So, TPP Fast Track has passed. RIP American Middle Class

[hifiguy]

143. The Sensible Centrist Woodchucks have been telling us for 35 years

"Just be patient - we can work around the latest attempt to destroy the middle class" whether it has come from Raygun, a Bush, Clinton, or now Obama.

The situation has deteriorated at an appalling rate and none of the reverses have ever been rolled back. Unions continue to decline, with "Democratic" presidents doing nothing to help bolster them. Wages continue to fall, as have median incomes. The rich and powerful get richer and more powerful, tightening their grip on the throats of the middle class. We expected Republicans to advance these policies. Yet over the last 23 years we have seen two two-term Democratic presidents do little but aid and abet while cheering them on.

The TPP and its component parts strip national, state and local governments of power to enforce laws protecting the people. Want proof? Read Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything." The province of Ontario decided to directly help a fledgling solar manufacturer with direct funding and a "buy Ontario" provision with respect to solar-power devices; the start-up got off to an excellent start. Then the province's actions and "buy local" provisions were challenged under provisions of WTO agreements. to which Canada was a signatory. Canada, and the solar power manufacturer lost, decisively. Bye-bye startup and the jobs it created.

When this abomination is fully implemented, "buy local" laws will be illegal. Product safety standards will be gone, labor laws, pollution standards, more or less ANY regulation at any level can be made to disappear by the TPP tribunals if the corps want to challenge them. And you know they will challenge every one on the grounds of damage to future profits, which is a genuine cause of action under these arguments, including NAFTA. Reduce the corporate overlords projected future profits by nasty old regulation or laws demanded by the people and the PEOPLE have to REIMBURSE the CORPORATIONS for their PROJECTED losses. And the first challengers will be the fossil fuel megagiants, to stop any meaningful response to climate change. On that you can bet your bottom dollar.

World domination absent war is the end game, and we are now seeing the beginning of the end. War destroys property, and the only thing more dear to the corporatist/Ferengi heart than property is money. Trade deals, which should be called enablers of unlimited capital movement rather than anything having to do with actual trade, leave the property there to be looted after the people are run off, reduced to peonage or eventually passively culled off, as HRC's buddy Kissinger once suggested ("Something will eventually have to be done about the useless eaters." quoth Henry the K). Profits over everything, even the future of the human race.