News & Articles

Suddenly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is in the news!
After years of negotiating the TPP behind closed doors, the corporate and governmental elites who’ve drafted this Declaration of Corporate Dependence are now demanding that our congress critters rubber-stamp it, pronto. Most Americans have never even heard of it, and that’s not by accident. In fact, all you need to know about TPP is that the Powers That Be don’t want you to know anything about it – what it is, what’s in it, where came from… nothing.
Trust us, they’re now saying, for this is a phantasmagorical free trade agreement that’ll deliver a 7-course dinner to everyone! “Trust Us?” I’d sooner trust a pack of coyotes with my last lamb chop! In fact, every bit of that 7-course dinner – the Dom Pérignon, truffled pâté, Beluga caviar, Chateaubriand, Cabernet Sauvignon, chocolate soufflé, Grande Marnier – goes to the corporate elites who effectively dictated this thing. They were part of the insider process that intentionally kept you and me from having a seat at the negotiating table. As the age-old adage puts it: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”
That’s why there’s such a rush to railroad this “free trade agreement” through Congress. It’s not free, not about trade, and We The People would never agree to it. As the New York Times recently reported, the corporate beneficiaries of TPP know they must get Congress to approve it before the public learns what a raw deal it is – and before “a wave of opposition can sweep it away.”
You and I are that wave! Let’s build it into a political tsunami that sweeps through Washington, cleansing it of the immoral hypocrisy of those attempting to usurp our people’s democratic sovereignty. For the lowdown on this, go to www.StopTPP.org.
“Congress Clears Path Fast Deal on Pacific Trade,”
www.nytimes.com, April 17, 2014.

Far from “liberalizing” global policies, TPP is corporatizing them

Words can be discombobulating when people twist them to fit concepts that are the exact opposite of what the word actually means.
Consider the current debate in Washington over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This secretly-negotiated deal is the exact opposite of a “liberal” reform, for it blatantly transfers a major portion of our people’s democratic sovereignty into the plutocratic hands of multinational corporate giants. Yet, lawmakers and pundits fronting for the corporations have disingenuously dubbed this corporatization of power a “liberalization” of global policies.
I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. For an example of the reactionary reality of TPP, look at a couple of little favors it does for Big Pharma. First, it extends the number of years that a pharmaceutical giant can keep a patent on its brand-name drugs. Not only does this artificially add more monopoly profits into the coffers of drug makers, but it simultaneously postpones competition from the makers of cheaper generic drugs – an especially dangerous delay for low-income people who’re ill. A second provision restricts public regulation of drug prices by any of the 12 countries that are part of the agreement. This is a gross nullification of the people’s sovereign right to remedy price gouging by corporate profiteers that hold monopolies on life-saving medicines.
Those pushing TPP assert that it’s merely a trade agreement – and we should not bother our little heads with worry about its details. But it’s filled with gotchas like these gifts to Big Pharma. They have nothing to do with trade, and everything to do with global elites secretively, deceitfully, and immorally agreeing among themselves to steal power from us.
Don’t just worry about TPP, fight it. Get the lowdown on how at www.StopTPP.org.


Even the ag secretary is shamelessly shilling for TPP scam

President Obama recently declared: “We’ve got to make sure we’re writing the rules so that we’ve got a level playing field.”
Wow – so much “we” in only one sentence. He was talking about his Trans-Pacific Partnership – but who exactly is “we”? Not you and me. TPP is yet another global trade scam that will ship even more of our middle-class jobs to places like Vietnam (with its 53-cents-an-hour wage base); it’ll let Big Pharma extend its worldwide price gouging of consumers, it will encourage more environmentally-destructive fracking of our communities; it will kill our “Buy Local” and other valued-based government purchasing programs; it will allow foreign corporations to take over our public services; and... well, TPP will empower multi-national corporations in the US and 11 other nations to reign supreme over regular folks.
Obama and his global corporate cohorts are mounting a massive PR campaign to get our congress critters to rubber stamp this un-American, anti-democratic deal. Even the Secretary of Agriculture is being used to hype this corporate boondoggle. How embarrassing to see Secretary Tom Vilsack shamelessly shilling for TPP, which he knows will help corporate middlemen further squeeze family farmers. Bizarrely, Vilsack hailed the deal as a boon to farmers, claiming it could increase exports of US farm commodities. Maybe… but dirt farmers don’t do the exporting – that’s done by Cargill, Tyson Foods, and other giant global marketers that profit by holding down the price they pay to our farmers. To paraphrase a verse from an old Western swing song: Little bee sucks the blossom/But the big bee gets the honey/Little farmer grows the crop/But the middleman gets the money.
That’s a good line in a song – but it’s ugly when our so-called “leaders” turn it into official policy.
“Obama Promotes Benefits of Trade Deals to Workers And Small Businesses,” www.nytimes.com, February 27, 2015.