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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObama is determined to push the TPP through despite opposition
Obama Pushes TPP Negotiations Despite Mounting Opposition at Home and Abroad
<snip>
Despite these blows, Obama and the US Trade Rep are still forging ahead to try to bring TPP closer to agreement among the 12 negotiating countries. US Trade Rep Michael Froman will meet this weekend with Japan's trade minister, who is head of the country's TPP negotiations, to reconcile differences on some major remaining sticking points around tariffs and auto trade. The next TPP meeting, already delayed several times, will begin on February 22 in Singapore. Then in April, President Obama is scheduled to make a trip to Asia. A White House press statement this week shows that TPP is clearly on his agenda as he visits two countries participating in the negotiations.
However, resistance continues to mount abroad. Over 80 senior legislators from seven TPP negotiating countries issued a joint letter demanding that the entire draft text of the agreement be published before it is signed, “to enable detailed scrutiny and public debate.” Vice President of Peru, Marisol Espinoza, is also a signatory to the letter.
The next few months will be interesting for the White House as it struggles to pull together support on this sprawling trade deal both at home and abroad. Senator Ron Wyden has become the new Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, where he will face pressure from the President to pass some form of Fast Track legislation to pass TPP as quickly as possible. But Wyden has been a vocal opponent to the secrecy around these trade negotiations. In 2012, he sent a letter to the US Trade Rep calling them to release detailed information about provisions in the TPP that would impact Internet freedoms. He also introduced a bill to the floor demanding the US Trade Rep give Congress members full access to the TPP text—the same access afforded to representatives of corporations like the Motion Picture Association.
Members of Congress may also introduce a different Fast Track bill, including provisions aimed at mitigating some of the major opposition to the TPP. But any version of Fast Track that facilitates secret trade agreements enables one-sided copyright laws and threatens users rights is unacceptable. Digital policies must be created democratically and transparently.
<snip>
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/obama-pushes-tpp-despite-mounting-opposition
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Scuba
(53,475 posts)
Can't piss off the corporations can he
Marr
(20,317 posts)This is the sort of thing he was talking about.
cali
(114,904 posts)He's pushed hard for the TPP and TTIP and his appointments at the USTR reflect his pro-corporate views.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)not enough benefit of the doubt/haven't waited long enough/obstructionism!/holdouts!/NAAAAADER
Autumn
(45,082 posts)
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Why does Obama fight tooth and nail for the TPP, but roll over and whimper on Single Payer/Public Option?
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Actually, though, many corporations would love to be freed from the obligation to cover health care costs, which single payer would do, so it's not that cut-and-dried.
But I guess the Insurance Corporations got to him first.
Jakes Progress
(11,122 posts)Someone must do a study of what it is in his background that makes him think that these advisers are smart. I do doubt that he wants the crap that will come with TPP. He just chooses to listen and trust the worst advice he gets.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)and will be well compensated for their hard work screwing us over. I wonder what Obama will pull in on the speaking circuit once he is out of office. The only thing that separates the two parties is a few social issues that will always be there- because both sides use those issues to keep us pissed at each other, while the politicians continue to rip us off. Economically, the parties are identical.
Jakes Progress
(11,122 posts)I think Obama may end up as the first officially registered lobbyist after leaving office. Speaking won't bring in the millions he gets for petting the 1%.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Just like the Clintons rake in big bucks making speeches to the people they sold out to on Wall St. and elsewhere.
The speakers fee is just another way to grease their palms.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/03/politics/clinton-speaking-fees/
Former President Bill Clinton commanded the largest speaking fees of his career in 2011, earning $13.4 million and exceeding his previous record by 25%.
Clinton's fees were detailed in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's annual financial disclosure report, released Monday. A CNN analysis of those records shows that the former commander-in-chief has earned $89 million from paid speeches since leaving the White House in January 2001.
quinnox
(20,600 posts)Single payer health care? Forget about it, won't even discuss it. Public option? Nope, too liberal.
Opening up pristine natural environments to oil? Fighting for a free trade treaty no one wants? Hell yea!
Orsino
(37,428 posts)...and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.”
As soon as my pals and I finish these canapes.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)By Vicki Needham
The next chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is making it plain to President Obama that he will not rush forward with “fast-track” legislation that would spur on the White House’s trade agenda.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has no plans to take up the fast-track bill written by outgoing Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)...Instead, he says he will hear out other senators on trade, a policy area he says has changed tremendously since the last time a fast-track bill was approved, in 2002.
<...>
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a member of the panel who has been critical of free-trade policies, said his view is that Wyden will ditch the bill Baucus wrote with Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), the top Republican on Finance, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.).
Brown expects Wyden to start from scratch.
“We’re not going to pass a 2002 fast-track and that’s pretty much what the Hatch-Camp-Baucus bill was,” he told The Hill. “It was dressing up the pig to make it look a little better ...“It has to be fundamentally different,” Brown said of a future bill.
