It looks like the fast track authority deal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement will move ahead in the Senate towards a final vote as the price of a deal involved holding a separate vote on the Export-Import Bank.
In a dramatic vote critical to the future of the president’s goal of securing new trade deals with Pacific Rim and European countries, the Senate on Thursday broke a bipartisan filibuster of legislation to give the president “fast-track” authority to negotiate new trade deals.
The 62-38 vote preserves the possibility that the Senate can finish the trade bill before the Memorial Day recess, which would be a major boon to Obama and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. It came after a round of horse-trading that assures the Export-Import Bank will receive a chance at a lifeline to live past June 30, when it is scheduled to expire.
“It was a nice victory. We’re going to continue and finish up the bill this week,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.
McConnell was seen on the floor talking with senators in both parties who want to see Ex-Im extended, and soon after a half-dozen lawmakers announced their support for the trade measure, lifting it above the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold. Republican and Democratic senators had been pushing to attach Ex-Im to the trade bill. But McConnell resisted because he fears that combining the two would have imperiled the trade bill’s prospects in the House, where it already faces difficult odds.
Whether Orange Julius and the House play ball, who knows. There are probably enough votes to get 218, but then again, things have this nasty habit of breaking down when one of the factors involves “John Boehner rounding up enough votes” to get something to work that the Senate has already passed.
Regardless, looks like fast track authority on the TPP will continue to survive in Congress for a bit longer.
James E Powell
but then again, things have this nasty habit of breaking down when one of the factors involves “John Boehner rounding up enough votes”
But then again, things usually go through when “Nancy Pelosi rounds up enough Democratic votes to bail out Boehner in exchange for an illusory promise to allow a vote on some matter that is important to Democratic voters.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
Missed opportunity for an even bigger “fuck you” to labor – they should have passed it right before Labor Day.
I guess this on its own is a big enough “fuck you” to working people.
Hopefully the House will put a bullet in the brain of this abomination, but I am not hopeful; when American jobs are on the line, the House has always found a way to deliver the votes to bury working people even deeper.
monkeyfister
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Yep.
I have no idea what the hell is running through the minds of Dems and Liberals who support phony-baloney “Free Trade” over proper FAIR Trade.
Only thing I can think of: “I was born with a huge Trust Fund. I don’t have to work, so screw those who do!”
Boot to the head of that entire bloody Tory lot.
redshirt
I like helping the poor people of Asia. One day we’ll all be middle class.
piratedan
@monkeyfister: I think the misguided idea is that it would be better to have US Corporate interests catered to than allowing the Chinese to do it, as if being exploited by a different set of corporate goons was somehow better for the poor bastards toiling away under shitty conditions.
Germy Shoemangler
From LGM:
srv
Thank god, now those checks can roll in. We’ve got to get an architect hired and planning going for that new Presidential Library.
Gene108
@monkeyfister:
Trade deals alone did not cause wages to stagnate for 40 years, in the US.
They get a lot of the blame, but there are other factors that were unleashed by Reagan that are not going back in the bag, such as the lack of objections to M&A deals, which led to downsizing and the lack of job security we have now.
Companies that “underperformed” in the stock market were take over targets.
This probably caused more problems for the U.S. worker than any trade deal ever signed.
Tree With Water
Lest We Forget: The president’s rebuffed “Grand Bargain”, that would have slashed Social Security and otherwise betray the vital interests of the rank and file. It’s who the man has always been.
But it provided a real profile in courage moment for Hillary, weighing in like she did in opposition to this giveaway. When the chips were down and their vital interests imperiled, she stood tall with Elizabeth Warren and the democratic wing of the democratic party. The rank and file owe her a debt of gratitude that can only be paid with support on election day. Right?
dogwood
@srv:
Presidential libraries are important, but they’ve become huge vanity projects. They should be funded by the federal government. Presidents should be able to pick the site and have input into the architecture and sensibility of the place so they aren’t cookie cutter facilities, but ultimately they should not be privately funded. Make them part of the national park system.
cahuenga
@Germy Shoemangler:
probably the biggest objection to the TPP will be gone
You mean, besides the TPP/Medicare siphon clause… And, you mean, as far as we know.
Archon
Obama’s earned the benefit of the doubt with me since Obamacare helped me and millions of others EXACTLY the way he said it would, but I’d feel a lot better about this trade deal if Republicans were fighting him tooth and nail on it like they do everything else.
