So I said... #18 for April 15-21

Another more-or-less weekly compilation of comment replies and random thoughts posted on other sites, this one covering April 15 to April 21.

Two notes on style: As always, at the top of each item I try to include some context, at least enough to make it clear what I'm responding to. If I need to add context here to what I originally said, it will be in square brackets ([ ]) in italics.

Also, both relies to my comments and my replies to other comments on the same original post (if you follow that) are grouped together. 

With that said, let's get to it. And oh yeah, comments and reactions are always welcome.

== 

2026-04-15
[Re a WaPo op-ed on a proposal in Connecticut to limit/regulate self-service grocery checkouts.] 

It is, of course, not surprising that a newspaper with an openly declared editorial bias in favor of "the free market" - that is, favoring corporations over the public and the bosses over workers - would carry something from "a newsletter on the consequences of overregulation" without a whisper of a concern about the consequences of under-regulation.

But as to the particular case, I refuse to use the self-checkouts on principle because I am aware of how they are marketed to the corporations.

Simply put, the pitch is that the company can boast about "service" and "speed" and "convenience" while the real impact is to get customers to do more of the work so the company can hire fewer workers. The net effect is that they are job-killers, especially of the sort of entry-level jobs long lauded by corporate America as a "way into the job market" for the young and those lacking specialized skills.
So limit them. Regulate them. It's probably unrealistic, but I'd say get rid of them as not only imposing costs on the jobs market (meaning our neighbors) but because those costs are unnecessary, recalling how long and how well we got along without them.
In the meantime, I'll deal with the "slowness" and "inconvenience" of waiting in a grocery store line. So should you.
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2026-04-15
[“So should you?” Wow, talk about sanctimonious.]

1. There is nothing either smug or condescending about my statement. There are occasions where the wider impacts of our choices makes YMMV inadequate as a response. I say this is one. (If you want to mentally add "unless limited by physical inability/disability" to my closing, go ahead.)

2. Attempting to wave off my argument with a dismissive sneer is not a rebuttal.
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2026-04-15
[Let the businesses run themselves and legislature keep your nose out if what they’re doing isn't illegal.]

Did it ever occur to you that everything is legal until it's not? "Don't act unless it's illegal" would have blocked every law ever passed anywhere. Say what you will about this proposal, but the principle you're applying needs much better definition.
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2026-04-15
[proposal of 8 regular checkout lanes per 4 self-checkouts required 4 cashiers on duty at all times regardless of traffic; cashiers are "jobs for buggy whip makers."]

Just for clarity, as I read this, a store with (for example) eight self-checkouts would not have to have four cashiers always on duty at a register regardless of traffic but rather that it would have to have a minimum of four such lanes that could be staffed if traffic called for it.

If it did intend what you say, I'd agree that was silly. But I strongly suspect, indeed expect, it does not but was if anything (and assuming there is an issue) the result of sloppy language that could easily be corrected by amendment.

As for the rest, as the AI-driven self-checkout wonderworld you image for grocery stores inevitably starts to spread to the rest of retail, I'd advise you to be careful what you wish for.

==

2026-04-15
[WaPo article: SCOTUS making religion outweigh all other considerations; here, allowing exemptions from public school vaccination requirements.]

I will say this and only this: We told you so. 

If you're surprised by any of this: You were warned.

If you say "I didn't know," you just weren't paying attention.

And most particularly if you say anything like "I voted for Trump, but I didn't vote for that," yes you did. It's on you. Because we told you so. You were warned. And you just wouldn't listen.
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2026-04-15
[Atheists have worst of it. Discrimination not only tolerated, celebrated; have to follow ALL laws, can't pick/choose."]

In at least some ways, the legal question about atheists has already been answered. In US v. Seeger (1965), SCOTUS ruled that conscientious objector status under the draft was available to non-theists if they had beliefs that if I recall the term correctly "occupied the same position" in their life as a traditional religion would. In Welsh v. US (1970), the Court expanded that to make explicit that those beliefs need not be religious or called such, that a personal moral code would suffice.

In short, if you had a set of core beliefs that would guide your judgment in the same way traditional religious principles (supposedly) did, you were eligible for CO status. (It was still tough to get for anyone not a member of a traditional "peace church," but you were eligible.)

It'd be very interesting to see someone pursue a demand for an exemption from some civic duty on the grounds of their atheist beliefs being as valid as those of right-wing Xians to see if the Court would be true to its declared principles. The downside is I'm afraid such a suit would be successful, ripping out another support from the already-rickety concept of community responsibility. 

==

2026-04-15
[re article on decision of MT SupCt state constitution provided broad protection for trans rights, wondered if GOPpers in Congress would try to pass law overruling it.]

The "supremacy clause" in the Constitution says federal law can (depending on the particulars) override state law and the same is generally true about state versus local law - but here we're not talking about a state law but a state constitution and federal law cannot override that. And as I think the article notes, the guiding principle is that your rights within a given state are protected to the extent guaranteed by the state or federal constitution, whichever is greater.

This is why the efforts of The Orange Overlord and RFK "My father would be ashamed of me" Jr. to cripple trans health care have revolved not around outright bans but through threats to cut off various sources of funding, i.e., banning it through fiscal blackmail, making such care inaccessible, even though not technically illegal.

==

2026-04-16
[oral arguments on CO SupCt case ordering reopening of trans health care clinic noted trial court sympathetic to the plaintiffs, denied relief for fear of potential reactions from feds re hospital financing.]

District Court [trial] Judge Ericka F.H. Englert was wrong. She was not being asked to "call the bluff of the federal government." She was being asked to rule in accordance with the Colorado constitution without relying on speculation of what actions the feds might take outside the court system.

And, oh yeah, there is no federal law involved here. Neither an Executive Order nor an agency declaration is a law.

It's an indication of how far were have come towards authoritarianism that even a state judge is treating whatever foams out of the mouths of RFK "My dad would be ashamed of me" Jr. and hydroxychloroquine fan Mehmet "I really am from" Oz as instantly becoming law.

==

2026-04-17
[DOJ demanding Reddit turn over personal info re user who criticized ICE]

"Be careful what you say" is exactly what we should not do. Be honest, yes. Be truthful, yes. If you are asserting particular facts (as opposed to expressing opinion), be correct or at least have a reasonable basis to believe you are correct. (In other words, don't just make crap up. There are more than enough hard facts to suffice.) In any event, do not engage in the self-censorship of "be careful." Rather, be defiant.

As for this particular case, the latest news I can find is that John Doe is going to file a motion to quash the subpoena. Personally, I would think the absence of any legitimate law enforcement purpose would suffice, but we'll have to keep watching.

