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What Makes The Trans-Pacific Partnership So Bad? You Better Sit Down.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015 4:49
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(Before It's News)

Trade

By: Voice of Reason

FOR MORE NEWS BY VOICE OF REASON CLICK HERE!

 

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON WITH REGARD TO THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP, CONSIDER YOURSELF BRAIN DEAD!

 

THE UNINFORMED IN THIS COUNTRY VASTLY OUTNUMBER THOSE OF US WITH A CLUE, AND IT’S ONLY GETTING WORSE! 

MUCH WORSE!

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I cannot remember the last time I heard ANYONE say they thought the country was headed in the right direction, or say they think Obama is doing even so much as an ‘ok’ job. I’m not talking about Gallop polls, or Quinnipiac polls, I am talking about every day Americans, MANY of whom I know were HUGE Obama supporters because their Prius still sports the Obama/Biden bumper sticker.

WHAT I FIND SICKENING ALMOST BEYOND COMPREHENSION IS HOW EVERYONE THINK’S OBAMA’S ILLEGAL ACTIONS AND THE COUNTRY’S DIRE PROBLEMS ARE ALL SOMEONE ELSE’S PROBLEM TO WORRY ABOUT… 

Treason

A PULSE, AND IQ OVER 6 ARE ALL THAT ARE REQUIRED TODAY…

CLEARLY THE SECOND IS AN ISSUE WITH MANY PEOPLE!!!!!!

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FIRST IT WAS OBAMACARE… THEN NET NEUTRALITY…

THEN IRAN… 

NOW IT’S THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP!!!

PLEASE TELL ME YOU SEE THE PATTERN THERE… PLEASE!

 

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT THE “SECRET” PARTNERSHIP?

SHAKE

 

FIRST: SEE HOW MUCH SENATORS WERE PAID OFF AT YOUR EXPENSE!

THEN: YOU THINK OBAMA’S AMNESTY WAS BAD? THIS DOUBLES IT!

The Guardian Reports: A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.

“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Those critics are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the sudden flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.

Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

Those impressive majorities follow months of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing by the world’s most well-heeled multinational corporations with just a handful of holdouts.

Using data from the Federal Election Commission, this chart shows all donations that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP made to US Senate campaigns between January and March 2015, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated in the Senate:

$1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.

The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.

The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.

The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.

Two days before the fast-track vote, Obama was a few votes shy of having the filibuster-proof majority he needed. Ron Wyden and seven other Senate Democrats announced they were on the fence on 12 May, distinguishing themselves from the Senate’s 54 Republicans and handful of Democrats as the votes to sway.

In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Floridacaved and voted for fast-track.

Bennet, Murray, and Wyden – all running for re-election in 2016 – received $105,900 between the three of them. Bennet, who comes from the more purple state of Colorado, got $53,700 in corporate campaign donations between January and March 2015, according to Channing’s research.

Almost 100% of the Republicans in the US Senate voted for fast-track – the only two non-votes on TPA were a Republican from Louisiana and a Republican from Alaska.

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who is the former US trade representative, has been one of the loudest proponents of the TPP. (In a comment to the Guardian Portman’s office said:

“Senator Portman is not a vocal proponent of TPP – he has said it’s still being negotiated and if and when an agreement is reached he will review it carefully.”) He received $119,700 from 14 different corporations between January and March, most of which comes from donations from Goldman Sachs ($70,600), Pfizer ($15,700), and Procter & Gamble ($12,900). Portman is expected to run against former Ohio governor Ted Strickland in 2016 in one of the most politically competitive states in the country.

Seven Republicans who voted “yea” to fast-track and are also running for re-election next year cleaned up between January and March. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia received $102,500 in corporate contributions. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, best known for proposing a Monsanto-written bill in 2013 that became known as the Monsanto Protection Act, received $77,900 – $13,500 of which came from Monsanto.

Arizona senator and former presidential candidate John McCain received $51,700 in the first quarter of 2015. Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina received $60,000 in corporate donations. Eighty-one-year-old senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who is running for his seventh Senate term, received $35,000. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who will be running for his first full six-year term in 2016, received $67,500 from pro-TPP corporations.

“It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days,” said Mansur Gidfar, spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us. “They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist.

“How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests?” Gidfar said. “As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”

 

WHAT ABOUT THIS DOUBLING THE AMNESTY THING?

Trans

 

CONSIDER THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AN ATOM BOMB ON OUR ECONOMY!

CAN I BE ANY MORE CLEAR?

Red Statements writes:

Republicans are about to make a huge mistake.  They are moving to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership fast track legislation favored by Obama.  Obama must be laughing his ass off at how easy it is to fool the morons in the Senate.  You see, there is a clause in the agreement with  AustraliaBrunei, Canada,ChileJapanMalaysia, Mexico, New ZealandPeruSingapore, and Vietnam that allows those countries to send workers into this country at will, much like the agreement that’s causing so much havoc in the EU countries.  Basically it would open our borders up to unlimited immigration.

To make matters worse, and something the average citizen may not realize is that the treaty actually trumps US laws.  That means congress could not pass legislation stopping the inflow of these immigrants into this country even if both houses pass it unanimously and the president at the time signs it.  This would assure us that Obama’s open borders would continue to live on for possibly decades, with no way to halt it.  You really need to contact both of your Senators and find out how they plan to vote and if they are supporting the measure, you need to tell them to vote no.

FOR MORE NEWS BY VOICE OF REASON CLICK HERE!

It would be a disaster to pass this fast track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  Once passed, Obama can sign the treaty without oversight from the Senate and cannot be reversed at a later date.  It will provide millions of citizens of these member countries to enter the United States legally, where they can freely steal jobs of Americans because they are willing to work for much less money.  They would also give the companies that hire them from 3,000 to 5,000 dollars because they would not be eligible for Obamacare. Companies would save what it would cost them should they not provide medical coverage and furthermore, they would not count towards the magic number of 50 employees, the threshold for having to pay the Obamacare penalty.

DOES ANYONE OUT THERE NEED THAT TRANSLATED?

The following is a combination of an article written by Michael Snyder of the Economic Collapse Blog, with the sarcastic comments added by me:

If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better?  There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible.  And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us.  

HOWEVER, NO AMOUNT OF POSITIVE THINKING IS EVER GOING TO TURN THE SUN INTO A BLOCK OF WOOD OR TURN THE MOON INTO A BLOCK OF CHEESE! 

Any good counselor will tell you that one of the first steps toward recovery is to stop being delusional and to come to grips with how bad things really are.  When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called “HOPIUM”.  This is a difficult term to define, but the favorite definition of hopium that I have come across so far goes like this

“THE IRRATIONAL BELIEF THAT, DESPITE ALL EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, THINGS WILL TURN OUT OF THE BEST.”

IN MY POST TITLED CONSPIRACY THEORIST ARRESTED,  I TALKED ABOUT COGNITIVE DISSONANCE!

“Because of the psychological principal, COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, no amount of direct or circumstantial proof would convince some people that the highest political position in the country has been compromised by a communist plot spanning several decades.” 

“The term cognitive dissonance refers to a person who has received information so shocking, so upsetting, that they CANNOT ADEQUATELY PROCESS that information and then instead denies the validity of the proof that anyone else can see. If you are one of the cognitive dissonance types, please allow me to ask you a few questions.

conspiracy-theorist-defenition-critical-thinker1

 

EARTH TO AMERICANS: DO YOU READ ME?

PEOPLE SURE DON’T READ THE EVIDENCE IN THE POSTS BELOW!

Michael Snyder goes on: In hundreds of articles, I have documented how the U.S. economy is mired in a long-term decline which is about to get a lot worse.  But most Americans see things very differently.  In fact, according to a brand new CNN/ORC poll, 52 percent of Americans describe the U.S. economy as “very” or “somewhat good”, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy will be in “good shape” a year from right now.  But if you asked most of those people why they are so optimistic, they would probably mumble something about “Obama” or about how “we’re Americans and we always bounce back” or some other such gibberish.  Well, it’s wonderful that so many people are feeling good and looking forward to the future, but are those beliefs rational?

 

REALLY? REALLY?

REMEMBER WHO WE’RE DEALING WITH HERE!

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>

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We witnessed a perfect example of this “hopium” on Wednesday.  Sales at McDonald’s restaurants have been in decline for quite a while, and the numbers for the first quarter of 2015 were just abysmal

The ubiquitous burger-and-fries chain said US sales, the largest share of global income, fell 2.6 percent from a year ago for comparable outlets.

Sales in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region dropped 8.3 percent, helping bring overall global sales down 2.3 percent, “reflecting negative guest traffic in all segments,” the company said.

Total revenue sank 11 percent to $5.96 billion in the quarter to March 31, and net income plunged 32.6 percent to $812 million, or 84 cents a share (-31 percent).

So you would think that the stock price would have tanked on Wednesday, right?

Wrong.

Thanks to news that a “turnaround plan” would be announced on May 4th, McDonald’s stock actually skyrocketed

McDonald’s closed up 3.13 percent after spiking more than 4.5 percent in early trade as investors cheered a turnaround plan expected on May 4. However, the fast food chain’s earnings missed on both the top and bottom lines.

This is pure hopium.  Why don’t McDonald’s executives just tell us what the plan is now?  But instead, the mystery of a “secret turnaround plan” gives people just enough hope to keep the stock from tumbling – at least for the moment.

And of course there are all sorts of other stocks that are being massively inflated by hopium right now.

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I was taught that a price to earnings ratio of more than 20 was really, really high.