The rumors going around that the majority of Republicans in the House won’t support TPP does make me feel a little bit better about the deal though. If House Republicans are for it then we know it can’t be good for the majority of Americans.
cahuenga
@Tree With Water:
Pretty much everything I feared about HRC has been confirmed. She will never see my vote.
Zandar
@Germy Shoemangler: And should that Warren Amendment pass, the rest of the TPP may then collapse as the other countries involved in negotiations start bailing on it.
Of course, that would be the point.
jl
@Germy Shoemangler: I think the fast-track bill is very bad because it will facilitate more corporate friendly mischief in the future. I don’t see how Import-Export bank is adequate compensation for accepting that risk.
Let’s see how many loony teabagger GOPers are true to their patriotic hatred of ‘one-world-government’ when it is one that is favored by money bag corporations. I understand that the scenarios of Investor State Dispute Settlement overruling laws of big rich countries are hypothetical, but the true demonstrable genuine ‘free trade’ benefits of the bill are so small, why put up with the risk? (edit: and since other government are making threats about how they might use it, the risk seems real to me) The past use of ISDS type provisions to intimidate and interfere with poorer country democratic governance is not hypothetical, and all we have is Obama’s unsupported assurances that the problems have been fixed. That is not enough.
TPP should go down in my opinion because of the increased, and from last evidence I saw, very crude and favorable to huge rent seeking rich corporations, IP protections. To repeat, in short to medium run, the IP provisions will result in more restraint of trade, the opposite of free trade, increasing prices for a wide range of important goods and services to workers and ordinary ‘lesser’ people all around the world, rich, middling and poor.
Krugman has a good NYT blog post today pointing out what I have noticed, which is that the WH is putting out irrelevant boiler plate in support of TPP. The arguments are true, but relevant to previous, true ‘free trade’ deals from decades ago. Krugman has a nice graph illustrating the relative importance of conventional tariff free trade barriers (about the same as average US state sales tax) and currency fluctuations.
Betty Cracker
@Archon: If the House Repubs are against it now, it’s only because all they know about it so far is that Obama is behind it. Once their corporate sponsors inform them that, this time, corporate interests and the president’s wishes converge, they’ll fall right in line behind it too.
jl
@Archon: I think you are using too many short cuts in your reasoning on this issue.
Obama has demonstrated in the past that he is too sympathetic to, or easily gulled by, what should be completely discredited neoliberal Washington Consensus economics. Even one of its main economist sponsors, Larry Summers, has learned (too late, and yes, I am still very suspicious of how he operates) from the evidence and has backed away somewhat. I mean, if Summers has doubts, even if he may grudgingly support it in the end, that is enough for me to oppose it.
So, I can not give Obama the benefit of the doubt on this issue.
As for the GOP pols, they are nutcases, and all we should worry about is if we can get them to do the right thing for the wrong reason from time to time. I wouldn’t use their support or opposition to anything, in itself, as a signal of any useful information at all. They are nuts.
Gin & Tonic
@cahuenga: Tell us how delighted you’ll be to see J.E. Bush filling RBG’s seat on the SCOTUS.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: You mean the same corporate sponsors that got the Tea partiers to back off of shutting down the government?
Archon
@Betty Cracker:
I disagree, I don’t think corporate interests is going to be enough to get House Republicans to vote for something as big as TPP with Obama’s full fledged support. “We oppose what Obama supports” is currently the House Republican prime directive. The interests of big business are secondary to that.
So I predict that if TPP passes the House it’s going to be with mostly Dem support
ruemara
I’m going to second the benefit of the doubt thing, mostly because much of the hair on fire Obama is selling us out crap was crap. But, it’s only a slight second, because I don’t support fast-track authority. It’s not good for any president to have. I’m also cagey on TPP. Sanders discussed his opposition, which I found to be a clearer statement on what’s wrong; the process. He can read it, making the “no one can read it argument” bogus but he can’t have staff with him, he can’t submit arcane legalese to his lawyers. This I find egregious. I can understand Obama wanting to have authority to achieve deals with certain goals in mind that I might agree with such as environmental, but I can’t support this.
Tree With Water
@ruemara: “I can understand Obama wanting to have authority to achieve deals with certain goals in mind that I might agree with such as environmental, but I can’t support this”.
Alas, neither do I. And what Obama has done on behalf of the rank and file should under no circumstance be confused with what he is now doing to it.
Betty Cracker
@Belafon: The teaturds would have sold their own mothers to a brothel to delay the ACA. They have no such motivation to sink TPP.
