Okay ... I'll read the OP now.

we have to trust him and many lesser minions day to day. We can't micromanage the government. Some people have taken to making the TPP a pet cause to bash him with and rant on about corporatists and the 1%. Even the 1% has no interest in killing us all.

NAFTA and its offspring

... and it's almost all very bad.

Yet so many here, who are against it say that it's top secret, and nobody knows. Of course the same posters will also jump on every " rumor" and "leak" that gets posted on the internet to "prove" how bad it is. That doesn't make any sense to me.

trust Bush on Iraq because he knows more than we do.
You may want to give your mind over to Obama on this. I don't.
Where is the text of the agreement? Why is it secret? Sunshine is the best disinfectant remember?

... Obama is exactly like Bush.

All trade agreements are negotiated in secret; this one is being handled no differently than all the others we are currently a party to.

The only ones let into the secret rooms are Wall Street banks and the Fortune 500 & Friends, of course.

on it because you trust him on everything else.
Does "a robust public option" ring a bell?

ALL trade agreements are negotiated this way. That's always been the protocol.

As for trusting Obama, yes, I do.

received the Obama family Christmas card every year. Just yesterday I got a letter from the President asking me to donate again. Yes it is a form letter. I have put my money into both his campaigns and not in the usually small donation amounts.

I think I understand him after the interview tonight. The TPP is good for future America

What if he's doing something wrong with the IRS, the EPA or the Department of Parks and Recreations?

The reasons for going to a war are reasons we can consider.

Huge trade agreement's don't have those stakes, and we just don't have time to micromanage them.

Imagine all the stuff the government does every day that we don't even know about. The IRS could be doing something outrageous right now. Why aren't we micromanaging them too?

And who knows what the Securities and Exchange commission is doing.

as soon as the deal was done, and prior to the deal, there were broad outlines of what the agreement required. As to the TPP, we all know how NAFTA affected the country, and we all KNOW how the GATT affected the country. The two deals were great for the 1%, not good at all for the rest of us.

The President has given vague assurances as to how the TPP will have strong protections for all the American people, but he cannot articulate a compelling reason that the negotiations must be conducted in secret. Nor can he articulate a compelling reason that any agreement be accepted in a simple yes or no vote, with no amendments possible.

And given that the TPP is being written by big business, any belief that somehow the President will get a great deal for the average US citizen is wishful thinking at best.

Well said.

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, includes the Treaty Clause, which empowers the President of the United States to propose and chiefly negotiate agreements, which must be confirmed by the Senate,

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;

It does not need 2/3rds of the Senate. The majority of United States free trade agreements are implemented as congressional-executive agreements. Unlike treaties, such agreements require a majority of the House and Senate to pass. In the "Trade Promotion Authority" (TPA), established by the Trade Act of 1974, Congress authorized the President to negotiate free trade agreements if they are approved by both houses.

One thought though ...

I have to think that President Obama knows something that we don't about this (and I would add "more about everything he touches&quot

I oppose TPP because from what I've read of it, it looks to carry over some of the worst of NAFTA, like chapter 11.

but unlike the Wikileaks author and others here who declared it unprecedented, I recognized it as very similar to chapter 11 of NAFTA, which is probably the worst part of the damn thing.

remains, at this point, merely a negotiating point. That's all I'm saying.

you are truly dreaming.

i.e., when the final agreement is released to the public, there will be no longer a need to dream ... we can deal with reality.

yup.

Which incidentally affects the inner city in horrific ways.

have gone. pretty much. And this is by design by the way.

As though it would not be more complicated than that.

are willing to say the past is the future ... and can only do so, by ignoring the past 6+ years.

Korea FTA was signed? That was within the last six years.

Did I mention the trade deficit growth?

http://www.epi.org/blog/korea-trade-deal-resulted-growing-trade/

should I add Colombia to the list of disasters? How about CAFTA? All these are within the last 6 years. You asked us to limit ourselves to the last 6 years. I have.

Colombia is in the midst of major strikes becuase of privatization and raids of the land. It is also increasing, shucks I know, like all of them, increasing income inequality in the country.

You might want to trust whatever, because, gee it is a D at the WH right now... but you should know the TTP started negotiations in 2002, these policies continue, regardless of who is in the WH, and they benefit the US Chamber and it's members, but not middle class Americans, Colombians, Mexicans, Koreans, Canadians, the list is long.

So truly, what side are you on?

And there could be no other influences. The housing bubble happened after NAFTA, so NAFTA must have caused it. It's no more thinking than that.

"A" happened and "B" happened ... So "A" obviously caused "B".

If the Republicans vote for this in anything like their usual swarm then the chances it's toxic for the 99% are 99%.

I'm kind of expecting it to line up with a high but not huge percentage of Republicans and enough Democrats to make it so.

We make decisions every day on tentative data, if we drive we make life and death decisions every day on tentative data (Is everyone going to stop at every red light?) and sometimes we get it wrong.

