General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: In Support of a Great DUer [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)The TPP is borrowing everything from what passed with NAFTA and is going further in a bad way, and they are trying again to sneak it through congress with "Fast Track Authority" to avoid public scrutiny for something that our founders should have been passed only as a TREATY that should have super majority support in congress, not a simple majority passing it without amendments or discussion, nor any kind of public review or review with congressional people that are allowed to talk about it once they know what is contained in it. Those that are putting it together or are corporate types that are having plenty of time to do so in secret.
NAFTA was bad enough when even it took away our sovereignty by taking down our ability to enforce dolphin safe tuna laws, when it gave an outside entity created by NAFTA (the WTO) the ability to override these laws when corporate entities didn't like them. And arguably it should have been used better to enforce better competition by telling us we need to get rid of our farm subsidies, which arguably did more to destroy the ability of South American country farmers to compete with underpriced farm exports to their countries, which put them out of business and had many of them become undocumented workers up here when they couldn't farm or work in their own countries when the jobs moved to a new cheaper labor place in Asia, etc. in the race to the bottom that NAFTA, and other "free trade" deals provided. Taking down farm subsidies as an anti-competitive law wasn't taken down by the corporate infested WTO, as they LIKED these laws that were in favor of big corporation that weren't interested in competition, but growing their own power and profits at others' expense. The TPP is going to make an entity such as the WTO that is an arm of power of the corporate sector a lot worse. Obama should know this, but instead he's aiding and enabling the TPP instead of fighting it as he should as a real Democrat should.