- more-
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/trade/197610-sen-wyden-says-not-so-fast-on-trade
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024467470
cali
(114,904 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)"what does that have to do with President Obama pushing this horrible "trade" deal?"
...it has more to do with the OP than this:
By Steve Bennish
Ohio’s senators and an Ohio steel industry organization Wednesday applauded a U.S. Department of Commerce decision to more comprehensively enforce actions against Chinese oil pipeline manufacturers who export product at artificially low prices.
The illegal international trade practice is known as product dumping. Because of the decision, the senators said, products exported from China, even when treated in another nation on the way to the U.S., will be subject to anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The dispute over the dumping dates to 2008 and involves billions of dollars of pipe exported from China.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said this case “focused on whether minor alterations made to Chinese (pipe) in other countries were enough to change the products’ country of origin.” With the ruling, pipe “made in China and finished in other countries will still face existing trade enforcement penalties,” Brown said.
<...>
Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, called the Commerce ruling “excellent news for Ohio’s workers and manufacturers like those at U. S. Steel and Vallourec Star. This decision makes it clear that countries like China can’t use loopholes to circumvent international law and evade anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Our steelmakers can compete with anyone in the world, and now we’ve taken a step towards leveling the playing field and protecting domestic jobs
- more -
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/ohio-steelmakers-senators-applaud-commerce-decisio/ndMSN/
PITTSBURGH – United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard issued the following statement after the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) announced that it would maintain antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese steel pipe imports:
“With thousands of family supporting jobs at stake, we applaud the DOC ruling to protect American workers. When our international trade partners break the law, we rightly depend on our government to enforce it to protect our communities and prevent the continued erosion of our industrial base.”
“The USW is especially grateful to Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman of Ohio for their leadership in calling on DOC to prevent Chinese pipe producers from exploiting a loophole that would have enabled them to avoid existing antidumping and countervailing duties by changing a product’s ‘country of origin’ after minor alterations elsewhere.”
“Domestic manufacturers have been dealing with the consequences of unfair foreign trade for decades, and we remain committed to fight to level the playing field for American workers to compete globally.”
The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations.
http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/releases/2014/duties-on-illegally-traded-chinese-steel-pipe-will-protect-american-workers
cali
(114,904 posts)The constant regurgitation doesn't indicate such.
"Are you capable of using your own thoughts and words?"
...see my previous comment.
"The constant regurgitation doesn't indicate such."
OMG. My bad superior one: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024505012#post13
The thought that the entire world doesn't hate Obama and think he's the biggest sellout in the world is really upsetting, huh?
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)Using your own words obviously isn't a good idea.
"Continue to post what others say. Using your own words obviously isn't a good idea."
...it took a certain amount of intelligence to come up with that.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)the OP is cut and paste.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thus, expressing opinions in your own words is dangerous.
Links are safer, because you cannot be held personally accountable for the lying shifts and rewriting of history required by the job. You can provide links on Tuesday that say, "We have always been at war with Eastasia!", but proclaim just as confidently on Wednesday through links that "We have always been at war with Eurasia!"
As ProSense has learned well, embarrassing and revealing things happen when propaganda actually expresses an opinion:
Prosense: "Spying on Americans was, is and will still be illegal."
ProSense (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Feb-15-06 08:53 AM
Original message
Edited on Wed Feb-15-06 08:53 AM by ProSense
Bush is spying on Americans: opponents and activist groups. The law can't
be changed to make that legal. The Republicans are trying to pull a fast one with this "law change" tactic by framing the illegal spying as warrantless spying on terrorists; therefore, the law is being changed to give Bush the authority to spy on terrorist. Spying on Americans was, is and will still be illegal. Bush committed crimeS by illegal spying on Americans and breaking existing FISA laws.
I'm sure all criminals would love to have a law passed that retroactively absolves them of their crimes.
solarhydrocan
(551 posts)great post
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)If it's such a great deal, why isn't he trumpeting all the details?
Could it be that it's not such a beneficial deal?
Response to Tierra_y_Libertad (Reply #11)
woo me with science This message was self-deleted by its author.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)got to hand it to the two most conservative democratic or is it liberal republican presidents in the last few years?
cali
(114,904 posts)so say those with OAS- Obama Adoration Syndrome.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)are these covered under obamacare?
DURHAM D
(32,609 posts)no one has blamed Hillary yet. 
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)at least we do not goose step and salute our leaders like the republicans do. it must be we do have the ability to think for ourselves.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)the next president will. Wall Street wants this, and all presidents serve them. If Hillary makes it into office, it will be the same thing. In fact, if Bugs Bunny were elected it would be the same thing. Before you are allowed to take the oath you must first sell yourself to Wall Street.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Don't want to disappoint you.
They're both too involved in The Club, which is the real issue, apart from them as individuals.
