The Communications Workers of America and the Teamsters union are both actively campaigning against TPP and Obama’s fast-track authority. Last week the unions released a statement condemning the president’s flip-flop by citing what Obama said when he was campaigning to be president.
In a April 2008 questionnaire provided by the Pennsylvania Fair Trade Coalition, Obama was asked if he supports extending presidential fast-track trade promotion authority, or whether he would support a “new process” that includes congressional approval, consent from the states and binding obligations that must be included in future free-trade agreements.
This is what Obama said at the time:
“I will not support extension of the existing fast track process that expired. I have not and would not support renewing trade promotion authority for this president [George W. Bush]. The current fast track process does not mandate that agreements include binding labor and environmental protections nor does it give an adequate role to Congress in the selection and design of agreements. I will work with congressional leaders to ensure that any new TPA authority fix these basic failings and open up the process to the American people for their participation and scrutiny.”
It should be pointed out that this was hardly the first time Obama lied to working people during his first campaign for the presidency, while engineering backroom deals with members of the 1 percent and Wall Street to screw working people. The Trans Pacific Partnership and Fast Track Authority are just the latest of his lies.
It should also be pointed out that every one of these so-called free trade treaties has resulted in a massive trade deficit, which is bad for the nation.
Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden and Wall Street President Barack Obama have also negotiated higher prices on such things as medicine for people throughout the world. In other words, this treaty is an income redistribution scam. The 99 percent will pay the higher prices and the 1 percent shall receive it.
The treaty is also being used to undermine financial regulations, making it virtually impossible for an incoming president, such as US Senator Elizabeth Warren–if she decides to run–to pass legislation that would actually regulate the financial markets for the good of the nation, rather than allow a tiny number of rich people to redistribute income from the 99 percent to themselves, as is currently the case.
Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden was elected to represent the people of Oregon, but he always represents Wall Street and the 1 percent on all matters pertaining to redistributing income from the 99 percent to the 1 percent and to Wall Street. He has a 100 percent voting record on these issues dating all the back to his days as a US congressman, supposedly from Oregon.
Take the case of the most massive income redistribution treaty of all time, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Wyden supports it, just like he supported NAFTA and all other income redistribution treaties falsely labeled free trade agreements. Wyden has for years told Oregonians in town hall meetings that Oregon is heavily reliant on trade, but he always lies.
According to the US Census Bureau, Oregon’s exports represent only 1.2 percent of the US total. This is down from 1.4 percent since Wyden voted for the South Korea, Panama and Colombia treaties. In other words, Oregon’s economy is not nearly as dependent on trade as the senator wants us to believe. And since he’s voted for the most recent treaties, Oregon has lost a net number of jobs because of them, just like it lost a net number of jobs to NAFTA.
Furthermore, Oregon imports 7/10 of one percent of all the goods and services that are imported into the US. So Oregon is not as heavily reliant on imports as the senator would have us believe, and by a wide margin. Five states import and export more than fifty percent of all goods and services; Texas, California, Florida, New York, and Ohio. Oregon is on the opposite end of this spectrum.
So if the statistics show the senator is lying to Oregonians on this issue, then why does he lie? Perhaps it is because he serves the 1 percent. He supports so-called free trade agreements because they redistribute income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent, and Wyden has a 100 percent voting record on this issue.
When a job is shipped overseas because the senator voted to make it happen, the difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages overseas goes into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, surging dividends, and rising share prices. The same is true of jobs that are created overseas, because this could not have occurred in the absence of these corporate trade treaties. Their primary purpose is to redistribute income. Wyden knows this. He is not the dumb dumb little boy he pretends to be at town hall meetings.
The result of Wyden’s policies for the people of Oregon is that the income of the people of Oregon has risen in real terms 13.5 percent from 1977 to 2007. The 1 percent have received over 80 percent of this income growth. That means the income of the 1 percent grew 127 percent over the same decades, while those in the bottom 99 percent received a two percent increase in wages over the same period. The difference is because Wyden supports redistributing income via trade treaties, privatization scams, tax cuts for the rich, and lots more. In other words, Wyden’s polices are enormously successful in redistributing income.
This income maldistribution is bad for Oregon. That means only one thing. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden has been bad for Oregon.