==

2026-04-18
[comment on YT vid: "I never imagined I'd see the rise of the 4th Reich in this country." response: because people "got complacent," ignored warning signs. then: "not that simple; super rich have been undermining the system."]

"It's not that simple" is a truism, but we should never forget that it implicitly acknowledges that the original assertion [i.e., that people got complacent] is indeed part of the cause. Shifting blame does not absolve us of our responsibility as citizens.

==

2026-04-18
[meme cited CNN story to say 62M cishet men "attend" "online rape academy" re sex with women either drunk, drugged, or asleep]

First, I found the link to the original CNN article. I also found an analysis by Snopes.

(The link is to a re-posting because Snopes.com is now behind a paywall.)

The criticism Snopes had is that the “62 million” figure is an estimate of the total traffic to the entire website over that month, which safely does not consist of 62 million individual cishet men going once each.

And please don’t anyone try to claim I’m downplaying or minimizing the horror here. It’s rather my conviction that when what you can prove is bad enough, exaggeration only invites dismissal.

Footnote: What was not clear from either the CNN article or Snopes was if the whole site is the sort of stuff that is the topic here or is it a pornsite where that is one part.

So I bit the bullet and went there.

It is indeed a site with what I suppose would be the usual range of material; I didn't even find a link on the main page to "sleep" content, although I may well have missed it or it might be deliberately buried. (The main page being as far as I went.)
 
I think this reinforces my concern about exaggeration. You never want to be in a position where your argument leans on a number where a more accurate figure could generate the response "Actually, it's only such-and-so," thereby trying to dismiss your entire argument even if the "only" number is more than enough to make the point.

==

2026-04-18
[re-post opened "Republicans just introduced a bill to force doctors [to] build a government list of trans people."]

Links, dammit! What GOPpers? Where? This reads like it’s referring to a state-level proposal in which case “where” matters in terms of resistance.

Certainly it is painfully obvious to anyone who looks that the ultimate goal is to wipe trans folks from society altogether, to drive them so far into the closet that they couldn’t even find the door even with a flashlight. But while resistance is rooted in awareness, it requires actionable knowledge to bloom.

[Posts and memes with no source provided is an on-going complaint of mine.]

==

2026-04-18
So the real estate salesman who became The Orange Overlord convincing people to vote for him on a promise of “no more wars” is now saying the federal government “can’t take care of day care ... Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.”

Why? “We’re fighting wars.”

So everything that doesn't involve being ever-more ready to kill ever-more people has to be up to individual states.

I'd say "Any questions?" but if at this point you still have any, it's too late for you.

==

2026-04-18
[Re why some folks don't realize are trans until well into adulthood.]

I thank you for this even though as a cis male I have little to add to the conversation.

I do have one passing observation: When folks say "I always knew," I don't think they're saying they had "independently formulate[d] an entirely different theory of gender" but rather that looking back later, they "always knew" that things just felt, well, wrong; not that they always knew "I'm really a boy" or "really a girl," but that what was expected of them didn't fit somehow.

Thanks for adding to my understanding, including to some degree of myself.

==

2026-04-19
[Re April 17 The Fucking News.]

This certainly up to your usual standard. (How's THAT for a politician's answer?)

However, the phrase "will 'restore the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE at the CDC'" sent a little shiver through me.

"Gold standard" is a term used regularly in trying to deny gender-affirming care on the grounds that the evidence is "low quality" - most commonly by people who don't know the first thing about the scale or what it's for. 

The term "gold standard" in this context is usually taken to mean blind randomized controlled studies. The problem is that a great deal of modern medicine is not based on such studies but on observational studies, i.e., "what has been tried, what worked, what didn't," which are by definition lower quality.

What's more, it is sometimes impossible to do those kinds of controlled studies in an ethical manner. Consider puberty blockers and hormone therapy. It's well-established that they work and how they work. Doing such a study today would mean denying people needed medication, giving people undesired medication, or both.

And blind? How is a young person to not know if they are or are not going through puberty? If they are or aren't experiencing the effects of prescribed hormones?

Hearing The Orange Overlord reference "the GOLD STANDARD OF SCIENCE" in the context of the CDC does not give hope; it gives me pause. We need to watch this space.

==

2026-04-19
[Oligarch Watch: AI cos push use chatbots for guidance on personal health care.]

I thought this might be worthy of inclusion. Back in November I took a YouGov survey related to public perceptions about the use of AI in healthcare. Three of the questions asked for general responses rather than picking from among multiple choices. This is quoting my responses.

Q: What ethical considerations are most important to think about when adding AI tools to healthcare?
I was told by my surgeon some years ago “You treat the patient, not the X-ray.” The more we use AI, the more that adage is reversed. During my recent hospitalization my PCP came by on their rounds, during which they displayed not through words but tone and demeanor a genuine personal concern for my health, something of which AI is incapable of expressing or feeling, at best offering instead merely an algorithmically-driven facade of concern, a programmed pretense, which well could be likened to the comforting reassurances of the scammer.

Q: What is your overall impression of AI in healthcare?
Not ready for prime time. For now, it’s a bandwagon promising what it can’t (and perhaps never will) deliver, driven less by public health than by the profit-driven preferences of the corporate spectrum of health care (i.e., hospitals and the insurance industry) who pursue a goal of “efficiency” (read as “fewer employees”) and would, as I suggested earlier, “treat the X-ray, not the patient,” with us coming to exist less as patients than as datasets.

Q: Is there anything else about AI in healthcare that you would like to share with us?
AI is good for, indeed excellent at, analyzing large amounts of data, producing results that can be viewed and considered mathematically because that’s what they are - mathematical derivations from mathematical data. But healthcare in general and medicine within that reach involves more than mere data but also includes personalities and foibles and trust and other human interactions along with unavoidable judgment calls driven by such non-mathematical considerations, all of which are beyond its capabilities. Which makes the use of chat boxes by consumers for health information advice fraught with risk and worse as shown by recent suits against various companies whose chat boxes are accused of having encouraged teenager users to commit suicide. AI simply is not up the task to which the health care industry is trying to set it in pursuit of profit.

==

2026-04-20
[Open ended YouGov poll Q: "How do you feel about the use of AI in making movies?"]

I can see its use as a tool in areas such as special effects in ways similar to how previous technologies have been used to make them more realistic. Beyond such areas, that is, where it functions as an improved version of already-existing tools employed under the same sorts of conditions, direction, and control as those, I would strongly prefer it was not used at all.

==

2026-04-21
[Ruling en banc, 5th CCoA upheld TX law requiring 10 Commandments in every classroom.]

Wait wait wait.

