May 21, 2015

Sen. Elizabeth Warren: NO FAST TRACK FOR TRADE DEALS That Weaken Dodd-Frank

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May 20, 2015

Harry Reid CALLS TRADE PUSH By Obama And GOP 'INSANITY'

My, my,...who would have ever thunk....President Obama & Mitch McConnell are best of buds!!...........


WASHINGTON -- The push by President Barack Obama and Republicans for gigantic new trade deals meets the definition of insanity, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) charged in a Senate floor speech Wednesday. The president and Republican leaders are pushing hard to pass legislation known as Trade Promotion Authority that allows a White House to fast-track trade deals through Congress with no amendments, no procedural hurdles or filibusters, and a simple up-or-down vote in limited amount of time. That fast-track authority likely would make it possible for the Obama administration to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership with a dozen Pacific Rim nations, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe. Together, those pacts would cover about 80 percent of the global economy. The much-maligned North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990s covered about 10 percent of the word's trade, and Reid said that deal and many since have all been disastrous for American workers, costing millions of jobs.



"We can look at these trade bills over the years -- every one of them without exception causes to American workers job losses. Millions of job losses," Reid added. "But yet they're going to try the same thing again and hope for a different result. That's insanity." Obama has tried to counter such complaints by pointing to some of the benefits of free trade deals, insisting they do create jobs, and that his will be the "most progressive" trade pact in history. He's also accused people like Reid and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) of "making stuff up." "I would not be promoting any agreement that I didn't think at the end of the day was going to be creating jobs in the United States and giving us more of an opportunity to create ladders of success, higher incomes and higher wages for the American people, because that's my primary focus," Obama argued last week. Democrats have pushed back on that, though, with Warren releasing a report this week that details the same sorts of promises made in trade agreements for decades, most of which were broken, according to the report. Obama got support Wednesday from his would-be trade ally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who spoke just before Reid, accusing Democrats of blocking progress and jobs for America.

He said the main result of failing to craft trade agreements that lower barriers would be to cost the United States and its businesses markets.







cont'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/harry-reid-trade-insanity_n_7343106.html

May 20, 2015

Blue Dogs And New Dems Are STILL WORKING To Undermine And TAKE OVER The Democratic Party

Florida DINOs Gwen Graham and Patrick Murphy




When Boehner and McCarthy boast how their extreme right agenda gets bipartisan support, they're talking about a gaggle of reactionary Democrats who for one reason or another vote with the GOP-- primarily Blue Dogs and New Dems. Last week, for example, the House voted 242-184 to further restrict women's right to reproductive Choice. Boehner was crowing how it was a bipartisan vote; it wasn't really. 4 Republicans voted with the Democrats and 4 Democrats voted with the Republicans. Of the 4 Democrats, one, Jim Langevin (RI), is a deranged religious fanatic and the other 3-- Henry Cuellar, Collin Peterson and Dan Lipinski-- are hard-core right-wing Blue Dogs who vote far more frequently for conservative initiatives than for progressive ones.


The real tragedy is that with "former" Blue Dog and New Dem leaders, respectively Steve Israel and Joe Crowley, rising in the ranks of House Democratic leadership, more and more conservatives and fewer and fewer progressives are being recruited by the DCCC. So far this cycle Blue America has endorsed 8 progressives for House seats. The DCCC hasn't lifted a finger in any of those districts. They don't want progressives or independent-minded legislators. They want hackish followers who won't make Wall Street banksters nervous. And both Blue Dogs and New Dems insist they're just trying to save the Democratic Party from itself-- by acting more like Republicans.





The two freshmen who vote with the GOP most frequently are Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE) and Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL). Each has an abysmal 22.86 ProgressivePunch score this session, worse than the records of several Republicans. And yet the DCCC is gearing up to spend over a million dollars on each of these worthless Members to help save their seats, despite all their votes for Boehner's agenda.

Here are the 10 "Democrats" who have been with the GOP the most this session on the crucial roll calls:




Contribute to the DCCC and most of that money will go to Blue Dogs and New Dems who have nearly as little in common with you politically as the Republicans do. The main Blue America page is for House candidates. There are no Blue Dogs and no New Dems on that page. And there never will be.




http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com

May 19, 2015

Why Fast-Track Is a DANGEROUS GIFT To Corporate LOBBIES

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He has twice been named among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders. He was called by the New York Times, “probably the most important economist in the world,” and by Time Magazine “the world’s best known economist.” A recent survey by The Economist Magazine ranked Professor Sachs as among the world’s three most influential living economists of the past decade.