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)and abroad?
cali
(114,904 posts)
eridani
(51,907 posts)--and not for the useless sociopathic pieces of shit in the 1% that want this nonsense.
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)or is that what you believe?
eridani
(51,907 posts)Everyone except the top 20% despises "free" trade.
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)and you are still making the numbers up.
Free trade is not the same as trade regulated by agreements like TPP. Free trade would require no agreements. Free trade wouldn't protect US patents and copyrights from "free copying." Free trade would allow dumping at below cost. Free trade wouldn't allow import quotas to protect US producers.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)That's a big part of the problem. These things are negotiated in secret, they snd immensly complicated and they bury the substance in indecipherable gobbeldygook.
Plus the news media would rather focus on the scsndsal du jour, rather than issues of substance.
So there are many people who either aren't aware if it, and its implications.
But among those who are aware of it and the general purpose, and have seen the direction of jobs, wages and other effects following previous "free trade" agreements, there is a hefty amount of opposition.
And before you trot out any cliches about the loony left, I know a lot of businesspeople who don't like it, because domestic business gets hammered by the results as much as anyone.
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)with low wage countries, the first thing we need to do is withdraw from GATT. That's the mother of all "free trade" agreements.
We can just go it on our own. We could just pretend those other people and governments aren't there.
eridani
(51,907 posts)When we had tariffs, we certainly did trading. Besides, which, only a few sections of TPP deal with trade. The rest is all about establishing a dictatorship of 1% psychopaths over elected governments.
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)I thought that as long as you believe all trade agreements are bad, you thought trade was bad. But I get it, you just want to put tariffs on it so we can argue about the amount of each tariff. Do you have specific tariffs you would like and on what?
I was thinking we could start with a tariff on sugar, to protect domestic producers.
eridani
(51,907 posts)Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)and another with Mexico and that would be OK, but a single agreement with both is wrong?
There are 128 countries in GATT, we should just negotiate 127 trade agreements to replace it and who cares if the others just want to keep GATT.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Your point about GATT (which was replaced by the WTO in 1995) is well taken. GATT was FDR's brainchild designed to get away from relying on bilateral trade agreements.
pampango
(24,692 posts)True, true. Yet everyone seems to discuss TPP as if it were NAFTA or one of the other "free trade" agreements that were primarily, if not exclusively, trade deals. TPP is about 'other things' with trade thrown in as a 'carrot' for adoption of all the other things. If the 'other things' were good things (effective and enforceable labor rights and environmental protections to name but two), the trade chapters would not mean much. The problem is that the 'other things' are not 'good' from what has been leaked.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)I just want an end to bad deals negitaited in secret that use trade as a blunt instrumennt to extort nations and prevent civil society from having power over unrestrained Big Money
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)I actually saw evidence that trade was being used "as a blunt instrument to extort nations and prevent civil society from having power over unrestrained Big Money."
The negotiated in secret part doesn't bother me, it is pretty standard operating practice for all governments, since forever. At least, in the US, people that we elected have to approve these agreements, in their final form.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)I'd sure like to know how this aspect is being negotiated in our trade agrements, as it does have very serious implications
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131126/04150225376/resistance-grows-to-inclusion-corporate-sovereignty-canada-eu-trade-agreement-ceta.shtml
Excerpt
"Although the CBC post claims "the most contentious points have been settled", that's not true for one of the most controversial areas: corporate sovereignty, officially known as investor-state dispute settlement -- and resistance is building. For example, the European Trade Union Confederation, which claims to represent more than 60 million workers in Europe, "strongly opposes the inclusion of ISDS in CETA." And as negotiations on the ISDS chapter begin, over 80 organizations have put together a "transatlantic statement" calling for the corporate sovereignty chapter to be withdrawn from CETA completely:
As European and Canadian trade officials meet again in Brussels today to continue negotiating an investment protection chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), transatlantic civil society groups are demanding that this chapter be removed entirely as an affront to democracy, an attack on the independent judiciary, and a threat to climate change and our shared environment.
The CETA "will include a controversial and unnecessary investment protection chapter and investor-to-state dispute settlement process (ISDS) that a growing number of countries are rejecting for good reasons," says the transatlantic statement, which is endorsed by more than 80 organizations in the European Union, Canada and Quebec. "These excessive corporate protections, built into thousands of investment treaties and free trade agreements, serve no social or economic purpose other than to undermine our democratic rights to decide public policy and public interest regulation."....
Progressive dog
(6,903 posts)method of solving trade disputes, according to all the information I can find. The Jay Treaty ending the US Revolutionary war included ISDS provisions.
I can only find one instance of a settled ISDS claim under NAFTA (the Methanex Case) where Methanex, a Canadian corp., brought a nearly $1 billion claim against the US for allowing California to ban the use or sale of MTBE in gasoline. Methanex lost and was ordered to pay US legal costs of $4 million.
