation in this, and we will do everything in our power to organize against its passage.

Sorry, White House – he’s just not that into you.

Barack Obama is in Korea lecturing Americans to suck it up and embrace the catfood at the same time Biden was left to represent the WH at the Arlington National Cemetery ceremony to honor America’s Veterans; all so Obama could sell out American labor via a Korean free trade agreement. Dumbest politics ever.

The proposed Korean “free trade” agreement would be a truly horrific blow to whatever is left of American manufacturing at a time when unemployment is rampant. But from a political standpoint, fighting for another so-called “free trade” agreement right now has got to represent some kind of death wish for the Democratic party. I don’t have any other way to explain it.

President Obama apparently plans to submit long-stalled free trade deals with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia to Congress “as soon as possible,” according to a speech he made today. If Obama wants to have the Colombia agreement see the light of day, there’s a number of “outstanding issues” to be resolved. Specifically, the murders of more union members in Colombia than the rest of the world combined every year

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg predicts that if the 2010 election were held today, it would be bad enough for Democrats to be 1994 all over again. Don’t act surprised. Rahm promised us this would happen: