that does not demonstrate any independent thought or critical thinking.

However, I also believe there are those who are waiting when the final agreement is made public, before the debates and vote, to determine how good or bad the actual agreement is before weighing in.

You're disrupting the attempt at a food fight.

before trying to stop the damage. But when people try to sell that attitude is where I have a problem. If you want to wait and see, go ahead but don't try to convince us that's the correct attitude. We have very good reason not to trust this so-called Agreement. We have good reason to be skeptical. The best way to fight something like this is to make it clear to our elected representatives where we stand.

As far as trust goes, some Democrats trusted H. Clinton and she betrayed them in 2002.

your post is correct...

of someone they support rather than the content of the final agreement

As to your point I am not sure if people are trying to "sell" the approach that they are waiting to see the final document before weighing in. As I see it there are two major camps on DU regarding the TPP. Those that are against the TPP because it doesn't include safe guards, or address the employment and other concerns, and those that believe the final document will because they believe in the assurances of the executive branch that it will. However, there is a third group who are truly undecided, and want to wait for the final agreement which will be made public before the debate or vote before deciding. I do not see this third category trying to convince one side or another what to believe

One group says that from history, from the leaks we've seen, from the fact that corporations were instrumental in writing the document, that most likely it will damage the 99%. Therefore we want to emphasize to our elected representatives that they need to understand our concerns. Now how can you say that take is wrong.

The second group trusts Obama when he says it will be good for the 99%. This is blind faith.

The third group are hiding behind the lame excuse that they want to wait until the TPP train runs over us before they decide. This group is the same as the second group.

No one has given the slightest reason to believe the TPP will help the 99%. Obama asks for our blind faith.

You've got it right, but I think the 3rd group not actually the same as the second group. The 3rd group are those with mostly financial interests in it's passing. They'll use either/or; or a combination of:

What are good for corporations are good for you...or a variation of "increased trade is good" regardless of the balance of same.

Hiding behind a betterment of the 3rd-world....using the first world's working class a pawns and martyrs; the latter group they utterly despise, as is made clear/flushed out in debates with them.

The argument that we need to better the peoples of the 3rd world is bogus from a number of different aspects. One, I don't know the facts but I bet if you took all of the 99% and reduced their incomes to the min wage, and gave the excess to people in the third world, it would not make a dent in their standard of living. Of course the most obvious problem with this argument is that the money would never get to the people but would go to the 1% like what happened in Mexico from NAFTA.
And those that suggest this argument don't even have the gumption to try to make the argument. They will only say something like, "Don't you think that people in the 3rd world deserve a decent living." Strawman argument.

Based on your post you seemed to take mine out of context and are thus barking up the wrong tree.

You never did state if you were for or against the TPP. If you are against it, then why the indignation of my bashing of corporations pushing this? ( and yes, I AM bashing korporate amerika )

If you are for the TPP, then your post is completely...utterly, incomprehensible.

No amount of opposition from voters will change that fact.
The only reason it will be public is because it will be too late to change it.

But, by all means, wait and see.

Rethugs are for it, and corporate funded Democrats are for it, so the concerns of the 99% will be irrelevant.

Democrats who are not happy with what they have seen

dumbest post yet on this issue

which would not insure passage

ar

somewhere in the TPP will a minor clause that actually helps a small segment of the population. Its called "The Hostage Clause", and THAT is what the Corporate Democrats will use to SELL the TPP.


If anyone objects, they will be overwhelmed by "What have you got against child retribution for the Fiji Islands???!!!!!

The plan is to keep it secret for a decade after it passes....it's gone beyond corruption straight into fascism.

shit.

Which, conveniently, prevents the use of the filibuster to stop it if it's a pile of garbage. I'd be fine with waiting and seeing on TPP if I wasn't being asked to give up the biggest tool the Democrats have to stop something that is full of corporate giveaways at workers' expense.

While "both parties are the same!" might be untrue when it comes to reproductive rights, LGBT equality, or expanding healthcare (all very important issues), when it comes to the TPP and fast trach, Obama might as well be McConnell might as well be Boehner might as well be Kerry might as well be Tillis might as well be Clinton.

This tells me all I need to know about the TPP's contents.

But that's NOT all I DO know. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have seen a recent draft of the ISDS chapyer, and it is terrifying; it is anti-democratic, it will lead to greater corporate dominion.

So, we know that significan membership from both sides of the aisle favor corporate dominion over democracy.

These people doo not represent me!

-app

What's that saying "politics makes strange bedfellows". It's no secret that the leadership of the democratic party and republicans are owned by corporations. So its not surprising that factions in both parties and independents want to stop the TPP. This issue seems to have the corporate stooges working overtime.

