Normally at odds over everything, Congressional Republicans cooperated with President Obama. Again. Once more, it was a jobs-killing free trade ageeement, the TPP. Why is it that the only time the two parties get anything done is in order to screw us over?
Bipartisan Scum
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Indeed, Ted, but I fear that your characterisation of the TPP as «a jobs-killing free trade agreement», is in error. The problem with the proposed TPP – at least so far as we have been able to ascertain – lies not with its trade sections but with those dealing with so-called «investor-state dispute settlement» (ISDS), which provide the legal framework under which the great corporations can sue state actors if they feel the latter have treated them unfairly, i e, act in such a manner as to reduce their profits (https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/WikiLeaks-TPP-Investment-Chapter.pdf). Such disputes – and note that state actors are not allowed to sue corporate investors ; this is a very one-way street – are to be settled by dedicated panels comprising a few corporate lawyers, whose decisions are not subject to review in any national court. What this in effect leads to is global governance by the corporate elite, thus the TPP and its Atlantic sister, the TTIP are not, in their essence trade agreements, but agreements to replace the governments of state actors by a government of the great transnational corporations….
Very bad news, indeed !…
Henri
I guess those right-wing nut jobs were right about the NWO!
@ mhenriday –
What you say is well-illustrated by the fact that Canada and Mexico have, under the terms of NAFTA, killed a U.S. law that required meats to bear Country-of-Origin labels. There’s no appeal — the Congress is moving now to undo that law. We’re screwed. 🙁
«We’re screwed.» Yes, indeed, mein verehrter Lehrer, we certainly are – and that is the real meaning of all those buzzwords like «democracy» and «human rights» that are regularly trotted out to pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible public….
Henri
The answer? Because we let them get away with it.
On an issue like TPP, there’s very little wiggle room. The whole thing is being kept secret. We aren’t allowed to read the contents of the bill. Right there, anyone with a brain should arrive at the same conclusion: If anyone in my voting purview votes for this thing, I throw them out of office by recall or by waiting for the next election.
If the Senate or the House decides to go to a nonrecorded vote? Then you vote out EVERYONE.
Yes. It’s that simple. It really is.
Or we rejoice that the coming of the inevitable collapse is accelerating–while relaxing poolside naturally. Let’s watch Western Civilization burn down and then help its rise from the ashes…it’s all we can do.
The ruling class, they being those who can write policy into law that our elected legislators are not allowed to read and discuss, even among themselves, much less with the public that will have them enforced upon them, act in the name of bipartisanship. See the TPP.
The People act on the belief that their sovereignty is rightly surrendered under law to the single unitary executive sovereign by means of election.
This is true to the extent that the People believe it is true. And the People are subordinate to the Unitary Executive to the extent that they act in accordance with this belief, both in the administration of, and acceptance of its imposed structural violence.
The essence of authoritarian power structure is on display here for those who wish to see it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/26/tpp-malaysia-slavery_n_7444978.html
“The provision, which bars countries that engage in SLAVERY from being part of major trade deals with the U.S., was written by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.). At the insistence of the
White House, Menendez agreed to modify his language to say that as long as a country is taking “concrete” steps toward reducing human trafficking and forced labor, it can be part of a trade deal. Under the original language, the country that would be excluded from the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership pact is Malaysia.”
While Obama sings “Amazing Grace” It appears his Left hand does not know what his Right hand is doing.
Bipartisan scum, indeed.
I think I threw up in my mouth a little.
Well, Glenn, the article on the Huffington Post website that you cite, demonstrates, as if any demonstration were necessary, that the point of the TPP spear is directed against China. That is why China, which after all is the most important trading nation in the region – and the world – has not been invited to join the negotiations for the proposed treaty – which, were the it a trade treaty would surely be counterproductive….
But since the treaty is not in its essence a trade treaty, but rather one which attempts to establish a form of global corporate governance, it is necessary to hold China out of negotiations which, the corporate forces which lie behind the treaty hope will establish the new rules described above. The problem with Chinese participation in the negotiations is the Chinese government’s well-known adherence to the principal of state sovereignty ; it is most unlikely that that government would sign off on any agreement which would permit corporations to sue it before a tribunal consisting of corporate lawyers….
