Matt Wuerker for November 13, 2015

Boy, is this accurate…

and in 6,000 pages there can be many, many bad surprises, like putting the USA under UN rules rather than protecting our national sovereignty. -like mandating full government support for that evil hoax, global warming/climate change. (more $trillions down the black hole).

There can be bad news in six paragraphs, but those are also negotiated in secret, like starting a war.

I like the phrase ‘unrestricted competition’.

Republicans/Fox “news” viewers believe that phrase means ‘competition unrestricted by the government’.

They either do not acknowledge or do not know that every business seeks to restrict competition. In either case, they think it’s OKAY.

Many techniques are used:buying the competition (mergers and acquisitions like Exxon buying Mobil)tariffs and quotasbribing legislators campaign contributions and post career income in return for favorable regulations, tax breaks, favorable contractsamong others

Ted Cruz is right about corporate welfare. But let me know the next time he gets supports legislation that reduces any of it, especially if that legislation get passed by a Republican Congress.

For a period after the second world war, (the ONLY time the U.S. government did right for combat veterans), when we had the world market, the ability to supply many devastated countries with machinery and other necessities, and kept up building armaments to counter the Russians, we enjoyed the benefits of a REGULATED capitalist system. When Communism was a viable threat, corporate America treated many of us well, paid well, with benefits. Many things changed during the Sixties and Seventies, one being the ascension of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Since that time, the working middle class slept as its hard-earned rights and the unwritten contract between employer & employee were eroded. The savings of many seniors, WWII vets included, disappeared through financial de-regulation, scamming and outright thievery. After the fall of Communism, G.H.W. Bush promised us a “Peace Dividend”, but the gloves of the owners of industry came off. De-regulation picked up speed, thanks to the likes of Bill Clinton and his political wizard, Alan Greenspan. NAFTA was shoved down our throats, with all the promises of “More jobs for Americans!” and the most ridiculous one “A rising tide lifts all boats!”.NAFTA, we were distinctly told, was to make the United States, Canada and Mexico a solid economic bloc, to successfully compete with Europe and Asia. Is that what happened? Are we to believe that the Tran-Pacific Partnership will benefit the working middle-class (or what’s left of us) American citizen?I think not.

Now that corporations are “people”, and are a clear minority, they need  NAFTA/TPP type protection. Copyrights should be infinite to protect their IP, and source code for engine-controls, voting machines, etc should never be made accessible to the public. Reverse engineering should be a capital offense. It’s been long enough that their rights and protections have been suppressed.

The Constitution provides for reasonable periods to control intellectual property. Laws, like for pharmaceuticals, have long provided for corporate manipulation, and profits. Copyright, also limited on time frame, and protective rules have actually been altered there, but for the better protection of authors.

TPP though, like most does indeed have too much in it to control impacts and “unexpected consequences”.