Well,
My children are certainly way right politically, from where I am. My
son-in-law, very far right, my older daughter, right of center but probably
conflicted with a far left mother and a far right husband, my younger daughter,
confused and in the center. Perhaps my mother was about where I was,
politically, or almost so, a bit to the right but not much. It's really
politically lonely to be where I am, in this time and place.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2015 3:53 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: TPPA: Capitalism at its predatory best
It's 75 degrees and raining. Muggy and some thunder.
It's hard for me to put a finger on it, Miraiam. People's political leanings,
not the muggy weather.
Often our conversations are brief, and it appears as if the speakers are
leaning further to the right. But if the conversation goes on for a while, and
we question why they feel the way they do, many people begin to express
frustration that they lay at the feet of government.
It's all the fault of this incompetent, self serving government, they say. But
when we ask who put this government in place, they usually blame the
billionaires. Of course there are those who blame the Liberal Communists,
Socialists and Blacks for taking our nation away from us. But I was speaking
of normally intelligent, but poorly informed people. When I havae the opening,
I ask who owns the government. And if they say that it is the billionaires, I
ask if they were a billionaire would they feel that the government was doing a
good job. Talk long enough and they will agree that a government that is not
serving some fraction of the public, will not survive. So we finally get to
the place where we agree that the problem is that we have little or no say in
the government. It's a beginning. But do not fret. You will probably notice
that there are far more folks who do not want the fog moved out of their heads.
Sort of like trying to convince an alcoholic to quit drinking right after he
had his swimming pool filled with whisky.
It can be frustrating. Even discouraging. Especially when my own daughter and
grandson put up walls.
But right now my mother-in-law is wanting to play another game of liverpool.
And she is not a person to talk politics with. She votes for the person who
has the "friendliest face". Helps if they're Catholic, too.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/28/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have 2 responses to what you say. First, although we've already
experienced a corporate takeover, each new trade deal does make things
worse for people than they were previously. My second reaction is
that while you talk about the time when we wake up to what has been
done to us, my observation is that many people whom I know, although
they are not happy about how things are, are moving to the right
politically. People who were moderate eight years ago, have become
right wing. People who were right of center politically ten years ago,
have moved to the lunatic fringe of the Right Wing now. People who
used to be liberal, are now centrist. I haven't done any surveys. This is
just my observation of people whom I know.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2015 1:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: TPPA: Capitalism at its predatory best
There are those who are concerned that we might be facing Corporate
Takeover. Allow me to put their fears to rest.
It's already happened.
Agreements such as the TPP are merely frosting on the well established
Corporate Cake.
We are now at the point of no return. Continuing to pretend that we
working class Americans have some say in the Empire's government, or
that this still is "our government", will guarantee our total
enslavement. The Empire holds all the cards except one. That one is
the will of the people. We do not need to meekly allow the Empire to
crush us, but we will first need to wake up to the understanding that we've
been duped for generations.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://socialistaction.org/tppa-capitalism-at-its-predatory-best/
TPPA: Capitalism at its predatory best
Published June 26, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
July 2015 TPPA
BY JEFF MACKLER
President Obama was granted “Fast Track” authority by Congress on
June 24, thus clearing the way to rapid passage of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
The TPPA has been 10 years in the making, including the last six
under the aegis of the Obama administration. The agreement, written
in secret by some 600 top corporate advisers, will encompass 40
percent of world trade. It is slated to be signed by 12 Pacific-rim
countries—United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan,
Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Despite the Obama administration’s earlier well-orchestrated “failure”
to secure Fast Track approval in Congress, Fast Track and the TPPA
were quickly resurrected in behind-the-scenes maneuvers, including a
bipartisan agreement to separately include the previously disputed
Trade Adjustment Assistance program (TAA). The latter includes, at
the request of the AFL-CIO, provisions for a government-funded
program for some of the thousands of U.S. workers expected to lose their
jobs as U.S.
corporations offshore production to low-wage and virtual slave-labor
nations like Vietnam and China.
The Republicans, joined by their “progressive” Democratic Party
cohorts, traded support for this token program when the Obama
administration agreed to include in a separate “non-controversial”
African trade bill some multi-billion-dollar boons to U.S. oil
corporations in exchange for the TAA bone to American labor.
Fast Track grants the president the authority to amend the TPPA at
will, with take it or leave it additions or deletions that cannot be
altered, negotiated, or filibustered in the halls of Congress. That
is, the basic terms of the TPPA have been essentially approved by
ruling-class corporate negotiators from all 12 nations. When the
corporate elite needs to tweak this or that point, Congress can only
vote yes or no.
