The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is Vile and Must be Stopped

Currently our favorite Potemkin liberal, Barack Obama, is negotiating a trade deal known as the “TPP”, or “Trans-Pacific Partnership.”  Now we don’t know for certain what’s in this agreement, because Obama has declared it a state secret. 

Hostile foreign powers know what’s in this agreement.  Big multinational corporations know what’s in this agreement (after all they have written it).  Obama’s wealthy patrons know what’s in this agreement.  But if anyone – even a U.S. congressman! – were to dare tell the American people what’s in it, they have been very publicly threatened with felony charges!  This is astonishing and without precedent!  

John 3:20-21King James Version (KJV)

20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

It should be obvious, the only reason to keep this secret from the American people is that this bill is toxic.  There have however been a variety of leaks on the bill, and given the utterly despicable nature of Barack Obama and his past track record of stabbing the average American in the back, I think we can pretty safely assume what’s in it.

Of course Obama is utterly shameless - he is now claiming that opponents of the TPP are lying when they say that it is being crafted in secret.  A less corrupt press would call him on this, but with a sycophantic corporate press Obama can lie with utter abandon and get away with it.

Check out the headlines on google news or some other big corporate news site - TPP is hardly in sight.  No, don't pay attention to those politicians getting ready to sign away American sovereignty to a  bunch of multinational corporations - check out Bruce Jenner's sex change!  Obama's top ten jokes at a dinner!  More on Gay Marriage!  Random problems in Nepal!

I note that all four presidents carved on Mt. Rushmore were unabashed protectionists. (OK Jefferson started out as a free trader – he always was the least practically-minded of the founders – but even he came around). 

Abraham Lincoln: “I don’t know much about the tariff.  But I do know this much. When we buy manufactured goods abroad, we get the goods and the foreigner gets the money.  When we buy manufactured goods at home, we get both the goods and the money.”

George Washington: I couldn't find any pithy quotes, but his first act was to sign the Tariff act of 1789, and despite some mutterings about free trade in his farewell address, as president his polices were 100% protectionist.

Thomas Jefferson: “The general inquiry now is, shall we make our own comforts or go without them at the will of a foreign nation?  He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufactures, must be for reducing us either to a dependent upon that nation or to be clothed in skins and live like beasts in caves and dens. I am proud to say that I am not one of these.  Experience has taught me that manufactures are now as necessary to our independence as to our comforts.”

Teddy Roosevelt: “I thank God I am not a free trader.”

Now these four presidents – and many others like them – took the United States from being a backwards agricultural colony to the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen – and with the highest standard of living.

Protectionism works.  Protectionism is the American system.

Lately we have had a series of presidents who believe in forced, corporate-managed trade (there is nothing ‘free’ about restricting the ability of regular people from importing legal pharmaceuticals from Canada because that would interfere with the ‘freedom’ of the rich to make more money by restricting trade…).  Under such luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, the United States has first stagnated and is now declining, with falling wages, massive trade deficits, deteriorating infrastructure, and colossal un- and under-employment.

Who’s your daddy?

Now the TPP is not about tariffs – the United States has already lowered import tariffs across the board to essentially zero.  The TPP is about destroying democracy and cementing corporate and oligarchic control of society.  Among other things that the TPP is rumored to do are:

- Allow local and federal U.S. laws to be overturned in secret courts staffed by unaccountable corporate lawyers, and these decisions cannot be neither appealed, nor repealed by any act of Congress.

- Allow big businesses to import unlimited numbers of foreign ‘guest’ workers, and their families, and force the US taxpayer to subsidize their medical bills etc.  Hello to the labor market of Bangladesh.

- Allow big corporations total control of information, outlaw fair use and educational exemptions, extend copyright to anything and everything and probably renew it to last for all time. 

- Allow the president to negotiate any deal with any nation, in secret, only tell Congress about what has been agreed to after the fact, and then prevent Congress from having any way of changing it.  Under the reported rules, changes in any TPP policy, or removal from the treaty, can only come about if ALL SIXTEEN INVOLVED NATIONS UNANIMOUSLY AGREE.  Hahaha.

- Force American taxpayers to subsidize the bailouts of all big financial concerns (foreign and domestic), and void any laws aimed at regulating parasitic finance.

- Require the US taxpayer to make good the 'lost' profits of any foreign corporation that under some fantasy was harmed by an action of the United States government.  So for example, if the United States were to ban a toxic chemical from foodstuffs, the companies making the toxic chemical can get reimbursed for their next century of 'lost' profits (well, assuming of course that the TPP even allows the banning of toxic chemicals.  It might well not).

- And it keeps getting better!  The smart people over at naked capitalism (www.nakedcapitalism.com) have pointed out that the TPP might well remove the ability of the United States to control its own finances.  Conceivably these foreign corporate lawyers meeting in secret might force the United States to pay settlements in foreign currencies (!).  There is nothing so toxic to a nation than to owe debts that are denominated in a foreign currency.

Remember the hyper-inflation of Weimar Germany?  Of course that was because the government was printing too many Deutschmarks.  But why was Weimar Germany printing so many Deutschmarks?  It's because Germany's war reparations were denominated in gold.  So when their currency devalued, the amount of debt they owed went up.  That caused the currency to devalue further, which increased the size of their debt (in Deutschmarks), forcing them print even more Deutschmarks, etc.  That our elected officials should give away America's sovereignty over its own currency is despicable.

But then, the United States no longer has elected officials.  It has purchased officials.

(If only naked capitalism was not so deeply indoctrinated in the idea that too-rapid population growth can never depress wages.  If you are feeling bored check out their site and politely suggest that they reconsider their willful blindness on demographic issues.  But I digress).

- Oh there will be some stuff about labor rights and environmental protections but these are deliberately unenforceable and will be ignored just as all such provisions in all previous forced-trade bills have.

We hear a lot of propaganda about ‘gridlock’, and that the problem with the United States is the Republicans and Democrats irrationally hate each other and cannot cooperate to get anything done.  We also hear that water flows uphill and the sun rises in the West.  This monstrosity of a bill, these many thousands of pages of corporate-lobbyist authored villainy, will be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote with basically no debate, and no time for anyone to read it, and it will be done with strong Democratic and Republican support.  There is no gridlock.  There may be the occasional bout of ‘opposition theater’, but there is no gridlock.  Please get this gridlock thing out of your head.

Probably you are doomed.  But you should at least try.  Call your elected representative and demand in no uncertain terms that they vote against this monstrosity of a treaty.  And if they vote for it anyhow, do not forget, do not forgive.  Make a point to constantly remind everyone who sold us out.

Time is short.  Act now. Operators are standing by.