Page 3 of 6 FirstFirst 123456 LastLast
Results 51 to 75 of 142
  1. #51
    Believe. benstanfield's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Post Count
    1,743
    TPP is primarily foreign policy, NOT economics. Both the US and China want hegemony over Asian markets. US planners will gladly create more unemployed and throw them in prison so long as they create an effective counterbalance to Chinese power in the region.

    I'm not saying I support it, but it's important to think about it in the right context. That's Warren's misunderstanding (at least publicly). She's making a public case about how TPP might not be "good" for middle/lower class Americans when she knows damn well that that isn't the goal. Call me cynical, but all it's doing is winning her points in the next election cycle. She isn't stupid, and she knows exactly what the people writing TPP are thinking: Pure military power isn't going to stop China, and if you're a typical US planner that's basically your chief concern for the next decade. TPP is a power grab for American multinational corporations that gives the US a huge foothold in Asia while being amenable to Chinese power in many respects. In their eyes, the inner-city poor can be dealt with quietly and domestically by John Rambo cops and Netflix.

    why am I posting here?

  2. #52
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    why am I posting here?
    to give us all lots of LOL
    Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-09-2015 at 04:40 PM.

  3. #53
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    "TPP is primarily foreign policy, NOT economics."

    bull

    America thinks it can control, confront China in Asia, extend America's imagined hegemony to control China?

    America has already handed it balls to China as prime manufacturer of 1000s US products, $100Bs/year. USA can contain China?

    TPP/TTIP are being sold as "trade agreements", but only a minority of the articles touch trade.

    The majority are elevating corporate, capital, investor power above sovereign countries' powers.

    TPP subverts any country's regulations to the least common denominator among the signatories.

    And then there is the ISDS Kangaroo, extrajudicial "court" to screw countrys' taxpayers out of $Bs.

    benstanfield

    Last edited by boutons_deux; 06-09-2015 at 04:41 PM.

  4. #54
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Doggett Challenges USTR for Not Enforcing Environmental Obligations in Past Trade Agreements

    In the run-up to the controversial vote on Fast Track trade promotion authority, the administration has repeatedly claimed that the Trans Pacific Partnership will be a “21st century” trade agreement that holds countries to high environmental standards.

    However, in a June 5, 2015 letter to Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative, Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Texas, demonstrated how

    the U.S. has failed to hold countries accountable to “binding” environmental commitments in past trade deals. In particular, Doggett detailed the repeated failure of the USTR to follow through on the comprehensive five year audit required by U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement Forest Annex.

    Bill Waren, senior trade analyst at Friends of the Earth, had this to say:

    Congressman Doggett is an environmental champion and a real scholar of international trade law. His devastating and accurate analysis demonstrates Michael Froman’s dereliction of his duty to enforce the Forest Annex of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement. As we approach a vote on Fast Track, Congress needs to look at the evidence: the USTR has failed to enforce one of the few provisions in a U.S. trade deal that was designed to help rather than hurt the planet. Congress should not fall for Froman’s empty environmental promises; the TPP is designed to benefit big business and Wall Street, not the environment.

    For more background:


    June 5, 2015 letter from Congressman Doggett to Michael Froman

    June 4, 2015 report from Environmental Investigation Agency detailing the U.S.’s failure to enforce the environmental obligations in the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement


    http://www.commondreams.org/newswire...ons-past-trade

    It looks like the Dems are rounding up a few more Dems to vote up the TPP fast track. We're probably screwed for decades.



  5. #55
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    "Most transparent administration ever."

  6. #56
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    "TPP is primarily foreign policy, NOT economics"



    TPP, TTIP are hyper-secret for Congress and public, but written by BigCorp, BigFinance, their lobbyists, lawyers, etc, TO ENRICH THEMSELVES.



  7. #57
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    "TPP is primarily foreign policy, NOT economics"



    TPP, TTIP are hyper-secret for Congress and public, but written by BigCorp, BigFinance, their lobbyists, lawyers, etc, TO ENRICH THEMSELVES.


    It's almost as if statism and big government are easily corrupted!

  8. #58
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    It's almost as if statism and big government are easily corrupted!
    ... already done. USA is corporatocracy,not a democracy.

    Politicians run for office to get (more) wealthy, for the insder deals while in Congress, and much more lucrative consulting, lobbying, quid pro quo corporate jobs after Congress.

  9. #59
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    ... already done. USA is corporatocracy,not a democracy.

