"Noting deep ties between the country's top trade negotiator and Wall Street banks, ten groups representing millions of Americans are calling on the White House to make public all communications between U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the massive financial institutions that stand to benefit from proposed trade deals."
What about lobbyists? http://www.ip-watch.org/2015/06/05/confidential-ustr-emails-...
"... 400 pages of email traffic between USTR officials and industry advisors ... the emails reveal a close-knit relationship between negotiators and the industry advisors that is likely unmatched by any other stakeholders ... Many of the industry representatives are themselves former USTR officials ... Jim DeLisi of Fanwood Chemical said he had just seen the text on rules of origin, and remarked, “Someone owes USTR a royalty payment. These are our rules. … This is a very pleasant surprise.”
The administration is attempting to weaken our sovereignty and globalize [overthrow] our government. They should be charged for treason.
If you voted Obama last time, please don't vote this time. Your bad judgement isn't necessary.
The only solution here is campaign finance reform. Suggesting that it's a my party vs your party issue is laughable.
Finance reform will solve nothing. You can't stop a billionaire from investing in himself.
Blaming the standing president for systematic problems is a fairly reliable sign that someone is a member of the opposite party (or an independent that always votes one way, natch). Even if that somehow happens to not be the case for you, there's the little problem that we have a FPTP voting system which effectively means that elections always boil down to two options (assuming that you're a rational actor who understands vote splitting). Claiming that voting for one option shows "bad judgement" implies that the alternative (remember, FPTP => only one rational alternative) is better, so it really is a partisan statement.
Sanity check: would a statement of the form "Obama is bad because x,y,z" be necessarily partisan by this logic? No.
> Finance reform will solve nothing. You can't stop a billionaire from investing in himself.
Sure you can, but for now that's a largely speculative failure mode. First let's solve the problem that our system effectively imposes a mandatory bribe quota on the candidates and see if that doesn't improve matters. If the problem you propose becomes an issue afterwards then we can fight over the whole "money is speech" argument.
There are the Cheneys of the world who seem to emit darkness and there are the Obamas of the world who offer an alternative but then do the same thing. Which one is worse?
They are both worse. Also, given the amount of candidates, it's amusing how we become bipolar with notions of good/evil. I prefer objectivity:
Vote for the cleaner voting record; that means some voting record and no PATRIOT Act, FREEDOM Act, etc.
Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minimum amount you'd be willing to work for. Thus, the wants of each party are kept to themselves before a final draft.
The thing is that is completely anti-democratic. If it hurts democracy to do the best thing for a small capitalist overclass then democratic nations should be choosing to uphold democracy. I wonder if there are any such nations?
Corporations wanting the legislation to be secret until it is a done deal is not a surprise. But, to assume that corporations are the stakeholders who matter and who should have access to the secret deals being made, is fundamentally incompatible with democratic ideals. The "explanation" is exactly what I am arguing against. The explanation assumes that the only people who should get to see this legislation are the corporations that paid for it, and the people on whom this legislation will be imposed have no rights other than to suck it up and deal with it.
Your explanation assumes good faith where there is demonstrably not good faith.
There is continuous nonsense repeating "secrecy" when the reality is you or I have no business nosing around in international treaty negotiation since we are in no way qualified, so having some kind of open vote from everyone in the world during the negotiation phase would in no way be realistic. Nothing has been passed as of yet.
You have a chance to review and tell your rep to vote yes or no before anything has a chance of passing, to say otherwise is really just flat out incorrect.
Who says? Why shouldn't international policy be something we, as a nation, talk about while it is being constructed rather than being given an all or nothing ultimatum at the end of the process (and given effectively no time to inform ourselves enough about what it contains to make effective demands of our representatives)?
Why should economists outside of the government and outside of the corporations the government serves be disallowed from reading the damned thing and commenting on it while there is time to alter its course?
All this notion about it being secret because "reasons" or "that's how it's always been" is, once again, oligarchic bullshit. It is saying: You'll shut up and take what we give you.
"Fast track" legislation is often used to pass legislation that legislators know will be unpopular or be challenging to pass if given time for sufficient discussion at a national level. Just because it's been done many times before doesn't mean that it should continue to be done that way. We live in an age where every person can become as informed as they want to be about legislation like this, as long as they are permitted to see it.
Again, the arguments for maintaining secrecy and then rushing it into law are anti-democratic. There are, of course, reasons many people want it to be secret, but those reasons aren't in the interests of the nation or the world as a whole.
The list of interested parties let in by the gatekeepers is all by itself horribly flawed. Then there's questions about accountability, secretly planned PR campaigns and whatnot.
The negotiating parties have access to the text so it is not about negotiating receives. It is secret from everyone except those competitors. The wants are circulated as annotations on the leaked drafts. Therefore your second paragraph is dead wrong.
I don't mean to annoy you, just help you realize you should reconsider your opinion on this.
A valid reason might be the negotiations effect share and commodity prices and need to be kept secret to avoid insider trading in these. But more likely it is so e.g. France can trade weaker pollution regulations for retaining farm subsidies, economically important but politically toxic. If voters are not mature enough to see this then is democracy a good idea?
Quoting a bit:
> All treaties are generally negotiated in secret, not just trade treaties, because draft documents do not actually represent what any country is actually seeking but rather a position they are taking to secure the terms they want. Countries will always overreach during negotiations by asking for insane/unrealistic things to be included such that the other countries involved are more willing to settle on a moderate position. Its precisely the same reason business deals, employment contracts and generally any other adversarial situation wont have working documents released publicly; it weakens the negotiation position for all sides to have a perfect understanding of the goals of the other side(s).
And which select corporation's interests?
A union that stands together and through collective boycotting, is able to effect just one corporate take down. And by that I mean complete, absolute and terrible market action that brings a company to its knees and bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers style (I understand the employees are 'collateral damage here but I think it would be worth it).
If we could just once, take down a stock market level company, through the pure will of the people, I think we could undermine the almost unmatchable power of the corporation as it stands today.
The argument against of course is that boycotts have never really worked. Consumers don't want to work in union. Corporations control the media and as such are able to persuade the people of it ineffectiveness.
But one success would change all that. I'd love to see that happen in my lifetime.
But, what is most disgusting is that we had to learn of how bad it is from leaked documents.
The leadership in many nations (not just in one nation, this is effectively a conspiracy at the highest levels of several nations, most egregiously the US) supported the TPP, lobbied for the TPP on behalf of a select few corporate interests, and all around sold themselves to the highest bidder, while keeping the details of it a secret from the people they allegedly represent. Democracy doesn't run on secrecy. What these leaders are pushing is not democratic, it is oligarchic.
It isn't one party's doing, either. This secret deal is not a Republican deal, or a Democrat deal. It has, at various times, had vocal support (even petulant support in the case of Obama, when fast track powers were on the line) from the likes of Hillary Clinton (she now makes noises acting as though she doesn't like it, despite championing it dozens of times, and after the damage has already been done), most high ranking Republicans in the house and senate, and damned near everybody else who ever cashed a check from ALEC.
All while it was secret. All while the only people allowed to see it were the lawmakers supporting and writing it and the corporations that paid for it (seriously, legal representatives from several multinational corporations saw this deal before the people of the United States were allowed to see it). Even if the deal weren't awful, it would still be awful, because of the way it is being made.