I'm just pointing out that the ignorant, racist, callous tbaggers are against it.

I understand. It's difficult to spin the TPP when we have such a long sad experience with past trade agreements. It doesn't help that the TPP is most enervate of them all. Long live corporate hegemony!

"Waiting for the final draft" is nothing but playing for corners to run out the clock and giving the multinational corporations, the Chamber of Commerce, and Congressional TeaPubliKlans unchecked power to screw us over yet again.

If the final agreement isn't acceptable then what? Nothing but to pretend it is better than sliced bread or wring their powerless hands. Which is why no matter what it is certain folks will circle their wagons right around it.

these cases will be global with the TPP...


This is a prominent case in Peru where investor-state treaties have provided an avenue for companies to delay or reverse agreements which had been enforceable in courts:

extortion?

I'm assuming the US state case was in civil court, but it begs an answer whether felony prosecution would be treated the same way?

ww ignore them at our peril and those who say we should "wait and see" are ignoring the dangerous precedents we already know about.

This is deliberate, criminal, severe lead poisoning of children and it's just one case. It makes me sick at heart.

The TPP is not news, but very few knew how she feels about fracking and what she's done to help Chevron:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026565578

For Clinton not to support it would be more controversial. We'll see how she chooses to downplay it or if she's up front about it.

Solar. Geothermal. Wind. Tidal. There are more...

Unfortunately they are using natural gas for peaking power for renewables.

Batteries may change the roadmap, but until it does all options are open.

Thus, our dependency on oil. Those will work for power, assuming that battery technology vastly improves. Otherwise we'll keep burning coal because it is so abundant and cheap, and nobody wants to pay thousand dollar a month electric bills.

Which means installing charging stations all over the place.

I'm not following you. We would need a vast improvement in battery technology first, to make wind, solar, and hydroelectric viable methods of locomotion. It would be far better, from a carbon footprint point-of-view, to convert our entire fleet of vehicles (including trains) to CNG/LPG.

They aren't fuel for internal combustion engines, but they are fuel for EVs.

Coal powers Priuses.

and grid power can be from fossil fuels or renewables, as you well know. The renewables are a small % but that is changing and the change is accelerating, admittedly we are still on the flat part of the acceleration curve.

I know you wish reality were other than it is, I do to. The point remains, that no one is willing to quit burning oil for their own personal transportation and start paying the real costs we need to shift over to renewables for locomotion.
Take care.

They add a surcharge of 3.5 cents per kwh. I don't know my current rate, they say the geothermal rate is about 20% higher. I am unemployed and trying to get through, when I get a job and a paycheck I will switch. So you could use me as an example of people that won't pay, I guess, but I will pay, and many people here are paying to switch.

https://sonomacleanpower.org/your-options/evergreen/

"We’re starting with clean geothermal power made here in Sonoma County. But that’s just the beginning. We’re also working to add new solar in our County to add to the mix."

http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/101546/sonoma-clean-power-plugs-in-big-geothermal-solar-deals/

You will still need to fire up coal or NG generators to handle peak load, especially in California. Every little bit helps, but we may never be able to get the power our society currently uses entirely from renewables.

And Fracking is only a passing phase in our journey to become energy independent (we are mostly already independent).

My field is energy, I presented at a refinery this past week, I have another at Diablo Canyon PP this summer, and I work with the Department of Energy and California Energy Commission and other organizations.

I know about energy and about hydraulic fracturing.

Fracking is more common than anyone thinks. Natural gas is super cheap right now.

But that doesn't mean that it's good. Under the right leadership, we can use it's availability as a bridge to greater deployment of renewable sources.

If Clinton truly cared, she would at least promote greater protection of the environment where fracking operations occur and call for full disclosure of frack fluid additives.

She does neither, she's all about promoting the industry, apparently.

Anyway, what we need to do is avoid the hydrogen economy myth and push for energy storage technologies and a smart grid, these will bring us closer and closer to 100% renewable energy portfolio.

Add to that more battery electric vehicles and hybrids, and more public transportation.

Natural gas consumption will be reduced significantly and fracking can continue but be done far more responsibly.

There you go.

Elon Musk's mega factory should be a start, but you are looking at massive numbers here. I'm on my phone or I show the numbers but if you are in energy you know I'm right.

It will happen, but fracking is part of the picture until it does. It's not controversial at all.

But grid scale storage might take different forms, including pumped hydro, which we use now and others that are on the drawing board, and smaller scale strategies, like home battery banks that can shift load to off peak times are promising.

