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May 12, 2015 06:33 AM UTC

Tuesday Open Thread

  • 21 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“If you don’t like what someone has to say, argue with them.”

–Noam Chomsky

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21 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

  1. Denver Post notices the pickle Michael Bennet is in wrt trade fast-track:

    Central to the fight is a legislative package that would give Obama more authority to negotiate trade deals. He and many Republican lawmakers support the plan, but it faces opposition from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats.

    Caught in the middle is Bennet.

    He voted in April to pass the package out of the Senate Finance Committee and said Monday he likely would continue his support if protections for U.S. workers and the environment remain part of the deal.

    "It's very important we keep that intact," he said. "They are, in my mind, intrinsically linked."

    ….says the Senator from Colorado. But, we don't know that those protections are even there, let alone linked, because the text of the deal is not available to the public. And despite Obama's assurances that the deal is just hunky-dory, many Democrats, including Senate Big Shots Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, worry it's not. 

    And they wonder what the urgency is for such a deal. So do I: stocks are hitting records again, unemployment is down, and corporations remain as profitable as ever. Obama says Warren is wrong about the deal and visions of trade deals past (NAFTA) and is just a "politician" doing what politicians do:

    The president’s statement demeaning what Warren (D-Mass.) is saying as just what politicians say makes it seem that he thinks that listening to constituents and doing that they want (a.k.a. “representative democracy”) is a bad thing. But Warren and almost every other Democrat have come to understand that trade agreements that send American jobs out of the country – and the fast track process that is used to push them through – have become core issues that could trigger severe public reaction. This Fast Track vote is politically the third-rail equivalent of the 2002 vote to authorize Bush to invade Iraq.

    It is the job of politicians to represent us. Politicians had better be concerned about being thrown out of office for doing something the public doesn’t want, because that is how our system is supposed to function.

    Warren has responded with a challenge to the president: “Declassify the text and let people see it” before the Senate votes to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership into law.

    Plenty to think about for our senior senator Bennet: workers, trade, politics, policy, and whether to stay the corporate Democrat course that's been so successful in years past, or to buck up the side that says banks and big corporations and CEO's are doing just fine and we need an economy that rewards the workers and maintains the Middle Class.

    The TPP is being negotiated in secret using a corporate-dominated process. Many of the negotiators come from the corporate/financial sector (and many likely will pass through the revolving door into the corporate/financial sector.)

    Even though the agreement remains secret from the public, more than 600 corporate representatives are privy to its text. Meanwhile, representatives from labor, environmental, consumer, health, LGBT, Internet freedom, democracy and other stakeholder groups have little or no input or access.

    Because of the close relationship between the negotiators and representatives of multinational corporations, it is understood that TPP will advance the interests of large, American corporations. …. They cite the rigged process, combined with what has been learned from leaks of parts of the agreement and the terrible effects from past trade agreements like NAFTA, the recent Korea-U.S. agreement and most others.

    To put it bluntly, the interests of the large corporations are not aligned with the interests of most Americans. The corporations want people to be paid lower wages, they want fewer environmental protections, they don’t want to (and many no longer do) pay taxes to support our schools, roads, courts, and other public goods, and they want government “out of the way” and unable to regulate or enforce (or even pass) laws. Rigged trade agreements have become one channel for them to achieve these goals.

    Bennet is poised to pass the deal. His misdirection about workers and the environment sounds good on paper, but is quite thin on substance. And I believe he is constitutionally incapable of thinking, admitting, or saying such a thing about America's most rich and powerful as the writer above says.

    The bottom line is that

    Americans don't want this deal. Voters don't want this deal. Colorado doesn't want this deal. If Michael Bennet votes for this, with most Republicans, and against most Democrats, we'll truly know where his sympathies lie. And we'll know for sure that he lies about his sympathies for the Middle Class. 

    1. What is Obama's record when it comes to trade deal predictions?

      David Dayen does a pretty good job at deflating all of the administrations lies (yes, he boldly goes ahead and calls them that in his piece) concerning the benefits of the TPP. Here is the link: The 10 biggest lies you've been told about the TPP.

      …

      Why is President Obama promoting a deal like this? Who knows, and really, who cares. But it is odd, isn't it that this agreement puts the President in alliance with Republicans and against labor and many Democrats? We've been led down this garden path before.