"They compared it to the Pledge of Allegiance - which is also religious, with its “one Nation, under God” line - to argue that students aren’t forced to say it."

Did they actually say the part about the Pledge being religious? You say they made the comparison but don't present it as a quote, so it's not clear.

Because if they did, I clearly recall a SCOTUS decision that said the Pledge was NOT religious and "under God" was a mere "civic exercise" which had at most a "tinge" of religion - which was why having to say it did not intrude on the rights of atheists.

In either event, I have to say I disagree on one point: The majority was not "delusional." That knew damn well what they were doing and they did it consciously and deliberately.
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2026-04-21
[SCOTUS will deny cert, and it will stand.]
Just to make it clear, it will stand in the 5th Circuit, nowhere else. However, the danger there is that it will serve as precedent for other circuits to consider. So either it will spread to significant parts of the country or at some point there will be a split in circuits, at which point SCOTUS would feel entirely justified in stepping in, even feeling obligated to.

Remember this - always!

I wrote about this more than a year ago. In fact, I first wrote about it more than 29 years ago. But events of late have pushed this back to the forefront of my political thoughts, pushing hard enough to get through a wall of struggles with burnout and depression to get me to write this, even if it's the only thing I manage to get out this summer.

Because I want the following quote burned into the consciousness of every single leftist, every single progressive, every single liberal, every single person on the entire left half of the American political spectrum and even those to the right of that line who are not yet beyond the reach of reality. And it is this: and yes it is deliberately in a great big bold font to emphasize its importance:

“‘Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservatives’ goal."
- George Will, syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Yes. That's what he wrote. "Back to 1900." And every single thing conservatives say and do, every single thing they promote, every single proposal they make, every single emotional button they go to push, should be seen through that lens. They want to reproduce the social and economic relations that existed 125 years ago. They want to, in their own words, go "Back to 1900." And that is exactly what they have been trying, are trying, and will continue to try to do. Go back.

Back, that is, to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of widespread child labor and twelve- or fifteen-hour work days and six- or even seven-day work weeks. Before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death.

Back to a time before environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws, a time when patent "medicines" were common and government "regulation" was more about promoting corporate interests than regulating them because caveat emptor was the rule of the day.

Back to before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance, before any kid of public insurance, including for health, was even under discussion and decades before it was taken seriously..

“Back to 1900.” Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition and the way to deal with poverty was to shove it out of sight.

Back to a time when education was largely a perk of privilege, only half of children went to school, only 6.4 percent graduated high school, and the majority of adults had no more than eight years of schooling.

Back before civil or voting rights laws, back when women couldn’t vote, wives were chattel, blacks were either “good n*****s” who got called “boy” or “uppity n*****s” who got lynched, racism (against Irish, Italians, Chinese, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians were sick or perverted while as far as “polite society” was concerned, bi, trans, or other flavors of the queer community simply didn’t exist.

Back to a time when valuing Protestant Christians over other religions and other people's rights was unremarkably ordinary and some, including atheists, were subject not only to social discrimination but also legal barriers to participation in society.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite and powerful were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss.

“Back to 1900” is indeed “a serviceable summation” of the right wing’s goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to benefit their selfish, warped, morally warped lives.

Maya Angelou wisely said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

We should have been paying attention when the fanatics were openly declaring what they wanted, who they were and are, and we either ignored it or dismissed it as hyperbole.

We shouldn’t have. Because they showed us, they told us directly - and we didn’t listen.

We can at least listen now. And then do more.

And we, each of us, can start by burning that quote into our minds.

Footnotes: For those who may not know, George Will is what passes for an intellectual among the right. And if anyone doubts the quote, I still have the column that I clipped out of my local paper. And it is a quote, not a paraphrase.
 

062 The Erickson Report for September 22 to October 5

 

 

062 The Erickson Report for September 22 to October 5

School book bans
https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/banned-books-in-Texas-school-districts-database-17359043.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/Texas-book-bans-driven-by-GOP-pressure-not-parents-17362170.php
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/31/2119964/-Republicans-sue-to-force-school-district-private-bookseller-Barnes-Noble-to-remove-two-books

Clowns
https://www.aol.com/news/massachusetts-gop-voters-size-trump-041243830-093431758.html
=
https://www.qsaltlake.com/news/2018/07/26/star-parker/
https://www.rawstory.com/women-not-controlling-their-bodies/

Outrages
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/12/disgusting-starbucks-help-its-workers-student-debt-unless-theyre-union
https://www.forbes.com/profile/howard-schultz/?sh=41d3889052c6
https://perfectunion.us/exclusive-starbucks-hit-with-charges-over-sweeping-illegal-union-busting-scheme/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/04/smells-illegal-starbucks-ceo-says-unionized-workers-will-be-excluded-wage-hikes
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/06/15/disgusting-starbucks-threatens-trans-health-benefits-union-celebrates-150-wins
=
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/08/abhorrent-and-anti-democratic-outrage-dnc-panel-blocks-vote-dark-money-ban
https://theintercept.com/2022/09/14/dnc-overrule-convention-bylaws/

Climate change
https://www.juancole.com/2022/08/pakistan-emergency-biblical.html
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3192559/typhoon-muifa-lashes-eastern-china-forcing-16-million-people
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/16/coastal-alaska-storm-surge-flooding-winds/

060 The Erickson Report for August 24 to September 7

 

 

060 The Erickson Report for August 24 to September 7

- Good News from Colombia and Brazil

- Good News from Singapore

- Good News from Yelp

- Some notes about the economy

- Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages

- A reminder what must not be forgotten

The Erickson Report is news and informed commentary from a self-described "proud member of the 'woke left.' (It's agenda: Justice. Compassion. Community.)"

As "advocacy journalism," we deal in facts and logic without every denying we have a point of view on the topics discussed.

Comments and reactions are welcomed either here or at Http://whoviating.blogspot.com. 

045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 1: Good News on the Minimum Wage

045 The Erickson Report for December 29 to January 12, Page 1: Good News on the Minimum Wage

I know we're all aching for some Good News, so try this on: On January 1, the minimum wage will rise in 21 states and dozens of cities and counties, with four more states acting later in the year. This is the result of nine years of labor activism springing from the "Fight for 15" movement among fast food workers, which started in 2012.

These increases are due to cost-of-living adjustments and scheduled raises written into local minimum wage laws as more states and localities act on their own in the face of determined inaction at the federal level. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and hasn't been raised for 12 years, the longest it has gone without an increase in its history, which dates back to the Great Depression.

