Secrets of a new "Free Trade Frankenstein"

Remember NAFTA? 

The North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada was supposed to promote commerce between the three countries creating the world’s largest “free trade” area by removing tariff and quotas on U.S. goods.

It was supposed to increase employment and prosperity across borders.

But there was nothing free about NAFTA.

It turned out to be a devastating trade for nearly a million American workers, whose jobs were exported to other countries where wages are lower and U.S. companies aren’t subject to worker, health and environmental rules, and got nothing in return.

Millions of workers in Mexico’s small-scale agriculture also lost their livelihoods because they couldn’t compete with subsidized U.S. corporate agribusiness, which flooded Mexico with corn.

Look out, because there’s a new “free trade” Frankenstein on the horizon. Because the public has gotten wise to the big lie of “free trade,” the authorities have changed the labeling – they call this one a “partnership” – the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

So far, it includes U.S., Australia, New Zealand and several Pacific Rim nations.

Who’s not included in the partnership?

Anybody from the public, or advocates for consumer, labor, environmental rights, improved health care, or anybody else that would question the notion of giving the corporate giants who have exclusive access to the negotiations anything they want.

According to critics, these deals should be more accurately labeled “corporate rights agreements,” because that’s what the real focus is ­ – protecting corporate interests and their private property rights against any interference from environmental, labor or financial regulations they disagree with  – either in the United States or any other country.

For example, the World Trade Organization, which judges trade disputes, recently ruled against a number of U.S. regulations designed to protect consumers, like labeling meat with its country-of-origin, and a ban on clove cigarettes to reduce teen smoking.

These trade agreements allow corporations to challenge national laws they don’t like in special courts. As in the secret negotiations, the public has no right to appear in those courts.

In addition, critics fear that the negotiations could lead to the imposition of strict intellectual property protections for companies that would have wide-ranging impacts, including limiting the availability of less expensive generic medicines, including AIDS drugs, critical to Third World countries’ efforts to limit illness and disease.

U.S. negotiators, led by trade representative Ron Kirk, insist the negotiators need secrecy to be able to negotiate freely.

Trust us, he insists.

But the negotiations aren’t secret from the lobbyists for the corporations whose rights and profits are at stake – they have full access, through “trade advisory groups” that review documents that are off limits to the public.

Corporate bigwigs also gain access to the negotiations while wining and dining with trade negotiators and politicians at fancy dinners at swank restaurants.

At one recent dinner in February in Washington D.C., the sponsors included a who’s who of corporate power – Amgen, Chevron, Dow Chemical, GE, Microsoft, Target and Wal-Mart, along with industry groups such as the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and PhRMA.

Fortunately, all the issues and secrecy around the talks have attracted attention.

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has become a leader in the fight to open up the TPP talks. Meanwhile several other groups, including Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, the California Fair Trade Coalition, and the Citizens Trade Campaign, have launched campaigns against the secrecy surrounding the TPP and raising issues about the substance of the agreements.

We don’t need more assurances that the trade negotiators and lobbyists are protecting our interests. We don’t need any more PR about how trade will create jobs in America. We can predict the unfortunate outcome of the TPP talks if they remain closed to the public, with only the insiders working to pursue their interests.

We need the most open process, public participation and the toughest scrutiny possible to avoid a massive rip-off at the hands of our secret “partners.”

 

Martin Column / TPP - 04/04/2012

“There Oughta Be A Law” – Want to Play?

I wrote last week that until we change the Constitution to permanently kick corporate money out of politics, we can forget about Congress protecting us from cell phone company contracts that strip consumers of their right to go to court.

I got a lot of interesting email on that post, because most people who read “Where’s Our Money” and other blogs think there “oughta be a law” of some kind. But no matter what you believe in or where you stand on the ideological spectrum, anybody who is trying to make America a better place for human beings is going to have a hard time overcoming the corrupting effect of corporate money on public officials and the democratic process.

Think I’m wrong? Here’s my challenge:

Name a policy issue that involves our power as voters, consumers, workers, taxpayers or even shareholders and I will show you how corporate money has derailed any serious progress on the matter.

If you don’t want to post it publicly, just ask that your comment remain private, or send me an email.

The same day I mused on our new status as second-class citizens courtesy of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, President Obama’s re-election campaign endorsed a constitutional amendment to reverse that ruling. "The President favors action—by constitutional amendment, if necessary—to place reasonable limits on all such spending," the Obama campaign said. This came in the context of a another controversial move: the President had decided to encourage supporters to donate to one of the Super PACs supporting him. “Super PACs” are the shadowy groups that the Supreme Court freed of restraints on political spending in Citizens United. Tens of millions of dollars, most of it from unidentified corporations and wealthy donors, have poured into the Republican primaries. But that’s just a fraction of what Super PACs are expected to spend to unelect Barack Obama in November.

In a stark example of biting the hand that has fed it, Wall Street has made it clear that it is offended even by the timid financial reforms mustered by the Obama Administration over the last few years. Now that the taxpayers have resuscitated the Money Industry, it wants to go all the way back to the insane deregulatory policies that pushed the nation into a depression in 2008.

There was a lot of critical commentary about the announcement, not just by hypocrite Republicans like John Beohner, but also by commentators on the left who feel Obama betrayed his commitment to campaign finance reform.

I for one can’t see how any candidate from either party can afford not to play by the deregulated rules of legalized bribery blessed by the Supreme Court. Like Obama’s campaign manager said, “unilateral disarmament” in the face of a massive attack of big money makes no sense. Our electoral system now assures the survival only of the financially fattest.

But will Obama really fight for the 28th Amendment? It’s one thing to endorse the concept and quite another to press for a change in the Constitution that would strip the corporate establishment of its power to elect candidates and dictate laws. The President has the bully pulpit and phenomenal power, but like the rest of us, he can't hope to pass any laws if corporations maintain a hammerlock over the legislative branch. No one knows better than he how the powerful insurance lobby turned health care reform into a corporate boondoggle. If President Obama thinks there oughta be a law, any meaningful law, in his second term, he's going to have confront Citizens United.

 

Citizens United / Congress / Harvey Column / Supreme Court / Uncategorized - 02/13/2012

What's Plan B For Jobs?

That’s the big question after the Republicans, true to their word, killed President Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal.

In response, the president has pledged to break up his plan, which is already too small to significantly reduce unemployment, into even smaller chunks that the Republicans might swallow. It’s hard to find anybody who believes that’s a serious plan to put a dent in unemployment.

The only job the president seems to have a clue about preserving is his own, continuing to raise campaign cash at a record-breaking pace, raising $70 million for his own and Democrats’ reelection.

Meanwhile Republicans pursue their own single-minded agenda to enhance corporate power and their own – destroy President Obama, reduce taxes and cripple government regulation.

Unfortunately for Republicans, when you look at the facts, regulations don’t turn out to be much of a threat to jobs after all

The only legislation the two parties agree on are a handful of NAFTA-style trade agreements that most Americans fear will only lead to more outsourcing.

Where does that leave the 99 percent?

Out in the street.

That’s where they’ll be across the country and the globe today, to register their frustration with a political and financial elite whose actions created persistently high unemployment, plummeting home values, social service cutbacks and a world of growing economic uncertainty.

As OccupyLA states on its web site, “We have been giving away our representation to people who do not deserve it …”

Check here for a list of demonstrations around the world.

 

 

Congress / D.C. Disconnect / Martin Column / Outrage / President Barack Obama - 10/15/2011