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Posts Tagged ‘North American Free Trade Agreement’

nafta-protest

The US corporate false-news media is reporting one-half of a story, but not the other half.

It’s true Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last Thursday he is willing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which US President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to change or scrap.

During the campaign, Trump called NAFTA the worst trade deal the United States has ever signed, while proposing protectionist measures to repatriate American jobs lost to free trade.

Now here’s what the right and left corporate news media doesn’t want you to know.

The US NAFTA problem isn’t with Canada. It’s with Mexico. Ultra-rich US campaign donors corrupting the politicians of both major political parties, as well as Wall Street executives, hedge fund managers, and other CEOs, like exporting US jobs to Mexico, rather than to higher paying, more unionized, Canada. So while this is big news that Trudeau is willing to renegotiate NAFTA, it isn’t that big of a deal since Canada isn’t where US jobs are being exported to.

When the Mexican president says he is willing to renegotiate NAFTA, then that’s news worth reporting, but only if any new agreement includes enforceable high minimum wages equal to about $10 an hour in the USA, as well as high labor, health, and environmental standards. That’s not likely to happen because corporate profits will suffer, meaning stock and bond prices will fall.

In which case, don’t count on any serious re-negotiation of NAFTA that might benefit the 99 percent of the United States. And certainly don’t look for such a re-negotiation like this, because it would help Mexican workers.

Neither the US or Mexican governments represents the vast majority of the 99 percent. NAFTA, as is, redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent, and that’s what it was negotiated to do.

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NAFTA is not a treaty! The Trans Pacific Partnership is not a treaty. The 1 percent doesn’t want you to know this.

Section 2 of Article II of the US Constitution clearly states that the US president “….shall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Only 61 of 100 senators voted for NAFTA. That means NAFTA is not a treaty under the US constitution. In addition, the TPP would require 67 yes votes, which makes it highly unlikely that it will pass treaty status.

The US constitution does not give any branch of the US government the power to negotiate international trade agreements (as opposed to treaties)  with other nations. It only gives the president the power to negotiate “treaties,” and only with the 2/3rds requirement. International agreements are not mentioned in the US constitution. All other powers not given the federal government redound to the individual states, which are prohibited from negotiating treaties with other nations. Therefore, such an agreement is only fiction, make-believe to fool us into believing the legality of such things.

A treaty is not required to pass through the House of Representatives. It must only pass through the US senate. NAFTA was forced to pass through the House because it is an illegal fictional agreement that could not probably resist a court challenge through honest judges.

In other words, these international income redistribution agreements, which are falsely marketed as international trade agreements, most likely cannot withstand a court challenge.

nafta

Now the US Supreme court has ruled that if your government is doing something illegal, you cannot challenge that law unless you can prove it has harmed you. In other words, the court has ruled the US government can illegally spy on you, burglarize your homes and businesses, and even kill you, but unless you can prove the US government is behind these things, you cannot challenge the law that allows this in court. That, of course, means the Supreme Court has ruled that the US government can do anything it wants outside of the law, just so long as it doesn’t get caught. There’s something corrupt there. Don’t ya think?

Now we have a special case coming up. TransCanada Corporation made its intention clear that it is going to sue the US government through an unconstitutional secret tribunal because President Obama refused to give the company a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. It is filing its claim for $15 billion in damages under North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provisions, which is through an illegal secret tribunal.

A secret tribunal made up of corporate lawyers will determine if US taxpayers have to ante up $15 billion in order to not allow an environmentally hazardous pipeline to cut across the USA. Only corporations can use this secret tribunal to sue governments over alleged damages and the loss of alleged future profits.

Some of the biggest US investors in TransCanada include JP Morgan/Chase, Vanguard Corporation, and Prudential. You can bet there’s a bunch of rich US citizens cheering on TransCanada executives in this case. These companies are circumventing US law via the unconstitutional secret tribunal.

If the US government loses, there is no reason why we as taxpayers should not launch a class action lawsuit challenging these secret tribunals as unconstitutional, since they are. Since the US Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, a challenge can be issued under the equal protection clause of the US Constitution, which should render illegal the secret tribunal provision of NAFTA, depending on how corrupt the US courts are. In addition, of course, the US constitution says the establishment of any “tribunal” must originate in the US house of representatives, and NAFTA clearly did not. There are several other ways that provisions of NAFTA violate the constitution.

In other words, the secret tribunals of NAFTA cannot withstand a legal challenge the moment the US government spends a penny of our hard earned tax dollars on defending the US government in this unconstitutional tribunal.

Perhaps it’s time for some legal action? What do you think fellow citizens? Anybody want to join me?