Tripod
Orangeman’s crew will do the lift on this one, with a splattering of pro business Dems to give them cover. The quid pro quo is allowing saner Republicans and the Democrats to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank.
Tripod
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed that they’re OK with the trade deal.
For whatever reasons, the Kock bros. are stirring up the yahoos against the Ex-Im Bank.
burnspbesq
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Exactly which “American jobs” are “on the line?”
Manufacturing jobs that can be done by anyone with no education or skills that will work for what white, middle-class, NPR-listening Americans consider to be slave wages, but the person receiving that wage sees as a vast improvement over subsistence agriculture in a third-world shithole? Those jobs went overseas a long time ago, and they aren’t coming back unless poor and working-class Americans suddenly discover a hitherto-unknown willingness to pay $15 each for plain white t-shirts at Wal-Mart.
If you could get those third-world shitholes to accept labor and environmental safeguards that white, middle-class, NPR-listening Americans would see as appropriate, as a cost of continued access to the U.S. market (which seems to be what Loomis wants), then the workers in those shitholes would be unambiguously better off. But unless you have a way to make the costs of compliance with those new and improved labor and environmental standards magically disappear, the price of everything made in those shitholes is going up (unless you can come up with a legally enforceable way to make the shareholders eat it, and good luck with that given the current alignment of political power in this country).
Which means that in the end you are making non-American manufacturing employees better off at the expense of poor and working-class American consumers). Is that what you want? And if so, explain why poor and working-class American consumers should volunteer to take one for the team.
Like it or not, it’s a zero-sum game: foreign workers vs. American consumers. Which side are you on?
gogol's wife
@cahuenga:
Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio will be so grateful.
dogwood
What’s most frustrating about all of this is the linear process of legislating in this country. If you go back to the Clinton administration it was striking that once healthcare reform was dead, Clinton moved on to work with republicans on welfare reform and NAFTA. Some of the stink from those bills could have been ameliorated if everyone had access to healthcare. It’s no different now. Democrats shouldn’t be talking trade deals until republicans are willing to talk infrastructure and education investment. These things are all interconnected.
ruemara
@Tree With Water: we may agree on this bill on the surface, but for vastly different reasons.
Brachiator
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Did the previous fast track deals kill American jobs? How about these?
How many American jobs were eliminated?
Meanwhile, China and Pakistan are continuing to develop the $46 billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a huge infrastructure investment and expansion of the Silk Road. China and India also recently moved closer to setting up a $20 billion investment deal.
Should the US government have any foreign investment strategy at all, or should we just leave it to the corporations?
David Koch
Bernie Sanders was on Chris Hayes last night
He said, yes, he does have access to TPP but he hasn’t bothered to read it because it’s too long and too “technical” and because he opposes trade deals.
Now that’s a respectable position. Truly. It’s an issue he doesn’t like so he’s against it.
He doesn’t lie and falsely foster hysteria by crying, “they won’t let us read it” like some of his colleagues.
Linnaeus
@Archon:
I think I read somewhere that as it stands now, Boehner is going to need about 20-30 House Democrats to get TPA to pass, which I think he will be able to get if he needs to. And Senate Republicans won’t oppose this. So I think TPA will pass, and that effectively means that TPP will pass.
David Koch
@Betty Cracker:
Just like how immigration reform was passed. Oh, wait.
dogwood
@burnspbesq:
I tend to agree with this. Ultimately in this global economy which isn’t going away, it is the failure of the government to commit to serious investment in education and infrastructure that really hurts workers in the long run.
jl
@Brachiator:
” Should the US government have any foreign investment strategy at all, or should we just leave it to the corporations? ”
Yes. What does that have to do with the TPP?
The projects you are referring to are mostly government supported infrastructure investment projects, not trade deals. How is the US government trying to force US IP policies on to the rest of the world, which will result, in the short and medium run, higher prices for less trade, but more profits for huge corporations, equal to infrastructure investment in your mind?
The US badly needs both domestic and international US government supported infrastructure investment projects.
What that would have to do with passage of TPP is beyond me.
I think you are, and have been, very confused on the TPP.
David Koch
wow, a thread on TPP has been up for 2 hours and only 30 comments, not 300?
but, but…. nike!
Kay
@burnspbesq:
Well then why do promoters of these deals always say it’s about jobs?
650k from Obama, 1.4 million from McConnell, “millions” from Rubio.
They don’t have any credibility because people have heard these same promises 50 times.
At this point it would go better if they’d just admit they don’t know if it will provide any benefit at all to most people because they don’t.