There is an Eli Lilly case against Canada that seems to be more about whether a Canadian company can copy Eli Lilly's patents, than about a sovereignty issue.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thank you for staying on this, Cali.
Broward
(1,976 posts)On Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked at the daily briefing whether chained CPI will be in the budget, and he declined to say.
"What I can tell you is the president has demonstrated in the past and continues — and will continue to demonstrate his commitment to achieving additional deficit reduction that addresses our medium- and long-term challenges through a balanced approach," he said
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/198434-senate-dems-warn-obama-on-social-security-medicare-cuts#ixzz2tQilf6EK
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Obama Pushes TPP Negotiations Despite Mounting Opposition at Home and Abroad
House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi firmly announced her rejection of the “Fast Track” bill at an event on Wednesday, saying it was “out of the question.” Its passage has become increasingly tenuous since Senate Majority leader Harry Reid came out against it two weeks ago.
Fast Track is a mechanism that empowers the White House with sweeping authority to si
I don't see the word "determined" in that title do you?
cali
(114,904 posts)not to mention that it's obvious he's pushing ahead with it- there are numerous articles about that.
don't like it? too bad. Oh, and your objection is dishrag limp.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024414324
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)and I sure HAVE heard a lot of things (right here in GD too) about President Obama that turned out not to be true as well!
cali
(114,904 posts)over the years. he's said so himself- repeatedly.
your denial is pretty spectacular here.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)That's the real issue in the OP.
Where do you stand on that?
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)that's all. Either you do or you don't or you have mixed feelings about it.
If you are going to attack the OP for adding a word, which does not significantly change the meaning of the original article, then you ought to have an opinion on the matter.
If you support his support for TPP, fine, that's your opinion. But it seems you are just trying to deflect from the subject of the post for reasons that have nothing to do with the content.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Armstead
(47,803 posts)1) I support President Obama's effort to get the TPP because I believe it is a good thing.
2)I oppose the TPP and believe that President Obama is mistaken in promoting it. But I believe it is important to get the words exact when someone posts an article, so I object to the use of "determined."
3)I don't really have an opinion on the TPP.
4)Other
neverforget
(9,436 posts) Armstead
(47,803 posts)Whether he is "determined" to push this bullshit theft is is simply "pushing" it doenlt make much difference.
The point is that it sucks, and he should go back to the drawing board and deal with trade as TRADE.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)having it appear on the agenda...is NOT the same as saying you are determined to make it happen.
cali
(114,904 posts)
Thanks for keeping us updated.
aggiesal
(8,914 posts)[Font Color=Red]H[/font]emisphere
[Font Color=Red]A[/font]sian
[Font Color=Red]F[/font]ree
[Font Color=Red]T[/font]rade
[Font Color=Red]A[/font]greement
or
S.H.A.F.T.A
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts)I don't mean just fast tracking this thing, either. It would be an act of treason to approve this deal. I certainly would not want to go down in history as the President who negotiated and signed away the government's ability to regulate commerce and assure product and occupational safety for the sake of a presumed right of corporations to profits.
Right now, President Obama's signature work is the Affordable Care Act, but under the TPP it would be possible for Health Insurance Companies to do an end run around the US Government and take the United States to a commission set up by this agreement to force the taxpayers to fork over to health insurance companies a fine to compensate for lost profits. Does this sound undemocratic? That's exactly what it is. There's a reason the TPP was negotiated in secret. Government of the people, for the people and by the people will parish from the earth.
Perhaps this is what corporate whores like Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan mean when the say that Obamacare will cost the taxpayer billions. The CBO can refute everything they say now, but the CBO isn't factoring in the consequences of approving the TPP and making CEOs as powerful in our time as the landed aristocracy was before the French Revolution and subsequent events up to the final collapse of empires in the twentieth century.
It's time to stand up for democracy and say no to corporatism. Grab you torches and pitchforks, everyone. This is the most serious threat to freedom and democracy since the failure of the French Revolution after Napoleon's coup d'etat in 1799 or the re-imposition by the reactionay Congress of Vienna of the Bourbon dynasty on the people of France after Waterloo. We must be resolved not to obey corporate tyranny. We must overthrow it before it takes root.
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)Trade agreements are treaties, the president negotiates treaties not congress. They do not get to see the president's representatives negations of the treaty. That is protected by the constitution. Wyden can pander and scream about how he hates the power given to the president by the constitution but he can't change it.
It will be fast tracked regardless of the screaming at the clouds and future. You can't stop the future. We all know we will have to drag some people kicking and screaming to it.
To be honest their screaming is funny.
cali
(114,904 posts)YOU making shit up is not funny. it's contemptible.
Congress cedes that authority with fast track but under the constitution Congress has the exclusive authority to negotiate trade agreements.
and no, my friend, there is no guarantee that fast track will pass.