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US Senator of Wall Street Ron Wyden wants to eliminate your voting rights, and redistribute your income to the 1 percent. And he knows exactly what he’s doing, as you can tell by the film below. He doesn’t even deny the accusations on this matter when confronted by a citizen of Oregon at a town hall in January 2015. He simply avoided the answer to the question over six boring minutes.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) will steal your voting rights on many issues. It will also redistribute massive amounts of income from the 99 percent, and stuff that money straight into the pockets of the 1 percent. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden knows this, and yet, he was the right hand man of President Obama to hustle the TPP out of the Senate Trade and Finance Committees. He is also the person who pushed Fast Track Authority through the US senate. Fast Track forces congress into an up or down vote on the TPP, limits debate, and stops the filibuster from being implemented when the TPP comes up for a vote in the US Senate. The final version of the TPP was introduced to congress a week or so ago, and the text of this international income and voting rights redistribution scam are being reviewed.

We know, as has Wall Street and its senator, the TPP will unconstitutionally allow foreign corporations to challenge US laws that the management of these corporations deem to negatively impact their alleged future profits. Such cases will be tried in secret corporate established tribunals.

If the citizen’s of a state or county vote to establish mandatory GMO labeling laws, for example, and a GMO company decides that this will negatively impact their future profits, that company can sue the state in Wyden’s secret tribunals. If the company wins, the state will have two options; pay the difference between what the company says its future profits if the law didn’t exist, and what the profits were before the law goes into effect, or rescinding your voting rights by eliminating the law.

In other words, your vote will be rescinded, or you will need to pay a foreign corporation every year in perpetuity to enact such a law.

So if a company is selling a gasoline additive, and poisoning the ground water of a state, and killing people with it, and the state legislators or the voters decide to eliminate the poison from their state, the same financial situation will crop up. Be poisoned and in the process lose your voting rights on the issue, if you lose in the secret tribunal, or pay forever a foreign corporation to exercise your right to vote, which is nothing more than an illegal and unconstitutional poll tax in perpetuity.

A US trade treaty can override US law, but only if it receives 67 votes in the US Senate. That’s why the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is legally called an agreement, rather than a treaty. NAFTA didn’t get 67 votes in the senate. Don’t ask me why the US Supreme Court has ruled that an agreement between two nations is not a treaty, but it has ruled this way, and don’t ask me why foreign corporations are allowed to sue state and local governments in NAFTA’s secret tribunals, since clearly such a process is overriding US laws, and NAFTA only received 62 votes in the senate. Okay, it’s called the corporate takeover and corruption of the US supreme court.

Regardless, that’s how Wyden is intending to illegally steal your right to vote, and all on behalf of his Wall Street masters. This year he has brought the TPP to the brink of a vote in the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. It’s time for folks to start calling their senators and representatives.

Only an insane or totally corrupted person would want to continue following the same trade policies that have redistributed massive amounts of income and voting rights from the 99 to the 1 percent and brought us to the most massive and destabilizing income inequality and historically high trade deficits in US history. Take your pick. Are the supporters of this income redistribution scam insane or corrupt?

As an aside, and as a final note, since 2009, the 1 percent has stolen 95 percent of all US income growth. In 2008, the 1 percent stole 21 percent of all income produced in the USA, up from 8 percent in 1980. This year the 1 percent is stealing 37 percent + of all the income produced in the United States. What do they do with that money? They corrupt your politicians and Supreme Court justices, and the legislation that flows from the US congress, and the white house. In other words, that money is used to rig the economic, political and financial games against the 99 percent.

Think about these numbers. They mean that the 99 percent went from earning 92 percent of all US income in 1980, to 79 percent in 2008, to 63 percent in 2015.

Do you feel like your working more and earning less? Where has your retirement gone? Where are the jobs? Why haven’t the 99 percent received a raise in pay when factoring inflation since 1980? Why are housing prices so high? The above numbers are the answers to every one of the these questions and more, and Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is one of the main culprits as to why these negative things are occurring.

As for how Wall Street Ronnie plans to steal your money, see what-the-corporate-new-media-refuses-to-tell-the-public-about-the-trans-pacific-partnership-its-a-massive-income-redistribution-agreement-that-will-drive-the-middle-class-further-into-poverty–JohnHively.wordpress.com

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Notice in the graph below that income inequality in the United States grew remarkably in favor of the 1 percent as soon as NAFTA went into effect. Notice that under Republican President Ronald Reagan the 1 percent took home about 12 percent of all the income produced in the USA by 1984, up from 8 percent in 1980. By 2008, the 1 percent was stealing 21-23 percent of all the income produced in the USA. Since 2009, the 1 percent have been stealing 95 percent of all income growth, which means, if you do some simple math, they’re currently stealing about 37 percent of all income produced in the USA.