As of January 1, the lowest minimum wage among those 21 states will be $8.42 for small employers in Minnesota, a rather paltry amount but still more than a dollar an hour and more than $2400 a year above the federal level, and in over half of the 21 states the minimum will be at least $12 per hour. In two cases - large employers in California and in New York City along with Long Island and Westchester county - the minimum hourly wage has hit the magic number of $15.

Although several states already have planned increases that will eventually raise their minimum hourly wage to $15, there is still a long way to go, considering not only that by the time they get to $15 it won't be worth $15 any more - in fact it already isn't - but that in 20 states the minimum wage is still the poverty federal level of $7.25.

And I do mean poverty level: Working full time, year-round at $7.25 an hour is $15,080. The federal poverty guideline for a household of two people is $17,420.

But don't let that stop you from savoring the fact that a combination of labor activism and consumer concern - the latter of which, by the way, is why Amazon raised its minimum to $15, as it is so loudly trumpeting now - activism and concern are what has made these gains possible.

12.3 - Good News: Andrew Puzder out

Good News: Andrew Puzder out

On another bit of Good News, TheRump's nominee to head the department of labor, fast-food chain billionaire Andrew Puzder has pulled out after it became clear that the worker-hating Andy Putz, who opposes the minimum wage, overtime, and mandatory sick time allowances, has a history of ripping off his employees, and loves worker robots, was probably going to lose.

Some suggest the real reason for his inadequate support among the GOPpers was that he favors immigration reform but in a way, I don't care. He's gone, and that's a win and that's Good News.

247.2 - Some updates on secret trade negotiations

Some updates on secret trade negotiations

Several times in the past I have made mention of a series of secret international trade deals being negotiated. Best known among them is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which would create a "free trade zone" among 12 Pacific Rim nations which together account for 40 percent of the world economy - making it biggest trade deal since NAFTA, a deal which has been responsible for the loss of millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs in the US in exchange for the creation of millions of low-paid service industry jobs.

Opposition to the TPP among environmental and labor groups, already burned by NAFTA, have lead some nations, including Canada, to have second thoughts about the deal.

But not in the US, where Barack Obama continues to push for it, so much so that he regarded getting fast track authority for the agreement - under which Congress cannot amend the deal, only give it an up or down vote - to be one of the great achievements of his second term and so much so that the State Department upgraded Malaysia's ranking on human trafficking from, in effect, "horrible" to merely "very bad" so that it could stay in the deal.

And in fact, the deal was finalized last October and was signed in February.

So why do I bring this up? For one that, because that is not the end: The deal is signed but not ratified. It still has to be approved by Congress. One reason I haven't pushed this more is that everyone knows the deal is not going to come up before the election because no one in Congress wants to deal with it: They don't want to anger their corporate donors by opposing it or their voters by supporting it.

There has been some concern about the pact's supporters trying to get it rammed through in the lame duck session in December, when there will be less political pressure because it is just after an election when most people won't be paying much attention and some members of Congress won't be coming back so they don't have to care about the voters but they still have campaign debts to pay off and so big donors to please.

That possibility brings up to the hook for today's discussion of it.

Just before the West Virginia primary, Hillary Clinton came out in opposition to a "lame duck" vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This takes her beyond her previous statements mildly opposing TPP and she also made a strong statement criticizing our trade agreements in general.

Remember, Clinton had been in favor of the TPP; in fact she called it "the gold standard" for trade agreements. But in the face of clear opposition among the public and Bernie Sanders making it an issue in the campaign, she has gradually shifted her position from support to opposition. Her latest statement is the strongest expression of opposition yet.

Which is encouraging but unfortunately, there is a question as to how sincere this new-found opposition really is. Her campaign has recently sent up a trial balloon about a VP pick, trying to cement her position as the presumptive nominee. Unhappily,  the name hanging from that trial balloon is Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, a moderate Democrat with some degree of progressive cred - but who is also a "free trade" zealot who has been the Senate's most fanatical supporter of the TPP.

Which in turn brings to mind the statement a few months back from Tom Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, who said not to worry about what Clinton is saying about the TPP now because once she is office she will flip back to supporting it.

The fact is, no matter the outcome in November, coming in January if not in December, this is going to be a big deal and we have to be ready for a fight.

I should also note that the TPP is only one of three massive trade deals being negotiated in secret. Beyond the TPP there is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which looks to do for North Atlantic trade what the TPP does for the Pacific Rim, and the Trade in Services Agreement, or TiSA, which looks to do for commercial services what the others do for commercially-produced products.

Together they represent the creation of a world economy where the benefit of corporations, especially transnational corporations, is not just standard operating procedure, it is a legal requirement of international treaties.

The TTIP is under strenuous attack in Europe from environmental, labor, and consumer groups. Recently, Greenpeace has warned that European Union, or EU, standards on the environment and public health are at risk of being undermined by the agreement. The charged was based on 248 pages of classified documents from the TTIP trade talks that were leaked to the group.

Greenpeace EU director Jorgo Riss said the documents

confirm what we have been saying for a long time: TTIP would put corporations at the center of policy-making, to the detriment of environment and public health.

A serious particular issue is the proposal to replace the EU's "precautionary principle" - under which manufacturers of potentially harmful products have to show they are sufficiently safe before they can enter the market - with the less strict US "managed risk" approach, under which hazards are dealt with after they arise from a product already in the market, not before.

According to the National Resources Defense Council, there are over 80,000 chemicals now in use in products in the US, most of which haven't been adequately tested for their effects on human health. The TTIP would spread that practice to Europe.

In addition, there have been serious charges the TTIP would be used to protect the megabanks from claims by European investors who allege that they were cheated during the debt crisis. It would so this by deflecting such claims to an "arbitration panel" dominated by the same economic interests that benefitted from the fraud in the first place.

Word is that the negotiators hope to have a deal ready to sign late this year, with the timing related to avoiding it becoming an issue in the US presidential campaign.

It should anyway.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-75-part-4.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2091-update-on-fast-track.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/03/04/3756197/trudeau-visit-preview/
http://www.care2.com/causes/obama-pushes-tpp-despite-overwhelming-concerns.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/07/2126-outrage-of-week-state-dept-to.html
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/10/05/3709061/tpp-agreement-reached-environmental-concerns-remain/
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/8/1481868/-Obama-signs-TPP-largest-corporate-coup-in-history
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Clinton-Commits-No-TPP-F-by-Dave-Johnson-Corporations_Hillary-Clinton_Issues_Tpp-Trans-pacific-Partnership-160509-882.html
http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/05/188713/clinton%E2%80%99s-vp-trial-balloon-can-she-really-be-full-air
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34629-chamber-of-commerce-lobbyist-tom-donohue-clinton-will-support-tpp-after-election
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/08/2172-more-on-three-secret-trade-deals.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36185746
https://www.nrdc.org/
https://www.nrdc.org/issues/toxic-chemicals
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44603.htm

244.1 - Good News: Wisconsin "right-to-work" law struck down

Good News: Wisconsin "right-to-work" law struck down

Okay, as always or at least whenever possible, we start with some good news.