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)Same group of people that screamed to high heavens over NAFTA.
cali
(114,904 posts)save us from conservadems. they really.....
eridani
(51,907 posts)Why?
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"Same group of people that screamed to high heavens..."
Are these the same voices that tell you what news stories are important, or another group of voices?
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)crime to cover as national news that doesn't have any importance outside of it's local community.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)eridani
(51,907 posts)--and you're cheering for this?
Elwood P Dowd
(11,443 posts)and has supported every single one of these trade and outsourcing deals that have cost millions of Americans a middle class income. It doesn't even bother him that most of these jobs go to countries where workers often make less than $1.00 an hour, pollution is rampant, and there are often zero or ineffective labor protections for the workers.
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)red blooded Merican's to rise up from where we were with child labor, pollution and wages. But you'll be damned if anything is done for others in that position to start the climb from where they are.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)to stop "the future". But if you mean we can't effect the future, you are very wrong. Most likely the wealthy will prevail but we can fight them all the way. I noticed that you havent committed to a side in this debate. Do you support the 1% and their "agreements"?
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)diseases that need to be eradicated from people's thoughts.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)pampango
(24,692 posts)All of them require countries to do or not do certain things. That does not make them undemocratic.
Corporate dominance can result from bad international agreements. It can and has happened when there are no international trade agreements at all (pre-FDR).
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)by the multinationals who are not under democratic control then such agreements are anti democratic.
If the majority of people oppose but it is forced down their throats then it is hard to call it democratic.
If the benefits go to the few at the expense of the many, it isn't very democratic.
If the needs of the many are placed behind the desires of the few, it ain't democratic.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Capitalism will eventually implode and millions will starve.
Elwood P Dowd
(11,443 posts)to convince us why we need to embrace the "race to the bottom" and its accompanying poverty/pollution that benefits the richest 1%. The truth is now out about these fake free trade deals you and the mega-rich corporate rats are pushing, and we ain't buying. You need to join a Fox News forum to find any takers.
cali
(114,904 posts)huge fail, kiddo. huge.
and it demonstrates the er, limits, of your grasp of the subject.
Are we living in economic isolation now? Uh, no. Not even close.
the tpp is largely not about trade.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)he had an author on whose book is now published, title was something about "Cyber attacks," or something with "cyber in it."
He talked about the need for spying to catch not only terrorism plots but also the great need to protect our copyrights & patents, and China is the worst transgressor in this crime.
They're profiting off American discoveries/inventions/arts, etc, underpaying their own people, dirtying their environment and it's about time they paid instead of always taking. We need some sort of agreement. Chinese at the top of the chain profit handsomely, and there should be a way to stop them.
If Asia/So America are backing away from the TPP it's because they fear China is getting even stronger and they don't know what's in it. I hope other countries join us in everything be made PUBLIC before passage or no passage, some already have...
Armstead
(47,803 posts)There are ways to deal with international trade --TRADE -- withough selling out the US economy and sovereignty.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)I guess we know which side of the political spectrum YOU favor.
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)opposed.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Democrats build bridges and always have.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Specifically, what does that have to do with the provisions in the TPP that exempt corporations from environmental and labor laws?
To support the TPP is to support the naked power of capital.
Elwood P Dowd
(11,443 posts)and start having multiple orgasms regardless of what's in the agreement.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Hahaha...lost industies and jobs. Whoooooo haaaaa.
One Big de facto Global Corporation.....Hhahahahhahahaha
Its not about resisting "the future" joker. It's about trying to steer us towards one that has some semblance of democracy and economic opportunity for the majority, instead of the Robocop future you seem to find so appealing.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)This is the chance to smash the unions once and for all - more than Ronald Reagan or Maggie Thatcher ever dreamed of in their wildest imaginations. The spoiled rotten American workers will in time have no choice but to accept the conditions of workers in China and India. And there won't be anything those pathetic idiotic American workers will be able to do to stop it! 
Generic Other
(28,979 posts)makes me furious.
We should be able to use all public domain material up to 1957 now. Except greed and corporate suckass greed.
What is entering the public domain in the United States? Not a single published work. Once again, we will have nothing to celebrate this January 1st because no published works are entering the public domain this year. Or next year. In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019.... In the United States, as in much of the world, copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime, plus another 70 years. You might think, therefore, that works whose authors died in 1943 would be freely available on January 1, 2014. Sadly, no. When Congress changed the law, it applied the term extension retrospectively to existing works, and gave all in-copyright works published between 1923 and 1977 a term of 95 years. The result? None of those works will enter the public domain until 2019, and works from 1957, whose arrival we might otherwise be expecting January 1, 2014, will not enter the public domain until 2053. In addition to lengthening the term, Congress also changed the law so that every creative work is automatically copyrighted, even if the author does nothing.
