Corporate coup d'etat....by Jim Hightower

[red dog 1]

Jim Hightower
Thursday, January 15, 2015


Look out America --- here comes the Trans Pacific Partnership!
Dubbed "a corporate coup d'etat" by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, it's a grandiose grab for power masked as a trade deal, allowing an unprecedented level of global corporate rule over Americans.
Let's take a quick look at what we'll be getting into.

The trade hoax.
Of the document's 29 chapters, only five address tariffs and other actual trade matters.
The other 24 consist of various ways to "free" corporations from any accountability and from any responsibility to the world community's common good.

Bye-bye "Buy American."
TPP dictates that all corporations based in any member nation must be given equal access to the public dollars that any government spends on equipment, food, highway projects, etc.
Thus, our own national, state, and local governments would no longer be free to give preference to suppliers of our choice.
"Buy American" and "Buy Local" programs could be challenged by private corporations.

Wall Street rides again!
If anyone doubts that the pact is a corporate boondoggle dressed in trade clothes, let them read it's shameful financial provisions.
"Too big to fail" laws, ensuring that the cost of a bank's collapse would be borne by investors, not taxpayers?
Under TPP, giant global banks could scamper into private tribunals to grab billions of our tax dollars if they have to comply with such laws.
Also, our nation's financial regulations would have to be "harmonized" to comply with TPP's extreme deregulation, re-creating the anything-goes Wall Street ethic that crashed the world economy in 2008.
A Robin Hood tax on volatile, super high-speed speculators?
Nope...TPP specifically lets global banks challenge and kill these laws.

To help stop this anti-democratic nasty, go to:
http://www.exposethetpp.org/

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[djean111]

1. ANY politician who tells you that the TTP or TTIP is a good thing is a liar and a corporate stooge.

That is my bottom line, and I will not vote for any politician who favors these corporate coups.

[red dog 1]

3. Are you surprised that President Obama favors the TPP?

I'm not.

[upaloopa]

2. Where is our academic TPP supporter troll

that was here yesterday? If you are reading this speak up.

[2naSalit]

4. Hightower is a national treasure! n/t

[red dog 1]

5. Jim Hightower is one of my heroes

and you're right....he IS a national treasure, a rare breed these days.

[2naSalit]

9. I think of him as

a more down-homey kind of Bill Moyers type of journalist and activist. Both are among the best we've got these days and they are too few for what we need right now.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. The "American Experiment" is over. The 99% lost.

[Enthusiast]

7. I am against the TPP and similar trade agreements.

Hey, Mr. Obama, once you renegotiate the NAFTA agreement then maybe we will discuss the TPP.

[red dog 1]

10. + 1000

[Enthusiast]

8. Hundreds of recommendations!

[bigwillq]

11. I am against the TPP (nt)

[StopTheTPP]

12. K and R

Call those senators and reps!

[Persondem]

13. I am very, very skeptical about TPP but ...

how many of you have read a concise summary (or draft document) of it without filters or spin that took longer than 5 minutes?

[Xyzse]

14. At this current time, I am still trying to figure it out.

At the moment too, I have a negative impression.