The Obama Administration is now on track to get "fast track" legislation through the Senate, heading towards a close vote in the House. The end goal is to conclude two major business treaties: the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The House Democrats are right to withhold their support until key treaty positions favored by the White House are dropped. One of the key reasons to fight fast track is the Administration's insistence on including Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the two draft treaties. ISDS is a dangerous policy that undermines the case for TPP and TTIP. The ISDS framework is an unjustified grant of exceptional power to multinational companies above and beyond the legal system in which the companies operate. ISDS allows foreign companies and individuals to sue their "host-country" governments through ad hoc arbitration proceedings rather than through normal administrative and judicial channels in the country. Through this mechanism, foreign investors can challenge domestic laws, regulations, court decisions (including Supreme Court decisions) and other domestic actions in front of party-appointed tribunals, and governments can be ordered to pay the investor millions or even billions of dollars. When governments lose, they have little recourse to challenge the decision, even if the tribunal erred on matters of fact or law.



ISDS's main supporters--basically trade associations, law firms, and some powerful companies--say that ISDS is nothing new, that it has been included in many hundreds of investment treaties over the past several decades. Indeed, it has been, but companies (and their lawyers) have only become aware of it relatively recently. In 1995, only a handful of ISDS cases had been filed; as of the end of 2014, there had been more than 600 known claims (since most arbitration can be conducted in secrecy, there may have been many more claims). The alarming evidence from recent cases shows that investors are using ISDS to contest a virtually unlimited range of government actions including tobacco regulation, measures relating to taxation, environmental regulation, water and electricity tariffs, health insurance regulation, and health and safety restrictions on pharmaceutical imports, among others. Under normal law, companies and individuals indeed can and do sue host governments regarding various government actions. Yet those lawsuits operate in a legal framework that evolves over time to balance the need to protect investors' economic interests with the government's need to regulate investors and their activities for the safety, health, security, and social interests of other parties. In the US and in many other countries, that balance is reflected in complex and detailed substantive and procedural rules governing who can bring claims against the government, under what circumstances, through what processes, for what types of harms, and for what remedies.


Under ISDS, none of those rules apply. Accordingly, investors can bring cases that they either couldn't have brought or wouldn't have won in domestic courts, and obtain remedies that wouldn't have been available under domestic law. Many countries in Europe and elsewhere are aghast at the end-run around domestic legal systems, rightly worrying that multinational companies will begin to ride roughshod over labor, environmental, financial and other regulations. These fears are well placed. Many big international businesses are aggressive and operate with impunity. If they can challenge regulations that they don't like, they are sure to try. They treat ISDS claims as corporate lobbying 2.0, a new, powerful way to challenge government action. Rather than further entrenching ISDS through TPP and TTIP, the opponents of ISDS are absolutely right to call on the US (and other governments) to remove this provision from these draft agreements. As an alternative to ISDS, the governments could agree on state-to-state consultation and dispute settlement mechanisms like those commonly used to settle trade disputes under international treaties. To the extent that US investors cannot get efficient or fair relief in their host countries, the US should be helping those governments to strengthen their domestic legal frameworks so that they are capable of developing and enforcing laws that protect and regulate business activities. Not only will such efforts help to improve dispute settlement between investors and states, it will also enable foreign investors to enjoy greater legal security when dealing with consumers, suppliers, and competitors, and will more broadly improve the investment climate of the host country.


~snip~

President Obama and the Republican Senators know what they are doing. They are handing gifts to the business lobbies out of sight of the American people, and attacking the opponents of fast track as anti-trade or ignorant, when in fact the opponents are merely pro-public interest. If the President and the Republicans believe these draft agreements are so good, and therefore merit fast track, let them make the agreements public, so that the public could say a resounding NO to ISDS and other threats to the common interest hidden within the draft agreements.


cont'


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/why-fast-track-is-a-dange_b_7312034.html

May 19, 2015

The MIS-SELLING Of The TPP

One of the great blog posts of all time was from Daniel Davies, who declared — apropos of Iraq — that

It’s a good dictum; and if you see a lot of lies, or at least misdirection, being used to sell a policy you should be very, very concerned about said policy. And the selling of TPP just keeps getting worse.