My only point is that I think it's not quite accurate to say that fracking is part of the long term solution.

We'll always use oil and gas, and we can get off both sooner than we think if we put our efforts in the right directions.

I think we're on the right track, slow but with a lot of good energy in the right directions.

Just part of the fully sustainable, mostly renewable, independent roadmap.

Vehicle to grid is where the batteries will start showing promise, but eventually you'll have load balancing with buildings full of batteries.

As long as running a natural gas peaking plant is cheaper with fracked gas then battery plants will take some time to build out.

But the economies of scale guarantee batteries will be cheaper in the long run.

We're taking more and more big plants (>1,000MW) offline and converting other dirty plants to use cleaner fuels.

Thermal plants, after all, are all the same except for what makes the steam. The Turbine deck at NRG's Ormund plant is practically identical to the one at Diablo Canyon.

Smaller plants are more easily permitted, more easily dispatched, and are part of the distributed generation future.

These things are all true in America.

However, my original complaint has to do with our SOS fighting for Chevron against the citizens' opposition to NEW fracturing operations in Bulgaria and Romania.

I don't approve of her intervention on behalf of a global fossil fuel industry.

Last edited Sun Apr 26, 2015, 12:47 AM - Edit history (1)

That was her job as SoS to insure deals went through. She had no obligation to other countries citizens, her obligations were to the US (and yes, US corporations). (You'll note that Russian money is behind a lot of those "protests." Just regular old geopolitical gamemanship.)

And as long as the status quo is fracking it's going to happen and our leaders are going to support it. For what it's worth I think she can come out in favor of chemical disclosure fairly easily, since the Obama administration has made it mandatory on the federal level.

edit: deleted horrible math, see it in edits

There's no logic in that equation that I can see.

Taking offline 501 TWh of Natural Gas generation will not be compensated by 501 TWh of stored capacity in batteries or the manufacture of said batteries in that quantity, that makes no sense.

What is needed is 501 TWh of new electric power generation from some other source or sources. All the batteries will do is store some of it for short periods of time.

A tall order, that, to take the 2013 32 TWh figure for renewables (except hydro) and ramp it up by 15X to 510. It would take some time to get that done, and all the batteries in the world won't generate power.

The need for batteries is simply to store wind energy generated at night, excess solar generation, and any others others so that we don't waste a single watt-hour, electron, etc.

Crunching the numbers to calculate the stored energy capacity needed for, say, California to deploy renewables to offset the natural gas component of our energy mix is above my paygrade.

But I'll bet it's a fraction of that 501 TWh value, and an interesting question for somebody at the CPUC or CAISO.

http://www.caiso.com

3% of generation is peaking natural gas: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=13191

Which would be much more reasonable, and actually not that insurmountable at all. But now that I see we're using ng for baseload (I did not know that) that makes me think getting off of fracking is going to be all the more difficult. My impression was that fracking was a stopgap until we could build out renewables. If it remains lucrative there's no incentive to stop drilling.

...by players in the movement toward a "hydrogen economy", or things like Buffett's push for natural gas vehicles and trains.

Chevron, Shell, BP, and Conoco were early supporters of this Hydrogen bullshit, but then 95% of hydrogen produced today uses natural gas.

They would love to build out an infrastructure and have people in H2 cars, dependent upon fueling stations, the middleman, paying whatever the market can bear.

All the while thinking they drive clean vehicles that run on the most abundant element on earth and produce no pollution.

I drive an Extended Range Electric Vehicle and am a big supporter of BEVs, and H2 vehicles hope to discourage EV expansion, IMO.

Anyway, let's keep up the pressure to keep our use of natural gas to reasonable levels, not grow it!

still making history.

I love my President for what he's accomplished so far.. in his 7 years in Office.

I'm content with the 60 days it will be made public. Plenty of time for a SOPA / net neutrality fight.

Let's see if it happens.

And I can't see how people here can be so against it, since "they" haven't even read it either.

So I can understand. It's unlikely TPP resolves every issue with previous trade agreements.

should tell you something about its contents. And not something good.

others of defending this "disaster deal" when so many want to see the whole thing before they decide anything.

And, yes, I do trust President Obama over the usuals who think of him as a "pos used car salesman".

who HAVE read it, when they tell us the other parts are equally alarming.

Haven't you read any of the leaked chapters?

Republicans overwhelmingly support it. Corporate Democrats support it. And the "fast track" bill removes the filibuster.

So, how you gonna stop it? Shout? Take to the streets? Repeat what failed to stop the Iraq war?

How many have to die before we stop pretending Tip-n-Ronnie can work things out over some drinks?

