Just called my Republican Congressman about TPP

[Tom Rinaldo]

Chris Gibson in upstate New York. He is voting against Fast Track authority for it. His spokesperson said that Gibson would want to introduce amendments to it and without the ability to do so he can not support it. I said we might talk again about TPP if Fast Track goes down and an amendment process begins. I gave as my primary concern that there were too many ways this mammoth agreement allowed for special courts and tribunals to over ride the will of the American people and strike down democratically enacted legislation. Gibson straddles the Tea Party/ Establishment divide in general. I think in general that sovereignty concerns are the best way to influence Tea Party leaning Republicans to vote against the TPP.

[Hoyt]

1. Democrats and TPartiers joining together in a kind of Sovereignty movement. Jeeez.

[scarletwoman]

2. Why not? All of us stand to get screwed together, why not stand together to fight it?

I'm good with welcoming whatever allies we can find in this fight.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. You may or may not be concerned

But the power of transcontinental corporations is growing exponentially. Buried in these trade agreements as negotiated by corporate lawyers are provisions that can subject states and municipalities to crippling lawsuits for actions democratically taken that can be interpreted as depriving corporations of their right to secure adequate profits. Even the threat of such lawsuits can have a chilling effect and the tribunals that convene to determine whether corporations have been "wronged" are about as democratic a process as the FISA Court.

[pampango]

4. The Sovereignty movement has been a mainstay of the far-right for decades. The UN,

the WTO and the mythical the North American Union and New World Order have all been villains in thei right's national sovereignty angst.

They have long viewed FDR with scorn for all the international organizations he created and his belief in international cooperation instead of the U.S. going it alone.

Perhaps the left is coming around on the Sovereignty movement. 😉

[Tom Rinaldo]

5. The conspiracy paranoia is a convenient distraction to avoid the obvous

It there ever is a one world government it will take the form of interlocking Boards of Directors of Trans Continental Corporations. The Koch Brother types want ordinary people to fear government because Governments are the only potential adversaries left to indirect corporate rule, with Organized Labor nearly routed.

I don't see "free individual sovereign citizens" as a bulwark of liberty protecting our basic rights, that is a laughable delusion. However government of by and for the people should not be allowed to perish.

[cui bono]

6. Well said. nt/

[pampango]

7. The right views the mythical One World Government as a liberal, socialist conspiracy. The left views

it as a corporate, conservative conspiracy.

Similarly, the right often refers to "liberal globalists in the Obama administration" implementing an FDR plot. The left sees globalists as corporate actors.

Like globalists, the mythical One World Government are always agents of the other side.

However government of by and for the people should not be allowed to perish.

Democracy is a wonderful thing. Does international cooperation necessarily diminish it? I think Germans and Swedes would say it does not.

A bad TPP does not mean that international cooperation diminishes democracy. At least that's what FDR believed and Europe is implementing today.

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. We of course can honorably agree to disagree

But I think you have created a straw man by equating opposition to the TPP with opposition to international cooperation. Far as I know, just like 99.99999% of living Americans, FDR never got any input into the actual TPP being negotiated.

[Jefferson23]

8. Very smart strategy. n/t