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ONEWORLDATPEACE;
aljazeera news announced today---
China to build almost 2 billion dollar methanol plant in Louisiana. Chinese workers? Chinese materials? Also today --- xl pipeline is using Chinese steel. I guess China does own the U.S.
I just can't believe that President Obama could even consider signing on to TPP after we see what has happened with the outsourcing and off-shoring that has been dragging our country down for so long. I do so wish that all of that was transparent so that, maybe, we could see what he sees to try to make it a positive thing but as it stands now from what we know - or don't know it appears - it will mean more jobs/money leaving our country and screwing us even more than NAFTA did. If anyone has Obama's ear, tell him DON'T DO IT!! DON'T SIGN ON TO TPP!!!
"You have never seen a TV ad which said vote for a Republican so we can cut Social Security and Medicare, so we can give tax breaks to the rich and large corporations." But that's what they do...... Senator Bernie Sanders.
You have also never seen a TV ad which said vote for Obama so we can send jobs overseas and let our middle- class continue to wither and die. But that's what could happen if Obama gets TTP fast tracking power.
The fact that TTP is being negotiated in secret tells us all we need to know!
I was a CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTOR and I actually read the contracts I signed (before!) and occasionally I would object to some clause that was not understandable by mere mortals and it usually ended up ommitted because the Lawyer would say the Insuror or bonding company wanted it inserted.
Soooo I hear this abomination consists of 500 pages and it was pretty much produced by Corporate LAWYERS and DIPLOMATS (?) and you think it might be hard to read?
I've sent requests to my politicians that I have concerns that China Inc. might just use the TPP to build Factories in the US using imported workers and Material, ignore our building codes, ignore our regulations by employing imported workers to operate the plant, ignore environmental regulations and when the place blows up, ignore any responsibility for negligence because that all threatens their profits and there WON'T BE ANYTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT!
Do you think that little giftee might just be tucked into some paragraph somewhere in 500 pages?
You wanna bet?
Thom, Fast Track is essentially the equivalent of the Line Item Veto that Reagan was demanding in the eighties. The response to Reagan also applies here in that this would essentially allow the Whitehouse to make law without the full approval of both houses of Congress !
Great Post Intermittent In...
I think the way people need to talk to (and wirte to) Republican lawmakers is to emphasize how fast-track would take authority away from them. In additoin, emphasizing how "buy American" provisions would go by the way would also be helpful. (No Repblican wants to be seen as un-American). Many Republicans don't like NSA spying on citizens, so they would probably not like the SOPA-like part of the TPP.
Older Americans, who always vote in large numbers, often use prescription meds, so they need to remind lawmakers how unpopular an increase in drug prices would be. In short, people need to emphasize the un-American aspects of fast-track and these so-called free trade agreements.
"Wool covered Wolf"? Would you rather a President Romney?
Anonymous prevented that.
I'm convinced of it.
I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary.
And so the worm turns...Obama is slowly becoming more of a repugnican.
Not surprising after his statement today that being gay is a "choice".
What a wool-covered wolf he turned out to be.
So President Obama is pushing a "NAFTA on Steriods" trade agreement (what would candidate Obama say?). What a surprise. It was Democratic President Clinton who ushered in NAFTA & GATT, expanded corporate welfare, and slashed the social "safety net", allowed all kinds of corporate mergers and the Telecommunications Act, backed corporate prison expansions, etc..
Ralph Nader nailed it years ago when he pointed out the lack of a real difference between our two major parties, each of which serves the corporate interests who support them, not the people.
So a few concerned Democrats (and Republicans too, I understand) will fight "fast-tracking" this thing, or maybe the TPP itself. I sure hope they succeed.
Maybe it's time for another party - one that represents people, not corporations. If the real democrats were to bolt for something better, maybe the Democratic Party would close up shop. Maybe one corporate party is (more than) enough.
Mark J. Saulys,
I agree, some of it is off base...or seems to be, but just as much of it is also dead on. There's obviously no money being made by the producer...his only motive seems to be to tell the story. ..and being a fly on the wall over hearing these discussions back in the 70s..well, that's all the proof I need.
Thom,
I am from Michigan, and the damage from NAFTA is still being felt here. I have heard estimates that as many as 400,00 - 600,000 jobs have been lost here in Michigan just due to NAFTA alone.
That is why this state suffered a one-state Depression from 2000 - 2011.
TPP will finish off the Middle/Working Class. And yes, it will begin in this state because frankly, the Middle Class BEGAN in this state. Want an early canary in the coal mine for the Great Depression of 2016?