Fast Track or not, however, big-time trade agreements and other such
megadeals, as with the multi-trillion-dollar bailouts immediately
following the economic meltdown of 2008, are always negotiated behind
the scenes before being entered into the record as law, with the fine
print rarely open to public scrutiny.
Fast Track is simply capitalism’s way to make highly lucrative deals
quickly, always at the expense of the working class. To be sure, the
general TPPA package is nothing less than the product of
broad-ranging arrangements between the competing wings of the
super-rich and their corporate representatives here and around the world.
In essence, TPPA, like the earlier North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), includes hundreds of thousands of secret
provisions—each one aimed at fostering or guaranteeing the profits of one or
another U.S.
corporate entity at the expense of its international competitors.
As the only world superpower, the U.S. always leverages its economic
might at the expense of other nations. Either they comply or they are
threatened with being excluded from the world economy through the
myriad of devices open almost exclusively to the United States,
including control over vast banking and credit markets and the
world’s only reserve currency, the U.S. dollar—today printed with
abandon and backed by nothing.
Like NAFTA, TPPA has little or nothing to do with “free trade.” It is
aimed at promoting the interests of the U.S. corporations that are
world-class state-of-the-art competitors (free trade for these
monopoly giants), while safeguarding the interests of those sectors
of U.S.
capitalism that are technologically inferior and therefore less
capable of competing in the international marketplace. In these
latter instances, U.S. trade and related policies are the opposite of
free trade. They are strictly protectionist; they impose restrictions
in innumerable forms, including tariffs, against more competitive
commodities produced abroad.
Little or nothing was known about TPPA until WikiLeaks in 2013
published some of the basic sections in an eye-opening exposé that
shockingly revealed its predatory nature.
The TPPA is touted as an extension and strengthening of NAFTA, the
Clinton administration’s gift to corporate America. Like NAFTA, which
was limited to the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, the TPPA’s congressional
approval is based on the president’s securing the votes of most
Republicans plus sufficient numbers of Democrats to ram it through.
Like Bill Clinton, Obama considers his legislation central to his
“legacy” to corporate America. Unlike his legacy-burnishing but fake
maneuvers to pose as a kind-hearted liberal when “the great deporter”
used his executive powers to temporarily diminish the horrendous
deportation provisions of current immigrant law, Obama is dead
serious about the TPPA. This measure is nothing less than U.S.
capitalism’s grand manifesto—an earthshaking and massive
conglomeration of largely U.S.-imposed agreements in every critical field of
corporate endeavor.
All are aimed at protecting and privileging the U.S. elite at the
expense of other nations and the broad working class.
The TPPA is a “trade” agreement with only five of its 29 sections
dealing with trade! What’s left are sections imposing a massive
curtailment of government regulation of environmental policies, the
establishment of new “intellectual property rights” (that is,
extending copyrights and patents to prevent others from using key
products such as life-saving pharmaceuticals), the imposition of
restrictions on internet freedom, and innumerable other measures to
strengthen corporate prerogatives.
The patent restrictions, for example, will preserve and extend Big
Pharma’s monopoly on critical drugs, preventing competitors from
manufacturing generic forms for sale at lower prices. Preservation of
the power of these monopolies will guarantee price increases. “Buy
Local” campaigns will be banned or restricted in the name of
“restraint of trade.” Noam Chomsky aptly noted, “It’s not about trade
at all, it’s about investor rights.”
TPPA includes, as with NAFTA, an Investor-State Dispute Settlement
(ISDS) section allowing foreign corporations to sue national
governments before extra-judicial three-member international
arbitration tribunals composed of corporate attorneys rotating as
judges one day and corporate advocates the next.
NAFTA’s ISDS sections, virtually unchanged in the TPPA, give these
corporate-appointed “arbitrators” the power “… to issue
non-appealable judgments on claims against domestic laws that
corporate claimants believe violate their right to do business. If
corporations win, they are entitled to financial rewards based upon
their projected future profits, payable in taxpayer’s money.”
Linda Nordquist, quoted immediately above and writing for the
Pittsburgh-based newsletter of the Thomas Merton Center, cites some
appropriate examples of ISDS decisions under NAFTA in which the
sovereignty of nation states is subordinated to global corporations
in the name of “free trade.”
Nordquist writes, “2012 Chevron v. Ecuador (Amazonian oil pollution):
Chevron seeks to evade payment of a multi-billion-dollar court ruling
against the company for widespread pollution of the Amazon rainforest.
Ecuadorian courts found that Chevron dumped billions of gallons of
toxic water and dug hundreds of open-air oil sludge pits in Ecuador’s
Amazon, poisoning the communities of some 30,000 Amazon residents,
including the entire populations of six indigenous groups (one of
which is now
extinct.) $9.5 billion desperately needed to provide cleanup and
healthcare to afflicted indigenous communities.
