TPP Agreed On; Here We Go...

The dozens of petitions, letters etc. we all signed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership... and there were a lot of 'em... had ultimately no effect on the 12 nations secretly negotiating the details of this secret treaty which no one gets to read before its ratification is voted on in Congress and the other 11 national legislatures because the deal is... um... secret. (Shadowproof; BBC.)

Now we have to stop it in Congress if possible. It will not be easy. The old saying comes to mind, "The opposite of Progress is Congress," and with the manifestly idiotic people in charge, that is very liable to be the case here.

In short, TPP is being crammed down our throats and up our butts by people who do not have our best interests in mind, let alone at heart. Sorry; that's not how we do things here. Or at least it wasn't until the previous and current presidents transformed our government into a corporatocracy and started giving the biggest of businesses everything they ever dreamed of wanting from the government, meanwhile damning the rest of us to our crumb on a take-it-or-leave-it basis (i.e., fast track).

Get in touch with your Senators and Congress-critters. This one is big and bad...

‘The War Is Over; The Good Guys Lost’ –OR– Senate Voted Cloture On TPP Fast-Track,Will Vote On TPP As Soon As Wednesday

TPP - the invisible monster

The first step toward passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership was done and the bill itself will likely pass Wednesday. Worse, 13 Senate Democrats and 28 House Democrats voted with Republicans to do the deed, and a Democratic president apparently intends to sign it.

Is there no federal elected official concerned about the public's wellbeing? Hello? Anyone??

Ten A Dozen Essential Ideas For Fixing The American Economy — Robert Reich

Robert Reich has completed, not his scheduled ten, but an even dozen videos succinctly expressing the great ideas essential to making the American economy more robust for all its participants and transforming American society into one more committed to equality of treatment of all its members under the law.

The 12 Videos appear (in reverse order) in the right-hand column of Reich's blog, and each video runs about 2-3 minutes. I can't think of a better way for an adult or adolescent American to spend about a half hour than in watching these videos. (In addition to his insight, Reich has a great hand as a cartoonist, which he exercises along with voiceovers on the current topic. You'll have fun learning some excellently framed talking points!)

Pelosi: ‘Slow Down The Fast Track To Get A Better Deal For The American People’ — Trade Deal ‘Sidetracked’ By House Dems, GOP

Astonishing, isn't it? Obama managed, in the secret trade deal for the TPP, to offend Democrats and Republicans alike, for different reasons, but to such a degree that the House slapped his wrist on the matter by a vote of nearly 3-1.

Erica Werner and Charles Babington, at AP via TPM:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House sidetracked a high-profile White House-backed trade bill on Friday, a humiliating defeat for President Barack Obama inflicted by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and dozens of rank-and-file lawmakers from his own party.

The 302-126 vote came a few hours after Obama journeyed to the Capitol to deliver a last-minute personal plea to fellow Democrats to support the measure, which would allow him to negotiate global trade deals that Congress could approve or reject but not change.

...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership might be bad for us living, working Americans (who knows; we only know of this secretly crafted deal what some people have seen fit to leak), but even worse for the nation: it would represent yet another instance of Congress's granting the President "fast‑track" authority, whereby the President may put up a bill for a congressional vote and Congress must vote it up-or-down, with no amendments. I'm sorry, but that is not the history and tradition of American legislative process, and I believe that if fast‑track were regularly instituted, it would eviscerate the "democratic" part of the democratic process. NO on TPP and NO on fast‑track: it's a two‑fer from the viewpoint of Americans seeking to retain control of their government. TPP may ultimately come back from the grave, but it appears it will at least actually be debated by Congress in (ahem) the American way.

(Look in the article at who supports this rejection: what a coalition! Jeebus, the bedfellows I find myself surrounded with are strange indeed!)

Dark Days For Democracy: ‘Leaked TISA Docs Expose Corporate Plan For Reshaping Global Economy’

Proposed TISA nations
(credit: wikipedia.org)

WTF is ‘TISA’? Via ctuttle at FDL, I learned only a couple of days ago about the Trade in Services Agreement, revealed in yet another release by WikiLeaks, and in turn explained in some detail by Sarah Lazare, staff writer at Common Dreams. There's no really short answer to the question, but one can simplify to this: "Leaked Docs reveal that little-known corporate treaty poised to privatize and deregulate public services across globe." Shades of the conspiracy theories floating around in my young adult years! Here's a rather extended excerpt from Lazare's article; it's enough to make the Trans‑Pacific Partnership sound downright benign by comparison:

An enormous corporate-friendly treaty that many people haven't heard of was thrust into the public limelight Wednesday when famed publisher of government and corporate secrets, WikiLeaks, released 17 documents from closed-door negotiations between countries that together comprise two-thirds of the word's economy.