But since without China the treaty would lose a great deal of its power, the strategy would seem to be the following : hold China out of the negotiations and then, when the treaty has come into being and the rules – most particularly those on investor-state dispute settlement – have been set, China will be «invited» to accede to the fait accomplli, which will then apply to all of its major trading partners in the region….
The comments about an «expansive China»’s «muscular actions» in the neighbourhood – while admitting that «[t]he U.S. Navy currently dominates this vital strait [the Strait of Malacca, through which most of China’s oil imports currently flow] courtesy of warships that are based in Singapore (at the southern end of the Malay Peninsula) and tacitly welcomed by Malaysia» – is just the consuetudinal Huffington Post bullshit….
Henri
True, Henri,
Another example of aggressive American Imperialism.
Most people in America are not able to comprehend America’s actions in these terms, so the only appeal to them is the foam on the witches brew, the jobs issue.
As a matter of fact, Glenn, I think the jobs issue a very significant one indeed, not merely in the US, but, to take a very topical example, Greece as well. But even if the US government has been using war and the preparation for war to boost the economy and create jobs ever since the run-up to the US war on Korea, that doesn’t mean that a US war on China would produce so very many jobs. Rather, I think, the contrary….
From what I understand – and you and other posters here are in far better position than a foreigner like myself to determine the truth of this proposition – there’s an awful lot of crumbling infrastructure in the US, the renewal and repair of which should be able to provide a lot of relatively good-paying jobs. But good-paying jobs for the so-called lower and middle classes give those classes greater political power, something which, alas, doesn’t seem to accord with the agenda of the billionaires who run the country, and who seem to prefer war to development….
Henri
I certainly credit Ted with teaching me this. Knowing this then makes watching mainstream political news (as if it were not already painful), near impossible. Their insistence that what we really need in DC is more ‘bipartisanship.’ Their bipartisanship shows us that they really do work together as well as showing us their true objectives and motivations.
Bipartisanship, the force for good that brought you NAFTA, the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, No Child Left Behind, TARP…
Indeed ! What’s not to like ?… 😉
Henri
I suggest a market based solution:
They claim that when the sell some product here for a hundred dollars, they lose money while they can sell the same product for a dollar overseas an make money on it. It’s all accounting BS, moving beans out of one pocket and into another. Solution: Tax mega-corps not on their so-called profits, but on gross domestic sales.
They can hire people overseas to do Americans’ jobs at a lower price, okay, there should be a tariff on ‘imported labor’ which makes up the difference. Profits garnered thereby should be used for training or government work programs.
The government is always interested in trade restrictions and subsidies, for example with integrated circuit chips, accusing other nations of “dumping” product below the price of production, but I never heard of any corporate protests of “dumping” labor on the U.S. market at prices below subsistence levels of labor.
If machine produced goods can be “dumped” into the U.S. market to price domestic producers out of the market, then the same act of “dumping” labor into the U.S. market should be recognized and regulated so that domestic labor is not priced out of the market.
And yet, I hear so many people (mostly Dems) proclaim that there is so much difference between either side of the American government coin. America’s CapitalistPoliticalParty (and its two subordinate Kabuki troups) is indeed, a single, fascist entity. When screwing the most money at stake from the local hoi-polloi, the PugDems are a single organism.
DanD
You see, with the TPP, the CPP can outsource all the cotton-field, semi-jobless, and tent-life impoverishment to its extra-national corporate sponsor. And then? We’ll maybe get a little bit of “protectionist” kabuki, but little else.
DanD
No, what «you» (i e, people in the US) will get is the revocation of laws that mandate worker or environmental protection – see, e g, derlehrer’s comment regarding NAFTA below (admittedly, the US Supreme Court doesn’t do a half-bad job of that all on its own – note yesterday’s decision in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 14-46, but a wise corporation has more than one arrow in its quiver).
As for the «CPP [sic !]», I am unfamiliar with that organisation, but I doubt that it could «outsource all the cotton-field, semi-jobless, and tent-life impoverishment to its extra-national corporate sponsor». Perhaps, «DanD», you should concentrate your efforts on watching Kabuki…. 😉
Henri