“The Walton family is the richest family in America,” US Senator Bernie Sanders asks, “is also the largest recipient of public welfare in America. Should the taxpayers in this country continue to pay welfare to the Walton family?”
One of the panelists is Aparna Mathur of the American Enterprise. She argues that it is the workers of Walmart that receive the public welfare. However, she is plainly stupid, because when the workers receive the public benefits, this allows Walmart management to earn higher profits, rising dividends and increasing share prices. This enriches the Walmart family via public benefits. This is clearly part of the Walmart business plan, and it plainly redistributes income from the workers and the public to the Walmart parasites, who own more wealth than the bottom
In Germany workers are far more powerful than than in the United States, and perhaps quite a bit more intelligent, too. Labor union folks in Germany are not happy with what is going on in the US South.
Volkswagen’s top labor representative threatened yesterday to try to block further investments by the German car manufacturer in the U.S. South if its workers there are not unionized, Reuters reported.
“I can imagine fairly well that another VW factory in the United States, provided that one more should still be set up there, does not necessarily have to be assigned to the South again,” said Bernd Osterloh, a member of VW’s powerful supervisory board and head of VW’s works council.
“If co-determination isn’t guaranteed in the first place, we as workers will hardly be able to vote in favor” of potentially building another plant in the U.S. South, said Osterloh, who was quoted in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Workers at VW’s factory in Chattanooga last Friday voted against representation by the United Auto Workers, rejecting efforts by VW representatives to set up a works council labor board at the plant.
Osterloh complained that “the conservatives stirred up massive antiunion sentiments.”
On October 31, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a campaign speech before a crowd at Madison Square Garden. The words he spoke could be uttered in our present time. Coincidentally, Roosevelt compared “government by organized money (which are corporations) to government by organized mob,” as in Government by organized crime. The above video is his actual words. The words below are a transcript of most of that speech.
“We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.
For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace–business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money (which are corporations) is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob (crime families).
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me–and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
The American people know from a four-year record that today there is only one entrance to the White House–by the front door. Since March 4, 1933, there has been only one pass-key to the White House. I have carried that key in my pocket. It is there tonight. So long as I am President, it will remain in my pocket.
Those who used to have pass-keys are not happy. Some of them are desperate. Only desperate men with their backs to the wall would descend so far below the level of decent citizenship as to foster the current pay-envelope campaign against America’s working people. Only reckless men, heedless of consequences, would risk the disruption of the hope for a new peace between worker and employer by returning to the tactics of the labor spy.
Here is an amazing paradox! The very employers and politicians and publishers who talk most loudly of class antagonism and the destruction of the American system now undermine that system by this attempt to coerce the votes of the wage earners of this country. It is the 1936 version of the old threat to close down the factory or the office if a particular candidate does not win. It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them.
Every message in a pay envelope, even if it is the truth, is a command to vote according to the will of the employer. But this propaganda is worse- it is deceit.
They tell the worker his wage will be reduced by a contribution to some vague form of old-age insurance. They carefully conceal from him the fact that for every dollar of premium he pays for that insurance, the employer pays another dollar. That omission is deceit.
They carefully conceal from him the fact that under the federal law, he receives another insurance policy to help him if he loses his job, and that the premium of that policy is paid 100 percent by the employer and not one cent by the worker. They do not tell him that the insurance policy that is bought for him is far more favorable to him than any policy that any private insurance company could afford to issue. That omission is deceit.
They imply to him that he pays all the cost of both forms of insurance. They carefully conceal from him the fact that for every dollar put up by him his employer puts up three dollars three for one. And that omission is deceit.
But they are guilty of more than deceit. When they imply that the reserves thus created against both these policies will be stolen by some future Congress, diverted to some wholly foreign purpose, they attack the integrity and honor of American Government itself. Those who suggest that, are already aliens to the spirit of American democracy. Let them emigrate and try their lot under some foreign flag in which they have more confidence.
The fraudulent nature of this attempt is well shown by the record of votes on the passage of the Social Security Act. In addition to an overwhelming majority of Democrats in both Houses, seventy-seven Republican Representatives voted for it and only eighteen against it and fifteen Republican Senators voted for it and only five against it. Where does this last-minute drive of the Republican leadership leave these Republican Representatives and Senators who helped enact this law?
