'Winning the Race to the Bottom': Obama Moves to Fast-Track the TPP
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/19-9
'Winning the Race to the Bottom': Obama Moves to Fast-Track the TPP
- Sarah Lazare, staff writer
Published on Thursday, September 19, 2013 by Common Dreams
As Obama moves to fast-track the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), critics are blasting the highly-secretive trade deal as "NAFTA on steroids" and a tool for advancing U.S. and corporate power.
"If impoverishing working people around the world is the goal, then the trade policies like this are working quite effectively," Chris Townsend, political director for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), told Common Dreams. "This is the grand-daddy of trade deals, a very destructive project, and it is happening completely under the radar."
Meeting with his corporation-heavy Export Council, President Barack Obama declared Thursday he intends to push for renewal of Trade Promotion Authority legislation to allow him to fast-track so-called trade agreements by giving Congress a yes or no vote but taking away powers to amend.
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The global public has been shut out of the negotiation process of the TPP, although it will profoundly impact domestic policies and the international economy. Press coverage of negotiations is prohibited, and even U.S. Senators are denied access to the most basic information about the proposals the U.S. is bringing. However, corporate "trade advisers" do get access to this information, as well as a role in the process. "Think of the TPP as a stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny," writes Lori Wallach for The Nation.
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I don't get it. Our capitalists are doing fine. They don't need more power and control, do they?
-Laelth
"
when he's not acting like a Republican/corporate toady)"
Come on, Obama nominated a Goldman guy to be ambassador. One you're start taking the money, you are pwned.
But I still want to believe that Obama is a liberal at heart and has liberal instincts. That's what the BOG dwellers keep telling me, and I want to believe it. I was hoping that one or more of them would step up and explain to me how the TPP is going to be a boon for working people in the United States. They wouldn't have to work very hard for me to believe it because I want to believe it, badly.
Instead, what I see is a wholesale betrayal of the interests of working Americans, an unprecedented and dangerous loss of American sovereignty (subjecting ourselves to capitalist courts that trump the will of the American people), and a huge boon to those of us who are already rich.
Am I missing something?
Please, can some sane liberal defend this? I am open, as I have noted, to just about any argument.
-Laelth
Cheers! 
-Laelth