Despite their name, right-to-work laws have nothing to do with having a right to work, that is, a right to a job sufficient to provide for you and, if you have one, your family.

Instead, they are state laws - or in some cases state constitutional amendments - that declare that unions cannot require people working at unionized workplaces to join the union or pay dues or pay some sort of fee to the union, but that at the same time those unions are required to have all such free-riders covered by the benefits in the union contract. That is, they have to represent them for free. Such laws or constitutional provisions exist in 26 states and are widely and quite correctly seen as intended to weaken and where possible undermine unions so we can go back to the good old days of the nineteen-teens.

Right wingers defend right-to-work on the grounds that, quoting one, "No one should be forced to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment." But what they're really saying, then, is that those people should be able to have the higher pay that union contracts bring, they should have the better working conditions, the paid vacation time, the paid sick time, all the benefits of unions, without having to do anything for them - they should, that is, be collecting free stuff. Which in a slightly different context, would have these same right-wingers calling them lazy welfare cheats.

Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou

Anyway, getting to the news, when he came into office, Wisconsin governor Scott WalkAllOverYou insisted that he had no interest in establishing a right-to-work law in Wisconsin. He was lying, of course, and in March 2015 Wisconsin became a right-to-work state.

The law was challenged and the good news is that on April 8 it was struck down as violating the Wisconsin state constitution, being a seizure of union property without compensation since now, unlike before, they must extend benefits to workers who don't pay dues.

The down side is that this was a County Circuit court decision, subject to appeal and with Walker by some I have to admit clever politics having pretty much packed the state supreme court with cronies, the future is not bright.

But for now, I will still call it good news, a win for the rights of labor and working men and women, that has pushed the foul and welfare-for-the-rich issue of right-to-work laws back into the public debate.

Sources cited in links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/4/12/1514205/-Big-blow-to-Republicans-and-Scott-Walker-Right-to-Work-ruled-unconstitutional
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392373328/targeting-unions-right-to-work-movement-bolstered-by-wisconsin

233.1 - Good News: minimum wage workers get a raise

Good News: minimum wage workers get a raise

Two bits of good news to start the year: First, minimum wage workers in 14 states got a raise as of January 1. In 12 of those states, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia, the increase came as a result of legislative action.

In the other two - Colorado and South Dakota - the increase is due to a cost of living increase tied to inflation.

The new minimums in these states range from a low of $8/hour in Arkansas up to $10/hour in California and Massachusetts. All of them ae clearly above the paltry federal minimum of $7.25/hour - and while there are still not enough to live on, the increases are still Good News.


Sources cited in links:
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/275768/14-states-raise-minimum-wage/
http://www.natlawreview.com/article/new-year-new-wages-minimum-wage-rates-around-states

222.7 - The pursuit of profit is the baseline cause of economic injustices

The pursuit of profit is the baseline cause of economic injustices

And yes, that pursuit of profit distorts our economy and our society. The pursuit of profit is the baseline cause of income inequality, it is the baseline cause of poverty, it is the baseline cause of unemployment, it is the baseline cause of homelessness, it is the baseline cause of hunger.

The pursuit of profit does not allow for the common good, it does not allow for the advancement or the benefit of the community as a whole, it does not allow for "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few - or the one." In fact, the  pursuit of profit declares the opposite: not even the needs, but the desires of the one outweigh the needs of all the rest.

Just consider one example: The Wall Street Journal has reported on "a severe shortage of midtier apartments," meaning apartments with a rental cost range "aimed at the working class." This shortage has driven up rents for lower- and middle-income-earners, with a market segment average of $845 a month - a daunting amount for many of today’s part-timers and even many full-timers.

The reason for this is simple: It costs about as much to develop a luxury apartment complex for the rich and well-off as it does for one for low- or moderate-income people. But the rental income on the luxury apartments is, obviously, much higher, with rents nationwide averaging over $1700 a month - more than double those for people futher down the income scale. As a result, since 2002, the supply of cheaper apartments has shrunk by 1.6% - there are fewer less-expensive apartments than there were in 2002 - while the number of luxury units has gone up by 31%. Put all that together with ordinary population growth and you have more people finding fewer apartments with escalating rents which fewer and fewer can afford, to the point where any sort of housing becomes out of reach for them.

Which in turn leads to the estimate contained in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Annual Homeless Assessment Report for 2014 that there are close to 580,000 people homeless on any given night in the US and the estimate by the Urban League that around 2.3 million Americans are homeless for some period of time at some point during the year.

At the same time, according to Census Bureau’s homeownership survey, in the first quarter of 2015 some 17.3 million housing units in the US were vacant, a figure that does not include those which are vacant only part of the year. That is about 7.5 empty places to live for every person who is homeless at some point in a year and 30 empty spaces for everyone homeless on a given night.

That state of affairs does not exist because of some force of nature or some ineluctable law of physics. It exists because of the drive for profit being placed above the needs of living, breathing human beings.

It is the drive for profit the generates unemployment, unemployment that is actually far higher than the supposed "official" rate. In fact, if you include those who are working part-time only because they can't find full-time work and an estimate of the number of "discouraged workers," those who dropped out of the labor force because they came to despair of ever finding work and so who are not counted in the unemployment numbers, unemployment is estimated at nearly 23%, Depression-era levels.

This is because corporations and their lackeys see employees as a cost, as something to be minimized. We've heard it so many times we can repeat the mantras from memory: "Businesses create jobs." No, they don't. Businesses incur labor costs in the pursuit of profit. That's why, despite the horrendous predictions of massive unemployment if the minimum wage is raised, such predictions have never come true in the past - because businesses do not make a practice of keeping employees they do not need, especially those lowly people at the bottom of the wage scale who obviously are unimportant because if they were important they would be making more money.

A full employment economy is possible; there certainly is enough work to do. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers puts out a report card on the US's infrastructure, something I will say on my own behalf I was talking about before most politicians even knew what the term meant. The Society considered 16 areas of concern, such as dams, bridges, and public parks, under four categories: water and environment, transportation, public facilities, and energy.  Eleven of those 16 areas rated a grade of D, with only one getting as high a B-.

So yes, there is a great deal of work to do, but it's not getting done because there is no profit in it for private corporations and the rich are not willing to pay the taxes needed for the government to be able to afford to do it. The pursuit of profit not only keeps us unemployed and underemployed, it threatens our infrastructure and therefore our health and safety by its indifference.