For 60 days straight.

If they pass it then a lot of people will lose their seats in 2016. Hell, if there's a SOPA / net neutrality style fight, even Clinton might come out against it.

There's something to be said for social movement. And I'm not talking protests that the MSM doesn't cover, mind you.

Talk ill of those you might care about, it will work itself out I hope..

Trade agreements. Fuck the corporate loving puppets. Why the hell does everyone think the republicans are for this when they've opposed everything Obama has proposed. Why would they suddenly agree? Does anyone believe they want to do something for working people? These are the people who starve children to keep tax cuts for the rich. And the chamber of commerce, that beacon of working people advocacy, no doubt worried about folks. Wtf is wrong with people?

It's bad for workers. Why do people suddenly think any of them care? Does anyone here think republicans had an epiphany and now want to do something beneficial for the poor or working class?

Obama supports it, he loves me and would never do anything to hurt me, and to hell with the fact that Paul Ryan and the Republicans like it while 150+ Dem congress oppose. This is how the party got entirely screwed since Jan 2009.

either.

Carry on!

disbelief.

His.

And I'll never understand how Democrats, the party I joined BECAUSE of its distrust of government in the 60s and 70s, came to be so emotionally invested in politicians and authoritarianism.

African-Americans are a part of the Democratic Party largely because of our trust the Federal Government.

That was really disturbing.

But pretty typical in certain protected du groups

Reminds me of banana republic style politics where politicians clash with these huge personality cults behind them, and their relatives inherit political support

That's what our country is becoming

The desire to belong to a larger group is more powerful than the desire to be correct. So, in any close race, people will choose to belong to the larger group than to stick to principle. It's hard-wired.

I have observed this phenomenon throughout life and it is particularly true of political parties. The desire to be part of a larger group appears to be a tribal survival mechanism going back to early man that is no longer as necessary as it once was.

I think our base understands the role that government can play in people's lives. In most ways they are not the same as the republican base.

goes in midterm elections, when Obama's not on the ticket?

the fast track, because it leaves only an up or down
vote. Also, former treaties have not been successful
in decreasing our trade deficits, to the contrary.

While the Iran +6 agreement discussions involve
a possible war or avoidance of war situation, I see
no reason in this case for the secrecy applied to it.

The POTUS may have done some good things, but
excluding the public option, avoiding Wisconsin
during union fights, and supporting charter schools
are not the items I had looked for. BTW, I am
still waiting for the reinstallment of the 4th
amendment. That is just me.

I always believed that citizens from whichever
party should hold their leaders accountable, and
none of them were/are perfect including FDR.

their lack of critical thinking skills reminds me of teabaggers

if you don't know whats in it? The same vice versa. People trip me out.

you don't know whats in it and you are against it, you proved my point.

...and what they've discovered isn't all that good. It's been my experience over many years that people tend to keep distasteful things hidden by nature and can 't help but leak things that are good. Makes one wonder why all the TPP secrecy? Well, secret from those who might kill it but quite open for those who might profit handsomely from it. Wonder why that is?

because it is secret and others tell you that it is bad. Ok.

....those who have seen what's currently in TPP are dead set against it. Those who's judgement I trust. The secrecy around Washington, while corporate movers and shakers know what's in the negotiations is merely icing on the cake.

people you like are telling you how to think, and the fact that it is secret is the icing. So, what i said.

those who have seen whats in it are not dead set against it, only some are against it. Admittedly, most of the democratic party are against it, but you are leaving out the President, some democrats, and a lot of republicans that are for it, those people have seen whats in it, so your argument is invalid. Not really happy about that myself.

Repeal of glass stegal and hundreds of thousands in judgments against people downloading music.

I'm against any law that I can't read.

we also have organizations like MSF and people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders etc who HAVE read it and say the rest of it is equally as bad.

Have you even bothered to read the leaked chapters so far?

They could have been in a rough draft and taken out. I'm not for it, but I not against it yet. Who do I trust more, Warren and Sanders or President Obama. Probably the President but its close. I don't like the secrecy but can admit there might be a reason for it. There will be 60 days where it will be made public, I will decide then and not before I have enough information to make a sensible judgement.

seem to be your primary possible actions.

Calling my congressperson would be better than any of the ones you listed.

already and if it is a TeaPubliKlan they could give a flying fuck about your calls.

My rep is in the 150, my Senators are all in and one of them hasn't even responded with so much as a form email in at least 15 years, neither of them will be coming to Jesus.

It is amazing that folks so "pragmatic" and in the "reality based community" can't count.

If you pass fast track it is all but impossible to stop the agreement. Call all you want.