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Emails Show How Industry Lobbyists Basically Wrote The Trans-Pacific Partnership
An anonymous reader writes: This Techdirt story shows how industry lobbyists influenced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, to the point that one even openly celebrates that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) version copied his own text word for word. The email exchange between Jim DeLisi, from Fanwood Chemical, to Barbara Weisel, a USTR official reads: "Hi Barbara – John sent through a link to the P4 agreement. I have taken a quick look at the rules of origin. Someone owes USTR a royalty payment – these are our rules. They will need some tweaking but will likely not need major surgery. This is a very pleasant surprise. I will study more closely over the weekend."
to know how this thing will operate. Whether there needs to be an agreement, and what needs to be in it, must be decided by some folks who have some decent idea of how these relationships operate.
The unfortunate part is that no one involved is doing anything to establish their credibility with regard to my interests. The people involved are plenty smart, but most of their words and actions seem to indicate that they have little to no consideration of my interests.
Are my interests more important than yours? Of course not. Neither are yours more important than mine. And most importantly, neither are the authors' more important than ours, collectively.
It would be nice to see some attention paid to that fact.
Both are ways, for large corporations, to "externalize risks to policitcs, and internalize profits". The wording is not mine. Karl Marx already observed this practice.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
The economists love to say that trade is great for everyone. But they assume that all parties have an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. There is this illusion of comparative advantage. But at least with the US we are making trade deals for the sole purpose of businesses lowering their costs to boost profits and make their shareholders richer and their CEOs even richer; while we little people lose opportunities and jobs and stagnant wages. This country's structural unemployment and underemployment is indicative of this.
Protectionism? Absolutely not!
What we need is a business environment like Germany's where government, business and labor all work together for society's overall prosperity. In the US, labor needs much more power (unions) and business needs to be taken down a few notches. I think we need to move towards a German economic model - stop the corporatism in the US.
I think we need to move towards a German economic model - stop the corporatism in the US.
The problem is that rich people in this country think we need to move to an Indian model. That's why whenever the US Government wants to hold up a nation as an example of an economic powerhouse, it's not Germany but India that is held up as an example.
This is one of the few instances where "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" actually applies. If the TPP is so great, why all the secrecy? If you've got to hide the details of a bill or treaty to get it passed, then maybe there's something wrong with your bill/treaty that means it shouldn't be passed!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
To be fair, I suspect much of this is the general dumbing down of our leaders combined with the increasingly technical World they are asked to govern.
The Congressman need not understand (or employ someone who understands) with all those helpful lobbyists at their beck and call.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Sorry, but you seem to be confusing a corrupt oligarchy for a nanny state.
And that's pretty much bullshit.
This is governments becoming beholden to corporations, and selling the farm for some magic beans.
This isn't a nanny state, this is a wholesale co-opting of government for corporate interests.
This has NOTHING at all to do with socialism, and everything to do with corporate welfare and stacking the deck for them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is how most bills are written. That is not a cynical but rather purely factual statement. The shock and surprise on TPP just makes you look ignorant.
A law so secret that you can't even view it unless you're a congressperson, and even then you have to go to a locked room without recording equipment.
But how could that be suspicious at all?
And now we find out it's written and conceived by multinational corporations.
And we all know how benevolent and caring *they* are.
More seriously, anyone who votes for this has been bribed or blackmailed. It's an obvious takeover of nation-states by a globe spanning elite corporate-state.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Not exactly. Treaties are always negotiated in secret. They kind of have to be. If the entire world gets to see every point and counterpoint and bluff and call you can't negotiate. There's nothing wrong with secret negotiation. And in general without the input of congress. It is the job of the executive branch to negotiate treaties, and the job of the senate to ratify or reject them.
Now once the negotiation is complete, though, there needs to be plenty of time to deliberate over the finished treaty before ratification. That part needs to be public and lengthy.
And "fast track" doesn't necessarily mean that it'll be passed quickly. It just means it must be taken or left as is, that congress can't make changes and send the executive back to the table. Which is not 100% unreasonable because if every nation did that negotiations would never end.
So there should be a long deliberation about whether this treaty should be wholly adopted or wholly rejected, with plenty of time for experts, media, industry, and /. commentators to weigh in on the pros and cons of the terms as they stand.
I don't see that happening, of course. It'll blow right through, and will probably be horrible for individuals. But so far there's nothing substantially wrong with the process.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Voters are often idiots though. They are easily manipulated. They could, theoretically, vote everyone out to be replaced by hard working reformers. But it won't happen because of all the idiots. Politics are like sports fandom and just as illogical - your side are the true heroes and the other side are evil usurpers. Manipulate the voters by telling them to be afraid: afraid of terrorists, afraid of people who look different, afraid of losing their jobs, afraid that someone from a different demographic will gain an advantage, afraid of communits, afraid of fascists, afraid of flipflopping moderates. If you keep people afraid then they will voluntarily give up all their rights.
It's a con game - the people may have all the power but the con man knows how to take it.