When jobs are shipped overseas, the difference between the old higher US wages and the new lower wages overseas goes straight into the pocket of the super wealthy via higher corporate prices, soaring share prices, and massive dividend growth. That great sucking sound in Mexico after NAFTA wasn’t just for sucking jobs away from US workers, it was the rich sucking the middle class’s wallets. Now the rich want to blood suck even more income from the 99 percent, and redistribute it to themselves.

On June 23 2015, the US Senate will vote on whether or not to increase income inequality via Fast Track Authority, which is legislation that will grease the wheels of a congressional rubber stamping of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has been labeled NAFTA on Steroids. It’s a massive income redistribution scam that benefits only the 0.01 percent at the expense of the 99.9 percent. Call your senators now. Save your nation! Save your job! Save your children’s futures. Click the following link to connect with your senators and tell them to vote against Fast Track, Click this link now to call your senator.

cbpp income inequality 2011

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President Obama has said many times that the Trans Pacific Partnership contains the strongest provisions yet for protecting labor and US jobs. However, US Middle Class Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon says that isn’t true in the speech above, which was made on the floor on the US senate on Friday May 24th.

Merkley, who has seen the text of the Trans Pacific Pacific Partnership (TPP), points out that the fundamental differences between the TPP and NAFTA are zero, which means President Obama is lying about the TPP when he says there are big differences between the two.

“Here we are repeating the same basic structure,” Merkley says. “…Secret tribunals of NAFTA already have wiped out some of our consumer laws, and the same thing will occur with the TPP.”

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Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich asked the following on

“Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the 30 years following World War II? Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons were:

First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages there can be no real recovery and no sustained growth.

In those years, business boomed because American workers were getting raises, and had enough purchasing power to buy what expanding businesses had to offer. Strong labor unions ensured American workers got a fair share of the economy’s gains. It was a virtuous cycle.

Second, the rich do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than they do with a large share of an economy that’s barely growing at all.

Between 1946 and 1974, the economy grew faster than it’s grown since, on average, because the nation was creating the largest middle class in history. The overall size of the economy doubled, as did the earnings of almost everyone. CEOs rarely took home more than forty times the average worker’s wage, yet were riding high.

Third, higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments — better roads, bridges, public transportation, basic research, world-class K-12 education and affordable higher education – improve the future productivity of America. All of us gain from these investments, including the wealthy.

In those years, the top marginal tax rate on America’s highest earners never fell below 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate was 91 percent. Combined with tax revenues from a growing middle class, these were enough to build the Interstate Highway system, dramatically expand public higher education and make American public education the envy of the world.

We learned, in other words, that broadly-shared prosperity isn’t just compatible with a healthy economy that benefits everyone — it’s essential to it.

But then we forgot these lessons. For the last three decades the American economy has continued to grow but most peoples’ earnings have gone nowhere. Since the start of the recovery in 2009, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent.

What happened?”

Then Reich explains a lot of true stuff, while leaving out a ton of things the Clinton administration did to bring about our current state of massively unequal income distribution.

For starters, instead of defending the middle class, President Clinton joined his Wall Street masters in redistributing income from the middle to the top via free trade treaties, such as NAFTA. Take a look at the graph below.

The US free trade regime began during the 1980s, during the regime of President Ronald Reagan. Jobs, however, had been exported from the US since the 1950s. Under Clinton, and Wall Street Congressmen, such as Ron Wyden, the exportation of jobs accelerated with NAFTA, as anybody with half a brain can see from the graph above, though not Wyden, who apparently still clings to fulfill the desires of his Wall Street masters.

In this case, the financial markets are a Ponzi Scheme. They need to increase steadily in value over the course of time. Otherwise, they’ll accelerate downward. That’s the primary purpose of redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, that is to keep the Ponzi scam known as Wall Street from collapsing, as it did during the Great Depression.

Furthermore, free trade treaties also pave the way for US corporations to create jobs overseas. Millions have been created over there rather here because of NAFTA, the South Korea free trade treaty and more.

And finally, with all the jobs begin shipped away, or created away, from the United States, that meant downward pressure on wages, benefits and salaries. And the difference between the old higher wages and the new lower wages have been redistributed from the pockets of the middle class to the already fat wallets of the 1 percent.

This is precisely why the stock markets tripled in value, more or less, during the last four years of the Clinton regime.

It’s accurate to conclude that the primary purpose of the regime of free trade is to redistribute income upward, and to lower wages, salaries and benefits.

The result of all this has been to diminish the middle class by redistributing the tax bases for our schools and social safety nets to the 1 percent, increase poverty, and corrupt democracy in the USA. And that’s just a few of the negative things this inequality has done.

Now Wall Street Ronnie Wyden wants to continue this process of redistribution via the Trans Pacific Partnership, the biggest income redistribution scam of all time in favor of Wall Street and the 1 percent.

