Passage Of TPP Will Be A Disaster For Dems Just Like NAFTA was. I'm Really Pissed.

[PatrickforO]

163. OK, I hear you, but...

How can you justify the provision that calls for local environmental regulations being able to be overthrown by an international tribunal staffed with corporate lawyers? Seriously, the idea that foreign corporations (or even American ones) can go into a country and challenge its regulations and laws in some tribunal independent of its legal process and then have no recourse after the tribunal has made its decision basically undermines the governments of all nations and hastens us on the way to oligarchical corporate governance.

And, you know, what is good for GE isn't necessarily good for you and me.

So, even though you make an international populist point, which is a valid one, I believe TPP too flawed for us to ratify. Plus, I'm in workforce development - have been for many years, and I have seen what NAFTA did to our economy. Regardless of what Krugman says, NAFTA is directly responsible for the loss of at least 800,000 jobs, many of which were good union jobs that paid well, and had pensions and benefits.

These lost jobs were replaced by lesser paying service jobs with few benefits. Basically, the American middle class took a big hit with NAFTA. And, yes, I care about a strong American middle class because I've watched over the years as neoliberal and neoconservative policies have taken more and more of what I had and made my future and the future of my family all that much more precarious.

What we really should be doing, instead of further hurting worker rights by free trade agreements that continue to benefit the very few corporatists at the top, is dismantling capitalism and working to reverse the dominant (capitalist) world culture's elevation of the individual good over the common good. Profit IS a dirty word, and we need to reorganize our society around people having enough, and preserving the world for our children and grandchildren.