Right now we are making decisions on tentative data (well I've been cut off before and there's a chance it will happen again) once data gets better the rational among is will make a further and less tentative decision at that juncture. My foot is often hovering over or even touching the brake pedal if I perceive the possibility of need for rapid use. Right now my foot is touching the brake pedal on the TPP, previous experience indicates this might be an opportunity to test the effectiveness of the ABS under real world conditions.

had the opportunity to review it.

Like I said in my OP - "I have to believe that a lot of the info that people are getting on the TPP is conjecture, rumors, half truths, etc."
There seems to be a lot of that floating around the internet, on DU and on Ed's show.

Is that what you are hanging your hat on? Or do you have a actual copy of the actual agreement?

Somebody, or somebody's, are making all of us a favor and leaking like a sieve.

Yet your point was not about the content of the deal, but that we should trust the president to do what was best. I don't place blind trust in anyone.

restrictions.

There could be things you don't like in the Iran agreement and things you do like in the TPP.

We hire him to do it because it's not practical to do it all by plebiscite. That I think is the point. Not surrendering your mind.

while I have yet to see a so-called free trade deal that didn't screw over ordinary folks.

vote against the final deal.

Fast track makes sense--if every country's legislature could go back and amend it with poison pills, no agreement would ever happen.

At the same time, a country's legislature should have the gumption to reject a bad deal.

Granted, much more slowly.

an agreement limiting Iranian nukes; there's nothing in it for them one way or the other, same as marriage equality. They care VERY MUCH about reducing the populace of the US to a state of feudalism/peonage, and for them there are no higher stakes.

Good strategy!

Is this what we're going to see from now on? Anyone who points out how wedge issues are used by centrist politicians is 'making a swipe at minority rights'?

Can we just make honest arguments?

Let it also be said that the billionaire class flexes its muscles when its interests - squeezing the last drop of cash out of the populace - are at stake but it does not do so when there is no money up for grabs. A nuke deal with Iran or nationwide marriage equality - or legal weed for that matter - does nothing to impede the billionaire class' plans to feudalize the US economy. The TPP is a long step towards that class realizing its end goal. Which is why they are agnostic about marriage equality and so fervently for the TPP.

I should think that much would have been clear from my prior post.

Even so, we did have to trust him to run the rest of the government.

I don't want anymore ass reaming, job killing, poverty expanding, exploitive, sovereignty surrendering, corporate empowering "free trade" agreements and no "cause Obama" doesn't help an iota this isn't his first bite of the apple in this area and his previous efforts are in the same template as these turds have been for decades.

Don't piss in my cup and call it lemonaid.

But I guess the lectures and scoldings will continue.

Wanna take a fucking stab at which is which?


Just how stupid do you think we are?

Preeee-cisely.

they're bad. Things like the U.S. team fighting hard (and getting in) extensions for patents on drugs, which will make generics less available. and there's tons more. (the chapter covering that was leaked). That's just one example. Enforcement of such things as labor and environmental standards in countries like Vietnam are a concern.

Then there's history. Nafta hasn't been good for the U.S. middle class. And for some countries in Central America, the ISDS process under CAFTA has been terrible- tragic actually.

There's a reason that the vast majority of dems in Congress oppose it- and they've seen quite a bit of it. There's a reason the NY State AG wrote an op piece yesterday imploring Congress not to pass the TPA. There's a reason, NRDC, the Sierra Club, 350.org, Doctors Without Borders, every labor union and many,many more public interest groups and non-profits oppose it. There's a reason that Nobel winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (belatedly) oppose it.

There's a reason his only allies are republicans, corporations, lobbyists and business groups support it.

Hope that answers you as to why I personally don't trust the President on this.

I wonder - will Warren get a ride on Air Force One, or a visit from Jamie Dimon?

the op.

He has not released the details of this treaty. His record of defending middle class people is pretty shoddy unless you think making them poorer is good for them. There is no reason to trust his intentions or judgement on what is good for the middle class. Unfortunately many of the neoliberals do think making us poorer is some kind of tough love. He may feel that way too.

On economic issues, we are not on the same side. He's a big supporter of the 1%.

Big money wields as much if not more influence in congress than in the White House.

They can say no to the treaty or yes. They wouldn't be forced to accept it if it had something they didn't want.

"It is about establishing a method to bypass democratic regulation of corporate power. "

As oversimplifications go, that's an excellent one, right to the point.

fucking bit. They only look out for their bottom line. Most Democrats in Congress are against this deal as are the unions. I trust them to look out for me than those corporations who are drooling over the TPP.

I fully support President Obama in negotiations with Iran in order to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons and possibly a war.

I can support one while not support the other. It's not that hard.

There has not been a single free trade agreement that has been beneficial to the working people - not in the US, and not in the other nations we "partner" with. each and every such agreement deregulates, strips consumer control, suppresses wages, cracks unions, and liberates capital while restricting people - all to the net effect of making the wealthy wealthier and the poor poorer.