And the selling of TPP just keeps getting worse.

William Daley’s pro-TPP op-ed in today’s Times is just awful, on multiple levels. No acknowledgment that the real arguments are not about trade but about intellectual property and dispute settlement; on top of that a crude mercantilist claim that trade liberalization is good because it means more exports; some Dean Baker bait with numbers — $31 billion in trade surplus! All of 0.2 percent of GDP!

But what really annoyed me, even if it’s not necessarily the worst bit, was this:



Actually, no. We have a low export share because we’re a big country. Here’s population versus exports as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries:



Population isn’t the only determinant — geography matters too, as the contrast between Luxembourg (in the middle of Europe) and Iceland shows. But claiming that the relatively low US export share says anything at all about trade barriers makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

If this is the best TPP advocates can come up with, this is not looking like a good idea.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/the-mis-selling-of-tpp/?_r=0

May 18, 2015

You Won’t Believe Hillary Clinton’s SPIN On AVOIDING THE PRESS

With Hillary Clinton rapidly approaching a month since she answered a question from a reporter, her allies are working to push back on the idea that she is ducking the press. "PUTTING THE VOTERS FIRST, HILLARY ASKS THE QUESTIONS THAT REALLY MATTER," read the subject line of an e-mail -- ALL CAPS in the original! -- that arrived in my inbox this morning courtesy of Correct The Record, a pro-Clinton super PAC directly coordinating with the presidential campaign on rapid response. The missive lays out the facts aimed at putting lie to the "she won't answer questions" narrative. First, Correct The Record notes that Clinton has answered 20 questions from "everyday Americans": seven during her first trip to Iowa (she's back in the state today), five during her New Hampshire excursion and a whopping eight when she visited Nevada. Then the group notes that Clinton has ASKED 117 questions of "everyday Americans." And, yes, it lists every one of those questions -- from "Give me a sense of your experience with that?" (Iowa) to "Do you want to share your story?" (Nevada).

I mean, where to start with this?



No, they're better, you say! They're about policy and not dumb reporters' obsessions, you say!

To all of which, I respond: Do you not think it is of value to know how Hillary Clinton spent her time since leaving the State Department? And how the Clinton Foundation handled its business with various donors who would, undoubtedly, still be in the picture if she was elected president? Or what she thinks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the fight currently happening in Congress? Or Iran? Or the Middle East? You get the idea. The role of the media in this process is to show voters who these people are, really, and to explain how these people would govern the country if elected. Like the media or not, that's a very important role -- and one that is essential to a functioning democracy.




cont'


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/05/18/you-wont-believe-hillary-clintons-spin-on-avoiding-the-press/

May 18, 2015

Republicans Use TPP Trade Deal To SLASH MEDICARE

It is reasonable to assume that most Americans understand that there is no way to make something inherently ugly more appealing, but it might be possible to reduce something’s repugnance with attractive adornments. It is the same with legislation. Since Republicans have had control of the House, and now the Senate, Democrats have admirably attempted to ‘adorn’ horrible Republican legislation with provisions and amendments to reduce the damage Republicans seem intent on wreaking just for the pleasure of seeing Americans suffer. Now, despite Democrats attempt to ‘adorn’ the hideous and secretly corporate-written Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement and make it less-damaging to Americans, Republicans found a way to make it more harmful and punish Americans in the process. Republicans will, and love to, use any reason to slash Medicare whether it is raising the eligibility age for benefits, turning the system into a coupon, or use their sequester to ‘save money‘ for corporate tax cuts. Now Republicans in the Senate have discovered yet another means of cutting Medicare to add insult to injury from the already damage-ridden Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that benefits no-one but the big corporations who wrote the ill-advised proposal.


~snip~

In February, Representatives Sander Levin (D-MI) and Adam Smith (D-WA) along with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced legislation to extend, only through 2020, the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program that expires at the end of 2015. The TAA renewal is to extend the vital 2009-2010 expansion of the program that provides assistance for thousands of service industry workers who are affected by trade deals, as well as the thousands of workers who have, and will, lose their jobs due to trade agreements with countries the United States does not have an ironclad free trade agreement with. Department of Labor estimates reveal that over two million workers have had to rely on the TAA program to receive benefits just to make ends meet, and get the training they require to find new employment. Congress included a very short-term TAA extension in the omnibus bill last year, but the program’s statutory authority expires in its entirety at the end of 2015 when workers and businesses are left completely abandoned. The new version of the bill also extends ‘TAA for Firms‘ which helps businesses adversely affected by trade deals regain their competitiveness. It is bad enough Republicans are pushing ‘fast track’ authority on TPP to further enrich the corporations that wrote the trade deal, but since they cannot accept the Democrats’ attempt to help American workers or businesses in the new TAA extension, or under any circumstances, they found other Americans and an industry to inflict pain on; senior citizens and the healthcare provider industry. That they can slash Medicare in the process is just a value-added benefit that should make the corporations that stand to benefit most from the TPP wet themselves with excitement.



