eom

Otherwise you need to check yourself into psychiatric care asap

Welcome to DU

the satire smiley.

Not seeing the avitars. Some folks on here do make me wonder tho....

Along the same lines as not being sure about some stories being from the onion.

but I'm firmly against the tpp. I've been researching and posting on it here for the past 2 years.

On stopping tpp, what hope do WE have of stopping it

and at this point, the President doesn't have the votes to pass trade promotion authority. I know there's ongoing epic arm twisting, but it's rather remarkable that they still don't have enough support in the House to schedule a vote.

a fantastic resource for DU:GD on this. Thank you!

I never knew trade could be such a fascinating subject. Now I want to dig into the history of U.S. trade.

Who have said almost the same thing as this OP, but meant it. I can think of 6 or so without trying. I am sure there are dozens who could do this post and it would not be satire.

... but it's still creepy the way you so perfectly captured the smarmy tone of oily corporate apologists.

I'm awaiting delivery of the guillotine I ordered on Craig's List. So many heads, so little time...

Seems a lot of them have been selling lately. Time to buy some guillotine stock

with dozens of links.

yes, I can post something satirical based on what I've actually seen some here say- that we're being "paranoid" about corporations- and still intelligently discuss it. You tell me what aspect of the tpp you'd like to discuss, and I'll be glad to join you.

Not that I expect that to happen.

I must have missed that.

I'm sure you've read some of my posts on TPP. We've had exchanges. So please don't accuse me of avoiding intelligent debate, you know better.

said we shouldn't be paranoid about corporations or worry so much about them vis a vis the tpp. I just saw one. it's satire. satire isn't about being literal. Not that I am in any way comparing what I wrote to Swift, but he wasn't really suggesting that anyone wanted to eat Irish children.

... for single-handedly making sure that these corporations had the rights that he felt they deserved so much and set precedent that so many Supreme Court justices after him embraced as legal precedent. Such a GREAT head note for corporations it was!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6601884

Maybe you can give me your thoughts on the contradiction between, on one hand, claiming that TPP isn't actually about trade, and on the other hand, that it will lead to wage depression and environmental degradation. After all, if TPP is only about IP and copyrights and generic drugs, that would imply that the traditional arguments about offshoring wouldn't hold water.

Or you could let me know your thoughts on non-tariff barriers, for example Japan's ability to prevent US Auto Imports without actually using tariffs. Do you think that is a worthy objective? After all, Japan isn't a sweatshop nation. It's just a nation that exports tons of cars to us, while we export maybe a handful to them.

Attribution of causality isn't clear, but my guess would be that they at least partly caused the increase.

But the whole point I was making is that cali has argued that very little in TPP is about traditional trade, which would imply that not only do the benefits of traditional trade agreements not accrue, but neither do the costs.

Shafta (Southern Hemispheric Free Trade Agreement) an acronym for tpp.

They follow the same MO, but Shafta is even worse. Because of the secret corporate courts which can overrule any country, who signed the trade pact, laws then force that country to pay restitution to the corporation for its future loss of profits.

Your tax dollars, your home, your retirement will be part of that giant sucking sound going directly in to the corporate coffers.

There are a lot of differences between NAFTA and TPP. One is that most TPP nations are wealthy, places like Japan and South Korea and Singapore. Which means that the markets we are dealing with are different from NAFTA and CAFTA. Moreover, TPP is mostly not about tariffs, but about non-tariff barriers to trade, which is something that particularly affects industries where US could potentially export more. Ironically, some of the stuff like the intellectual property provisions in there that people object to are the most likely to benefit the US in trade deficit terms, because the US produces a lot of things (technology, movies, drugs, etc.) that are IP-intensive.

Read this for clarity:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTAs-Broken-Promises.pdf

Billions of copies made in China of almost everything for example and the Chinese government makes at most a token effort while lumpenproletariat here get huge monetary judgments against them for downloading some songs or movies.

We will just get more of the same, it really doesn't matter what governments sign it's what they enforce that counts and we all know what is going to get enforced and what is going to get winked at.

Corporations get more money which will go to the 1%, average people don't get anything but increased cost listening to music or watching movies, reading books and so on, privatize the profit, socialize the cost.

That's trickle down economics you are describing

not about traditional trade barriers- and yes, there are other barriers to trade. But past ftas have led to environmental degradation and the ISDS process being employed as a defense. The past is instructional. I've sure as shit NEVER said that the tpp is only about copyright and generic drugs. You are employing strawman tactics.

I'm all for looking at Japan's utilization of tactics to prevent imported cars, but I want to point out that other nations sell quite a few cars in Japan and I believe they are subject to the same non-tariff barriers. Why do you think that is? Could it be that they actually manufacture cars that the Japanese want to buy, and the U.S. only makes a few models that appeal to the market?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6601781
So what is the point of making that argument? Who cares if it doesn't deal with "traditional trade issues" if "traditional trade issues" aren't actually the things that are hampering trade with the majority of TPP countries?

As far as environmental degredation, the question is whether it will be worse or better without TPP. TPP does contain environmental regulations in it, which if enforced, would actually improve the situation versus the status quo.

Also, most TPP countries are wealthy, meaning this is a different situation than NAFTA. The notable exception is Vietnam, but the big economies in the deal are places like Japan and South Korea. Do you think TPP is going to cause Japan and Korea to pollute more?

