Robert Reich Takes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

[cantbeserious]

[mother earth]

1. I love Reich for this video alone, of course there is far more to appreciate about him.

When you learn the reasons why TPP is so bad...it really is mindless to cheerlead it, or any candidate that thinks it should be.

K & R

[cantbeserious]

2. A Multinational Trojan Horse: The Trans-Pacific Partnership

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-09/multinational-trojan-horse-trans-pacific-partnership

Snip ...

The most troubling aspect of the TPP, asserts Ellen Brown, is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision, which “first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959.” Brown continues:

According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law … that [negatively impacts] corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing nuclear catastrophe.

Imagine a scenario in which the U.S., coming to its senses about climate change, imposes a revenue-neutral carbon fee on fossil energy. According to provisions of the TPP, a fossil-fuel company in a signatory nation could then sue the U.S. for lost profits, real or imagined.

The threat is not idle. In 2012, the U.S.’s Occidental Petroleum received an ISDS settlement of $2.3 billion from the government of Ecuador because of that country’s apparently legal termination of an oil-concession contract. Currently, the Swedish nuclear-power utility Vattenfall is suing the German government for $4.7 billion in compensation, following Germany’s phase-out of nuclear plants in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.

Snip ...

[cantbeserious]

3. The High Price of ‘Free’ Trade

http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp147/

The high price of ‘free’ trade
NAFTA’s failure has cost the United States jobs across the nation
By Robert E. Scott | November 17, 2003

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.

Snip ...

[PSPS]

4. B-b-but we should just trust Obama! That's what the swooners say! Even right here on DU!!11!!1!

[diabeticman]

5. Awesome & simple explanation.

[BillZBubb]

6. It is like "Groundhog Day" with these disastrous trade deals.

The same old lies in support, the same decline in America's working class as a result.

Obama should be ashamed to support this mess. As should ANY Democrat. If this passes on his watch, Obama's legacy will go down the drain.

[bvar22]

7. Obama's legacy is circling the drain over this issue.

He is using the Bully Pulpit to sell all the old Clinton lies.
I'm still waiting for my high paying NAFTA job.

[SoapBox]

8. ^^^This!^^*

Ya know...he's being so fucking hardheaded and asshole like over these pacts, that it's REALLY piss'n me off!

[libdem4life]

10. Well put.

[mother earth]

9. And in any conversation about fast track for TPP, if passed it will give that authorization for 6

years to any president for all trade agreements, no amendments, etc.

[Hoyt]

11. Reich, mastermind of NAFTA, who still says it was a good agreement, just needed more labor and

environmental protections. Exactly what Obama is doing.

[cantbeserious]

12. Ever More Character Assassination - A Logical Fallacy Used By Poor Debaters

eom

[Hoyt]

13. That's not character assassination, that's a fact.

[mother earth]

14. Well, then, who better to really state it as it is...

NAFTA Supporter Robert Reich Proud Of What Clinton Did
http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Inequality-offers-education-on-economy-4827878.php
Q: You say in the film that when you were in the Clinton administration, "We didn't do enough." Enough of what?

Reich : "We didn't do enough to reverse these underlying trends. I'm proud of what we did do, but we set out to do much more. There's a distinction between the business cycle, the natural ups and downs of the economy, on the one hand, and these underlying structural trends.

I think we in the Clinton administration managed to help facilitate a very vigorous recovery, one of the best recoveries in American history, at least postwar. But we didn't do nearly enough to reverse widening inequality. The moment the recovery was over, we were back to the same underlying trend lines, but worse."

*********************************

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a UC Berkeley professor, will see his message move from the lecture hall to the big screen with "Inequality for All."

Working and middle-class Americans have a passionate advocate in Robert Reich, secretary of labor during the first Clinton administration and currently Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He has long contended that growing income inequality is an injustice and a threat to the nation, and he makes a compelling case in a new documentary, "Inequality for All."

[Hoyt]

15. Reich is just ticked because Obama didn't invite him for a beer.

[mother earth]

16. Yeah, that must be it.

[Hoyt]

17. I suspect being left out has a lot to do with Reich's criticism of Obama correcting

what he messed up in NAFTA.

[Chef Eric]

18. How can you suggest that the TPP will "correct" anything?!

According to usnews.com, the TPP will:
1) Give multinational corporations the power to force governments to retract laws that they don't like.
2) Give pharmaceutical companies longer-lasting patents for their drugs (as if their patents weren't long-lasting enough).
3) Allow tobacco companies to interfere with anti-smoking campaigns in some countries.

Do you not see a problem here?

Are you not concerned with the way in which the TPP is being "fast-tracked"? Why the hurry? Do you not see a problem here?

What about the criticisms voiced by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Sierra Club, the NRDC, and the World Wildlife Fund? Do you not see a problem here?

[Hoyt]

19. 1 and 3 aren't true. 2 might increase patent length, but some of these countries don't recognize

patents. Besides, in many poor countries brand name drugs are cheaper than generics here.

I would like to see separate US legislation that defines how much a company can charge on meds after they recoup reasonable research costs. But that is for other legislation, not a trade agreement.

Read up on the tribunals that have been used in over 2500 trade agreements since 1959. If they were as you say, why would any country's government accept them?

Phillip Morris has tried what you allege in 3. They've gotten nowhere in at least 4 years and won't. The anti-smoking campaigns are still in full effect, and working.

[Enthusiast]

20. ...

[daleanime]

22. Hope that will be washed after it's been used....

[redruddyred]

21. just the point I was abt to make

could reich's recent activism be due to... guilt?