What do these laws mean to you? As you can read in our analysis here, they impose great (and in many cases unnecessary) costs on creativity, on libraries and archives, on education and on scholarship. More broadly, they impose costs on our collective culture.
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday
PuraVidaDreamin
(4,101 posts)For remaining vigilant, and keeping us informed.
I appreciate that very much.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)if it gets shot down, he will have far less credibility in what he's trying to do in the Pacific. I'm not weighing in on the effects on American workers or anything else, just observing why this is so important--mostly as a way to balance out China's growth.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)
kentuck
(111,094 posts)in a bi-partisan way.
Also. according to an expert on C-SPAN the other day, the Keystone XL Pipeline has almost been completed from Oklahoma to Texas already. He will sign off on that also after the election.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Unions, advocates take a stand against TPP
Working people are under attack. No TPP and no fast track!
The Obama administration and multinational corporations have made it clear they want to push forward with finalizing the TPP as soon as possible. They tout economic gains for employers and employees alike. But the numbers just don’t support those claims. A report released last week by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that even when using the most pro-TPP statistics to determine U.S. economic growth, the trade pact would result in a pay cut for 90 percent of U.S. workers.
Luckily some are sounding the alarm. Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa co-authored an op-ed with Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune today warning negotiators about how both fast track and the TPP could harm workers.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)...because the world is going to be destroyed anyway: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024509463
I mean, why bother raising the minimum wage. It's irrelevant because of the TPP, which is irrelevant because the planet is dying. Let's just ride this thing out.
By Steve Bennish
Ohio’s senators and an Ohio steel industry organization Wednesday applauded a U.S. Department of Commerce decision to more comprehensively enforce actions against Chinese oil pipeline manufacturers who export product at artificially low prices.
The illegal international trade practice is known as product dumping. Because of the decision, the senators said, products exported from China, even when treated in another nation on the way to the U.S., will be subject to anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The dispute over the dumping dates to 2008 and involves billions of dollars of pipe exported from China.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said this case “focused on whether minor alterations made to Chinese (pipe) in other countries were enough to change the products’ country of origin.” With the ruling, pipe “made in China and finished in other countries will still face existing trade enforcement penalties,” Brown said.
<...>
Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, called the Commerce ruling “excellent news for Ohio’s workers and manufacturers like those at U. S. Steel and Vallourec Star. This decision makes it clear that countries like China can’t use loopholes to circumvent international law and evade anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Our steelmakers can compete with anyone in the world, and now we’ve taken a step towards leveling the playing field and protecting domestic jobs
- more -
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/ohio-steelmakers-senators-applaud-commerce-decisio/ndMSN/
PITTSBURGH – United Steelworkers (USW) International President Leo W. Gerard issued the following statement after the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) announced that it would maintain antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese steel pipe imports:
“With thousands of family supporting jobs at stake, we applaud the DOC ruling to protect American workers. When our international trade partners break the law, we rightly depend on our government to enforce it to protect our communities and prevent the continued erosion of our industrial base.”
“The USW is especially grateful to Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman of Ohio for their leadership in calling on DOC to prevent Chinese pipe producers from exploiting a loophole that would have enabled them to avoid existing antidumping and countervailing duties by changing a product’s ‘country of origin’ after minor alterations elsewhere.”
“Domestic manufacturers have been dealing with the consequences of unfair foreign trade for decades, and we remain committed to fight to level the playing field for American workers to compete globally.”
The USW represents 850,000 men and women employed in metals, mining, pulp and paper, rubber, chemicals, glass, auto supply and the energy-producing industries, along with a growing number of workers in public sector and service occupations.
http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/releases/2014/duties-on-illegally-traded-chinese-steel-pipe-will-protect-american-workers
By Michael A. Fletcher
The National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday resurrected a proposal to implement new rules aimed at speeding up unionization elections, a move applauded by organized labor groups that have seen a steady decline in membership.
The labor board’s proposed amendments are identical to ones that the politically divided board was on the verge of enacting in late 2011...The latest version of the proposed rule change was approved by the NLRB’s three Democratic members, while the two Republican appointees dissented.
<...>
At present, workers must hold an NLRB-sanctioned election after filing a petition to organize a union. For years, union leaders have voiced concern that it takes too long after an organizing petition is filed to hold an election to determine whether workers want to create a union. The votes were often pushed back for weeks to manually distribute information and to appeal rulings by regional NLRB officials. The delays, union leaders complained, gave employers too much time to campaign to disrupt organizing efforts.
“When workers petition for an NLRB election, they should receive a timely opportunity to vote,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement. “But the current NLRB election process is riddled with delay and provides too many opportunities for employers to manipulate and drag out the process through costly and unnecessary litigation and deny workers a vote.”