      Here is Senator Sherrod Brown's statement which Dayen quoted in his article concerning what the aftermath of the South Korea trade pact has been:

      The Obama Administration predicted that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create 70,000 jobs and deliver up to $11 billion in exports. Instead, it only increased U.S. exports to Korea by $1 billion, while Korean imports have skyrocketed to more than $12 billion. The growing good trade deficit with Korea has eliminated over 75,000 jobs in the last three years.

      1. Hmm, well the counter argument is, are you willing to give up your vastly improved Hyundai or Kia automobile (nearly a million sold each year after stumbling into the market a decade or two ago with cheap crappy cars), your Samsung phone, or your LG HDTV?

        On the auto front, Hyundai and Kia's competition has led to amazing improvements in Ford, Chrysler and GM vehicle quality and style.

        When consumers are given a choice, they are usually pretty savvy.  When manufacturers start losing to the competition, they look at what they are doing wrong and fix it, or they don't and they die.

        I suspect the Korean imports came at the expense of our Japanese imports. Korea has US-based assembly plants as well. So it’s not as black and white as it seems.

        In this area, I am an economic Darwinist…

  2. I just can't quit you, cpols. 

    Whether the president's statements about trade and the secret Trans Pacific Partnership deal are lies or misstatements or obfuscations or misleading or something else could be a little ol' policy disagreement between friends.

    Whether Michael Bennet supports all those talking points or not is political and will have a direct bearing on his re-election attempt next year. (There's still time to take a dive for those who'd rather work under less scrutiny.)

    Why is Obama triangulating now, when he least has to, on an issue that has no compelling justification? 

    9. SECRET DEAL: Obama has angrily dismissed the notion that TPP is a “secret” deal, saying that everyone will have public access to the TPP text for at least 60 days before a final vote. This is not the point opponents are making. The vote on fast track would severely limit Congressional input into the deal. And right now, members of Congress can only see the text in a secure room, without being able to bring staffers or take notes, or even talk about specifics in public. That makes the deal effectively secret during the fast track vote. “The president has only committed to letting the public see this deal after Congress votes to authorize fast track,” Warren told Greg Sargent. The President wants to filibuster-proof the bill in secret, then employ pretend transparency on TPP after that.

    10. JUST A POLITICIAN: This idea from Obama that everybody opposing fast-track is acting like a mere “politician,” aside from demonizing the concept of representing constituents, neglects the fact that he’s a politician too. His interest in building a legacy, when practically nothing else has the potential to pass Congress the next two years, is a political interest. His possible interest in rewarding campaign contributors who would benefit from TPP is also political, or his desire to earn the respect of the Very Serious People who always support trade deals. Since Obama has a large platform and will not publicly debate any opponent on trade, he can float above it all, acting like a principled soul only wanting to better the country rather than a transactional ward heeler. This may be the biggest lie, that Obama’s somehow superior to everyone else in this debate.

    Obama and Bennet are both politicians too…at least for now.

  3. Well this is an open thread so here's something different. Did you know that it was scientists, not the Church, that was behind the inquisition? Apparently our education system has been failing  us for many decades if educated middle aged grown ups   actually will be nodding at how this just goes to show how evil and intolerant scientists are. 

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/11/louisiana-scientists-burn-stake_n_7259486.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

      1. They might correct the specific story you're complaining about, but seldom do TV newsrooms correct their own archives. So whenever there's a new story about O&G, they go to the archive and pull up the same old shit.

      1. Not only Con-Man but Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and every Repub except Yertle (who voted with the Dems so he could move for reconsideration later) voted to let Hussein expand his dictatorial powers.

        I wonder if this is a hint of what the Dems have in store for themselves in the future:  the pro-trade wing (Obama, Bill Clinton and the DLC folks) vs. the protectionist wing (Warren et al.) with HRC trying to walk down the middle.

    2. Oh wait. Less interesting than I thought. Either the first intertubes story I read made a mistake or I misread it because I thought it said seven Dems voted yes and I would have expected Bennet to be one of them. Today I read that just one lone Dem broke with the rest and voted yes. Either I mixed up a 1 with a 7 or someone else did. Bennet not choosing to defy his party to that extent isn't particularly interesting after all. Still glad he and the rest took the stand they did and that even the pro-pact/fast track faction wanted a better deal with a guarantee of four other measures getting a vote in tandem. For details and for a change it's explained in the Post pretty well. 

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