And whose interests they normally represent.

It's our responsibility to scrutinize and hold them accountable for their decisions and policies. In this case, it's nearly impossible to do so because they're hiding the TPP policies from us.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

 Thomas Jefferson

That's why. The TPP protects corporations at the expense of both workers and environment. Do you really want some corporation which doesn't like your local environmental regulations to be able to OVERTURN them in an international tribunal???

I don't.

And I don't want to see this country lose another 800,000 jobs because Obama thinks 'free trade' is good for us, because it's NOT.

Obama is just plain WRONG on this one.

And, yes, the nuclear agreement was fine. Also, do you notice how the Republicans are generally for the TPP but against the deal with Iran? They want war because war is good for the 1%. But they tend to be FOR the TPP. This should be a giant red flag right there; since when is ANYTHING the Republicans like or want good for the American people?

Calling them "libertarian" doesn't begin to approach the depth of their evil, and no I'm not talking about Jules or Chelsea Manning or any of the familiar faces. Don't be fooled by wikileaks.

TPP is a complex, ambitious piece of legislation that can't be boiled down to a single slogan. Naturally, the vultures and hyenas are hell-bent on boiling it down to a single slogan.

"Do we think that after all the hard work he's done in his last 6 years to bring the economy back from the brink that he wants to do something that some people are calling a "National Disaster" and undo that work?"

Given that the "economic recovery" has really almost exclusively helped the 1%, I don't think a trade agreement which will do the same is undoing all his work.

I think the suspicion is due to the outright lies about a lack of criminality on Wall Street, the duplicitous National Mortgage Settlement pushed hard by the administration, the utter whitewashing of the robosigning scandal, the complete avoidance of prosecution for money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, the lack of prosecution for things like the London Whale, the wholesale adoption of right-wing fantasies regarding the federal budget (specifically "the government must live within its means&quot , the embrace of the corrupt public-private partnership model, and the general unwillingness to deal with the facts of the economy as it is, as opposed to how neoliberal rhetoric would like to paint it.

As to why he's more or less trusted when it comes to an Iranian nuclear deal? That has a lot to do with who came before him. It's also because he's into clever foreign policy. American foreign policy is back to working through proxies and intermediaries in key regions, unlike from 2001-09. It's less likely to blow up in our faces, at least dramatically so, and has the force of custom behind it. Whether I agree with all of the goals of it is a different case, but there is something to be said for smart process. That's a lesson his predecessor, and the rest of his cronies, never learned and actively refuse to learn.

He makes some compelling arguments. I'm very much inclined to trust him.

I'll be watching over the next few days to see if we get broad brush responses or specifics back from the TPP critics.

secretly negotiate environmental agreements with India and China ......... And republicans trust him on none of them.

Now he's an untrustworthy sellout whom we can't trust any farther than we can throw him. That will teach Obama how much Democrats trust him.

Maybe Democratic presidents get used to not being trusted by one side or the other (or both in the case of TPP).

I don't trust the President on TPP because of the money involved. Selling out to multinationals can pay well later in life (See Bill and Hillary Clinton). Also, the secrecy involved in the negotiations is revolting given we are a democracy. Why so secret if the deal is going to help the citizens so much? Doesn't smell right.

I trust him on Iran because there isn't much of a money influence on his actions. The vested interest is to have a verifiable peace. The deal is more out in the open so we can see what is going on and discuss it.

It's all based on what is good for us as a people. What's in the Iran agreement is good, mostly. What's in the TPP is horrific. And we have precedent for distrust: NAFTA. Clinton sold us down the river on that one. It also proved disastrous for Mexico. We KNOW what trade agreements do, and it is not good.

impact jobs, or many other changes in law that affects workers and can greatly enrich management and ownership for companies at the expense of workers.

My complaint is not that the agreement is being negotiated in secret. As i have said elsewhere, it is difficult to negotiate an agreement with people who do not understand what they read.

My problem is the request for Fast track authority that limits Congress and the public from petitioning their government.

That doesn't make him infallible.

Pretty soon we won't need to vote anymore either.

Americans to suck it up.

The scary information which has come out about TPP is perfectly consistent with that pattern.

So no. I don't trust him on TPP. I think he has sold us out again.

... we just can't trust Obama on this.

You see, he has lulled the masses into a false sense of security by launching Obamacare, supporting gay/lesbian rights, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using diplomacy rather than war to further peaceful dialogue among nations, etc.

But all along it has been part of his diabolical plan to negotiate a treaty that will decimate the American worker, obliterate the middle class, and destroy democracy as we know it.

Seriously, what US president DOESN'T want to go down in history as the most vilified American who ever lived? What US president DOESN'T want to undo his own legacy of positive achievements? It all makes perfect sense - doesn't it?

I didn't "trust the president" to negotiate anything.