Maybe then they could work on something else that MIGHT provide a benefit to most people.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
Hmmm, something about this…something…can’t quite put my finger on it…
Oh, yes I can. It’s a govt sponsored infrastructure deal, and has fuckall to do with a 12 country free trade deal.
KG
@Gene108:
the most amazing thing to me during the 2008 crash was that the response wasn’t “we should probably break all these large businesses up” but was instead “let’s consolidate all these large businesses with questionable practices into even larger businesses without demanding that they stop questionable practices.”
redshirt
I love that “Fables of the Reconstruction” is a topic category.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: Another analogy that ignores the context. Why would House Republicans obstruct a bill that is all upside for corporations? Corporations might be on board with immigration reform because it’s good for business and against government shutdowns because it’s bad for business, but corporations weren’t the primary beneficiary (or victim) in either of those scenarios.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
They don’t need Congress The administration could move a good strong overtime rule thru and offer that as an immediate wage boost. That way they don’t have to make up hypothetical on “middle class jobs” on their trade deal.
Brachiator
@jl:
The programs I noted all related to fast track authority deals granted by Congress. So, if it makes it easier for you, we can break this up into 2 questions.
Do you oppose TPP?
Do you oppose granting the president fast track trade authority at all for any deal?
And you claim that TPP is in part about the US ” trying to force US IP policies on to the rest of the world.” But isn’t the EU trying to force its view of IP policies on the US and the rest of the world, and for the benefit of European corporations?
jl
But we are talking about fast track deals that are being used in the US to facilitate TPP and similar deals now. So what if fast track was used for other projects that can stand on their own merits.? I am willing risk passing them without fast track. Indications of more confusion from you on this issue.
From what I know of it now, I am opposed to TPP in its current form. I think TPP’s provisions could be modified to make it worth supporting.
I am opposed to fast track.
” And you claim that TPP is in part about the US ” trying to force US IP policies on to the rest of the world.” But isn’t the EU trying to force its view of IP policies on the US and the rest of the world, and for the benefit of European corporations? ”
I don’t see what that has to do with support of TPP.
I certainly would not support attempts by the EU to write EU patent and other IP law into international trade deals (which is what I understand that a recent draft of the TPP proposes for US law).
The US has recently adopted an historically very extreme version of intellectual property rights, which really elevates capturing rents from patent and copyright monopolies granted by IP law over all other considerations. EU IP law, in general, is less extreme, particularly on drug patents, so to that extent I think it is better public policy. But even so, I would not support attempts by the EU in piecemeal country trade deals to impose it around the world.
So, I am not gong to play twenty questions with you on the TPP anymore. You have a case, make it. OK?
jl
My general answer to all these confused and irrelevant arguments made by supporters of TPP and similar trade deals, including arguments made so far by the WH, is to go back to true global multilateral trade talks. But those have been dead for almost ten years no. And in my opinion, mainly because US corporations, and multinational corporations, could not get what they wanted out of them.
David Koch
@Betty Cracker: you’re kidding right? after 6 years you don’t know what motivates republicans?
Ed Schultz just played a clip of John Thune saying House republicans are hostile to the bill because…… wait for it , “we have people in the House who don’t want to give this President authority” [emphasis original].
redshirt
@Betty Cracker: Chaos is its own reward.
redshirt
Also, follow me on twitter!
https://twitter.com/Redshirt_Lament
David Koch
@Kay: The overtime rules are on the way. There was large article on it 2 days ago.
Shockingly, “moderate” republicans are have a shit fit.
This follows the President expanding parental leave to 6 weeks, just 4 months ago.
Allan
@David Koch: Outrage fatigue. The poor dears.
David Koch
OT
The BENGHAZI! committee is leaking Hillary’s emails today. They’re doing so because people are traveling for the holiday and they don’t want people to know that her email exonerate her.
Sadly Sy Hersh has pushed the conspiracy theory that BENGHAZI was a arms deal gone bad. Predictably, Griftwald has been pushing the conspiracy theory that Hillary is covering up.
Well, here’s Hilary’s email:
I’m sure Hersh and Griftwald will retract their smears and issue an apology, to save their reputations, right.
MomSense
We will all get 60 days to read the darn thing and I prefer to wait until I’ve had the chance to read it before I decide that Obama is worse than bush he sold us out.
Tree With Water
Barack Obama is quoted today as having said, “Despite that error, those sacrifices allowed the Iraqis to take back their country. That opportunity was squandered by Prime Minister Maliki and the unwillingness to reach out effectively to the Sunni and Kurdish populations.”