And it keeps us poor.

Poverty in two states - North Dakota and Colorado - is at or below the level it was at in 2007, before the great recession. In every other state, poverty is above the level it was at in 2007. Between 2007 and 2014, median household income for non-elderly families dropped over 9%. Over essentially that same period, specifically from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2015, corporate profits after taxes went up 37.5%.

Indeed, the pursuit of profit keeps us so poor that some 1.5 million American families subsist on as little as $2 per person per day, a 70% increase since the 1990s, people who are so far on the fringes, whose lives are so unstable, exposed to so many risks, going from one crisis to the next, that researchers said the stories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse seemed like the norm rather the exception.

Those 1.5 million families include 3 million children, because as the pursuit of profit keeps us poor, it particularly keeps our children poor.

According to a study by the Urban Institute, 22% of US children, more than 16 million of them, live in households with income below the federal poverty line, a figure which itself is absurdly low: The federal poverty line for a family of four is $24,250, and research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that to cover basic expenses. What's more, nearly 40% of American children live in poverty for at least one year of their life before they reach the age of 18. And, it shouldn't be necessary to point out but I will, the figures were far worse for black children than for white children. All those children experience unmet needs, low-quality schools, and unstable circumstances that can damage their chances for success as adults.

That, too, is the result of the pursuit of profit. And what really tops this off is that in all too many cases, it's not even that some enterprise, some project that could provide employment and stability to a struggling family, is not profitable, it's because it's not profitable enough. It's not that the corporations can't make money, it's that they can't make as much as they want. Because the drive for profit, the thirst for profit, even overrules profit.

If we are ever to build a just society, or at least an economically just society, a minimally just society,
- a society in which there are jobs, decent jobs at decent pay for everyone who wants one,
- in which yes, there may still be rich but no one will be poor,
- in which yes, there may still be McMansions but no one will be without a decent place to live,
- in which yes, there may still be those who will indulge in various nips and tucks and facelifts and the rest of the vanities but no one will lack for adequate health care,
- in which yes, there may still be those who can pop off to Paris for the weekend but no one will lack for the means of travel and the opportunity for recreation and the arts,
- in which opportunities for life-long education will be freely available to all,
then we will have to accept that our economy, even our society, is built on a false premise, a premise that says profit is a goal rather than the very most it properly can be allowed to be, which is a means.

Sources cited in links:
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18441/the-1s-houses-are-getting-bigger-and-swankier-while-average-americans-strug
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/grades/
http://www.epi.org/blog/in-virtually-every-state-the-poverty-rate-is-still-higher-than-before-the-recession/
http://www.epi.org/blog/income-stagnation-in-2014-shows-the-economy-is-not-working-for-most-families/
http://ycharts.com/indicators/corporate_profits
http://www.dailycensored.com/39-of-us-children-spend-at-least-one-year-in-poverty-75-of-black-children-demanding-obvious-reforms-and-arrests-or-need-more-pain/
http://www.urban.org/
http://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000369-Child-Poverty-and-Adult-Success.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-shocking-reach-of-us-child-poverty/
http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html

217.2 - More on the three secret trade deals

More on the three secret trade deals

I told you last week that this week I would tell you what we know about two still-mostly-secret trade deals, trade deal which if you hadn't heard about, don't feel bad, you weren't supposed to.

The Terrible Trio of trade deals now being negotiated in secret include the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, and the Trade in Services Agreement, or TiSA. I've mentioned the TPP several times; it's the latter two I said I tell you more about this week.

Taking the TTIP first, this is a proposed deal that has been negotiated in secret between the US and the trade office of the European Union since June 2013. In essence, it seeks to do to the Atlantic side of the world what the TPP seeks to do to the Pacific side. Or, to be more exact, I should say the North Atlantic part of the world, as no African nation is part of this negotiation.

What we know about the TTIP has come through leaks and the occasional self-serving release by one or more of the parties involved and it is more than enough to get any sane person who is not a corporate executive, flak, lobbyist, or toady to be deeply worried.

One group called the agreement a "corporate lobbying paradise" because in 2012, during the run-up to the start of the negotiations, the European Commission’s trade department had 597 behind-closed-door meetings with lobbyists to discuss the plan. 528 of those meetings (88%) were with business lobbyists while only 53 (9%) were with public interest groups. The remainder were with other actors such as public institutions and academics. So, for every meeting with a trade union or consumer group, there were 10 with companies and industry federations.

What's more, there is clear evidence that during that time the trade department actively sought the involvement of corporate lobbyists, while holding trade unionists and other public interest groups at arm's length.

Not just before, but also during the negotiations, corporations are playing a shaping role. Some formulations in draft texts which have been leaked are identical to proposals of company lobbyists.

Then there is what is in the deal. Now, in fairness I have to say that the deal is not finalized so some of this may change, but considering the history of how such secret agreements go, any changes are at least as likely to make it worse than to make it better.

A big and important issue is the inclusion of what's called Investor-State Dispute Settlement. What that means is that foreign investors and corporations would have the right to sue for damages if they believe that they have suffered losses because of laws or measures of the targeted country. This would include environmental and consumer protection laws and other such measures; the fact that they were beneficial to the society as a whole would not matter.

So, for example, Barack Obama wants to reduce our carbon output to deter the threat of global climate change. Doing so would of necessity mean reducing the use of fossil fuels such as coal. Under this provision, if it was in effect, a foreign corporation with investments in US coal mines could claim that environmental program hurt the value of that investment and sue to "recover" its "loss."

Next, under something called "regulatory cooperation," corporate groups are to be included in the drafting of any new regulations or laws which might affect their trade interests. Public interest groups and workers are not invited.

Employee rights are coming under pressure, and jobs in numerous industries are endangered. The UN's International Labor Organization has established eight core standards for labor protection and rights. In the US, only two out of the either are recognized. The TTIP provides no protection for those other rights.

Privatization and so-called "liberalization" - and I hate that word, because "liberalization" should mean making something better, improving something, but here it means giving corporations a freer hand to do what they place - but they will become one-way streets. Once some asset or service has been handed over to private industry, turning it back into a public asset would be made almost impossible by TTIP. It is a blueprint for over time turning more and more of government services provided for the benefit of the public into profit centers for the benefit of corporations and their investors,as has already happened in part of Latin America, with the predictable result of skyrocketing prices for water.

