Leap Year Political Post

There was a time when this blog featured politics more often. I decided those accomplished nothing and birdie/dog/etc. pics were better for my blood pressure. As February 29th doesn't come around too often, there I go again.

1. TPP, TTIP, TISA (i.e. the agreements covered by Fast Track)

2. Journalism and Journamalism

3. Election 2016

Part One

Since my last post on the TPP, Our President managed to get Fast Track passed through Congress, primarily with Republican votes. There were two separate votes in the House, one for Fast Track and one to pair it with the TAA (Trade Assistance Authority, a fig leaf bit of legislation for pro-Fast Track Democrats who want to pretend to care about workers). The first passed 219-211, with 28 Democrats joining 191 Republicans. The second passed 218-208, with the same 28 Democrats joining the GOP (and Our President).

Thirteen Democrats joined the Republicans to get reach the required 60 votes in the Senate. But they could have rounded up a few more if needed...for instance, Chuck Schumer did everything he could to make this vote possible, then voted against it. If it had come down to the wire, you can be sure Chuck the Schmuck would have put his bloody fingerprints on that knife. That's why you can't rely a simple summary of a congresscritter's voting record to see where he or she really stands. You have to follow the play by play.

The TPP is a horrendous piece of legislation. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we see just how bad TPP trade deal is for regular people.

The TTIP is at least as bad. And then there is the TISA. The most secretive, and SURPRISE, the worst.

G.W. Bush began negotiations on the TPP. It took a sellout Wall St. Dem like Obama to get that stinker past our first (and best) chance to stop it.

Part Two Spotlight won the Oscar for best picture. It is a movie about journalism working the way it is supposed to.

Media coverage of Syria is an example of the opposite.

Inevitably, this kind of disinformation has bled into the American presidential campaign. At the recent debate in Milwaukee, Hillary Clinton claimed that United Nations peace efforts in Syria were based on “an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva.” The precise opposite is true. In 2012 Secretary of State Clinton joined Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel in a successful effort to kill Kofi Annan’s UN peace plan because it would have accommodated Iran and kept Assad in power, at least temporarily. No one on the Milwaukee stage knew enough to challenge her.

Part Three

Sanders 2016

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The TPP: Our President Drops The Mask

My last post on the topic. Dean Baker continues to do an excellent job of exposing this shameless sellout.

One Democratic Senator (Tom Carper of Delaware) joined 51 Republicans voting for fast track. Mitch McConnell voted against it when it was clear it would fail so that he can bring it up again. So who will benefit from the TPP?

The People's View:

Big labor unions and liberal members of Congress have picked a fight against the global expansion of the rights of workers by mounting do-or-die opposition against the Trade Promotion bill moving through Congress that will allow the President to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership to Congress for an up-or-down vote. In doing so, American labor is displaying key symptoms of its self-inflicted collapse.

Rep. Paul Ryan, on CNBC with Joe Kernen shilling for the TPP this morning, does not give a hairy rat's behind about the rights of workers. Neither does the Chamber of Commerce, also shilling for this execrable multinational corporate government deal.

I remember when President Obama's fans explained his Catfood Commission as "eleventy-dimensional chess." It wasn't. He's been working for Wall Street the entire time.

President Gas is tap dancing
For the banker he's a thief
He isn't very honest
But he's obvious at least

P.S. This isn't over. There will be another vote tomorrow, after a couple fig leaves have been added. Our President and the GOP only need 7 or 8 Democrats to switch votes to get this through the Senate. Some who voted against it yesterday are just hoping for token concessions in order to cover their fealty to the richest few.

The people won this round because Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown effectively organized opposition and because voters persistently called their Congresscritters to let them know it's a bad deal. Keep calling!

Cross-posted at Whiskey Fire. And at Kos.
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Better Than Ezra

Here's a Wonkblog post about the Administration's efforts to further screw the American worker:

How Congress might have already tied Obama’s hands in trade negotiations

Quoted in the post are:

James Bacchus, a former member of Congress who served as a judge at the World Trade Organization and now chairs Greenberg Traurig’s global trade practice.

Thomas Bollyky, a former negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative who’s now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Stanford professor Judith Goldstein, who calls this emerging dynamic (foes of granting fast-track authority) a “Baptist-bootlegger coalition.”

Chris Wenk, the Chamber of Commerce’s point person on trade issues.

And just one opponent: Lori Wallach of Public Citizen. Even the caption "Obama needs leverage with the Europeans. Congress could help." is slanted in favor of granting fast track authority to get these trade deals done.

So here's Dean Baker:

Of course there is no reason the deals have to be complicated. If the trade deals focused on removing traditional trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas, there would not be "a zillion different interests and moving parts." There would be some formulaic wording written into the agreement that specified the rate at which these restrictions would be pared back.

The reason there are a zillion moving parts is because the Obama administration went to the oil and gas industries to ask how they can use the trade agreement to get around environmental restrictions on drilling. It went to the food and agricultural industries to ask how they could get around food safety rules. It went to the pharmaceutical industry to ask it how it can use these deals to increase patent protections and jack up drug prices. It went to the entertainment industry and asked how it can use these deals to strengthen copyright enforcement and require Internet intermediaries to take responsibility (and incurr expenses) to help enforce copyrights.

Note: The Wonkblog post was written by Lydia DePillis, not Ezra Klein. However, I wanted an excuse to put up this youtuber.



NAFTA was begun by President G.H.W. Bush, and finished by Bill Clinton.

"First of all, because NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement." - Bill Clinton, September 14, 1993

"In a few moments, I will sign the North American free trade act into law. NAFTA will tear clown trade barriers between our three nations. It will create the world's largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone. The environmental and labor side agreements negotiated by our administration will make this agreement a force for social progress as well as economic growth. Already the confidence we've displayed by ratifying NAFTA has begun to bear fruit. We are now making real progress toward a worldwide trade agreement so significant that it could make the material gains of NAFTA for our country look small by comparison." - Bill Clinton, December 8, 1993

So what happened? "As of 2010, U.S. trade deficits with Mexico totaling $97.2 billion had displaced 682,900 U.S. jobs. Of those jobs, 116,400 are likely economy-wide job losses because they were displaced between 2007 and 2010, when the U.S. labor market was severely depressed." - Robert E. Scott, Economic Policy Institute, May 3, 2011

Similarly, it was G.W. Bush who began Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. And neither the results of NAFTA nor five years of high unemployment due to the financial meltdown have dissuaded our President Hope and Change from pursuing "NAFTA on steroids" one iota. Serving "our" multinational corporations by screwing the American worker has been bipartisan ever since 3rd Way corporatists captured the Democratic party.

Cross-posted at Whiskey Fire. Mouse over pics for captions, and click them for larger versions.
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