Stupid Iraqis. They took their lucky break and squandered it. They proved unworthy of implementing the grand visions of Bush-Cheney (et.al).
Schlemazel
Thank god! there for a minute I thought the Democrats might foil this attempt to stop the jobs bleeding to places that pay 50 cents an hour and let you dump whatever shit you want into the lakes, rivers and air.
chopper
@MomSense:
where’s the fun in that?
Brachiator
@Tree With Water:
Do you really think that this is what Obama was saying?
And since no one has a time machine that could magically undo the Iraq war, what option did the Iraqis have but to move ahead?
Baud
Doesn’t fast track authority last for six years? I can see the GOP voting for fast track and then voting down the TPP if they believe they’ll win the White House in 2016.
Brachiator
@jl:
Not twenty questions, just a couple, and I appreciate your taking the time to reply.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: Oh sure, there will be a handful of nut balls who raise a stink — there always are. But they won’t have the juice to tank TPP. I hope I’m wrong, BTW…
Gravenstone
@Brachiator:
This is Trees we’re talking about here. Thinking isn’t in his retinue, only deep, heartfelt feels.
Bobby Thomson
@MomSense: we already know the meal (all of which we must eat) contains shards of glass. I don’t care if the beef Wellington has a nice crust.
Linnaeus
@MomSense:
I’m glad that we will have that opportunity, although I’m not sure how much difference that will make – at that point, passage of the TPP could be a fait accompli.
MomSense
@Linnaeus:
Well the vote has to wait until after the sixty day period is over so we could read it in 5 days and then advocate for or against for 55.
MomSense
@chopper:
I think the we don’t know what’s in it because it’s super secret but we loathe it anyway is much more popular.
Keith G
@MomSense:
Is this the metric we are blessed with…”As long as this (Obama’s decision) is not worse than one of the most pathetic American Presidents.”?
This trade pact seems to have regrettable things in it.
For most college educated, economically stable (for now) Americans, I doubt that there is anything here that qualifies as a sellout. Once fast track is approved, I imagine that there will be things left in this agreement that will not be considered serious enough to blow up the pact in an all-or-nothing Senate vote.
And then once again the already powerful will be helped at the expense of the less powerful.
Linnaeus
@MomSense:
Right, but my own sense on this issue – and I could very well be wrong – is that if TPA passes, then it’s quite likely that TPP will also pass, even after the 60-day period.
Tree With Water
@Brachiator: I think Obama was looking forward again, and not back.
MomSense
@Keith G:
I think there are a lot of assumptions that can’t be tested until we read the document.@Linnaeus: There is a good chance the Republicans will scuttle the deal. I don’t think anything is certain right now.
Keith G
@burnspbesq:
That is a rather bold bit of economic prognostication. I am curious what you base that on.
Nonetheless, Josh Bivens, Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute disagrees with your idea.
Keith G
@MomSense:
And why has the Obama administration put harsher rules in place about who has access to copies of the revised proposals than did Bill Clinton during NAFTA?
RaflW
I read yesterday at a relatively insider-y airline/aircraft industry blog that Airbus is already using the uncertainty about the Ex-Im bank to poach aircraft orders from Boeing. Dunno if it’s true, but I do believe that Boeing is the single largest beneficiary of the Ex-Im bank.
Leave it to Boehner’s idiot house to f*k up and cause one of our few really strong export industries to stumble.
I cannot fathom how business thinks the GOP is pro-business. There is so much more than taxes at stake in our economy.
Linnaeus
@MomSense:
No, not certain, but I think some possibilities are more likely than others. Again, I could very well be wrong.
David Koch
@Keith G: how is it no one on the left complained about secrecy over the Iran deal and normalization with Cuba and the China carbon deal and the release of Bowe Bergdahl and when when Americans were released from North Korea? How is they applauded all those confidential efforts then but are now shrieking now? doesn’t the inconsistently and selective outrage expose their concern to be false.
Corner Stone
@David Koch: Speaking of “false”. Try again, propagandist.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: Can you really not comprehend the difference between the types of negotiations in question? In one set of negotiations, working people have a direct financial stake in the outcome (though not a seat at the table when terms of the negotiations were being framed, alas). How is that even remotely analogous to a deal to free a POW?
weaselone
@Betty Cracker:
So the American people do not have a stake in the negotiations with Iran? They did not have an economic stake in the carbon negotiations with China?
David Koch
@Betty Cracker:
I am not against opposition to the agreement. I admire Bernie for being against the agreement. What I’m against is false arguments, because I have always stressed being part of a realty based community.