Through a process called "regulatory convergence," standards of food safety and for consumer protection for cosmetics, medical products, pesticides, and other commodities are threatened with being set at whatever are the lowest standards now in force. In many cases, that would be the US standards, because US standards are often weaker than those in Europe. For example, in Europe a company has to prove a substance is safe before it can be used, while in the US, it's the other way around: a substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. So instead of us being able to improve or toughen our consumer protections, the nations of the European Union would have to weaken theirs.

Oh, but it doesn't all go one way: The financial rules, the controls on banks, are tougher in the US than in the EU. Under the rubric "regulatory convergence," European banks are pressing the TTIP to require the US to loosen its regulations. The already weak and already wounded Dodd-Frank bill could become worth less than the paper its printed on.

That's obviously not the whole agreement, but it should be more than enough to show you why so many environmental, public interest, consumer, and labor groups - particularly in Europe, when it has gotten more attention than here - are against it.

Which leads us to the last leg of this three-headed beast of corporate wet dreams.

It's called the Trade in Services Agreement, or TiSA, and in a nutshell it seeks to create the same kind of international corporate playground in services that the TTP and the TTIP aim to do for goods. Negotiations have been taking place - in secret, of course - since early 2013.

A year ago, WikiLeaks published the secret "core text" being used in the negotiations, which today involve over 50 nations making up two-thirds of global GDP, including the US, the EU, and nations such as Turkey, Mexico, Australia, Pakistan and Israel - nations which, by the way, do not include what are called the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which have been excluded from the TiSA negotiations, even though those negotiations purport to benefit the global economy. Apparently, some nations are not supposed to be part of that economy.

According to analysts, that core text actually looks to undermine the governments involved in the treaty in favor of multinational corporations. One way is that it would require signatories to give up their right to choose local service providers in areas like broadcasting, education, electricity, and sanitation. "Buy local" would for governments become illegal.

The text looks to limit governments’ ability to regulate national services while giving unprecedented freedom to foreign corporations. This would apply to all services, including banking, financial services, e-commerce, health, transport, and consulting. The reforms would touch all levels of government from local to national.

The draft treaty also proposes restricting the ability of governments to set size and growth limits on various economic activities, as well as institutions such as banks. The expression "too big to fail," which not only suggest that is an unfortunate condition but carries the implication that smaller institutions can be controlled and even broken up, would become as passe as poodle skirts and rotary telephones.

The rules not only apply to internal matters: Another major element is a rule restricting governments from putting controls on cross-border movements of capital, including anything related to services or inflows of capital. Options to enforce capital controls are very limited, with the result that a small nation could be potentially bankrupted if a major international investor corporation or bank just decided to pull its capital out of the country.

That's not the end of it. In June of this year, two months ago, WikiLeaks released another set of secret documents leaked by some whistleblower, showing that the intention to, as described by the group, "deregulate global financial services markets" and "assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals" is as strong as ever.

I found two revelations in this new set of documents particularly disturbing. One is that "the leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data" and privacy of personal information can go the way of the dodo. Who knew that when the Amazing Mr. O promised "the most transparent administration ever" he meant that we must be transparent to the corporations?

Oh, but wait, the draft does have a chapter on transparency. It mandates that regulators must tell transnational investors ahead of time what they are doing.

The other particularly disturbing revelation is that amendments proposed by the US would end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as "monopolies" and limit public regulation of all financial services, freezing regulation at existing levels, so that when another 2008 happens, we won't be able to do anything about it. Except, of course, to bail out the banks again.

Heard enough? No, you haven't, not until you've heard one more thing.

- Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership began in 2008 and continued to the present.
- Those on the Trade in Services Agreement began in February 2103.
- Those on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership began in June 2013.

So the administration of what US president has been pushing for these deals?

The administration of what US president wants US consumer protection, environmental, and other such regulations reduced to the lowest common denominator?

The administration of what US president wants to slash away at our privacy rights and calls public pension plans "monopolies?"

I don't know how many times I will have to say it: These people are not on your side!

Sources cited in links:
http://eu-secretdeals.info/ttip/
http://corporateeurope.org/international-trade/2015/07/ttip-corporate-lobbying-paradise
https://stop-ttip.org/what-is-the-problem-ttip-ceta/
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/lang--en/index.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/06/20/thirst-profit-corporate-control-water-latin-america
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
http://www.rt.com/news/264745-wikileaks-secret-tisa-documents/
http://www.rt.com/news/271138-wikileaks-tisa-leak-documents/
http://www.rt.com/usa/167088-wikileaks-tisa-secret-trade/

216.10 - The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not the only massive trade deal being negotiated in secret

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not the only massive trade deal being negotiated in secret

Here's another example of the failure of our news media, perhaps an almost ideal one because this does affect us directly and we still don't hear about it.

We start by referring to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, this huge trade deal being negotiated in secret among 12 Pacific-rim countries which has been described as the biggest such deal in history. I have talked about this before; in fact the first time was nearly three years ago and I brought it up several times during the Amazing Mr. O's ultimately-successful push for renewed fast-track authority. (For example, here and here.)

The news on this front is that the announcement of the deal has been put off because the partners wrapped up their most recent round of talks in Hawaii without reaching an agreement on key sticking points, with different nations demanding either greater access to other countries for its exports or limits on imports from other countries. (So much for the "free and open trade" we're being told is the goal.)

All 12 nations this weekend vowed to continue the talks, but didn't set a date for their next round of negotiations.

Meanwhile, Obama is starting to be under some time pressure. He wants the deal to go into effect before he leaves office in January 2017 but needs to allow for months of both congressional review and text scrubbing and language translations that are inevitable before a vote in Congress, a vote Congress might not be happy taking up if the issue drags into the 2016 campaign season.

But here's another thing, the thing I particularly wanted to bring up, one you probably are unaware of: The TPP is only one of three massive trade deals now being negotiated, all in secret.

The others are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), largely between the US and the European Union,which would do for much of the Atlantic side of the world what the TPP seeks to do to the Pacific side, and the Trade in Services Agreement, or TiSA, which involves more than 50 countries and looks to establish the same sort of transnational corporation-dominated "free market" in services that the other agreements seek to establish for goods.

And about the only way we know what's going on with any of these negotiations is due to leaks and whistleblowers who provide materials to WikiLeaks, which then publishes them to the almost complete indifference of the US media. With the result that you very possibly have never heard of them.

I'll tell you more about what we know about the TTIP and the TiSA next week.

Sources cited in links:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2012/09/left-side-of-aisle-75-part-4.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/05/2045-outrage-of-week-senate-dems.html
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2015/06/2091-update-on-fast-track.html
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/235365699
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
http://www.rt.com/usa/167088-wikileaks-tisa-secret-trade/
http://www.rt.com/news/271138-wikileaks-tisa-leak-documents/
https://wikileaks.org/index.en.html

209.1 - Update on fast-track

Update on fast-track

Okay, let's go straight to it.

