By Diane Kepus
November 9, 2015
NewsWithViews.com
Most things in America are a little funky lately, but one of the most puzzling is the Democrats siding against Obama and Republicans supporting Obama. I understand the Democrats position because they are supporting the unions and in this case it is a good thing. The unions want to keep what is left of American jobs and American businesses here in this country.
They know how much damage NAFTA (thank you Heritage Foundation) has done to the economy of this country through the loss of jobs and American industries. So do you!
Republicans will tell you they are the ones who have always been about the people because they were against slavery and they support the middle income families and try to help out the poor families of our country.
But someone is playing some dangerous games here and what they are doing is playing with our livelihood and the very existence of the American Family and our sovereignty.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement. The focus of this trade agreement is between the countries of US, Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, and Brunei Darussalam. The TPP also contains a chapter on intellectual property covering copyright, trademarks, and patents.
Dangers: 1) Intellectual Property Chapter: Leaked draft texts of the agreement show that the IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate.
(2) Lack of Transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy.
This country does not need any more trade agreements especially those that will move more jobs out of the country. But the TPP goes further than just trade agreements raising significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities. In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.
Recently Elizabeth Warren has come out swinging against Obama (she is not one of my favorites but she is right on this issue) on the TPP deal. The whole deal itself has been treated like the largest national security agreement to ever hit our shores. But it is NOT a national security agreement, but it IS the largest secret in recent years. We haven’t heard details about it because even most of the elected Congress doesn’t know what is in it. We aren’t even sure the President knows, just that he is agreeing with the corporations pushing for it.
Corporate Whores who have pushed and pushed to control every aspect of the American way of life for years upon years are intending to pass this legislation. Once again I see the elected legislators refusing to follow the will of the people and vote against this monster.
Warren stated, “Are you ready to fight? No more secret deals. No more special deals for multinational corporations. Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to fight any more deals that say we are going to help the rich get richer and leave everyone else behind? Are you ready to fight back?"
Since the draft text of the agreement has never been officially released to the public, we know from leaked documents, such as the May 2014 draft of the TPP Intellectual Property Chapter, US negotiators are pushing for the adoption of copyright measures far more restrictive than currently required by international treaties, including the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
You MUST ask yourself if the TPP is supposedly as great for Americans as the legislators are saying, then why is everything being done BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.
I don’t care if there are rich people in this country – what I do care about is those that have the money and think they have the RIGHT to destroy our country and make our citizens robotic followers into their COLLECTIVE mindset rather than ‘we the people’ being INDIVIDUALS.
Obama’s response to Warren’s remarks was that he and Warren are friends but that Warren is wrong on this issue”. Sorry Obama but you are wrong and there is much more to this.
The largest supporters of the TPP and Obama are coming from the Chamber of Commerce (still belong to them?), Republican’s and Wal-Mart.
Whoops! Did I say WalMart? You bet your very last dollar because you have to admit that almost everything that slides through those WalMart doors, with exception to those we see the funny pictures of, are coming mostly from China, Viet Nam, Taiwan Bangladesh, Honduras, Cambodia, Venezuela and other south American countries.
This
massive deal is not about increasing trade that would benefit or help
American workers in any way. It is not about making things better
or easier for you or me.
These deals aim to MAXIMIZE CORPORATE PROFITS and RUIN THE AMERICAN
WAY OF LIFE. It is COLLECTIVISM versus INDIVIDUALISM.
This massive deal is actually not about trade. It's about 14 things we’ve been able to learn about and trade is the smallest piece of it.
One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. Take the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision in which corporations can sue government if they pass laws that affect their bottom line. The suit is then resolved not by a court of law, but by an external body. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages and still deal with the toxic chemical.
Highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments.
The use of ISDS is on the rise around the globe. From 1959 to 2002, there were fewer than 100 ISDS claims worldwide. But in 2012 alone, there were 58 cases. Recent cases include a French company that sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage, a Swedish company that sued Germany because Germany decided to phase out nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and a Dutch company that sued the Czech Republic because the Czechs didn’t bail out a bank that the company partially owned. U.S. corporations have also gotten in on the action: Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Uruguay from implementing new tobacco regulations intended to cut smoking rates.