As for the Clinton regime, there were plenty things President Clinton did to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, but Reich has no intention of letting you in on this, like the free trade scams.

In other words, the political and economic game has been rigged, and Bill Clinton and his labor secretary Robert Reich played big roles in creating this inequality, and now Reich is trying to pretend that his boss and he played no role in creating this rigged game.

For the rest of Reich’s semi-accurate story, click the link below.

Why the Three Biggest Economic Lessons Were Forgotten–BillMoyers.com

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“That giant sucking sound predicted by Ross Perot commenced 20 years ago last week. It is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) vacuuming up U.S. jobs and depositing them in Mexico.

Independent presidential candidate Perot was right. NAFTA swept U.S. industry south of the border. It made Wall Street happy. It made multi-national corporations obscenely profitable. But it destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of American workers.

NAFTA’s backers promised it would create American jobs, just as promoters of the Korean and Chinese trade arrangements said they would and advocates of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal contend it will. They were — and still are — brutally wrong. NAFTA, the Korean deal and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization killed American jobs. They lowered wages. They diminished what America cherishes: opportunity. They contributed to the very ill that President Obama is crusading against: income inequality. There is no evidence the TPP would be any different. American workers need a new trade philosophy, one that protects them and puts people first, not corporations.”

Click on the link below for the complete story.

Fast Track to Poverty–Huffington Post

 

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Look at the graph above. As Nafta was making its way through congress in the early 1990s, more and more money was thrown at politicians of both parties. President Bill Clinton signed Nafta and it became law in December 1994. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs were shipped to Mexico. The difference between the old US wages and the new lower Mexican wages were redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising share prices and soaring dividends. Eventually an estimated 2.5 million US jobs went south, and the real number was probably much higher.

Meanwhile, massive amounts of textile products and shoes were shipped from American factories and contractors in Vietnam and China to Mexico, which utterly destroyed those sectors of the Mexican economy on behalf of rich American investors, and redistributed massive amounts of income from Mexican workers to those same investors. In addition, major US government subsidized corporations shipped massive amounts of chickens, corn and other produce to Mexico under the terms of the treaty, and put millions of Mexicans out of work in those sectors of the economy, and in the process, and via the same Wall Street mechanisms, redistributed income from the 99 percent of Mexico, to rich American investors. The results of Nafta put downward pressure on wages in Mexico and in the US. In Mexico, wages dropped nearly 30 percent in the first six years after the Nafta scam became law. All of this resulted in a massive rise in the US stock markets during the 1990s.

Nafta and other trade treaties let the rich pick the pockets of the 99 percent, and then they diverted some of their stolen gains to the political process, corrupting the political system even more, as can be seen in the graph above. Now President Obama has a team negotiating a new “corporate income redistribution treaty” called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). It’s goal is to jack up the prices of goods such as medicine, limit Internet freedom, redistribute more income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent, and destroy state and local labor and environmental regulations in the process, among other bad things.

The unstated result of what Obama is negotiating is a more corrupt government. The TPP will see the rich get richer by rigging the game in their favor even more than it already is, by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, and by throwing more of their ill gotten gains at politicians. This is particularly true in this post-Citizens United era, which was made by a very corrupt corporate wing of the US Supreme Court. That court is rigged against the 99 percent, as well as the US Constitution if its contents are not in harmony with the income redistribution scams the court backs.

Goldman Sachs will be awash with cash. So instead of giving Hilliary Clinton $200,000 a speech, they might up it to a half million. Let’s face it. She’s likely to run for president in 2016. The office has been profitable for her and Bill.

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Big Bucks are rigging the economic game. The Trans Pacific Partnership is nothing but a partnership between governments and big corporations to rip you and your children off by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, by shipping your jobs and tax bases overseas, and handing your local and state environmental and labor laws over to those multinational corporations, and curbing your abilities to use the Internet. The difference between the old higher wages in the USA and the new lower wages overseas will be redistributed into the pockets of the already rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices.

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The Trans Pacific Partnership is a massive income redistribution scam being negotiated by President Obama’s team. If this corporate trade treaty becomes law, hundreds of billions of dollars will be redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent every year for decades, and corporate control of local and state governments will increase. This scheme will drive millions of people from Latin America into the USA illegally, like Nafta did. The treaty will drive prescription drug prices higher, lower income for the bottom 90 percent of Americans, weaken our tax bases that support schools, local and state governments, and our social safety nets; but it will drive corporate profits, stock prices, and dividends higher. In doing so, this scam called a treaty will make the wealthy richer at the expense of everybody else. But it will have other negative consequences. Click on the link below for a list of them.

Trans Pacific Partnership Threatens to ….

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