The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Deeply Flawed Partnership – Mel Gurtov

The American people have become used to government trickery in foreign affairs—wars and interventions based on lies and falsified evidence, “national security” used to justify the whittling away of privacy, classification of documents to hide embarrassing disclosures, massaging of budget figures to mask outrageous spending on arms, and demands for new weapons when already in possession of an unmatched conventional …

Trade Rules Create Obstacle Course for a Better Food System – Karen Hansen-Kuhn

There were some decidedly Kafkaesque aspects of the Congressional debate this week on Fast Track legislation, designed to speed through the passage of secret trade deals that could have a serious impact on our food system. At first, the Senate refused to approve a bill to limit debate on Fast Track. Then, when the Senate did approve that bill, it …

Trans-Pacific Partnership versus National Sovereignty: A False Dilemma – Dr. Glen T. Martin

We are faced here with a terrifying false dilemma because we refuse to recognize the bigger picture that includes the history of capitalism in relation to the system of sovereign nation-states. In the past several decades, the globalization inherent in capitalism has gone off the charts in its drive to colonize the entire world economy in the service of private …

Fast/Track/TPP: The Death of National Sovereignty, State Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Democracy – Joe Firestone

Most of the critical attention given to the Fast Track Trade Agreement legislation and to the associated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Congressional – Executive Agreement on mainstream corporate media and by politicians and establishment interest groups interacting with them in the beltway echo chamber, has focused on the likely or possible economic impacts of these. But relatively little attention has focused …

Obama: Debate Senator Warren on Global Economic Pact – Ralph Nader

President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear President Obama: You have taken a strong across-the-board position favoring the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) nearing completion and scheduled for a fast track clearance vote in the Congress. Indeed, you have descended admirably from your presidential perch to take on the most informed critics of this agreement …

The TPP: Toward Absolutist Capitalism – Lambert Strether

There are many excellent arguments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two of which — local zoning over-rides, and loss of national sovereignty — I’ll briefly review as stepping stones to the main topic of the post: Absolutist Capitalism, for which I make two claims: 1) The TPP implies a form of absolute rule, a tyranny as James Madison would have …

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic – by Ellen Brown

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .” On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a …

The TPP: Toward Absolutist Capitalism – Lambert Strether

There are many excellent arguments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two of which — local zoning over-rides, and loss of national sovereignty — I’ll briefly review as stepping stones to the main topic of the post: Absolutist Capitalism, for which I make two claims: 1) The TPP implies a form of absolute rule, a tyranny as James Madison would have …

Astroturf Warning: TPP Critics Call Out Fake ‘Progressive’ Group Pushing Corporate Trade Agenda

Critics of the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership are lining up against what they call an “astroturf” operation claiming to represent progressives in favor of Fast Tracking the sweeping and secretive trade deal. No such progressives exist, they say. Last month, a Democratic political consulting firm founded by former Obama administration staffers launched a website dubbed “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs,” which claimed to prove …

Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty will help neither workers nor consumers

“China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region … We should write those rules,” President Obama declared in his State of the Union address. To sell Congress on giving him authority to “fast track” consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and investment treaty with 12 nations that has been under negotiation for five years, the president …