- more -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/nlrb-gives-boost-to-speedier-union-elections/2014/02/05/a0d0e35a-8ebe-11e3-b227-12a45d109e03_story.html
The National Labor Relations Board announced today that it is issuing proposed amendments to its rules and regulations governing representation-case procedures. In substance, the proposed amendments are identical to the representation procedure changes first proposed in June of 2011. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) will appear in the Federal Register tomorrow. The proposals are intended to enable the Board to more effectively administer the National Labor Relations Act. Specifically, the NPRM presents a number of changes to the Board’s representation case procedures aimed at modernizing processes, enhancing transparency and eliminating unnecessary litigation and delay. Issuance of the proposed rule was approved by Board Chairman Mark Gaston Pearce and Members Kent Y. Hirozawa and Nancy Schiffer. Board Members Philip A. Miscimarra and Harry I. Johnson III dissented.
In announcing the proposals, Pearce said: “The Board is unanimous in its support for effective representation case procedures. I am pleased that all Members share a commitment to constructive dialogue, and we all agree that important issues are involved in this proposed rulemaking. With a Senate-confirmed five-member Board, I feel it is important for the Board to fully consider public comment on these proposed amendments, along with the comments we previously received in 2011. These amendments would modernize the representation case process and fulfill the promise of the National Labor Relations Act.”
“I believe that the NPRM first proposed in June of 2011 continues to best frame the issues and raises the appropriate concerns for public comment,” Pearce said. He stressed that the Board is reviewing the proposed changes with an open mind: “No final decisions have been made. We will review all of the comments filed in response to the original proposals, so the public will not have to duplicate its prior efforts in order to have those earlier comments considered. Re-issuing the 2011 proposals is the most efficient and effective rulemaking process at this time.”
“Unnecessary delay and inefficiencies hurt both employees and employers. These proposals are intended to improve the process for all parties, in all cases, whether non-union employees are seeking a union to represent them or unionized employees are seeking to decertify a union,” Pearce said. “We look forward to further exchanges of ideas to improve the processes in a way that will benefit workers, employers and all of the American people.”
The reforms the Board will propose would:
- allow for electronic filing and transmission of election petitions and other documents;
- ensure that employees, employers and unions receive and exchange timely information they need to understand and participate in the representation case process;
- streamline pre- and post-election procedures to facilitate agreement and eliminate unnecessary litigation;
- include telephone numbers and email addresses in voter lists to enable parties to the election to be able to communicate with voters using modern technology; and
- consolidate all election-related appeals to the Board into a single post-election appeals process.
The public is invited to comment on the proposed changes. The deadline for comments is April 7, 2014. Reply comments to the initial comments may be filed by April 14, 2014. Details on how to submit comments are set forth in the NPRM. In addition, the Board will hold a public hearing during the week of April 7, at which members of the public may address the proposed amendments and make other suggestions for improving the Board’s representation case procedures.
http://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/national-labor-relations-board-proposes-amendments-improve-representation
Teamsters Support Proposed Change That Would Speed Up Union Elections
The rule, if approved, would eliminate existing hurdles that can delay union-organizing votes with meritless and unnecessary litigation. The changes would streamline pre- and post-election procedures to help facilitate agreement and consolidate all election-related appeals into a post-election appeals process. Taken together, they would help stop companies from abusing the legal process to stall election votes, as many do now.
“Workers for too long have been forced to endure unnecessary delays when they have tried to start a union,” Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa said. “We urge the NLRB to move forward with these changes so hard-working Americans can organize and better provide for their families.”
http://teamster.org/news/2014/02/teamsters-support-proposed-change-would-speed-union-elections
cali
(114,904 posts) I knew that post would get your attention.
TPP. 
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Response to cali (Original post)
RAM49 This message was self-deleted by its author.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)djean111
(14,255 posts)The attempted thread hijackings over a word and/or with giant gobs of quotes are getting kinda formulaic and, well, funny.
I am sure I am not the only one who just skips over that stuff - I don't quit the thread.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)
cali
(114,904 posts)madville
(7,410 posts)I view trade deals like income inequality. The US and China are the rich guys on the block (even though the credit card is used quite a bit by the US, we're still in the upper-class). Then you have middle-class countries and lower-class countries.
So how do you fix income inequality? You bring the upper-class down a few notches and bring the lower-class up a few notches, hopefully meeting in the middle. That's the way I see trade deals, it will bring the US down a few notches while bringing some lower-class countries up a few notches.
The problem is, the upper-class in the US doesn't take the hit if we fall down a notch or two as a whole on the world stage, the lower and middle classes in the US take the hit through job losses, devalued currency, etc.
pampango
(24,692 posts)so have the top 1%. The groups that have suffered are the bottom 5% and the 75 to 90% - mostly the middle class in the developed world. This middle class can live a decent life by forcing the 1% to give up their hugely excessive income gains, without jeopardizing the income gains of the bottom 2/3 of the world's population.
This would improve both national and global equality.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Simple economics. If production can go where costs are lowest, just as one country starts to rise, capital will go to somewhere poorer to get a better deal on labor.
