Astroturf Warning: TPP Critics Call Out Fake 'Progressive' Group Pushing Corporate Trade Agenda [View all]

[IDemo]

This is a piece from April that appears to be relevant to the conversation this morning -

Critics of the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership are lining up against what they call an "astroturf" operation claiming to represent progressives in favor of Fast Tracking the sweeping and secretive trade deal.

No such progressives exist, they say.

Last month, a Democratic political consulting firm founded by former Obama administration staffers launched a website dubbed "Progressive Coalition for American Jobs," which claimed to prove the existence of progressives who support trade promotion authority, or Fast Track power.

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However, groups like Public Citizen, CREDO Action, and Democracy for America say no real progressives support handing over trade authority to the White House in this way.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/02/astroturf-warning-tpp-critics-call-out-fake-progressive-group-pushing-corporate

See also:

A Trade Campaign Built On Four Pinocchios
March 11, 2015
Dave Johnson

A newly launched public relations campaign in support of trade promotion authority, a.k.a. “fast track,” and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) calls itself “the Progressive Coalition for American Jobs.” At its foundation is a set of misleading (at best) claims that begin with a four-Pinocchio whopper.

It is unclear who is in the coalition, why they call themselves “progressive” when progressives are opposed to TPP and fast track, and flat-out wrong that the trade agreement is going to produce “American jobs.”

The “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs” sent out a press release earlier this week promising that the TPP will “support hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States.” This is the same promise that Clinton used to sell NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and we know how that turned out. (Hint: lost jobs, lost wages, lost factories, lost industries, devastated regions of the country, increased trade deficits and a few CEOs and Wall Street types made vastly richer.) (See also, Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership Promises Echo Clinton’s On NAFTA.)

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker looked at this “hundreds of thousands of new jobs” claim on January 30, in “The Obama administration’s illusionary job gains from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” The conclusion:

Our advice remains: be wary whenever a politician claims a policy will yield bountiful jobs. In this case, the correct number is zero (in the long run), not 650,000, according to the very study used to calculate this number. Administration officials earn Four Pinocchios for their fishy math.

http://ourfuture.org/20150311/a-trade-campaign-built-on-four-pinocchios

The astroturf org “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs” was pushing a poll which they claimed showed "Likely Democratic Voters Nationwide Finds Overwhelming Support for Trade Promotion Authority".

http://www.pcaj.org/news/2015/5/8/new-poll-shows-democrats-support-president-obama-on-trade