Analysts warn that preliminary review shows that the pact, known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), is aimed at further privatizing and deregulating vital services, from transportation to healthcare, with a potentially devastating impact for people of the countries involved in the deal, and the world more broadly.

"This TISA text again favors privatization over public services, limits governmental action on issues ranging from safety to the environment using trade as a smokescreen to limit citizen rights," said Larry Cohen, president of Communications Workers of America, in a statement released Wednesday.

Under secret negotiation by 50 countries for roughly two years, the pact includes the United States, European Union, and 23 other countries—including Israel, Turkey, and Colombia. Notably, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—are excluded from the talks.

Along with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations, which are also currently being negotiated, TISA is part of what WikiLeaks calls the "T-treaty trinity." Like the TTP and TTIP, it would fall "under consideration for collective 'Fast-Track' authority in Congress this month," WikiLeaks noted in a statement issued Wednesday.

However, TISA stands out from this trio as being the most secretive and least understood of all, with its negotiating sessions not even announced to the public.

...

And to think we used to fear the Trilateral Commission! And where are the black helicopters? But no, apparently this is new to all of us whose nerves are put on edge by such things, and the people involved could not be described as friendly to genuine democracy. But hey, as far as I can tell, only a lot of old geezers (using the term in a gender-neutral sense) and a few college students are actually friendly to democracy these days...

Please help me out: after you read Lazare's article, keep your eyes open for more details from other sources. Thank you!

Senate Clears TPP Fast Track For Obama, Republicans

The Senate just voted the required 60-vote majority to strip itself of most of the power it intrinsically had to forge a satisfactory deal on the mysterious, secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. With fast-track in place, Congress can vote the TPP up-or-down, but cannot amend it, essentially making an international trade organization a fourth all-powerful branch of the US federal government.

So... do we get to see the contents of the TPP now? Or is this secret law still secret? And...

Who really runs the "democratic" government of the United States of America? Right... I don't know, either, but it damned surely isn't "we the people"!

♫ Once... I Had... A Secret Law... ♫The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Environment

NOT the logo, but should be...

If I have been absent from the blog a lot, it is because I've been reading Naomi Klein's prizewinning book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The book is utterly essential reading for anyone who calls him- or herself an environmentalist, but I'd be the last to deny it is challenging reading on several levels. Especially on point regarding the environmental consequences of the TPP are two chapters: chapter 9, Blockadia: The New Climate Warriors; and chapter 10, Love Will Save This Place: Democracy, Divestment and the Wins So Far. It may be possible to read these chapters independently without starting at the beginning of the book; I'm not sure because I so strongly feel you should read the entire book.

Leaders of TPP member states
(courtesy Wikipedia))

Reading the chapters led me to pursue more information on TPP on the web. Goodness knows there's both a lot of it, and not enough of it: the damned thing is being written in secret, from the public of the involved nations and (in America) from Congress, by 600 people who might politely be called corporate lobbyists... no environmentalists involved. But someone leaked an early version of specifically the environmental section of the draft, WikiLeaks published it in January 2014, and a team assembled from Sierra Club (SC), World Wildlife Federation (WWF) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) published an analysis (.pdf), also in January 2014. This is surely not the final version, but it does include a comparison of two earlier versions of the environmental chapter. Believe me, it isn't pretty!

For background, you might want to read about the two decades of NAFTA, the only major trade agreement in town at the moment, and see how that has worked out. Back to TPP, here's a recent TechDirt article of possible interest, mostly about how the US thinks it can get around TPP's provisions... yes, the ones for which no one has been permitted to know the text... and an op‑ed by Sarah Rose at SFGate urging that TPP not be fast-tracked.

The whole thing sucks little green dog dicks. And I doubt we can stop it; TPTB have shown little interest in what the public thinks in any nation involved. But we have to try: democracy already means little enough, and IMO we are obliged to give it some help.