Just watch Michigan's unemployment rate. When it starts to spike,....that means we're all going down. Just ask David Stockman,....right?
He coined the expression,
"When the country's economy gets a cold,....Michigan gets pneumonia."
"...it's up to us to take it back. We must get money out of politics."
(In addition to MoveToAmend.org - the folks at Wolf-Pac.com are taking action)
And then there's some knucklehead pushing this line of...:
___________________________________________________________________________________________
FREE PARTY!!! Democrats, Greens, Libertarians... are invited to address issues, and debate and discuss an agenda for positive change to be effected upon setting aside the backward and corrupt Citizens United trumping united citizens paradigm.
Citizens United doesn't say that spending xillions to run for office is required, and this may be nothing more than a misconception.
A new party might be considered, maybe not right away, or maybe just in time for the 2016 go-round.
The "Red" team and the "Blue" team, will likely continue to attempt to marginalize, ignore, and suppress any kind of "third party" voices (Heard that Jill Stein was once shackled to a chair(!!!)) that might present a serious challenge to the status quo.
They can't stop us from having a(n even better) conversation.
Why not a FREE PARTY that runs on ideas, not money. Why play the losing game of competing for bribes with an opposition, whose wealthy and powerful masters can invest in politicians with their pocket change, whereas most Americans can't readily afford to (and shouldn't have to), even if they had more interest and faith in the democratic process.
Government should be more than a lobbying/trade group for the various non-citizen interests it seems to have come to represent.
Politicians should be doing their jobs and not spending half their time fundraising.
Many elected offices provide decent salaries and benifits. The public should
not have to fund politician's SuperPAC's, Powerful "dark" special interests should certainly not be allowed to. (Heard Huckabee turned his PAC into a generous welfare program for his friends and family.)
What if the likes of Marianne Williamson, Jill Stein, Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson, Ralph Nader, Jeff Merkley, Peter DeFazio, Russ Feingold, Sherrod Brown, Jerry Brown... (and their ilk) were to have some electrifying discussions, presentations, hearings, debates... (maybe the Greens could debate the Browns).
The public could enjoy these via You-Tube... (maybe even C-Span, PBS...), and engage in lively discussion and debate. Maybe at some point, they could come up with a slate of candidates for all sorts of elected offices... running as Greens, Browns, or...
Cost: ?? (might be worth it regardless)
Maybe when the "prime time" debates are held in 2016, the people who care about the issues and want to work for a better future (many of whom actually vote) will be paying attention to this convention/these debates (great ratings on C-SPAN?). Maybe being excluded from sharing the stage with the august "Blue" and "Red" teams will be out of the question.
Maybe the bribers and bought-and-paid-for set can spend all they want on getting their messages out, but if they fail to address the real conversation... who knows?
I've had an interesting idea about splitting up large states, but I don't have time to lay it out before the end of the show. Maybe I'll try tomorrow if there's a "live" blog post.
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You got it, Alvord. That is, in fact, done in Western Europe and government isn't nearly as corrupt there, things that are barely mentioned here would be full fledged scandals there.
Arizona and Maine had laws that were close to that and until CU knocked them down they took lobbyists completely out of the equation. In Wahington, legislators from either of those two states could walk from their cars to their offices or to their legislative chambers in less than 5 minutes. Everybdy else took at least a half an hour because they had to run the gauntlet of lobbyists lying in wait for them.
Very good Alvord!
One thing the Democrats need, is to develop a big mouth. But then do the opposite way of the other side - SHOUT THE TRUTH backed up with THE FACTS! And by the way, well said Mark!
Mark J. Saulys ~ How true! After all, it all started with COINTELPRO. If we learned tomorrow that sources within that old agency were behind most of these bogus theories and claims, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Or to discredit conspiracy theorizing in general so when someone happens upon the real story, "wolf!" has been cried too many times already.
Mark J. Saulys ~ I wouldn't be too apologetic if I were you. I think you're spot on. YouTube is full of fantastic conspiracy documentaries that prey upon the worst fears of people. There was a time I followed these theories with earnest myself. Then, I realized that the dire predictions made simply never came true. Then it occurred to me that the REAL conspiracy is the existence of these conspiracies theories themselves. What better way to control the population than distract them with fear, anxiety, and the feeling of helplessness? Paralyze the population with fear so to speak. When you look at it that way, the minor investment made in these productions have a rather high return on investment for the establishment.
Thanks for a very informative post on this, Thom. I am glad you are pointing out this situation, because BOEHNER's BEHAVIOR SHOULD NOT BE CONDONED AND THIS EVENT SHOULD BE CANCELLED AND NOT BE ALLOWED TO SET A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT!
