Stop TPP Archives - Waxman Files

By Jerry Waxman

Remember that old 1956 movie, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where the giant seed pods were replacing real people with non human things that looked like people as they slept? Remember Kevin McCarthy’s frantic warning (“They’re here already! You’re next!”) as he bounced about in traffic? That movie was a thinly veiled warning against communism which was a very popular sentiment during the McCarthy (no pun intended) years. No need to be alarmed. Communism would never take hold here because we were a free people, free to choose how we lived…….or so we thought. More rightly, the movie has become prophetic because if we substituted the words “Multinational Corporatism” it doesn’t sound so horrible but it accomplishes the same goals. Guess what? Communism was never the enemy; totalitarianism was. We are about to experience totalitarianism of a different kind, a totalitarianism so absolute that even our government, at all levels, will be powerless to stop it. It’s called the Trans Pacific Partnership or TPP and our government wants us to be a part of it.

We’ve been asleep as a nation since Ronald Reagan’s election as president. That was the beginning of trickle down economics, union bashing, privatization and the consolidation of corporate power on a global basis. The economic elites see the billions of our tax dollars pumped into our highways, schools and other government services and they think to themselves that they need a piece of the action. Governments don’t make anything; they contract it out to builders, auto manufacturers, furniture manufacturers, clothing manufacturers, etc. Private industry already supplies the government with everything it needs but these people want more and our elected officials are willing to let them have it because we haven’t been holding them accountable. President Obama even alluded in his State of the Union speech to fast tracking the US efforts to join the TPP. Fast tracking is a method of escaping accountability in the US congress. The method failed on NAFTA during George H. W. Bush’s administration and NAFTA had to have a full hearing during the Clinton administration. The lessons learned from NAFTA and other free trade agreements should steer this country clear of any of those agreements in the future. I’ve written previously on the TPP in two articles, The Enemy Beneath, and You Have been Granted a Rare Privilege, the former about the dangers of the TPP and the latter about a forum in which Congressman Alan Grayson as well as other leaders spoke out. There’s no need to cover it again.

Jim Howe is a man on a mission. I first met him almost two years ago when he moved here from Midland Texas, where he was an activist, at about the same time that Occupy Orlando was starting up. He is a member of the Communications Workers of America local 3108 and his politics are decidedly progressive. He is active in the local Green Party and through his influence and efforts I got to spend a lot of time with the Green Party 2012 candidate for president, Jill Stein, who had a profound effect on me. Jim is a political activist first class and his mission these past 10 months has been to rally union and political opposition to the TPP. His efforts are starting to pay off.

At the recent AFL-CIO Central Labor Council meeting on August 14, during a hotly contested officers election meeting, Jim was able to get everyone to agree to sign on to an opposition resolution showing Central Florida labor’s stance on the TPP, prior to the elections. He also is active in Floridians Against the TPP and works closely with Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign. The Citizens Trade Campaign has crafted a letter to Congress with support from numerous groups to stop the fast tracking and the TPP itself. The letter itself hasn’t been updated since March, but Central Florida Labor was signatory to it even then.

Although it is not written about by the mainstream press in a large way there are several articles and actions popping up if you care to look for them. Most recently progressive blogger, Jim Hightower, wrote extensively and expressively on the subject. The one question we all ask ourselves is why the secrecy? How come there’s no real outrage? Are we so used to being ignored and abused by our leaders and corporations that we just meekly accept whatever crumbs we receive? Not where Central Florida Labor is concerned. With men like Jim Howe taking leading roles in keeping up the opposition this battle is far from being over. Howe wants everyone to know that the next planning meeting for action against the TPP will be held on Thursday, August 22 at 6:30 pm at CWA union hall, 2220 Edgewater Drive in Orlando. Be there, because if you’re not “you’re next!”

By Jerry Waxman

Ship’s Captain: “Bring her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships”

Bosun: “What’s that, Captain?”

Ship’s Captain: “MAKE A LEFT! MAKE A LEFT!

U-Boat Captain “Hmmm…He brought her around hard aport 220 with a hard rudder amidships.”

1^st mate: “ Vas, Herr Hauptmann?”

U-Boat Captain: “HE MADE A LEFT! HE MADE A LEFT!”

With apologies to Charlie Manna’s War at Sea from his best-selling comedy album Manna Overboard.

The late Charlie Manna’s War at Sea routine was a send up of the classic WWII movie, The Enemy Below in which an American Destroyer captain and a German U-Boat captain play a cat and mouse game with each other, anticipating each other’s every move and countering each other’s offensives. It was a taut, tense drama with a not fully satisfying ending. Manna’s routine was very funny, but nothing is funny about the newest threat to our country which is traveling well below our radar, and we only know about it because of a few well isolated pings on our Sonar. We everyday Americans are at sea cruising while the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), running as silently as possible, has us in its periscope sights and the eleven or twelve member wolf pack is ready to draw blood.