I am sure the vast majority of law-abiding businessmen who are not parties to this propaganda fully appreciate the extent of the threat to honest business contained in this coercion.
I have expressed indignation at this form of campaigning and I am confident that the overwhelming majority of employers, workers and the general public share that indignation and will show it at the polls on Tuesday next.
Aside from this phase of it, I prefer to remember this campaign not as bitter but only as hard-fought. There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.
It is because I have sought to think in terms of the whole Nation that I am confident that today, just as four years ago, the people want more than promises.
Our vision for the future contains more than promises.
This is our answer to those who, silent about their own plans, ask us to state our objectives.
Of course we will continue to seek to improve working conditions for the workers of America–to reduce hours over-long, to increase wages that spell starvation, to end the labor of children, to wipe out sweatshops. Of course we will continue every effort to end monopoly in business, to support collective bargaining, to stop unfair competition, to abolish dishonorable trade practices. For all these we have only just begun to fight.
Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America, for better and cheaper transportation, for low interest rates, for sounder home financing, for better banking, for the regulation of security issues, for reciprocal trade among nations, for the wiping out of slums. For all these we have only just begun to fight.
Of course we will continue our efforts in behalf of the farmers of America. With their continued cooperation we will do all in our power to end the piling up of huge surpluses which spelled ruinous prices for their crops. We will persist in successful action for better land use, for reforestation, for the conservation of water all the way from its source to the sea, for drought and flood control, for better marketing facilities for farm commodities, for a definite reduction of farm tenancy, for encouragement of farmer cooperatives, for crop insurance and a stable food supply. For all these we have only just begun to fight.
Of course we will provide useful work for the needy unemployed; we prefer useful work to the pauperism of a dole.
Here and now I want to make myself clear about those who disparage their fellow citizens on the relief rolls. They say that those on relief are not merely jobless–that they are worthless. Their solution for the relief problem is to end relief–to purge the rolls by starvation. To use the language of the stock broker, our needy unemployed would be cared for when, as, and if some fairy godmother should happen on the scene.
You and I will continue to refuse to accept that estimate of our unemployed fellow Americans. Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side.
Again — what of our objectives?
Of course we will continue our efforts for young men and women so that they may obtain an education and an opportunity to put it to use. Of course we will continue our help for the crippled, for the blind, for the mothers, our insurance for the unemployed, our security for the aged. Of course we will continue to protect the consumer against unnecessary price spreads, against the costs that are added by monopoly and speculation. We will continue our successful efforts to increase his purchasing power and to keep it constant.
For these things, too, and for a multitude of others like them, we have only just begun to fight.
All this–all these objectives–spell peace at home. All our actions, all our ideals, spell also peace with other nations.
Today there is war and rumor of war. We want none of it. But while we guard our shores against threats of war, we will continue to remove the causes of unrest and antagonism at home which might make our people easier victims to those for whom foreign war is profitable. You know well that those who stand to profit by war are not on our side in this campaign.
“Peace on earth, good will toward men”–democracy must cling to that message. For it is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and of moral purpose. Above our political forums, above our market places stand the altars of our faith-altars on which burn the fires of devotion that maintain all that is best in us and all that is best in our Nation.
We have need of that devotion today. It is that which makes it possible for government to persuade those who are mentally prepared to fight each other to go on instead, to work for and to sacrifice for each other. That is why we need to say with the Prophet: “What doth the Lord require of thee — but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” That is why the recovery we seek, the recovery we are winning, is more than economic. In it are included justice and love and humility, not for ourselves as individuals alone, but for our Nation.
That is the road to peace.”
By the way, those same people who consider government to be “an appendage of their business activities,” have been back in control of our federal government for over thirty years now.
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and A People Betrayed
The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed
Wall Street is up to no good, and has been since 1980, when it took over the Republican Party, and then the Democratic Party in 1994. Income has been massively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via legislative scam after scam, from tax cuts for the rich to international income redistribution schemes falsely labeled as trade agreements. In The Rigged Game, John Hively exposes how this has all come about starting with a revolutionary, but simple reality, all recessions begin in the financial markets.
John Hively's Blog: News and Analysis of the War Against the Middle Class 