Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL has read through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), exposing its contents. Telling the truth about what the TPP says, he is urging Congress to oppose it in a five page letter to his colleagues.
On May 18, 2015, Kevin Zeese writes on Nation Of Change:
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is one of the few members of Congress who has taken the time to jump through the hoops and read the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But, he has gone a step farther than other members – he told members of Congress what he read. He told the truth about what the TPP says and why Congress should oppose it in a five page letter to his colleagues.
Sessions’ action flies in the face of the threats made by the US Trade Representative to prosecute elected officials who tell people what is in the trade agreement. Others should follow his example and get out the truth about the TPP.
The debate in the Senate begins on Tuesday, May 19. This is an opportunity for Senators to tell their colleagues the truth about what is in the TPP. Sessions’ “Dear Colleague” letter was leaked and reported in Breitbart. Senators from both parties may want to take a similar approach. Even better, during the debate on the Senate floor there will be an opportunity for amendments that expose problems with the TPP. Senators can tell their colleagues and, through C-SPAN, their constituents the truth about what is in the TPP.
How Senator Sessions Exposed the Truth about TPP
Breitbart has written two articles on Sessions’ revelations. In “Critical Alert:Jeff Sessions Warns America Against Potentially Disastrous Obama Trade Deal,” they report:
“’Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret,’ Sessions’ team writes in a document that lays out the top five concerns with the Obama trade deal. ‘It must improve the quality of life, the earnings, and the per-capita wealth of everyday working Americans. The sustained long-term loss of middle class jobs and incomes should compel all lawmakers to apply added scrutiny to a ‘fast-track’ procedure wherein Congress would yield its legislative powers and allow the White House to implement one of largest global financial agreements in our history—comprising at least 12 nations and nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP.’ . . .
“The Sessions document then goes point-by-point for five full pages through the TPA trade deal, laying out why it wouldn’t help Americans—rather, it would likely hurt American workers—and why the deal doesn’t in fact provide Congress with more power over trade despite talking points from the Obama trade deal’s proponents . . .”
The second article in Breitbart, “Only Two Republicans Admit They Have Actually Read Secret Obama Trade Deal – Both Unsupportive” reports on a survey they did of Senate Republicans where they asked three questions: (1) Have you read the TPP, specifically the ‘living agreement’ in the trade deal that allows the deal to be changed and countries added without congressional review? (2) Does the Senator agree with Sen. Sessions’ call to make the TPP available to the public? And, (3) Will the Senator vote for fast track Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) if the TPP hasn’t been stripped of the ‘living agreement’ section that would allow countries to amend the deal without Congressional approval, and to even add countries (like China, if they wanted to) to the deal without Congressional approval?
Breitbart reports that one additional Senator, James Lankford (R-OK) was scheduled to read the TPP on Friday, May 16. Interestingly, the Oklahoma legislature recently passed a resolution urging their federal representatives to vote against fast track trade authority.
While the US Trade Representative has threatened members of Congress with criminal prosecution for telling others what is in the TPP, they have made no threat to Senator Sessions. No doubt if they did so, fast track and the TPP would be dead because the years of work by the Obama administration to move this forward in secret would be over, and as the first trade representative in the Obama administration, Ambassador Ron Kirk, told the media “if the American people knew what was in this agreement it would never become law.”
The Truth About Trade is Needed Right Now
We are in the critical phase of debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other rigged corporate trade agreements. While Speaker of the House,John Boehner (R-OH) has promised to publish all bills before they are voted on, he has not even read the TPP and definitely has not required it be made public. While the fast track bill can be read, the TPP is different; elected officials have limited access to it and they are not allowed to discuss what they read. So, the Congress is tying its hands on the TPP and other deals, without knowing what is in them and thereby shirking their constitutional responsibility under the Commerce Clause which directs Congress “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.”
Now, it becomes even more important because President Obama hasrepeatedly chided members of Congress for being inaccurate about what is in the TPP, even comparing Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Sarah Palin talking about death panels. He makes the claim that Congress does not know what it is talking about while keeping the agreement secret and difficult for elected officials and their staff to read. On top of that Obama and his administration consistently put out false and misleading statementsabout the agreement. One wonders, and I hope the media begins to ask him, whether President Obama has read the agreement? As Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) said in response: “We know exactly what we’re talking about. My concern is that he does not understand what’s in it.”
Obama criticized Warren for claiming that the TPP would undermine federal regulation of banks. If the language of the TPP were released we could see if he is accurate. But, after their argument on this issue, Canadian Finance Minister, Joe Oliver, bolstered Warren’s position by claiming that banking regulation that requires banks to invest with only their own money violates NAFTA.
The president has claimed that his deals are the most progressive trade agreements ever and fix the problems of NAFTA “by making labor and environmental provisions actually enforceable.” Yet, a leak of the environmental chapter actually shows the opposite – there is no environmental enforcement and the protections are weaker than agreements during the George W. Bush era.