"Free trade" deals have never been good for the American people and they never will be or any other relatively high-wage country. It is basic arithmetic. An American engineer is no better or worse than a Chilean, Vietnamese, or any other engineer. The only difference is that the ones overseas will work for a lower wage. The fiduciary duty of corporations is profit maximization for shareholders. "Free trade" with countries that have low labor cost puts the American worker at a disadvantage. No amount of spin can change that. It is not a difficult concept and one wonders why the president gives the semblance of not understanding that.
The problem we need to overcome in this country that would greatly help wages is doing away with all the regulations that are forced on American companies. One of the main reasons American corporations began moving overseas.
It is our Republican controlled Congress politicians laying out the groundwork for things to come with Senate bill 995, ‘Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015’, an updated version of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation that expired in 2007. With this legislation, Congress establishes an extensive set of priorities for our country’s trade agreements. It will help promote high-standard trade agreements for the 21st-century global economy and will encourage our TPP negotiating partners to now put their best offers forward for improved access to their markets for U.S. goods and services and to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. The TPA will also provide for efficient and timely consideration by Congress of the TPP which will, assuming the agreement is in our national interest and is approved by Congress, work to the benefit of the American economy and jobs.
The Republican House has an exact matching bill currently being discussed as H.R. 1890 written by another political prostitute Paul Ryan.
Senate Bill 995, written by Sen. Orin Hatch, would also allow the president, any president, the authority to enter into multilateral and bilateral trade agreements without going through the approval of the Senate. This would extend through July, 2018 but the president could request a 3 year extension.
Can someone please explain to me this love fest between Obama and the Republican Congress?
Let me be very clear here – the role of the President of the United States is to PROTECT the CITIZENS within in i.e., why he over sees the military. It is not about:
* Authorizing the President to enter into trade agreements with foreign countries for the reduction or elimination of tariff or nontariff barriers* Authorizing the President to proclaim necessary or appropriate modifications or continuation of any existing duty, continuation of existing duty-free or excise treatment, or additional duties to carry out any such agreement.
Wal-Mart VP Angela Marshall Brown testified before a congressional subcommittee on Trade and stated: “Wal-Mart encourages negotiators to secure liberal rules for retail and distribution rights with no limits on size, geographic location or merchandise assortment.” Here are the facts:
• Wal-Mart with the exception of Bill Gates is the largest supporter of all EDUCATION programs we have been fighting against for years especially the push for the Common Core Standards and Charter/Choice/Vouchers. You MUST ask yourself why?
• Wal-Mart is against unions, promotes deregulating tariff and transit costs to allow for more liberal regulations on the dumping of goods on foreign markets
• Those Wal-Mart workers hoping they can bring SEIU into their stores might as well forget it because Wal-Mart is now bigger than your union
• Wal-Mart’s CEO Michael Duke’s annual salary is $35M while the average Wal-Mart employee makes only $11.75 an hour, grossing $20,744 a year, which for a one-earner household is below the $22,000 poverty line.
• Wal-Mart’s 2011 fiscal year sales were at $419 billion. This puts Wal-Mart’s GDP around the same as Austria’s (ranked 28 out of 191 world economies).
• Wal-Mart’s $200,000 per capita income mostly goes to expanding their global supply chain, cutting into livelihoods of workers and undercutting the real costs of extracting and transporting environmental resources.
• Wal-Mart is now publicly pro-”gay” and giving major grants to homosexual/transgender events and organizations, including $25,000-50,000 in 2014 to the “Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund”–a group that helps elect “out” homosexuals to political office (mostly Democrats).
• Wal-Mart’s Corporate Equity Index (CEI) is now at a record 90% - the only reason they don’t have a 100% rating is because they are not supplying trans-gender insurance coverage – they are providing transgender restrooms so watch your kids.
