There are folks out there who insist that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties, so one should either cast a Naderesque protest vote, or not vote at all. I’ve always felt that there is too much truth in that position to totally reject it, but that on the whole, the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that at least the Democrats will keep us from theocracy, albeit not a plutocracy.
But if there’s any truth in this, I really may have to re-think my position.
WASHINGTON — A critical document from President Barack Obama’s free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.
The leaked document has been posted on the website of Citizens Trade Campaign, a long-time critic of the administration’s trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.
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The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration’s advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.
Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.
(via Huffington Post)
Unfortunately, given the Obama administration’s track record, I can’t dismiss the possibility that this representation of the situation is substantially correct. This type of mechanism would not be unprecedented, but it can’t be denied that it’s a mechanism the corporate wing of the Republican party would embrace, as indeed it has. Under the radar, outside of the public eye, there’s not much difference between the parties when it comes to serving corporate interests.
When I was a young lad, the Supreme Court, an un-elected, unrepresentative body answerable to no one, actually functioned as a bulwark against oppression and a protector of our basic constitutional rights. Since that was the way it was, I imagined that it had always been thus, and I think a lot of my contemporaries felt the same way. We didn’t realize that, in fact, that Court was atypical; that the court had for most of its history been the guardian of the status quo and the “rights” of the uptrodden. The court has of late returned to its historical role with a vengeance. With Citizens United, in one fell swoop, it handed the country over to the billionaires.
If the above is true, then Obama is planning to do the same on an international scale; handing our laws to an unelected body, answerable to no one but the plutocrats, and undoubtedly staffed by plutocrats or their designees (after all, who else understands these very complex issues?). One can make the case for international institutions and one can even make the case for international institutions that can override national laws, but the case collapses when those institutions are part of a closed system, in which the deciders (to borrow a term) are selected through a process so removed from democratic institutions that they are, in effect, the same as the Supreme Court but even more so: an unelected body answerable to no one, with an institutional bias toward the interests of the very entities that will appear before them as plaintiffs. The public interest, be it local, national or international will be ignored. The leaders of sovereign nations, themselves ever more increasingly just the tools of the plutocrats, will simply plead helplessness as their citizens protest the failure of their elected representatives to rein in the corporations.
It calls Europe to mind, where national leaders tell their rightfully disbelieving populaces that there is no alternative to austerity for everyone but the bankers. People will look for alternatives, and they will find them at the extremes. If things run true to form, judging by past history, demagogues of the right will be most likely to arise, partly because the entrenched powers tend to view the right as more tractable and therefore put up less resistance to their rise. See, e.g., Germany in the early 30s.
As a sidebar, the provision barring U.S. corporations from subverting our laws is so obviously subject to manipulation that it means nothing. All a corporation need do is form a foreign corporation and have it do the dirty work. Corporations are wonderful things; they are people “my friends”, but they can be conveniently birthed and buried as convenient.
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