Then the poorer country benefits for a little while (a few people also get really rich and join The Club) but just as they start to do better, capitaal will move again to find a new source of cheap labor.
Rather than supporting this tendency, trade policies ought to be devised by nations for the best interests of their own populations, not just the global flow of Big Capital.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Each country pursuing its own self-interest in trade is no more likely to be guided by an 'invisible hand' and achieve the 'greatest good for the greatest number' than it is in our national economy. FDR did not seek a return to the republicans' unilateral tarfi pushed for GATT, the IMF and the World Bank. He saw multilateral trade organizations as preferable to each country protecting its narrow self-interests. He saw the effects of this in the 1920's and 1930's and did not like what he saw.
The richest and strongest protecting their self-interest against the poorer and weaker is not a liberal policy either domestically or internationally. Do the poor have some kind of unfair advantage over the rich that requires the latter to wall themselves off?
How do you account for the fact that the bottom 3/4 of the world's population has benefited the most over the last 25 years? Some might have thought that the global poor would only benefit for 10 years or 20 years and then the bottom would fall out when capital moved on to find cheaper labor. Well, according to the figures it has not happened after 25 years. Might it still be just around the next corner?
If we take excess income gains from the our 1% and distribute them to our middle class, we can help them without reversing the income gains of the lowest 3/4 in the world.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Ideally there would be a balance between a global system of fair trade and healthy competition that benefits everyone. But since any system is not perfect we have to look for the least imperfect, and make the best of it.
Given that we have to do that, i would prefer to have nations competing for theor own economic self interest than all nations bending over and taking it in the butt to enrich Multinational Big Money, which is what the current system of so-called free trade is all about.
Yes ultimately the lower segment henefits, but only in terms of relative poverty. Something is better than nothing. But it also has bad consequences and creates many setbacks for tye actuak peopke and domestic economies of the developing world.
I realize this article is a few years old, but it illustrates the kinds of problem NAFTA, TPP agreements cause.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/business/worldbusiness/24peso.html
“A new phenomenon has grown up under Nafta — high-productivity poverty,” said Harley Shaiken, chairman of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
What, IMO, is really the issue is philosophy, ethical social values and structural reforms to make it preferable to do the right thing everywhere.
I realuze thats broadenong it out, but that is what is really the stakes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-free-trade-and-the-loss-of-us-jobs/2014/01/14/894f5750-7d59-11e3-93c1-0e888170b723_story.html
By avoiding discussion of the consequences that trade deals with developing nations have on U.S. workers, not to mention our trade balance, defenders of free trade are indulging in the worst kind of imperviousness to facts. But when the case for free trade is coupled with the case for raising U.S. workers’ incomes, it enters a zone where real numbers, and real Americans’ lives, matter. In that zone, the argument for the kind of free-trade deal embodied by NAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China and the Trans-Pacific Partnership completely blows up. Such deals increase the incomes of Americans investing abroad even as they diminish the incomes of Americans working at home. They worsen the very inequality against which the president rightly campaigns.
There are ways that a developed nation can trade with the developing world without gutting its own economy. Germany has been able to protect its workers not only through the advantage of having the euro as its currency, but also by requiring its corporations to give their employees a major say in their companies’ investment decisions and by embracing a form of capitalism in which shareholders don’t play a major role. Were the United States to adopt this form of stakeholder capitalism, then its trade accords wouldn’t necessarily come at the expense of its workers. Absent such reforms, however, trade deals will only negate our attempts to diminish inequality.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Who's avoiding a discussion. I'm saying take it out of the hides of the 1%, not the bottom 75% of the world.
I agree wholeheartedly. Why don't we work towards that - which would entail much stronger unions - rather than working against trade deals which progressive countries embrace?
The US' "disease" is weak unions and regressive taxes. Our middle class is not going to prosper no matter what trade deals we have or don't have, if we do not deal with the disease. We had no trade deals in the 1920's (and sky high tariffs to boot) and our middle class took it in the shorts during that republican decade, because we had weak unions and regressive taxes. Strong unions and progressive taxation were FDR's "cures" (and still work in modern Germany which prospers on trade), not a hyper-focus on trade which the US does relatively little of compared to other countries, anyway.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)From all evidence I can see, these versions of "free trade" are being negotiated by oligarchs, for the benefit of oligarchs and to the determent of civil society and the majority of people ultimately.
I don't know if the politicians like Clinton nd Obama who have pushed these things are either misguided, bought off or have simply become myopic because of who they hang with.
When Obama's Sec. of Commerce discussing free trade says "Well I was having lunch with Jamie Dimon..." to explkain how wonderful it is, something is terribly wrong.
At the VERY LEAST the information during the negotiations should be widely disseminated in a form that average people can understand, and put to the scrutiny of the political process BEFORE anything is written in stone.
