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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.
So no public debate based on no disclosure is better than ill-informed debate based on full disclosure? He might as well have said that as a form of government, dictatorship is superior to democracy.
There is some place for secrecy in negotiation. If our negotiators are trying to get the best deal for us, they don't want to reveal what concessions they are willing to make until they have a sense of the concessions other parties are willing to make.
The problem is that, at least in the US, the trade negotiating agency has its priorities set by a limited number of industry advisory groups, and these groups are not representative of US interests. The composition of the groups is about 20 years behind the times, so as a result you have a trade agency pushing for copyright restrictions without thinking about how they will affect the technology industry.
The trade agency also expends a disproportionate amount of bargaining capital on intellectual property, thus reducing what it is able to accomplish in other areas, such as labor and environmental standards.
Finally, the trade agency writes its own interpretation of US law into free trade agreements. It's usually pretty close to what US law actually says, but sometimes it misinterprets it, or US law changes and the FTA text ends up saying something completely different.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is why it’s “secret”.
The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations—like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America—are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement. [...] More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing. We hear that the process by which TPP is being negotiated has been a model of transparency. I disagree with that statement.[94]
Corporations don’t want the hassle of people complaining and/or some members of congress doing something about it.
That tells you right there it’s a bad thing.
Here’s something else.
they are concerned that the TPP focuses on protecting intellectual property to the detriment of efforts to provide access to affordable medicine in the developing world, particularly Vietnam, going against the foreign policy goals of the Obama administration and previous administrations.[79]
Read the entire wiki, then read this article to see exactly what might happen to who gets to set foreign policy.
Then. read this.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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."
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]