    Politicians run for office to get (more) wealthy, for the insder deals while in Congress, and much more lucrative consulting, lobbying, quid pro quo corporate jobs after Congress.
    And yet lib s such as yourself think MORE government is the solution.

  10. #60
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    And yet lib s such as yourself think MORE government is the solution.
    gotta separate government, the civil service, from Congress and political appointees, includes ELECTED judges. two totally different animals.

  11. #61
    Believe. Blizzardwizard's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Post Count
    4,145
    And yet lib s such as yourself think MORE government is the solution.
    It is. But not the bull US government of Obama, defined and working for the private sector corporatists and the 1%.

  12. #62
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    It is. But not the bull US government of Obama, defined and working for the private sector corporatists and the 1%.
    That's the inevitable result of big government. Power corrupts - that's why the Founders limited it and put in so many checks and balances to begin with.

  13. #63
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Really All About

    In 2025, according to this model, the baseline Gross Domestic Product for the US is $20,273bn. Under TPP11, this falls (very slightly) to $20,268.0bn. Perhaps this is a rounding error, but the fact that the increase in trade could lower US GDP should give us pause.

    No matter how you look at it, the positive impact on GDP (measured at 2007 relative prices) is miniscule: roughly $40 billion in a total economy of $20 trillion, i.e., 0.2 percent.

    When you strip out the distractions, TPP comes down to essentially three things:


    • A free trade agreement with Japan. We need to see the details of that, including the FDI dimension, to understand if there will be GDP gains for the US or not. The impact on US inequality and median wages also remains at best unclear.
    • Investor State Dispute Settlement. This is of very dubious value to residents of the United States, at least unless the administration agrees to introduce greater safeguards against abuse.
    • Greater protection for pharmaceutical patents. This will almost certainly reduce access to affordable medicines, both in the US and in our trading partners.


    There are also vague claims about improving labor and environmental standards. But, as far as outsiders can discern, any agreement along these dimensions will not require actions before TPP goes into effect. Enforceability of such clauses after the fact is typically weak or nonexistent.


    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3...ally-all-about

  14. #64
    Believe. Blizzardwizard's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Post Count
    4,145
    That's the inevitable result of big government. Power corrupts - that's why the Founders limited it and put in so many checks and balances to begin with.
    The almost instant result of no government is corruption and virtually zero distribution of wealth.

  15. #65
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    The almost instant result of no government is corruption and virtually zero distribution of wealth.
    Nice fallacy, but nobody's asking for no government, just an efficient government that abides by the Cons ution.

  16. #66
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Nice fallacy, but nobody's asking for no government, just an efficient government that abides by the Cons ution.
    yeah, right. Repugs austerity is producing INEFFICIENT govt, regs not enforced, and just ask the 100Ks of tax filers who couldn't get through to the Repug-demolished IRS.

    Repugs denying the vote to Ms of citizens isn't "Cons utional"

  17. #67
    Believe. Blizzardwizard's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Post Count
    4,145
    Nice fallacy, but nobody's asking for no government, just an efficient government that abides by the Cons ution.
    BS, Libertarians spam all over the internet painting government as some evil dictatorship that denies them of "meh liberties and meh freedoms ." You conservatives would much rather have a government with minute control so the rich businessmen could run free and not pay taxes and not pay fair wages to their workers.

  18. #68
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    U.S. Shifts Stance on Drug Pricing in Pacific Trade Pact Talks, Do ent Reveals

    Facing resistance from its Pacific trading partners, the Obama administration is no longer demanding protection for pharmaceutical prices under the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a newly leaked “transparency” annex of the proposed trade accord.

    But American negotiators are still pressing participating governments to open the process that sets reimbursement rates for drugs and medical devices. Public health professionals, generic drugmakers and activists opposed to the trade deal, which is still being negotiated, contend that it
    will empower big pharmaceutical firms to command higher reimbursement rates in the United States and abroad, at the expense of consumers.

    They also say it could expose international markets to the direct consumer appeals that Americans have experienced.


    “It was very clear to everyone except the U.S. that
    the initial proposal wasn’t about transparency; it was about getting market access for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them greater access to and influence over decision-making processes around pricing and reimbursement,” said Deborah Gleeson, a lecturer at the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University in Australia, who has seen the leaked do ent. And even though it has been toned down, she said, “I think it’s a shame that the annex is still being considered at all for the T.P.P.”