The president also makes the claim that “no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.” This is an outrageous claim because all previous trade agreements have required the US to harmonize its laws with the agreement. How can they not? The TPP, according to leaks, changes laws around patents and trademarks. How can the TPP say one thing about intellectual property and US law say another? They must be harmonized. Elected officials who have read the text can explain differences between US law and the TPP – what laws will have to change? For example will popular laws favoring buying American products survive the TPP? The Finance Committee refused to approve an amendment that would protect Buy America.
Certainly President Obama knows that his Organizing For America is being completely misleading when in an email: “argued that the term ‘fast track’ for TPA was a misnomer because TPA would have to go through Congress like any other bill.” OFA and Obama know the debate is not whether fast track has to go through Congress in the normal fashion but whether trade agreements will be fast tracked. Why would the president and OFA be so obviously misleading? Are they desperate?
Ralph Nader has suggested that President Obama debate Senator Warren on the TPP. This would be one way to get to the truth, hear both sides debate in public so we can all decide for ourselves whether this is an agreement that should be fast tracked through Congress outside of the traditional congressional process. But a president that has worked for his entire tenure in office to keep the TPP and other rigged agreements out of the public dialogue will certainly not take up this suggestion.
Congress Is In Position to Expose the TPP
Now, at this key moment in the debate, members of Congress who have taken the time to view the TPP are in a position to get out the truth.
The debate in the Senate with its open amendment process is an opportunity to tell the truth about all the issues in the TPP so there can finally be a public debate about trade agreements that will impact every aspect of our lives.
In the House, Republicans should be sharing the comments of Senator Sessions for a solid Republican critique of fast track for the TPP and other agreements. Democrats should be highlighting key senate amendments to their caucus to highlight shortcomings. And those who have read the TPP should share what they learned in order to strengthen opposition to fast track in the face of what will be a massive Obama effort to change their minds.
Those who oppose the TPP have the tools needed to win this debate, stop fast track and stop the TPP and other rigged agreements. If we succeed, we will have the opportunity to rethink global trade in light of two decades of experience with a failed model. It will be an opportunity to develop trade so that it protects the planet and raises the standard of living for people around the world. To achieve that opportunity, the first task is to expose the truth of what is before us.
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/05/18/sen-sessions-takes-a-bold-step-tells-the-truth-about-tpp/
Not surprisingly, it appears that the agreement will promote the interests of giant, multinational corporations over the interests of labor, environmental, consumer, human rights, or other stakeholders in democracy, AND FURTHER CONCENTRATE OWNERSHIP OF THE NON-HUMAN PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL MEANS OF PRODUCTION!
The REAL STORY is a story about the collusion among a globally wealthy ownership class to further concentrate private sector ownership in ALL FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital asset creation on a global scale. A sorta FREE TRADE ON STEROIDS!
This is a battle between two property system choices: economies such as China in which the productive capital assets are primarily state-owned or state-sponsored communism or socialism and economies such as the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, etc in which the productive capital assets are primarily privately owned, although also largely concentrated among less than 10 percent of the population so as to require massive earnings redistribution, and thus welfare support open and disguised.
But there is another alternative, a balanced Just Third Way (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/thirdway-intro.htm), based on an understanding of binary economics, by which over time the economy’s productive capital assets will become almost entirely individually owned by 100 percent of the citizens. Such an economy would produce efficiencies of production fully using ever-advancing technologies of production that will fuel a greater growth of the world economies by eliminating the problematic condition of the exponential disassociation of production and consumption through ordinary citizens gaining access to FUTURE productive capital ownership to improve their economic well-being, without taking anything away from those who already own.
It is critical that private property ownership in productive capital be extended to ALL people because of the increasing power of productive capital to produce more and more of the wealth or products and services needed and wanted by society. Because productive capital––the non-human factor of production––is an independent productive power separate from human labor power, and represents an increasing role in creating wealth, the question to be addressed is: Who has the right to acquire ownership of productive capital?
While people have private property rights in their own labor, due to tectonic shifts in the technologies of production it is not enough for individual survival if people cannot get jobs, or if jobs, in reality are no longer doing a substantial part of the wealth creation. As exponential technology shifts destroy jobs and devalue the worth of labor, people need not only private property rights in their own labor, but also private property rights in the productive capital assets that are doing ever more of the work.
We as a nation, and other nations, can no longer limit people to personal rights while restricting ownership acquisition rights in wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital assets to those already well-capitalized. To be a just society, all individuals MUST have effective property rights not only in their labor and personal use possessions but also in FUTURE productive capital asset creation. Because of this imbalance, the result has been that the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the products and services produced increasingly by the non-human factor––physical productive capital––as a result of substituting machines for people. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption.