On June 23, Senate gave the bankers' buddy, the Amazing Mr. O, what some called the biggest legislative victory of his second term, voting to advance the bill to give him so-called Trade Promotion Authority, better known as fast-track, on the massive, still-secret so-called "trade" deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. The vote was 60-37, those 60 votes being the minimum needed to move the bill forward by overcoming legislative objections. Final passage, now assured, requires only a simple majority.

Thirteen Dems, including such supposed liberals as Patty Murray and Ron Wyden, voted to please the transnational corporations rather than protect the environment and the working people of the US.

Let me give you a quick recap of the maneuvering over the past couple of weeks: The Senate passed fast-track connected to something called Trade Adjustment Assistance, a long-standing program intended to help workers who lose their jobs as a result of trade deals. I don't understand why such a program is necessary since all of these deals are supposed to be just so awesomely great for everyone, but there it is.

Anyway, the Senate's fast-track authority bill passed with 62 votes in favor. In the House, a coalition of liberals opposed to TPP and Tea Party types opposed to Trade Adjustment Assistance combined to produce over 300 votes against renewal of that program, which served to block the fast-track bill from advancing because the rules of debate required that both bills - the Trade Adjustment Assistance and fast-track itself - pass for the two to move forward as a package.

Then the pro-corporate caucus that is the House leadership - with the support of the pro-corporate caucus that is the White House - separated Trade Adjustment Assistance from fast-track and got the latter passed as a stand-alone measure by a margin of about a half-dozen votes, saying there would be a separate vote on Trade Adjustment Assistance in about six weeks.

So that stand-alone bill went back to the Senate, which has now approved it - which means that fast-track is headed to Obama's eager grasp without the Trade Adjustment Assistance program.

The Senate is likely to pass Trade Adjustment Assistance as separate legislation, but its fate in the House is uncertain both because a lot of the right wingers oppose it in principle - the magic of The Market (pbui) supposedly taking care of everything - and because more liberal members may still try to derail TPP by blocking Trade Adjustment Assistance, since Obama has said he wants both and has even suggested that he wouldn't accept fast-track without Trade Adjustment Assistance attached to it.

However, expecting Obama to be true to his word is an iffy proposition. Recall that when he was running for president in 2008, he promised to renegotiate NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement, the one that established a massive "free trade" zone of Canada, the US, and Mexico and which was supposed to provide an economic boom and massive job growth to all three nations but instead, combined with other over-promised trade deals, has seen the US lose five million manufacturing jobs, having even service jobs outsources, continuing downward pressure on wages, and a ballooning trade deficit. As a candidate, PHC* promised to renegotiate NAFTA to correct its "evident shortcomings," a promise which he renewed shortly after his inauguration - and then promptly forgot. No move has been made in that direction since.

Right now, when I'm doing this, which is the afternoon of Wednesday the 24th, what I expect is that he'll sign the fast-track bill and then grandly call for Congress to pass the Trade Adjustment Assistance extension, lobbying the liberal members of the House with "I got fast-track. It's a done deal. I want Trade Adjustment Assistance but if you don't pass it, I'm going to use fast-track anyway. So it's fast-track with Trade Adjustment Assistance or fast-track without Trade Adjustment Assistance - your choice." That is, he will dare Congress to vote it down.

What makes this worse is that in the course of this sausage-grinding, the fast-track bill has gotten worse and worse.

Remember how the Senate version included restrictions on human trafficking - the slave trade - and Obama wanted them out? The bill as passed by the Senate weakened those provisions as well as weakening provisions relating to currency manipulation and to trade enforcement - trade enforcement referring to what you actually do when one of the nations violates one of the supposed protections for workers or human rights or the environment - and added provisions that prohibit trade deals from addressing climate change or immigration issues.

What's more, something people don't realize, is that this is a six-year renewal of Trade Promotion Authority, not something restricted to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It means in effect that any trade deal brought to Congress by Obama or whoever is the next president already works under fast-track. One such deal could be the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a series of trade deals being worked out - of course - mostly in secret, but these are between the European Union and US. Sort of like a TAP: a Trans-Atlantic Partnership.

You may have noticed I called the TPP a "so-called" trade deal. That's because it is not a trade deal. Trade is about trade, about the exchange of goods and services; international trade is about the exchange of goods and services across international boundaries. TPP is not a trade agreement. In fact only five of its 29 draft chapters - and let me emphasize here that what we know is from leaks, remember this is still all secret - but only five of its 29 draft chapters deal with trade.

TPP is not a trade agreement. Rather, it is a statement of corporate and investor rights. It is not designed to promote trade, it is designed to protect investor returns and corporate profits. "Trade" is merely the cover story.

How much of a cover story? It develops that when the deal is finalized, only the final text will be released. Everything else, negotiating documents, understandings, side agreements, codicils, are all to be kept secret until four years after the agreement goes into effect. Even the agreement to keep those secrets was itself intended to be secret. We are only supposed to know what our Lords and Masters deign to tell us in their own interest.

I really thought we had a chance to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It's not a done deal yet: Remember that fast-track passed the House by a vote of just 218-208, an effective margin of just six votes, if just six votes had flipped it would have failed, so when the finished deal finally is presented to Congress, some of those now-secret provisions may spook enough people to vote it down.

But right now I'm not counting on that as I can hear the clinking of champagne glasses echoing through the top-floor offices of transnational corporations on both sides of the Pacific - and also down the halls of the White House.

We are so screwed.

*PHC = President Hopey-Changey

Sources cited in links:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/obama-trade-deal-congress-tpp-tpa/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/23/senate-fast-track_n_7645348.html
http://www.thenation.com/blog/obama-needs-keep-promise-rewrite-nafta
http://citizen.org/documents/prosperity-undermined.pdf
http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issuesredirect.cfm?ID=2157
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pearl-korn/why-we-ordinary-people-sh_b_7635234.html
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/23/senate-passes-tpp/
http://billmoyers.com/2015/06/23/constituents-to-senators-reject-fast-track-or-dont-come-home/
http://www.ibtimes.com/trans-pacific-partnership-house-approves-fast-track-trade-bill-close-vote-headed-1973444
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-is-ttip-and-six-reasons-why-the-answer-should-scare-you-9779688.html
https://www.citizen.org/tpp
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/26/stop-calling-tpp-trade-agreement-it-isnt
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111018/05561916398/out-acta-ing-acta-all-tpp-negotiating-documents-to-be-kept-secret-until-four-years-after-ratification.shtml