    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/11...t-reveals.html

    iow, TPP/TTIP is all about BigCorp, capitalists sucking wealth from govts (taxpayers) and citizens. Has all to with "trade"



  19. #69
    Board Man Comes Home Clipper Nation's Avatar
    My Team
    Los Angeles Clippers
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Post Count
    54,257
    BS, Libertarians spam all over the internet painting government as some evil dictatorship that denies them of "meh liberties and meh freedoms ."
    Depends on which type of libertarians you're talking to. There's the anarchists who actually do want no government, but most mainstream libertarians (like myself) are minarchists, who are content with a cons utionally-limited "nigh chman state."

  20. #70
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    WikiLeaks has published another portion of the text of the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

    The text reveals that the TPP would

    give major pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine,

    weaken public health care programs and

    prevent Congress from passing reforms to lower drug costs.

    http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_leaked_tpp_text_reveals_increased_corporate_ control_20150611?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium= feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Truthdig+Truthdig%253A +Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines

  21. #71
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    House DEMS KILL TPP Fast track.

  22. #72
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    House DEMS KILL TPP Fast track.
    temporarily

  23. #73
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514
    Awesome Power Is On the Verge of Being Handed Over to Private Banks If TPP Passes

    In March 2014, the Bank of England let the cat out of the bag: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it. So wrote David Graeber in The Guardian the same month, referring to a BOE paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy." The paper stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong. The result, said Graeber, was to throw the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.

    The revelation may have done more than that. The entire basis for maintaining our private extractive banking monopoly may have been thrown out the window. And that could help explain the desperate rush to "fast track" not only the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), but the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA would nip attempts to
    implement public banking and other monetary reforms in the bud.


    The Banking Game Exposed


    The BOE report confirmed what money reformers have been saying for decades: that banks do not act simply as intermediaries, taking in the deposits of "savers" and lending them to borrowers, keeping the spread in interest rates. Rather, banks actually create deposits when they make loans. The BOE report said that private banks now create 97 percent of the British money supply. The US money supply is created in the same way.


    Graeber underscored the dramatic implications:

    . . . [M]oney is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There's really no limit on how much banks could create, provided they can find someone willing to borrow it.

    Politically, said Graeber, revealing these facts is taking an enormous risk:

    Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.

    On June 3, 2015, WikiLeaks released 17 key do ents related to TiSA, which is considered perhaps the most important of the three deals being negotiated for "fast track" trade authority. The do ents were supposed to remain classified for five years after being signed, displaying a level of secrecy that outstrips even the TPP's four-year classification.

    TiSA involves 51 countries, including every advanced economy except the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The deal would liberalize global trade in services covering close to 80% of the US economy, including financial services, healthcare, education, engineering, telecommunications, and many more. It would restrict how governments can manage their public laws, and it could dismantle and privatize state-owned enterprises, turning those services over to the private sector.

    TiSA picks up where the Financial Services Agreement left off, opening yet more doors for private banks and other commercial service industries, and slamming doors on governments that might consider opening their private banking sectors to public ownership.

    Blocking the Trend Toward "Remunicipalization"

    In a report from Public Services International called "TISA versus Public Services: The Trade in Services Agreement and the Corporate Agenda," Scott Sinclair and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood note
    that the already formidable challenges to safeguarding public services under GATS will be greatly exasperated by TiSA, which blocks the emerging trend to return privatized services to the public sector.

    Communities worldwide are reevaluating the privatization approach and "re-municipalizing" these services, following negative experiences with profit-driven models. These reversals typically occur at the municipal level, but they can also occur at the national level.

    http://www.alternet.org/economy/awes...ter1037924&t=3

    iow, if the Repugs miraculously refuse to OBSTRUCT The Great Socialist Kenyan Muslim Satan Obama and are pushing hard WITH OBAMA for TPP, TISA, TTIP, you absolutely know that passing these agreements will protect/enable/enrich BigCorp, capitalists, finance, the 1% while screwing the 99% and the planet.

    LIAR Ayn-Rand-licker Paul Ryan was on NPR this morning LYING by omission of the nasties that result from TPP, TISA, TTIP



  24. #74
    Believe. benstanfield's Avatar
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Post Count
    1,743
    http://www.c-span.org/video/?326582-...ebate-vote-tpa

    Interesting stuff. Louise Slaughter with no regard for human life.

  25. #75
    Veteran
    My Team
    San Antonio Spurs
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Post Count
    97,514

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •