Hundreds of U.S. Organizations Urge Congress to Replace Fast Track

Troubled by continued secrecy in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement , over 400 civil society organizations representing more than 15 million Americans have written to Congress urging that Fast…

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Hundreds of US Organizations Urge Congress To Replace Fast Track–Citizens Trade Campaign

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Video: Everyone-but-China Trans Pacific Trade Deal Threatens Sovereignty and Public Ownership

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new trade agreement that President Obama and his administration is leading the charge on is a lot of Asian countries except China. Vietnam is the low wage nation in the agreement, and so it is the pivotal nation, one in which 40 percent of Nike’s production occurs. That share is growing greater. Critics say, is going to increase corporate rights and decrease sovereign rights. Internet freedom is also at risk, so long as it doesn’t impact the share prices of companies such as Google. However, to minimize the ability of people to get honest news and views, non-corporate honesty in other words, the Obama administration most likely will attack Internet freedom. TPP is about redistributing income and political power from the 99 to the 1 percent.

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Barack Obama’s War Against the Middle Class: Rising trade deficits with Japan illustrate problem with proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership

From the Economic Policy Institute:

“The U.S. trade deficit with Japan has increased steadily over the past four years, reaching $79.9 billion in 2012, an increase of $13.4 billion (20.2 percent). Last month, the United States and Japan agreed on language that could allow Japan to join negotiations to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed free trade agreement with 10 other Asia-Pacific countries (a new round of negotiations on the TPP began in Singapore last week ).

Exports support U.S. jobs but the larger volume of imports displaces even more jobs. Trade deficits such as the one we have with Japan have cost the United States millions of jobs, most of them high-paying jobs in manufacturing. Signing trade deals is an ineffective way to create jobs, in large part because they usually result in higher trade deficits. One of the biggest causes of our trade deficits is currency manipulation, which acts as an artificial subsidy to other countries’ exports and a tax on U.S. exports. Japan has a history of currency manipulation, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he intended to weaken the yen when he was elected in December. The yen has declined 11.9 percent since then.”

The US also has a trade deficit with China, but that’s not quite the truth. The US has a trade deficit with US corporations that do their manufacturing in China, such as Nike, Apple and Microsoft. The worse thing is that the Obama man may force US textile manufacturers to move their facilities to China, as well. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that there are plenty of US textile manufacturers in China, already.

The TPP is being negotiated by officials from the Obama administration. Obama’s policy preferences, like George W. Bush before him, have been to redistribute income and political power from the 99 to the 1 percent, or at least the slice of the 1 percent that Obama represents, such as the Crown Brothers of General Dynamics. That’s what the TPP is all about.

The TPP will off shore more US jobs and continue a deadly race to the bottom in order to support the Ponzi Scam known as Wall Street. That’s because US corporations must experience long-term rising share prices, which means profits must continually rise, more or less. And the best way for that to occur is if wage rates are reduced more and more. And so the TPP is an engine not only to get around the US Constitution (That’s another story), but also to depress wages and other compensation worldwide. So naturally Obama is aiming to destroy US textile jobs and redistribute the wages of the people who actually do the work to the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and surging dividends.

Within the framework of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the government of Vietnam is demanding “preferential rules of origin to use raw materials from China.” This includes yarn, thread and fabric.

Central American textile businesses are also worried that Vietnam will get more flexible terms to import its apparel into the US, such as an end to tariffs on apparel goods. In which case, some estimates suggest El Salvador alone will lose 200,000 textile jobs. These jobs are located in large part within Maquila zones, which are zones in which US companies are allowed to assemble goods and then export them duty free to the United States.

Once these zones were established, US corporations sent jobs to Central America. The difference between the old wages in the US and the new lower wages in Central America went into the pockets of corporate CEOs and rich shareholders. The people whose jobs were shipped away as part of the Democratic and Republican Party’s war against the 99 percent were lucky if they got unemployment insurance. The Central America Free Trade Treaty (CAFTA) did the same thing, only on a grander scale.

Nowadays, every year, the 1 percent legislatively steal about 32 percent of the income of the United States compared to about 7-8 percent thirty-two years ago. That means the 99 percent have less money to burn, which creates less jobs. And guess what else? The 1 percent destroy jobs by pressuring the government to enact more and more free trade treaties because they wipe out American jobs and redistribute the income from the lost jobs into their own pockets.

It just so happens that textile workers in the El Salvador Maquila zones earn .78 cents per hour, compared to .60 cents of their Vietnamese counterparts. However, the Maquila Zones in Central America have a cost advantage over their Vietnamese rivals since there are no tariffs for their products exported to the USA. If Vietnam is allowed to ship their apparel products into the US duty free, El Salvador will have a labor cost disadvantage vis-a-vis Vietnam.

Now here’s the real problem.

“U.S. textile manufacturers produce yarn, thread, and fabric for apparel, home furnishings, and for various industrial applications. In 2011, the U.S. textile industry generated $53 billion in
shipments and directly employed about 238,000 Americans, accounting for 2% of all U.S. factory jobs. Approximately one-third of U.S. textile production is exported, with the bulk of the exports
going to Western Hemisphere nations that are members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA-DR), like El Salvador and Honduras.

Both free trade agreements provide that certain exports from member countries may enter the U.S. market duty-free only if they are made from textiles produced in the region. This has encouraged manufacturers in Mexico and Central America to use U.S.-made yarns and fabrics in apparel, home furnishings, and other products. Exports to the NAFTA and CAFTA-DR countries contributed to a U.S. trade surplus of $2.5 billion in yarns and fabrics in 2011.”

So the TPP has the potential to affect U.S. textile exporters in at least two ways. As mentioned earlier, it could enable Asian apparel producers, principally Vietnam, to export clothing to the United States duty-
free.” Roughly 40 percent of Nike’s products are produced in Vietnam. Guess what corporation is lobbying US politicians to support the TPP and eliminate the import duties from Vietnam?

“This (TPP) would eliminate much of the advantage now enjoyed by Western Hemisphere apparel producers in the U.S. market and, because Vietnamese manufacturers make little use of U.S.-made textiles,” will likely “reduce demand for U.S. textile exports,” killing US jobs, and redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent in the process. Second, it is possible the TPP will allow Western Hemisphere apparel manufacturers to use yarn and fabric made in any TPP member nations, such as China, which is where Vietnam gets its yarns and fabrics.”

In other words, Vietnamese apparel makers could wipe out El Salvador apparel makers, and that’s how Obama’s scam would destroy a couple of hundred thousand textile jobs in El Salvador. But this process would eliminate tens of thousands of US jobs in the textile industry, since the jobs in El Salvador are dependent on yarn, thread and fabric made in the USA.

In other words, Obama’s TPP scam is intended to make the 1 percent richer at the expense of the 99 percent, precisely because all free trade treaties are negotiated with this as the intended consequence. And this is just one of the income redistribution scams hidden within the negotiations of the TPP.

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Is the Modern University Education and Student Loans a Scam?

I disagree with the people who made this film in their assertion that the proliferation of student loans is the cause of college tuition hikes. The reason tuition is going up and up has nothing to do with student loans. When you ship tens of millions of jobs overseas, as the US government has help Wall Street and corporations to do, you ship your tax base that supports education and other government services overseas, although, as you know, you’re really redistributing the tax base and the income from those jobs into the pockets of the 1 percent. That’s why tuition goes up and up. I agree with some points in the film, but he’s way off base in asserting that it’s student loans pushing up the cost of college.

As jobs are shipped overseas, the difference between the old wages here and the new lower wages there are redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and surging dividends. That’s how the rich have gotten richer over the last thirty years, by corrupting government and using legislation to this purpose.

BTW, the Obama man is pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest income redistribution scam in US history. He’s the person currently ordained by Wall Street to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

And also BTW, Wall Street investment firms buy up student loans, clump them together, issue bonds against the loans, then sell those bonds to rich investors. Students make their payments, and mostly it’s wealthy investors that reap those payments. In other words, by 1983, student loans had become an income redistribution scam from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s precisely why the government slashed student grants and increased student loans, so the rich can prosper even more. In addition, the same rich people redistributing income from students to wealthy bondholders are also the people that pressure corporations to ship jobs overseas.

That’s the complete income redistribution game. Notice how circular it is. Ship jobs overseas, force people to improve their job chances in a declining job market by increasing their education and locking them into student loans. It’s a scam. The rich always win because they control political puppets like Wall Street Senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch. You always win any game if you control the vast majority of pieces.

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President Obama and the Trans Pacific Partnership–NAFTA on Steroids

Trying to Screw a Nation?

If you want to destroy an economy, if you want to destroy a middle class, the best way to do that is to ship as many jobs as possible away. That’s what President Obama wants to do, apparently, since he is continuing the negotiations begun by President George W. Bush to do exactly this via the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the Guardian Newspaper of the UK calls NAFTA on Steroids.

Like all free trade treaties, it’s an income redistribution scam. These treaties ensure that high paying jobs are shipped away to low paying nations. The difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages, as well as other savings (such as lower environmental and regulatory costs), is redistributed to the 1 percent from the 99 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising dividends and soaring share prices.

Obama is indebted to such Wall Street corporations as Goldman Sachs and Citibank. With the TPP, he will be paying them back, but he’s taking money from those whose jobs are being shipped overseas (such as call center workers, computer programmers, engineers, manufacturing workers, etc…), and this will weaken the tax base. Other income losers will be government workers, such as teachers, fire fighters, accountants, government lawyers, road workers, etc…. In addition, it should be pointed out that for every 70 workers who lose their jobs in manufacturing, there will be an additional 25 job loses for book keepers, accountants, computer techs, accountants, managerial staff, and everybody who works to support those 70 manufacturing workers. The numbers are similar for call-center operations, computer programmers, etc…. There are tons of support staff jobs that will follow the ships shipped overseas.

Do your kids have crowded classes? That’s because your tax base has been redistributed to the 1 percent which is best shown via the bold paragraph above.

As the Nation magazine notes, “The TPP has been cleverly misbranded as a trade agreement (yawn) by its corporate boosters. As a result, since George W. Bush initiated negotiations in 2008, it has cruised along under the radar. The Obama administration initially paused the talks, ostensibly to develop a new approach compatible with candidate Obama’s pledges to replace the old NAFTA-based trade model. But by late 2009, talks restarted just where Bush had left off.

Since then, US negotiators have proposed new rights for Big Pharma and pushed into the text aspects of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would limit Internet freedom, despite the derailing of SOPA in Congress earlier this year thanks to public activism. In June a text of the TPP investment chapter was leaked, revealing that US negotiators are even pushing to expand NAFTA’s notorious corporate tribunals, which have been used to attack domestic public interest laws.”

Therefore, the president is not only planning on using the TPP to redistribute income from the 99 percent to his Wall Street cronies, he is plotting to take away more of your rights as US citizens and redistributing those rights to Wall Street.

As the Guardian of the UK reports, “In reality, the deal has almost nothing to do with trade: actual trade barriers between these countries are already very low. The TPP is an effort to use the holy grail of free trade to impose conditions and override domestic laws in a way that would be almost impossible if the proposed measures had to go through the normal legislative process. The expectation is that by lining up powerful corporate interests, the governments will be able to ram this new “free trade” pact through legislatures on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.’

Right now, the 1 percent receive over 30 percent of all the income in the US, compared to about 8 percent in 1980. That means the 99 percent receive about 69 percent of the total national income, compared to 92 percent thirty-three years ago. Jobs are scarce, the US economy is teetering on the abyss of banana republic status because the 99 percent have less money to purchase stuff compared to 1980. That’s why there are less jobs. The tax base has been wrecked by free trade treaties, which is why the federal deficit is so high. All of this are simple concepts and your president understands them, but he has political debts to pay, and if it means destroying the wreck of a once great economy, so be it.

Click the link below for more on the Trans Pacific Partnership.

nafta on steroids–the nation

The free trade agreement that is not about free trade–the guardian UK

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Historical Data: Earnings of the top 1.0 percent rebound strongly in the recovery

The graph below shows how income distribution has changed quite a bit since 1979. Notice that the most massive income redistribution from the 99 to the 1 percent occurred after President Bill “Wall Street” Clinton signed NAFTA into law. Clinton wasn’t dumb. He knew the treaty was an income redistribution scam.

Right now negotiators from 11 nations, along with 600 corporate lobbyists, are negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership in secrecy. This is the largest free trade pact of all time. The implications are massive; the utter destruction of the American middle class, since the 1 percent will have more power via the treaty to suck the middle class dryer. That is Obama’s agenda. But we’re really talking about the top 0.1 percent, the high millionaires and the billionaires that have destroyed democracy in the United States and replaced it with a plutocracy.

Think about this. After Obama signs the still being negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership into law, the line in the graph that shows how much of the national income the 1 percent receive will shoot up way higher, while the 90 percent go down, down, down. And the 91-99 percent will follow. It’s beginning to look like banana republic time for the US middle class. It doesn’t need to be that way. Fight back. Labor unions are. Don’t let corporate drones like Wall Street Congressman Earl Blumenauer vote for the treaty.

By the way, some ridiculous discussion over the last year or so is that the growth of income inequality in favor of “the 1 percent had been reversed in the recent downturn and, therefore, policymakers need not focus on the overall increase in income inequality since the late 1970s.” A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that income of the top 1 percent have rebounded strongly since 2010. However, I show in The Rigged Game that this argument is stupid because it has never been the case. It’s true that the wealth of the 1 percent declines during recessions, and with it the income that derives from those assets, but the decline reflects temporary dips in the values of corporate stocks and bonds and other assets due to recessions. These dips are always temporary, if they occur. By the way, income is money coming in, wealth are assets such as stocks, bonds, gold, house, cars, etc…..

Regardless, below are some of EPI’s findings for the current downturn.

1. Those at the top are seeing their wages rebound quite strongly in the recovery. Following a 15.6 percent decline from 2007 to 2009, real annual wages of the top 1.0 percent of earners grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011.

2. The real annual wages of the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

3. Wage inequality grew substantially over 1979–2007, lessened in the 2007–2009 downturn, and began expanding again in the 2009–2011 recovery. Trends over the next few years will determine whether wage inequality returns to or exceeds the heights reached in 2007 or 2000—or simply remains far higher than at any time in the 1980s and 1990s.

4. Given the strong stock market recovery and wage growth at the top, the top 1.0 percent’s overall incomes (which include wages, capital gains, and other returns on financial assets) probably grew strongly in 2011, thereby increasing income inequality.

In other words, Obama’s policies have not reversed the redistribution of income from the 99 to the 1 percent. In fact, Obama’s policies continue to accelerate the redistribution process. That’s why the 90 percent have seen wages drop 1.2 percent from 2009-2011. That money has been redistributed to the 1 percent, more or less, by such simple methods as shifting more jobs overseas, reducing employee compensation, and privatizing more government jobs. The difference between the old wages and the new, lower, wages is redistributed to the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, dividends and share prices.

Click the link below for the complete study.

The Report From the Economic Policy Institute

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Corporate Profits are at an all-time high as worker pay plunges

According to a report by CNN, in 2012, third quarter corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago. Corporations are currently making more as a percentage of the economy than they ever have since such records were kept. That money goes to shareholders and CEO’s, charter members of the 1 percent. But at the same time, wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low, as this chart shows. (The red line is corporate profits; the blue line is private sector wages.)

As CNN Money explained, “a separate government reading shows that total wages have now fallen to a record low of 43.5% of GDP. Until 1975, wages almost always accounted for at least half of GDP, and had been as high as 49% as recently as early 2001.”

As CNN also explained, “businesses with high labor costs have either gone under or moved offshore.” And that’s the real problem. Free trade treaties are really income redistribution treaties. The difference between the old higher pay of US jobs and the new lower pay in other nations goes into the already fat wallets of CEO’s and rich shareholders.

So when somebody loses his or her job on account of an income redistribution trade treaty, that person loses the money year after year. However, the money isn’t really lost. It goes into the fat wallets of the rich year after year. That’s what’s going on right now.

And President Obama plans on redistributing more cash from the middle class to the 1 percent via the Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest free income redistribution trade treaty ever. In other words, Obama is rigging the game even more against the middle class, while simultaneously destroying the economy’s ability to increase the demand for goods and services.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Worker pay continues to go down, down, down. The result is an economy that is tilting toward the abyss. This is a no-brainer.

ric
Corporate profits at an all-time high–Thinkprogress.org

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The Robin Hood Tax

The time has come for a sales tax on Wall Street transactions. Such a thing will curb investment for short term profits and decrease the pressure CEO’s have to move jobs overseas. Stop the Trans Pacific Partnership, the biggest free income redistribution trade treaty ever for the USA. It’ll be a massive tax on the middle class, as more of their jobs and tax base are shipped to third world nations, like Vietnam.

New Balance shoes are still made in the United States. However, the Trans Pacific Pact may eliminate or lower tariffs on products exported to the USA. New Balance executives fear lowering those tariffs will compel them to ship their remaining US jobs overseas.

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Income Redistribution from the 99 to the 1 percent, an incredible, but sad, fact

That $45,000 a year per family has been redistributed to the 1 percent via free income redistribution trade treaties and privatization scams. The 1 percent have legislatively stolen around 30.5 percent of all US income, up from about 8 percent in 1980. That means the 99 percent have gone from earning and spending 92 percent of all income to 69.5 percent. That’s why demand for goods and services is so weak, and the job market is pathetic. The worse part is that President Barack Obama is planning to redistribute more income from the 99 to the 1 percent via the currently negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest free income redistribution treaty ever. Fight it successfully, or the richer get even more rich at the expense of the rest of us, and watch your children and grandchildren live life in a banana republic. Stop Obama’s madness!

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Has Senator Ron Wyden of Wall Street Gone Insane?

Senator Ron Wyden, who is supposed to represent the people of Oregon, but who represents the 1 percent of people who use Wall Street to steal money from the 99 percent, is not happy with the latest income redistribution scam put forth by the Obama administration. That scheme seeks to redistribute more and more income from working people to the ultra wealthy.

The senator is the chairman of the senate subcommittee on trade. He is leading the charge against the scam, which is something of a miracle, but more of a coincidence, since he normally aids and abets such plots against the American people.

The Trans Pacific Trade Agreement (TPP) is being negotiated in secrecy, except for the 600 corporate lobbyists with access to the negotiators and a few members of congress. The negotiations involve twelve nations and it’s going to be bigger than Nafta. That’s a ton of income the Obama administration is planning to redistribute from working Americans to Wall Street.

Leaked documents show the pharmaceutical corporations want higher prices. Can you guess whose pockets they intend to pick when the TPP is enacted into law? Yours, or some other working stiffs somewhere. And then Big Pharma will take their higher prices, swell their profits, jack up their dividends and pump up their share prices. That’s how the extra money working stiffs will pay to stay healthy and alive will wind up in the pockets of the affluent. Think about it for just a moment.

The Obama administration is negotiating to jack up the price working people will pay to stay alive. That’s how the free trade income redistribution scam works. Your money or your life. Sounds like highway robbery to me.

Senator Wyden normally supports Wall Street in the rape and pillage of the 99 percent, especially via free trade scams. So what gives?

Wyden said, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, PhRMA, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

This statement explains a great deal. Wyden represents Google and other Internet firms. They are opposed to anything which would inhibit downloading and other things they do to make a profit. The movie industry and others don’t like this. The TPP could be a vehicle to go around Wyden and other supporters of Internet freedom. In this way, Wyden appears to side with the people of Oregon, whom he is supposed to represent, but whom he does not normally on economic matters, since he likes free “income redistribution” trade scam treaties. But his opposition to the secrecy of the TPP is a happy coincidence for the people of Oregon.

There is one other thing to note. The senator’s opposition is not to the TPP, but to it’s secrecy.

Related stories

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Key Senate Democrat Joins Bipartisan Trade Revolt Against Obama

Wyden's Statement Introduction of Congressional Oversight Over Trade Negotiations Act

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