One of the benefits of the new Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) bill is helping displaced workers by providing a tax credit to help them pay for health insurance when they are unemployed. Democrats attempt to help workers gave Republicans the opening they needed and instead of leaving the TAA alone and consider it a reasonable concession for giving President Obama ‘fast-track’ authority on the corporate-written TPP, Republicans despoiled the ‘adornment’ by cutting $700 million from Medicare. The Republican assault on the TAA incurred the wrath of nationwide health providers who rightly object to the GOP ‘fix’ because it includes a 0.25 percent cut in Medicare payments. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare payment cut amounts to $700 million. The amount, regardless how much, is just another assault on the elderly, hospitals, physicians, nursing homes and home health and hospice providers who have already been forced to absorb hundreds-of-billions of dollars in cuts to the Medicare program in recent years. The latest GOP assault was in 2011 with the 2 percent cut in Medicare payments as a result of the Republicans’ precious sequester. The 2 percent cut will continue for eight more years unless Republicans find it in their black hearts to end the sequester cuts once and for all.



To make the cost of the trade bill just a little more painful for Americans besides those that will lose their jobs, the elderly who will lose out with Medicare cuts, and healthcare providers facing another .025% cut in Medicare payments, the Republican adornment to the TAA extension includes damage to struggling families with cuts in the child tax credit. Republicans could no more explain why cutting the child tax credit is crucial to ‘fast-tracking’ the TPP than they could cutting Medicare, but it is safe to say they just love hurting Americans; particularly in advancing the whims of corporations. No group in America can find a bad deal, see it getting made less harmful, and then make it a thousand times worse than Republicans; even in a trade deal written by their corporate masters and promoted by a President they hate with religious passion. Their malice towards working Americans, senior citizens, the healthcare provider industry, and families with children knows no bounds when they are able to find an unrelated means to the increase the damage of an already bad trade deal. If any American is unsure of whether or not TPP is a bad deal, just consider that if it has ardent Republican support and very secret corporate machinations, it cannot be good for America; especially if they are willing to give President Obama special authority to advance it. The Medicare cuts in the TAA extension are just the Republicans idea of an added adornment for their corporate masters’ enjoyment.




cont'

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/05/18/republicans-tpp-agreement-slash-medicare.html

May 18, 2015

DemocracyNow: Revolt Over TPP

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May 18, 2015

Groups Lobbying On Trade PAID Hillary Clinton $2.5M In SPEAKING FEES

Since leaving her post as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton earned millions of dollars delivering 41 paid speeches in the U.S. to a variety of companies and organizations. At least 10 of those groups have been lobbying Congress and federal agencies on trade, an issue that has divided Democrats as the Obama administration pushes for a 12-nation pacific trade deal - and around which Hillary Clinton has remained mum. Clinton has spoken in general terms on trade, saying in New Hampshire last month that any trade deal "has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security." But the issue pits liberal Democrats against the White House and Republicans, and there's a chorus of Democrats are calling for Clinton to weigh in.


In the weeks since she launched her presidential bid, Clinton has been dogged by questions about whether special interests sought to buy influence while she was secretary of state through donations to the Clinton Foundation and through Bill Clinton's paid speeches. For the first time, Hillary Clinton's financial disclosures provide a picture of the speaking engagements for which she was paid since leaving the State Department and at a time when she was actively considering whether to run for president. According to the disclosures released by the campaign on Friday evening, the former secretary of state earned at least $2.7 million from speeches at companies backing the trade promotion authority (TPA) that President Obama has been seeking in order to "fast track" approval of trade deals. While that's a fraction of the $25 million Bill and Hillary Clinton earned from paid speeches from January 2014 to present, they nonetheless open the presidential candidate to criticism.