Broadened, private sector individual ownership of FUTURE productive capital assets as a societal objective is the ONLY individual private property-rights approach that will provide solutions to income inequality, unemployment, underemployment and anemic GDP growth––all of which is rooted in the tectonic shift in the technologies of production and its concentrated ownership. This reality, as a practical matter, is destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor, widening the income gap between the rich and poor and struggling (each resentful and suspicious of the other), and resulting in our inability to achieve double-digit GDP growth in the United States and other countries.
To solve this challenge, several policies must be implemented in the United States:
1. Tax reform is needed to incentivize broadened individual ownership of corporations by their employees. As an incentive, provide a tax deduction to corporations for dividend payouts, which would tighten-up the right of each owner to his or her full share of profits, a basic and historic right of private property. It would eliminate double and triple taxes on corporate profits, shifting the burden of taxation to personal incomes after exempting initial incomes that would allow low and middle class citizens not to pay taxes on incomes needed to cover basic living expenses. It will also encourage corporations to finance their growth through the issuance of new full voting, full dividend payout shares for financing their productive capital growth needs through Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs). Politically we need to insist that politicians lift barriers to the democratization of future ownership opportunity based on sound principle, rather than redistributive taxation.
2. As increasingly more workers acquire ownership stakes in FUTURE corporate productive capital assets using ESOP financing mechanisms, workers will build second incomes to support their living expenses, which in turn means they will be better “customers with money” to support demand for the products and services that the economy is capable of producing. By reason of the higher marginal spending rate on the part of workers second incomes, more of the additional income earned by the new capitalists (who have many unsatisfied consumer needs and wants) will be spent on consumption than if the income had been earned by those capitalists who now have concentrated the ownership of productive capital exclusively, and who have few, if any, consumer needs and wants. Such broadened incremental consumption will fuel a demand for more consumer products and services, which in turn will provide incentive for greater productive capital investment.
3. For all Americans, the Federal Reverse needs to create an asset-backed currency that can enable every man, woman and child to establish a Capital Homestead Account or “CHA” (a super-IRA or asset tax-shelter for citizens) at their local bank to acquire a growing dividend-bearing stock portfolio to supplement their incomes from work and all other sources of income. The CHA would process an equal allocation of productive credit to every citizen exclusively for purchasing full-dividend payout shares in companies needing funds for growing the economy and private sector jobs for local, national and global markets. The shares would be purchased using essentially interest-free credit wholly backed by projected “future savings” in the form of new productive capital assets as well as the future marketable products and services produced by the newly added technology, renewable energy systems, plant, rentable space and infrastructure added to the economy. Risk of default on each stock acquisition loan would be covered by private sector capital credit risk insurance and, if necessary, government reinsurance, but would not require citizens to reduce their funds for consumption to purchase shares.
4. Reform the tax code such that the tax rate would be a single rate for all incomes from all sources above an established personal exemption level (for example, an exemption of $100,000 for a family of four to meet their ordinary living needs) so that the budget could be balanced automatically and even allow the government to pay off the growing unsustainable long-term debt. The poor would pay the first dollar over their exemption levels as would the stock fund operator and others now earning billions of dollars from capital gains, dividends, rents and other property incomes.
5. As a substitute for inheritance and gift taxes, a transfer tax should be imposed on the recipients whose holdings exceeded $1 million, thus encouraging the super-rich to spread out their monopoly-sized estates to all members of their family, friends, servants and workers who helped create their fortunes, teachers, health workers, police, other public servants, military veterans, artists, the poor and the disabled.
6. Eliminate all tax loopholes and subsidies.
These polices would result in rapid and substantial economic growth with the GDP rate in double digits. As a result of the stimulus effect, more REAL, decent paying job opportunities and further technological advancement would be created while simultaneously broadening private, individual ownership of FUTURE wealth-creating, income-generating productive capital assets, which would support second and primary incomes for ALL Americans.
In this new FUTURE economy, a citizen would start to benefit financially at the time he or she enters the economic world as a labor worker, to become increasingly a capital owner, whose productive capital assets contribute as a non-human worker earning a second income, and at some point to retire as a labor worker and continue to participate in production and to earn income as a capital owner until the day you die.
As we ALL contribute to the building of a FUTURE economy that can support general affluence for EVERY man, woman and child, at some point as the technologies of production further advance there will be far less need for human workers and productive capital asset ownership will become the primary income source for most people. As general affluence becomes more widespread people will be free and economically secure to pursue their creative desires and pleasures, further contributing to the cultural and societal development of the country.
Support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm. See the full Act at http://cesj.org/homestead/strategies/national/cha-full.pdf
See “Financing Economic Growth With ‘FUTURE SAVINGS’: Solutions To Protect America From Economic Decline” at NationOfChange.org http://www.nationofchange.org/financing-future-economic-growth-future-savings-solutions-protect-america-economic-decline-137450624 and “The Income Solution To Slow Private Sector Job Growth” at http://www.nationofchange.org/income-solution-slow-private-sector-job-growth-1378041490.