To fully understand what’s happening we have to go back about twenty years ago to the early 1990’s when the Bush 41 administration had finalized NAFTA talks and was trying to “fast track” the agreement into action. NAFTA was a free trade agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada which was supposed to promote more and better trade between the three countries as well as open up more jobs. Most of us don’t read these things because they are voluminous beyond our attention spans and filled with words beyond our comprehension, but rest assured that giant corporations have more to do with the formation of these agreements than governments do and these corporations will do anything they can to create and protect their perceived future profits under these FTA agreements. We the people don’t really matter to them. Bush 41 wasn’t able to fast track the agreement before time ran out and Bill Clinton came into office. Clinton, the ultimate corporate Democrat had to renegotiate the agreement to assure some worker protections, which ultimately led to its passage. Clinton signed the document on Jan. 1, 1994. Clinton was quoted as saying. “NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t support this agreement.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

So did Prohibition, at the time. The trouble is that when you research these things from other that a human nature perspective Murphy’s Law kicks in full force and something bad is bound to happen. In the almost twenty years since the enactment of NAFTA American jobs have yet to make any kind of impact, Mexico’s farm communities have been devastated and Canada isn’t so happy with it either. The only people it has benefitted are the actual corporations who are doing the trading. In fact, it’s even worse than that. Buried somewhere in these agreements are regulations that supersede actual laws of the countries involved. In other words if something a corporate entity does is considered to be illegal by a country or a state it can be overruled by the terms of the agreement. The agreement allows for NAFTA to pick its own arbiters, usually corporate lawyers to determine the outcome, even over and above a Supreme Court ruling. One case in point is The Canadian Parliament banning the use of MMT, a gasoline additive in 1997. Ethyl Corp., based in Virginia, notified the government of Canada of its intent to sue under NAFTA’s Investment chapter. Ridiculous, right? Nope! The Corporate lawyer NAFTA panel rejected Canada’s argument and a year later Canada was compelled to reverse its decision on MMT and to add insult to injury Canada also had to pay out $13 million in fines and corporate profit losses. In 2012 Canada was again in the gunsights of the Eli Lilly Company because of Canada’s restrictions on granting medical patents to Lilly. Lilly filed for $100million in the NAFTA investor court. So far, over $365,000,000 has been paid out on submitted claims and there are 19 other actions under review worth 14 billion dollars. The worst part of this is that this has nothing to do with trade issues; this has to do with environmental and public health issues.

I remember discussing NAFTA with my son’s friend, Morgan who was an AFL-CIO organizer in South Florida back in the mid Nineties. At the time I was not against NAFTA because I believed that Clinton was sincere about how NAFTA would work. Morgan took the opposite view and said that it’s the worst thing that could happen to American labor. I pointed out the worker protection clauses that Clinton had inserted, and Morgan just said “that’s just never going to happen. It’s a ruse.” As it turns out Morgan was right. NAFTA is an unmitigated disaster unless you are the corporations doing the business, and there’s nothing that our government can or will do about it.

“If at first you don’t succeed”

So, what do you do when you see NAFTA is not working out? That’s easy. You expand it to include Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic making it more dangerous that before, after all, why shouldn’t some of our Latin American and Caribbean friends feel our pain as well. This was the work of the neocons in 2005 in the Bush 43 administration. There was a lot of contention in congress over CAFTA and it was only ratified by one vote in the House of Representatives. Again workers lost protection and American jobs were sent overseas. Environmental and health concerns were overlooked and the corporations made a fortune. Combining that with the Bush Tax Cuts we were screwed again.

“Try, try again.”

Not satisfied with enriching their corporate friends and damaging the average taxpayer more than ever, the Bush 43 people entered into talks to create a Pacific Basin partnership originally encompassing nine countries, including The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. The US entered the negotiations in March of 2008 which places it during the Bush 43 administration. Since that time other countries have expressed interest including Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, The Philippines, Japan, Colombia, Laos and Costa Rica. The US is aggressively pushing South Korea to join. Since the original meeting back in 2004 there have been 16 rounds of talks, the last one taking place in Singapore back in March 4-16^th of this year. A seventeenth round is scheduled from May 15-24 in Lima, Peru.

Having experienced the difficulties in both NAFTA and CAFTA the US participation in these talks has gone covert. No one talks about it. There is almost a 100% blackout of information in the corporately controlled news media, and what information is available has been gotten through leaks and whistleblowers, and you know what happens with whistleblowers. There is no transparency in these negotiations and from what we can ascertain only 2 chapters of the agreement actually have something to do with trade itself. Much of it has to do with intellectual property, and a lot of it has to do with circumventing labor, environmental and public health issues. What we do know is that the Obama Administration has embraced the TPP and is doing what it can to fast track it. On April 15, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Japan and gave a speech at Tokyo Tech waxing eloquently about the advantages of the TPP. Activist Cherie Faircloth, a contributor to WONO actually called the White House and got through to Robert Spitzer, Senior Trade Policy Advisor with the USDA. In her conversation with Spitzer, he admitted that there were too few corporate agricultural advisors in Florida and he was looking for more. Her article appeared on Feb. 26, 2013.

Back in Early March a group of activists attended an anti TPP rally in the Ybor city section of Tampa. You can find the links to the videos Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The message is pretty clear. We’re in Submarine Alley and all those torpedoes are set to fire on us. Since we know about it we can do something about it. Even though many politicians will deny that they have knowledge of it there are some who are aware of it including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida. Action needs to be taken in the congress to not allow the fast track and to ultimately defeat the US participation in the TPP. You can get more involved by researching the TPP and going to Public Citizen. Org. Maybe we can avoid the torpedoes. Just watch out for the minefields.

Central Florida Unions Say No to the TPP

THE ENEMY BENEATH