• A 2014 report released by Americans for Tax Fairness reveals the true costs everyday consumers pay for Wal-Mart’s low prices. The company, and specifically the several Walton family members who control it, receive an estimated $7.8 billion per year in tax breaks and taxpayer subsidies
• Wal-Mart receives an estimated $6.2 billion annually in mostly federal taxpayer subsidies. The reason: Wal-Mart pays its employees so little that many of them rely on food stamps, healthcare and other taxpayer-funded programs
• Wal-Mart avoids an estimated $1 billion in federal taxes each year. Reason: Wal-Mart uses tax breaks and loopholes, including a strategy known as accelerated depreciation that allows it to write off capital investments considerably faster than the assets actually wear out
• The Walton’s avoid an estimated $607 million in federal taxes on their Wal-Mart dividends. The reason: income from investments is taxed at a much lower tax rate than income from salaries and wages
• Florida Wal-Marts have the most employees @ 97,222 with the cost of public assistance to the taxpayer because of low wages at $429.2 million. Yes Wal-Mart does give many donations and supply grant opportunities, but those are also tax write-offs and most of this is done through the Foundation, not the corporation
• Companies that used to manufacture products in the United States, from Levi’s jeans to lock maker Master Lock, were pressured to shut their U.S. factories and moved manufacturing abroad to meet Wal-Mart’s demand for low prices
Any questions as to why Wal-Mart is supporting the TPP? Do you realize you can buy AMERICAN by spending a few dollars more and in the long run be helping bring jobs back to America and keeping them here ?
American Corporations are creating tens of millions of jobs in other countries with our purchasing power, and we are losing tens of millions of jobs in our country, because foreigners are not buying as much of our goods and services.
What are they doing? They’re buying our assets. So we lose twice. We lose the jobs, and we are moving further toward national bankruptcy. That is the end game.
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And don’t forget about Fast Track (aka Trade Promotion Authority). Lawmakers in Congress are trying to pass this bill to hand over their own constitutional authority to debate and modify trade law. It creates special rules that empower the White House to negotiate and sign trade agreements without Congressional oversight. Lawmakers won’t be able to analyze and change their provisions, and have a very limited time for an up or down, Yes or No vote to ratify the entire treaty. That means Internet and copyright provisions, buried in omnibus treaties, will get almost no oversight.
Tell your Rep to stand up for your rights and preserve our constitutional checks and balances in government and vote NO on both the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Fast Track.
Find your Representative – Find your Senator
And please find somewhere else to shop rather than Wal-Mart – they are NOT your friend and could care less about your and yours. It is all about their wallets! It is time to take care of your wallets rather than feed the corporate whores who are responsible for ruining this country.
© 2015 Diane Kepus - All Rights Reserved
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Share This ArticleDiane
Kepus – Parent, Education/Human Trafficing Researcher, Speaker
Diane’s background is not one of an educator, but as an Auditor
showingher a love of “digging”. In 1980 when shetook up
the hobby of Genealogy as the TV commercial says “she was in
deep”.
Dianehaswitnessed the decline in the scholastic achievement levels of our children brought about by the interference of the Federal DOE and individuals/businesses who choose to use our children as “human collateral” for their own financial gains. In the process they are leading them into a Communist agenda to be overseen by the United Nations.
She actually began her Education research regarding the “International Baccalaurate” (IB) program and that branched out into all aspects of foreign education of which has been allowed into our schools. Then it moved on tothe push for Charter Schools with “unelected” school boards to the indoctrination of our children with the Common Core State Standards.
Diane does at times branch out into other topics important to Americans and the preservation of America. Her special projects are Charter Schools, Child Abuse, Abortions and Human Trafficking.
Diane is married to her high school sweetheart/very best friend and they have a blended family of 8 children, 13 grandchildren and three great-grandsons so you can readily understand why she chose Education or the “lack thereof” and the world’s danger to our children as her passion.
She maintains 5 web sites, belongs to manydifferent groups, has a blog site and is also very active in the Fraternal Order of Eagles.
Websites:
1-
www.chartertruth.com
2- www.flcommoncore.net
3- www.truthabouteducation.org
4- www.americaismyname.org
5- www.truthabouteducation.wordpress.com
E-Mail: Thekidds8@ymail.com