A number of Clinton's appearances before the organizations lobbying on trade were among her most lucrative speeches. Clinton earned $335,000 from Qualcomm for a speech in San Diego on October 14, 2014; $335,000 from the Biotechnology Industry Organization on June 25, 2014; and $325,000 from Cisco Systems for a speech in Las Vegas on August 28, 2014. According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, both tech companies lobbied in support of TPA in 2014 and 2015. They're also members of the Trade Benefits America Coalition, which in November 2014 sent a letter to congressional leaders saying, "As members of the Trade Benefits America Coalition, we write to urge passage of bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation this year....Congressional action on TPA is needed to help ensure high-standard outcomes in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, which the United States and 11 other Asia-Pacific countries are striving to complete." That letter was also signed by General Electric and Xerox, companies that paid Hillary Clinton to give speeches in 2014. Clinton earned $225,000 from GE on January 6, 2014 and $225,000 from Xerox Corporation on March 18, 2014. In total, she earned at least $1.4 million from companies signing that letter. To be sure, these companies have lobbied on a variety of issues. Qualcomm, for example, lobbied on more than 15 policy areas including transportation and taxes in 2015.




Likewise, trade has traditionally been a thorny issue for Democratic presidential candidates who are courting progressives and union support. In 2008, Clinton and then-Sen. Obama sparred over NAFTA, the trade deal with the U.S., Canada and Mexico, struck Bill Clinton signed during his presidency. As secretary of state, Clinton publicly promoted the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). In her book, "Hard Choices," she said it would level the playing field for American workers in a global marketplace, and that it would "link markets throughout Asia." Now, the Clinton campaign says she'll be watching negotiations closely. Asked whether they're concerned that Clinton's paid speeches from companies that lobbied for TPA could pose a conflict, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Clinton has "laid out the bar that needs to be met, to protect American workers, raise wages, and create more good jobs at home." "So, consistent with what she's been saying on the issue, while this is still being negotiated, she will be watching closely to see what is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency, and open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas," he said. Some Democrats are looking for a more definitive stance. On Sunday Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" whether Clinton should take a position on trade and he said: "You can't be on the fence on this one. You're either for it or against." Asked the same question on ABC's This Week, Senator Dianne Feinstein said, "I think it would be very helpful. I think it's been typified by our party in a way which is most unfortunate and that is on the jobs issue."




cont'

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-earned-more-than-25m-speaking-groups-lobbying-trade/

May 18, 2015

The Trojan Horse President

By William Rivers Pitt

I am not an economist, not even close, but Joseph Stiglitz is. Stiglitz is actually a Nobel Prize winning economist, former Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, and former chief economist for the World Bank. Joseph Stiglitz is positively terrified of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal being pushed rabidly by President Obama. Because he is, I am also frightened by what this "deal" portends.



At the core of this Nobel Laureate's argument against the TPP deal is the simple fact that legal authority - basic, bedrock legal authority - would be transferred from the sovereign courts of the United States to multinational corporations if this "deal" comes to pass. Note well, also, this statement from Stiglitz: "Though corporations can bring suit, others cannot. If there is a violation of other commitments - on labor and environmental standards, for example - citizens, unions, and civil-society groups have no recourse."

That is utterly intolerable, and it's what the president wants.

~snip~

The funny part came when President Obama dismissed Sen. Warren as just another politician as a means of defusing her criticism. Richard Nixon said, "I am not a crook" while staring into a camera. He was in fact a crook, and President Obama is in fact a politician. A consummate one, if truth be told. Of course Sen. Warren is a politician, but she is endeavoring to do what the president is not: represent the people. The president, for his part, is actively representing the corporations that actually are allowed to read the details of this deal, while the rest of us are not.

~snip~

Stiglitz, Warren, Sanders ... and they are not alone. A very interesting left-right coalition is coalescing around opposition to this mysterious, dangerous, perilous trade deal. The real mystery, however, is why President Obama - in his final years in office - would staple himself to such a divisive and damaging initiative. He has the opportunity to focus on infrastructure repair, an example made vivid by the recent rail calamity in Philadelphia. He could lean into pushing the ACA in Red states that still resist it. Hell, he could go wild and push for what they've done with solar power in Germany, panels right down the sides of the highways, free and open space to do all that green stuff he's been yapping about while approving oil drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic Ocean.

But no, it's this terrible thing he has chosen for his "legacy."




cont'

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/30815-the-trojan-horse-president