Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich
writes Trans-Pacific Trickle-Down Economics:
Now comes the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It’s being sold as a way to boost the U.S. economy, expand exports, and contain China’s widening economic influence.
In fact, it’s just more trickle-down economics.
The biggest beneficiaries would be giant American-based global corporations, along with their executives and major shareholders.
Those giant corporations initiated the deal in the first place, their lobbyists helped craft it behind closed doors, and they’re the ones who have been pushing hard for it in Congress – dangling campaign contributions in front of congressional supporters and threatening to cut off funding to opponents.
These corporations made sure the deal contains provisions expanding and protecting their intellectual property around the world, but not protecting American jobs.
Supporters of the deal say it contains worker protections. I heard the same thing when, as secretary of labor, I was supposed to implement the worker protections in the North American Free Trade Act.
I discovered such provisions are unenforceable because of how difficult it is to discover if other nations are abiding by them. On the rare occasion when we found evidence of a breach we had no way to force the other nation to remedy it anyway. [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2005—Pentagon Analyst Charged With Passing Secrets To AIPAC:
The shoe dropped on Larry Franklin. In a much anticipated culmination of an investigation that could have wider reaching implications, the Department of Justice arrested Franklin, a man closely associated with Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowoitz:
Federal agents arrested a Pentagon analyst on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally disclosing highly classified information about possible attacks on American forces in Iraq to two employees of a pro-Israel lobbying group.
The analyst, Lawrence A. Franklin, turned himself in to the authorities on Wednesday morning in a case that has stirred unusually anxious debate in influential political circles in the capital even though it has focused on a midlevel Pentagon employee.
The inquiry has cast a cloud over the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which employed the two men who are said to have received the classified information from Mr. Franklin. The group, also known as Aipac, has close ties to senior policymakers in the Bush administration, among them Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to appear later this month at the group's annual meeting.
The investigation has proven awkward as well for a group of conservative Republicans, who held high-level civilian jobs at the Pentagon during President Bush's first term and the buildup toward the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who were also close to Aipac. They were led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary who has been named president of the World Bank. Mr. Franklin once worked in the office of one of Mr. Wolfowitz's allies, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary for policy at the Pentagon, who has also said he is leaving the administration later this year.
Tweet of the Day
Well, Senator Graham said one of "al" dumbest things ive heard this week
— @BxHayes
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Bill in Portland Maine tweets the word "wienerschnitzel" and that takes up an hour of the show.
Greg Dworkin discusses Fiorina's substantive entry into the race, but also her webFAIL. We've never been more united about how divided we are.
WSJ's 2016 snapshot. Christie in
Sixth Sense sequel (doesn't know he's dead yet). Charlie Hebdo vs. Garland, no comparison. Three guns in Capitol bathrooms, and the investigation is about who leaked the news! Follow-up on the convoluted Kinloch, Missouri, story. Wienerschnitzelpalooza! An inside look at benefit corps., from
citisven, shared with us not by
Arliss Bunny as I mistakenly stated, but by
where4art!
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