“The tribunal in this case ordered Ecuador’s government to violate
its own Constitution and block enforcement of a ruling upheld on
appeal in its independent court system. Pending. To date, several
issues decided in Chevron’s favor.
“2015 Bilcon v. Canada (environmental protection): investor win
(seeking $300 million.) Corporation sought to expand basalt quarry in
Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. Government rejected on basis of
environmental impact report stating blasting and increased shipping
would be hazardous to endangered whales and salmon; negative effects
on tourism and community values.
“Dissent by third lawyer-judge criticized the decision as challenging
the right of government to implement environmental safeguards
reflecting community concerns. Further it would have a ‘chilling
effect on future environmental policies as governments face possible
punishing financial awards.’ He noted, the ruling was a “significant
intrusion into domestic jurisdiction,” giving more power to NAFTA
than the Canadian legal system.”
Nordquist properly concludes, “Obama’s TPPA elevates corporations
from personhood to nationhood.” In truth, it’s always been that way.
Labor bureaucrats lay aside their token opposition to TPPA
A sideshow to the carefully orchestrated ruling-class squabble over
TPPA was the subservient role of the AFL-CIO and its president,
Richard Trumka. A June 14, 2015, front-page New York Times headline
read, “Labor’s Might Seen in Failure of Trade Deal.” The Times
credited labor’s powerful lobbying of “progressive Democrats” for the
initial congressional defeat of Fast Track approval. Business Day
chimed in to tout labor’s power with the headline, “Labor’s Might
Seen in Failure of Trade Deal as Unions Allied to Thwart It.” Of
course, only the naïve believed that TPPA would be derailed by the
tragically impotent AFL-CIO.
Since March, AFL-CIO lobbyists bragged that union members had held
650 events opposing the TPPA; 160,000 phone calls were made to
members of Congress along with some 20,000 letters sent. The
federation also produced digital ads, which have received more than
30 million views, aimed at several dozen members of Congress.
“We are very grateful for all the activists, families, community
leaders and elected officials who worked so tirelessly for
transparency and worker rights in international trade deals,” said
Richard Trumka. “This was truly democracy in action.” But the
“democracy” and praise for “labor’s power” ended abruptly a week later.
Originally, Trumka and Co., along with an extremely broad range of
environmental and social justice organizations, had pledged total
opposition to the TPPA, even if TAA provisions were included. But
when the chips were down, a week later Trumka and his fast track
opposition team reversed course and agreed to sign onto Obama’s
agenda—providing only that a TAA provision for some labor
compensation for lost jobs was included, one way or another.
With barely a shrug, Trumka’s team of hardened class-collaborationist
bureaucrats, tied to the Democrats hand and foot, jumped ship,
leaving its former environmental (anti-climate crisis/global warming)
and social justice allies in the lurch and once again identifying
labor’s future “fortunes” with the welfare of the U.S. capitalist
state and its plundering corporate institutions.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a longtime ferocious TPPA and
NAFTA advocate, happily engaged in the week-long game of posing as
“labor’s friend,” as did virtually all “progressive Democrats.” As
with the Democrats’ granting Trumka two minutes speaking time at the
last Democratic Party national convention, at a time when virtually
no one was present at the convention hall, the Democrats organized to
promote “labor’s cause” for a few days before cutting yet another
secret deal behind their backs.
The TPPA is the modern-day expression of the needs of a world
capitalism in deep crisis. The ruling rich have no solutions other
than at the expense of their corporate competitors and the broad
working class of every nation. Today’s labor movement stands at a low
ebb, with its bureaucratic mis-leaders incapable of offering even the
most minimal of challenges to capitalist austerity. That the AFL-CIO
tops focused on organizing member phone calls and letter writing to
its claimed Democratic Party allies, as opposed to exercising its
class power at the point of production, is a testament to its bankruptcy.
A new and fighting labor leadership that operates in the class
struggle instead of in the class collaborationist mode, and organizes
in the political arena independently of and against all capitalist
parties, is an absolute necessity.
Today, the gap is glaring between the pent-up anger and hatred of
working people toward the deepening capitalist-imposed austerity and
the development of a conscious fightback. But in time, the insults to
labor’s dignity and quality of life will inevitably fuel
unprecedented struggles that will challenge capitalist rule in all
its forms. The precondition for the success of these struggles will
depend on revolutionaries’ sinking deep roots in the coming struggles
and building a mass working-class socialist party capable of ending
capitalist’s inherent horrors once and for all.
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Posted in East Asia, Economy, International, Labor. | Tagged AFL-CIO,
NAFTA, TPPA, Trumka.
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