But these days that is the norm on Wall Street, and at the moment there are quite a few stocks that actually have price to earnings ratios that are greater than 100

There are 10 stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500, including industrial giant General Electric, video-streamer Netflix and oil and gas explorer Cabot Oil & Gas that are trading for 100 times their diluted earnings the past 12 months excluding extraordinary items, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ.

And if you can believe it, General Electric has a PE on its training earnings of more than 200

Take General Electric, the industrial giant that’s swiftly selling off banking assets so it can return to its manufacturing roots. GE sports a PE on its trailing earnings of 227, says S&P Capital IQ.

This is completely and totally irrational.  General Electric is a giant mess and is being very badly mismanaged.  But investors continue to pay a massive premium for GE stock because they hope that things will turn around eventually.

Look, hope will get you a lot of things in life, but it won’t put money in your pockets or dinner on the table.

Our politicians and the mainstream media continue to sell us hard on the idea that things are getting better in America, but meanwhile our economic infrastructure continues to decay.  

Just check out what is happening in the steel industry

United States Steel Corporation issued layoff notices to 1,404 workers in the latest sign of struggle for the American steel industry. The missives went out in recent days to workers producing pipe and tube products that are used in the oil and gas sector. Job cuts could come as early as June for 17 to 579 employees at a plant in Lone Star, Texas, 166 at a factory in Houston, 255 at a mill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and 404 managers across the company’s tubular operations nationwide.

Since last June, the company has informed 7,800 employees of potential job cuts, a tally from Pittsburgh Business Times indicated. U.S. Steel spokeswoman Sarah Cassella said the ongoing layoffs are the result of “challenging market conditions and global influences in the market including a high level of imports, reduced prices for oil and natural gas and reduced steel prices.”

A little over a month ago, I published an article entitled “10 Charts Which Show We Are Much Worse Off Than Just Before The Last Economic Crisis” in which I demonstrated that we are in far worse economic shape than we were just prior to the last recession, and now another great economic crisis is at our door.

Unfortunately, most Americans have no idea what is going on out there.  Most of them get their news from the giant propaganda matrix that very tightly controls the flow of ideas and information in this country.  This is something that I explain on my new DVD.  Six colossal corporations control over 90 percent of the news, information and entertainment that Americans consume, and that gives them an awesome amount of power.

 

AND RIGHT NOW THE PROPAGANDA MATRIX IS TELLING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EVERYTHING WILL BE JUST FINE…

WELL, THEY BETTER BE RIGHT. BECAUSE IF NOT, THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE EXTREMELY ANGRY WITH THEM WHEN EVERYTHING GOES TO PIECES!

 

By: Voice of Reason

FOR MORE NEWS BY VOICE OF REASON CLICK HERE!

 

THE VOICE OF REASON

Short Fire

FOR LINKS TO UNDERSTAND THE ECONOMY & THE COMING ECONOMIC COLLAPSE:

 

460x307xobama-nukes.jpg.pagespeed.ic.k8pRlkBkjH

ANALYSTS EVERYWHERE ARE SUGGESTING WE ARE ON THE VERGE OF WW III!

Martial Law

FOR MORE LINKS ON MARTIAL LAW:

 

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE GIFT SHOP!

 

 

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  • PeoplePower

    “Pres. Barack Obama is traitor. This underhanded legislation/ treaty secretly sells- out the American people’s legal rights in favor of his corporate puppet masters. 

    The concept, inception, and mechanism of the TPP treaty comes, solely, from the Obama administration. In doing so, our one time constitutional scholar president attempts to create a new, world- wide, corporate dynasty. TPP gives up legal sovereignty and jurisdiction of the United States, and its laws, to a foreign power. This is the very definition of treason.”

    http://www.occupeyes.us/tpp-is-treason-wake-up-globalization-goes-for-check-mate/

    I couldn’t agree more…..

    Transpacific Partnership = TREASON

    Where I come from, TPP are fighting words!

  • A question for all of us. How can you commit treason if you are a foreign agent placed as the pres of the corporation and your job is to make money for your stock holders?

    We assume from a false notion that we matter to them and that work for us and they do pretend to do so.

    Many of know know that we are being lied to, played and there is something going on and we do not have any say in it.

    They hate us because millions are armed and if they can con us into trusting them, it will be game over for the masses.

    It may be to late already but I still think most of the corporate guys and galls have to go to work for a pay check and lead is flying in their direction they will call it quits.

    Would you go to work knowing that millions of people are ready to respond in kind? I think not.

    The corporate elite know this too. What you have here is a fraction of the 1% on board and they know they can no longer pay out the entitlements, not do they want to. It is no longer profitable when you have to pay out more than you are taking in on the ponzi schemes.

    No matter what happens it is game over for the masses living of a gov pay check whether or not they earned it or not.

  • Question :
    Would this open border policy apply to all the partisapating country’s in the TPP, would Malaysians be able to enter the Australian and NewZealand work forces ? , would they in turn be able to say,work in Japan. Some of us here down under have heard of this partnership but very little has surfaced in the media.

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