Thursday, May 14, 2015

Ow, You're Stepping on my Foot!

We Americans tend to be complacent.  We do not vote, we are entertained into a stupor, and it's hard for us to get really, really pissed until someone steps on our toes personally.  Maybe we can understand Occupy and how multinational corporations and the ultra-wealthy are in charge of our country and our U.S. Congress and state legislatures.  We see other injustices, but we are a hard bunch to move to action.

Until it comes homes to roost.  Until we feel personal pain.  Until it's our own toes who get stepped on.  Like, when we are the ones who get fired, when it's our kid who gets mistreated, when our trash does not get picked up -- although they got the neighbor's.

But, we are about to get our toes stepped on -- unfortunately, not in a way we will experience viscerally right away, but in a lasting way that we will feel in the gut as well as the toe -- in ways that will limit how we can improve our lot in life. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which makes countries irrelevant and firmly under the Legal Rule of Multinational Corporations, will devastate America and what's left of the American Dream.

That you never may have heard of it should tell you enough -- it is so hideous that the President and Congress are pushing this through behind closed doors.  If Americans really understood what was happening, we would -- or should -- be out in the streets. 

OBAMA'S IRAQ
In fact, this is Obama's Iraq. 

George W. Bush's attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that posed no threat to the United States, was devastating in terms of human cost, creating enemies, financial cost and instituting Constant War as a matter of national policy.  Those who benefited were few: the large, multinational corporations who got windfall profits and no-bid contracts.

Pressured members of Congress and ginned-up public sentiment handed Bush a blank check to make war any time, anyhow and anywhere, without having to go back to Congress and chance the  public debate that never took place.

President Obama is pushing for his Iraq, a gargantuan gift to giant multinationals and a monumental blow to the ordinary humans as corporations are given further subsidies and incentives to move operations off-shore.  Meanwhile, foreign corporations will Rule the United States -- not we, the people -- as they will be able to sue cities, states, the U.S. government and citizens for their loss of profits perceived from our environmental standards and other laws which they can claim speed-bump their profits. 

It's the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Obama continues to push behind the scenes for "fast-track" authority as President to enter trade agreements.  This fast-track authorization, which is presently being pushed through Congress with wide support from Republicans and corporatist Democrats, will continue for a period of six years, for whomever is President.  Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the patriotic Democrats who are true to small-d, Thomas Jefferson-style democracy are the only voices in Congress who speak against this giveaway of America.

A WORLD WITHOUT BORDERS
This is the end of sovereign nations.  Countries no longer matter.  Our laws will not be enforced.

As much as workers' rights and rights of mere mortals have been blasted in this century, there will be no rights left for workers or citizens.  For instance, local governments and citizens will have no rights to sue one of these multinationals for ruining their homes and cheating them any way they choose. 

Thus, it's the giant multinational money interests, whose interests are among the most narrow in the world, affecting the fewest, the elite, the ultra-wealthy -- that will explode at the expense of the balance of the world, which will be their slave class. 

This will be Robin Hood in reverse.  NAFTA super-sized.

Adam Smith, whom the capitalists love to quote, actually knew better and wrote about it (they don't quote those parts, and they distort the other).  He cautioned against capitalism unchecked, the movement of financial capital outside of nations and the movement of labor globally across borders.

This global giveaway of your rights and resources portends to be more broadly devastating and more pervasive than the destruction and ruination that sprang from Bush's Iraq.

MITCH MCCONNEL, OBAMA'S NEW BFF
When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a far right radical, praises you, be sure you did not just sell your soul to the devil.  McConnell is busy lavishing praise upon Obama for his playing along with Republicans.  Here's a story:  https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/17/1385471/-McConnell-Praises-Obama-s-Hard-Work-To-Get-TPP-Passed

DON'T GET STEPPED ON
It's now or never, all hands on deck, to wake up to this seismic threat.  Call every politician you know of, every media outlet and person you ever heard of, and tell them it is their patriotic duty to expose this mass mugging of America and the rights of anyone and everyone this side of a multi-billionaire and multinational corporation poised to get even more rich as you get more poor.

You don't hear about this on TV and in the newspapers.  You have to go on the Internet.  Here is a recent story: 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/17/1384996/-The-TPP-will-pass-unless-progressives-make-compelling-case-that-touches-lives-of-Americans

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