My view on this comes out of my views about our sham of a two-party system and our nation's immoral past behavior toward Iran and the way we destroyed democracy there in the early 1950s when we orchestrated the overthrow of the duly elected Iranian president.
It seems to me that Obama would himself have invited Netenyahu if the Democratic Party had no need to preserve some differences between the two parties in order to pull off more election rigmarole and campaign hype. It's my view that both parties seek to preserve at least an appearance of differences between Reps and Dems, maintaining these differences in some way to make the public think there is a vast choice between the goals of these parties.
It seems likely controlling forces behind both parties' favor our government policies to destabilize and destroy the resource-rich and strategically located nations and are even participating in war-profiteering. (When was the last time Congress looked into war-profiteering, especially of government officials, including its own members? If it had, Diane Feinstein would be questioned alongside Dick Cheney, I would hope.)
The greed-crazed warmongers and war-profiteers must be prevented from getting their way and fomenting war against Iran. No to Netanyahu spreading his jingoism on the floor of Congress.
Hope I wasn't too tactless in how I panned that documentary but I think it's not quite so hopeless, I think the documentarians are trying to exaggerate it way out of proportion.
That doc was more than a little wild in spots. I think there were a couple of things were wrong with it right on the surface.
First, organized labor was becoming infiltrated by organized crime in the '30s because employers they were fighting were hiring gangsters to break the strikes so unions started hiring gangsters to fight those gangsters. At the end of that period the unions emerged, oft times, in the control of those gangsters that they hired. The Teamsters, however, didn't get that way until the '50s and, in some regions of the United States, not at all.
Second, anybody who knows anything of the life of Mao Tse Tung could hardly dismiss him as a "Chinese gangster" planted in Beijing by the Skull and Bones Illuminati or secret fascist industrialists like the doc did. It's just laughable.
That highlights the main problem with the whole doc, they make a lot of assertions without backing them up, expecting you to accept them at face value, rightly presuming that most people don't know any better one way or another and, not unlikely, will just say, "Golly!", swallow it all whole and be off on a fervent, lifelong conspiracy trip.
I know they were, at least, exaggerating on a couple of occasions, lying on at least one, I don't know how many more times they may've been. I need a little proof, for me to accept it uncritically, at face value would be reckless.
Hate typos
The issues of Citizens United are falsely framed as "free speech" issues, i.e., conservative supporters of the ruling falsley claim that it's purpose was to fulfill the promise of the First Amendment and make the right of freedom of speech a reality for all. The truth, however, is the opposite. The true purpose of the Citizens United ruling was not to further free speech but, in fact, to suppress free speech, of all who are not billionaires or exorbidantly rich.
By making one's right to free speech depend on one's ability to pay for it the Supreme Court has directly contradicted the Constitution rather than upheld it by making the freedom of speech, rather than a basic right for all, a privilege of the wealthy and a luxury of the well to do. It ensures that only the wealthy will be able to speak, publicly - even in the Soviet Union or any totalitarian police state one could speak freely in private.
Therein is the essence of the matter because the freedom of speech is meaningless if it doesn't include the right to be heard. Freedom to close yourself into a soundproof closet and speak freely there, but nowhere else, is not "freedom of speech", in any meaningful sense.
For a time the oligarchic powers that be tried a strategy for public speech they found inconvenient by relegating it to "free speech zones" or "free speech pens" which were often literally "pens" or cages or fenced enclosures, sometimes with barbed wire, wherein - and only wherein - "free speech" was supposedly allowed. Typically these pens were in the alley by the dumpsters or in some remote area where few people (and certainly not the powerful intended targets of the protest - or the public before which they were to be called out and held accountable to) would be likely to hear the dissenters enjoying their "freedom" whence confined to the pen. (It did provide some richly, poetically ironic imagery of "freedom of speech" being locked behind barbed wire that was too much even for the plutocratic devisers of the strategy and thus the practice was abandoned after a few years - but not before some pretty significant events had passed, such as the Republican National Convention of 2004 and some anti "free trade" summits, with protest somewhat circumscribed by it. For the record, the progenitors of the methodology were the Democrats, Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago first implementing it to limit or preclude protest at the Democratic National Convention of 1996, in his city, which he anticipated to be great and possibly quite violent.)
Thus freedom of speech is the freedom to speak but, really, it is the right to be heard and, perhaps more importantly, the right of us, the public, to hear them, the speakers, so that we can then make informed choices on issues and elections.