There are good reasons to be against the agreement, which K-Thug has stated.
For a person to run around screaming it’s secret when it’s not secret and when that person has never ever objected to secrecy before, even on a bigger issue as nuclear weapons, undermines that person’s credibility and presents a weak case.
Kay
Passage of Fast Track is passage of the trade deal. The one and only time anyone will get anything in exchange for the trade deal or concessions on the trade deal is prior to Fast Track passage.
After that we’re all stuck with whatever the 500+ corporate lobbyists negotiated.
Betty Cracker
@weaselone: The economic impact of those agreements is a fart in a whirlwind compared to the TPP, which would be the largest trade deal in history. Also, IIRC, those proposals weren’t written by coal companies or AIPAC — more than one set of interests were represented. That doesn’t appear to be the case with TPP.
David Koch
@Betty Cracker:
How will working people be hurt? Will their employers close plants and move to China and Mexico for wage and environmental arbitrage? Well, they can do that already. Whether this deal passes or fails doesn’t change the status quo of NAFTA and PNTR. Companies will still be able to close up shop and leave if it fails and move to a communist dictatorship.
The case to make is the one K-Thug makes about intellectual property.
David Koch
I can be against communism without having to rely on red scare tactics and panics and saying, “fluoridation of water is commie plot” or “in my hand is a list of 500 communists in the state department”
I can be against a trade agreement like Sanders and K-Thug without relying of scare tactics and screaming “it’s secret, everyone run for their lives” or “in my hand is a list of 500 lobbyists in the state department”
David Koch
@Betty Cracker:
Which means you must oppose immigration and support deportation as immigration hurts working families.
Immigration increases the supply of labor. When supply goes up it keeps wages down.
Making matters worse is the immigrants are undocumented so companies take advantage of them by paying sub market wages. This affects the wage market, pulling it down. It additionally hurts workers because immigrants have less disposable income so less domestic products are sold. Lower sales means lower output and therefore lower demand for labor.
All this hurts working families.
So everyone should oppose immigration and support deportation because their presence in the labor market hurts working families, right? Or not.
Consistency, what is consistency?
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: Don’t put words in my mouth. But since you’ve invoked Bernie Sanders as a model of reasonable opposition to the TPP, perhaps you’d be interested in his views about it. He issued a statement on it today, which you can view at his senate site. Here it is:
I agree with Bernie.
Gian
the major blind-spot in the geopolitical thinking of the US since WWII seems to be that the national economy will always be #1
the Breton Woods agreement seemed to make this clear (although see DeGaul and decoupling and Nixon closing the gold window)
but I digress. the national economic interest has played second fiddle to the national hegemonic/empire/political interest.
the TPP in that light is no different than any other US policy since 1945 or so. To change the policy would require a humility that would in itself be problematic.
ahh fuck, in English, since the dawn of the cold war, the US government has entered trade/monetary agreements to further world wide political and military power, fuck the citizens. TPP is same as it ever was.
David Koch
@Betty Cracker:
Well, I had not seen this statement. It’s sad. Nothing more than scare tactics aimed a low information voters. Completely different than what he said the night before on msnbc.
There are those who talk about the kinds of values that mean a lot to us emotionally. It’s easy to get swept up and not notice that their arguments are false, if not misrepresentations.
But if you want to continue down a discredited road, you two might as well just say the agreement includes “Death Panels”.
Betty Cracker
@David Koch: If you’d actually listened to anything Sanders (and Warren, Brown and others) have been saying for the past several weeks, you wouldn’t have exposed your ignorance so thoroughly above. Sanders has said the same thing all along.
Many people who have actually seen the bill or read the excerpts leaked online have grave concerns about it that are based on specific proposals that are allegedly in the deal, not emotion or hysteria or ignorance. Of course, the fact that the terms of the deal are classified makes arguing specifics difficult, which is awfully convenient.
Anyway, I’ll give you credit for consistency: You are consistently a sycophant who insults and attacks anyone who disagrees with the president on any topic. You work backward from the conclusion “PBO is right” for every argument you make, so it’s no wonder you’re occasionally full of crap. It’s pointless to argue with a cultist.
Ryan
You mean we can have the right to have our laws overturned by corporations, and we can have a big corporate subsidy too?!? Jackpot! Seriously, I’m not sure compromise is what they think it means.
Hey Zeus
@Betty Cracker: What a brilliant take down of David Cock (and the Obot ethos in general). Nicely played.