Re: Japan, I honestly don't know enough to say exactly how the non-tariff barriers work, I've read that they are strategically designed regulations that intentionally have the effect of greatly increasing costs to importers, but you shouldn't take my word on that. But, I don't think other countries have had much better luck than the US exporting to Japan. I googled up this link, it's from the American Auto Council, so bear that in mind, but unless it is outright lying, only 3.9% of Japan's domestic auto market are imports.

http://americanautocouncil.org/sites/default/files/Japans%2BProtected%2BAuto%2BMarket.pdf

You bin workin' too hard.

And mean us no harm.

mean and bad corporations are. I want to believe in the ultimate goodness of corporations but I'm scared

How do I get unbrainwashed, cali?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/111667093

Our little group has been following this treason from the start...

to them. Just like a homeless person hiding in a box in a dark alley is not a person to most people walking by.

Who knew that Manny invented satire?

(and my style is different from his)

Join The Hive !

And no wonder. The nation is in the control of malevolent pirates.

It's hard to believe, because it is so easily used as a cover for swindles and ambition. But those who like to think of themselves as rationalists can be seduced by the logic of the market, that bad practices will be eliminated by the "hidden hand" which will not tolerate counter-productive measures. Frankly, I want to slap such people upside the head: it is FAR easier to understand someone who is unabashedly looking out after Number One than someone who really believes Capitalism is Good For You. At the very least, the latter put 'way too much trust in Daddy not to trigger my gag reflex.

-- Mal

I wonder if these capitalist fanboys are just overcompensating because they think it gives them some measure of credibility with mainstream center-right intelligentsia of the media.

As in, "I'm not a communist or far-left or whatever....." in order to prove their bona fides.

I think the true believers -- not the expedient ones -- have a deep psychological need for security, order, and authority. They want to believe that it will all come out right in the end. This may be true of all ideologues, but I haven't tested that sufficiently to have a conclusion.

And there may be a bit of a desire for clear subordination, which is part of the need for authority, which would tend in the direction you indicate. You know, I want to show I'm a good, decent person and hold all the right opinions, so I will fit in.

-- Mal

"You know, I want to show I'm a good, decent person and hold all the right opinions, so I will fit in"

In other words, trying to establish their bona fides so as to be taken seriously by those they think are opinion leaders. Very similar IMO to bigots trying to oversompensate with their "I'm not a racist....some of my best friends are ( insert ethnicity of choice )" memes.

Which is what I was trying to say in my above post.

When one joins with them, one gives them carte blanche to do whatever it takes to turn a profit in your name.
They will never face prosecution, they will never face prison, they will never stop.

We alone hold the power to change it and the idea of not joining with those people in the battle against creating a better world is the one that is ridiculed, scorned and ignored.

All thanks to people who know it is far better to do wrong than to suffer it.

I think it needs more work; but, not bad for a first effort.

Your 'argument' isn't going to convince anyone to support the TPP.

I love this OP.

In a nutshell, that's why corporations cannot be permitted to buy governments.

This is commentary from 2014. The TPP will be bigger and stronger than NAFTA. Multinational corporations will thrive.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one-million-u_b_4550207.html

For NAFTA's unhappy 20th anniversary, Public Citizen has published a report that details the wreckage. Not only did promises made by NAFTA's proponents not materialize, but many results are exactly the opposite.

Such outcomes include a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after "investor-state" tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.

The study makes for a blood-boiling read. For instance, we track the specific promises made by U.S. corporations like GE, Chrysler and Caterpillar to create specific numbers of American jobs if NAFTA was approved, and reveal government data showing that instead, they fired U.S. workers and moved operations to Mexico.

Well, one of two things.

They'll try to convince the working class that your concern of being fleeced by ( yet more ) offshoring is overblown or not founded....only to unmask as corporatists after you've pissed them off by accurately rebutting their lame canards, and tell you that you have it coming and that you'll just have to STFU and take it by being fodder in a feel-good foreign policy move of lifting the 3rd world.

OR

Something along the lines of "No no no, it's not bad like NAFTA...." or somesuch faux soothing balm........only to unmask as corporatists after you've pissed them off by refuting their lame canards, at which time they'll cherry pick data to claim either:

A) NAFTA was actually good in some geopolitical absurdly macroeconomic sense

B) NAFTA wasn't the cause of the job losses or downward pressure on wages that followed its implementation.

The official, final text of TPP hasn't been publicly released. In fact, nothing official has been publicly released. What we have are late-stage drafts that we weren't intended to see (at least not yet) but that have leaked.

If someone posts on DU to point out reasons to oppose a particular provision, you can count on someone else responding that this is only a draft, thinking about it is a waste of time because the draft (the product of more than four years of negotiations, though they don't mention that) may be radically transformed in the last couple months of negotiations, so it's not a basis for criticizing TPP.

But DUer DanTex, who presumably is not personally involved in the negotiations and who therefore knows nothing except what's been leaked, can write (as in #27): "TPP does contain environmental regulations in it, which if enforced, would actually improve the situation versus the status quo." Suddenly, not one of the TPP supporters cares to express any doubt about the accuracy of the leak. As long as someone is relying on a leak to praise TPP, then such analysis is perfectly proper and by no means premature.

The same people that claim ignorance to the content and tell us to wait and see, suddenly become fountains of info, rife with details, as they wag their fingers at us.

Work it!

http://assets.amuniversal.com/d4f73730acc801314882005056a9545d