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Is Public Debate of Trade Agreements Against the Public Interest?
onproton writes The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being negotiated in secret, has been subject to numerous draft leaks that indicate these talks are potentially harmful to everything from public health to internet freedom. So why isn't the public involved, and why are the terms of the agreement being debated behind closed doors? According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done." Leaving one to question how revealing the full context and scope of the agreement talks would lead to an increase in misinformation rather than clarity.
Using treaties and agreements negotiated in secrecy with other nations to do an end-run around the democratic process is *obviously* a subversion of everything a civilized country *should* stand for. Public debate is not actually a bad thing - but because of things like these the public interest is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
So public disclosure of the terms is "likely to lead this to go immediately into the public debate on an ill-informed basis", and yet aren't secret terms and meetings guaranteed to result in ill-informed debate? If the agreement were truly in the public interest, then it sounds like Groser is saying is that the public is too stupid to be persuaded to support the agreement via educational campaigns. The reality is that these agreements are trying to achieve aims that are in the interests of corporations and other mega-donors, not further the interest of the people, and that's what they don't want known.
According to New Zealand's current Trade Minister, Tim Groser, full disclosure of what is being discussed would likely lead to "public debate on an ill-informed basis before the deal has been done."
"We have to pass it to find out what's in it!" - Nancy Pelosi
Of course, in context, what that quote meant was that she couldn't provide the final text of the Affordable Care Act before the scores of amendments had been voted on, because she couldn't somehow "know" exactly which ones would pass.
I suspect the same sort of thing would happen if all treaty negotiation had to happen in public. Inevitably diplomacy involves compromises. In a fully transparent process, at the first signs that a politician might be considering making a concession on the particular concern of some special interest group the politician would come under intense pressure. There would be no consideration of the wider gains and losses from the treaty as a whole, it would just be endless talking points along the lines of "why does Tim Groser want to destroy our farming industry and poison our kids by allowing in cheap antibiotic-laced US meat". Negotiations would reduce to politicians from different countries mouthing sound-bites at each other aimed at domestic audiences and nothing would ever get done.
I recently finished the book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang. He makes a very good point that the "free" trade agreements themselves are frequently against the public good and primarily benefit entrenched corporations at the expense of developing nations and, often the workers in developed nations. Because the field of economics has been captured by the neo-liberal wing (not liberals in the sense of the word as used in the US.. . think 1700s' liberal) it is essential that the people impacted by these policies, not just those who stand to benefit, have a voice in the process. [link to book; no, I do not get a cut http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Sama... ]
After 12 attempts in 25 years, Congress finally repeals Glass-Steagall, rewarding financial companies for more than 20 years and $300 million worth of lobbying efforts. Supporters hail the change as the long-overdue demise of a Depression-era relic.
On Oct. 21, with the House-Senate conference committee deadlocked after marathon negotiations, the main sticking point is partisan bickering over the bill's effect on the Community Reinvestment Act, which sets rules for lending to poor communities. Sandy Weill calls President Clinton in the evening to try to break the deadlock after Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, warned Citigroup lobbyist Roger Levy that Weill has to get White House moving on the bill or he would shut down the House-Senate conference. Serious negotiations resume, and a deal is announced at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 22. Whether Weill made any difference in precipitating a deal is unclear.
On Oct. 22, Weill and John Reed issue a statement congratulating Congress and President Clinton, including 19 administration officials and lawmakers by name. The House and Senate approve a final version of the bill on Nov. 4, and Clinton signs it into law later that month.
Just days after the administration (including the Treasury Department) agrees to support the repeal, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the former co-chairman of a major Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs, raises eyebrows by accepting a top job at Citigroup as Weill's chief lieutenant. The previous year, Weill had called Secretary Rubin to give him advance notice of the upcoming merger announcement. When Weill told Rubin he had some important news, the secretary reportedly quipped, "You're buying the government?"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Assuming you are American or from another developed country Free Trade probably isn't the goal. Free Trade will mostly benefit big corporations who will make more money by producing items in whatever country who's employees will work for the least. And those 3rd World Countries will benefit big time. Effectively wages and standard of living gets averaged out. Rich North Americans and Europeans get poorer as our jobs move out of our countries, and our money moves out of our economies.. Poor Africans and Asians get richer.
-Kevin
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Contrary to Betteridge's law, the answer here is Yes
Despite all of America's faults our freedom of speech and self correcting form of democracy had always made me proud to be and American. These days however we seem to teeter on the edge of Fascism in order to preserve the interests of the top 1%.
The freedom of the internet and the cultural clash with ideologies like radical Islam seem to have created a perfect storm to motivate those at the top to grab what they can now and lock down everything to keep it for themselves in perpetuity.
Automation will increasingly make goods cheaper. Intellectual property is essentially free to distribute once created. Since there will be less profits in making goods going forward, the way to more riches is to lock up IP and make it artificially expensive. The ultimate cash-cow.
The top 1% decry the inheritance tax (death tax in rich parlance). By all measures class mobility in America is declining – lowering taxes for the rich is increasingly a scam to produce a new nobility, not a way to spur more hiring. It is not a coincidence I think that as tax rates for the rich have declined that the rich are pulling away year after year from the middle class. The advantages the rich have had over the last few decades never seem to trickle down to the middle class, so why always the argument the rich are needed to create jobs? The more we give the less we get.
Letter To Iran
Hearing this, I cannot help but thinking that our political systems reflect something called Inverted Totalitarianism.
Inverted totalitarianism is a term coined by political philosopher Sheldon Wolin in 2003 to describe the emerging form of government of the United States. Wolin believes that the United States is increasingly turning into an illiberal democracy, and uses the term "inverted totalitarianism" to illustrate similarities and differences between the United States governmental system and totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the nationalist Spain.
Wolin holds that the United States has been increasingly adopting totalitarian tendencies as a result of transformations undergone during the military mobilization required to fight the Axis powers in the 1940s, and the subsequent campaign to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War:[2]
He refers to the U.S. using the proper noun "Superpower", to emphasize the current position of the United States as the only global superpower.
While the versions of totalitarianism represented by Nazism and Fascism consolidated power by suppressing liberal political practices that had sunk only shallow cultural roots, Superpower represents a drive towards totality that draws from the setting where liberalism and democracy have been established for more than two centuries. It is Nazism turned upside-down, “inverted totalitarianism.” While it is a system that aspires to totality, it is driven by an ideology of the cost-effective rather than of a “master race” (Herrenvolk), by the material rather than the “ideal.”[6]
According to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism.
- Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corrupt.[7]
- While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.[8]
- While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world.[9] Wolin writes:
Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.[10]