Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership sucks: short, funny animation

So are we going to be allowed to know what laws we are to abide by after they are passed, or will they remain secret then as well?

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I do agree that secret agreements are bad. But credibility when attempting to rally opposition against them takes great transparency - more like what you just posted. That may not be a good fit for a funny cartoon however. I don’t have any suggestions for how you resolve this mis-match, but you see the question I came out of watching the video with. What could you add to the video to prevent that from being the take-away?

While the US Constitution isn’t inviolate it is not an easy task to amend it.First you do have to get Congress, both houses, to agree by super-majority to propose an amendment (a herculean task to begin with) or get 34 states to agree to a constitutional convention, which has never been done. Upon proposal you then have to get 28 states to ratify or have a convention to ratify. Ratification is even more difficult as we saw with the 21st amendment to repeal prohibition, in which a convention was held because it was thought that the temperance movement held too many state legislatures.

At a time when getting Congress to agree to even raise the debt ceiling to keep the US fiscally sound is a task, the likelihood of a secret amendment getting proposed, of which no one knows the details, is almost non-existent. Good luck at getting it ratified.

Credit to the video’s creator: the restraint he issued to NOT draw the sharks with asian eyes must’ve been phenomenal, and to a lesser extent same for not coloring the sharks yellow.

What is it that makes this video xenophobic?

Where is the racism you imply exists?

Give me a break. Here’s me expecting something truly xenophobic after reading your dramatic crocodile tears and not finding it in the video. The music choice at the beginning is in poor taste, but that’s the only thing that could be construed as xenophobic. It’s funny that you try to make your point about “protectionalism” and “closed borders” by shaming Boing Boing editors for traveling or living abroad. This FREE TRADE agreement has nothing to do with human’s freedom to move about the country and everything to do with their wealth being free to move and be extracted globally.
Good try though. It almost seemed like you were sincere.

Yeah, the music alone makes me think of Andy Rooney’s character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

You know what would be better? How about an intelligent analysis of the bill’s main bullet points with a well thought-out refutation of each? (edit) Like the link just posted above. Thanks.

Now one might charitably assume that Krugman hasn’t chosen (again) to carry water for the Administration, that he really hasn’t bothered checking what Joe Stiglitz, Dean Baker, the Electronic Freedom Foundation have said about the regulations-gutting and egregious intellectual property strengthening elements of this proposed deal, and that he also missed the two sets of Wikileaks releases. In other words, he really does see this as yet another “free trade” deal, and just dialed his response in.
Is Krugman Running on Brand Fumes? (TransPacific Partnership Edition) | naked capitalism

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You must have a really acute sense of racial injustice, because you are seeing things that aren’t even there.

Ha! Oh snap! You do know that you could be right.

But, you know what would be better? How about an intelligent analysis of the bill’s main bullet points with a well thought-out refutation of each?

Deja vu.

I am not arguing that point with you. I am taking no position other than that you implied that the video’s creator is racist, and that you can’t substantiate that point. Instead, you throw up straw men arguing about the actual text of the TPP, and continually fail to substantiate your claim.

The entire video is predicated on fears that free trade agreements lead to the loss of jobs (i.e., the “great sucking sound”) to foreign territories. And I think it’s implicit in this line of reasoning that while the free flow of capital and goods is bad, the free flow of labour would be worse. I mean, I find it highly doubtful that someone would hate NAFTA and its “great sucking sound from the south” but still be in favour of more immigration from Mexico and legalizing people already here. There’s an implicit “America for Americans” message here.

I happen to find this closed-border viewpoint distasteful, and incongruous with the way Mr. Doctorow and his colleagues have been able to easily move from country to country for both personal and economic reasons (and if not for economic reasons, then certainly without impediments to their livelihoods). I’m not shaming them for being able to do this; if I’m shaming anything it’s Mr. Doctorow for his apparent support of this video’s sebtext. To me, this endorsement suggests a belief that those who already belong to the first-world club should be able to freely move from country to country and enjoy globalization, while those on the outside looking in should be firmly kept out.[quote=“Dr_Awkward, post:31, topic:16451”]
I am taking no position other than that you implied that the video’s creator is racist, and that you can’t substantiate that point.
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Can you substantiate that he implied that the video’s creator was racist? I don’t think he’s concerned with the creator at all; he’s saying that the video itself is racist, which is a very different thing.

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Substantiate your claim that I’m making unsubstantiated claims, first :wink: I mean, where do I mention race or racism or anything of the sort?

The video’s creator made a poor choice in presentation – the Vapors’ song Turning Japanese opens with the “oriental riff” (which is arguably, if not racist, a horrible and clichĂ©d and tasteless bit of ornamentation), and then the song itself laments a whole bunch of Japanese and otherwise asian stereotypes. Racist? Depends on whom you ask. The song still gets airplay on indie and alternative stations (I think it’s a god awful trash myself, but only because it’s ridiculous.)

That said, I question the creator’s intent in using that song. Obviously, he is passively connoting Asia w/o coming out and saying “I mean Asia goddammit!” which feels kind of underhanded. The usage makes me question exactly who his intended audience is; obviously it’s not me, because I found the whole piece boorish, cringeworthy, and uninformative.

I kind of concluded that the audience would dog-whistle on some kind of anti-asian sentiment (edit) akin to the whole asian menace hype in the 19th and 20th centuries. I hope I’m wrong.

Progressives are generally against policy like NAFTA, but for the freedom of people to move around the world as they like. Neoliberalism supports an opposite view: Wealth is free to move (be extracted and concentrated up to the elite) but people are not. And free trade (of the NAFTA kind) does lead to loss of jobs, or to the replacement of decent paying jobs with “McJobs” as has been the case in the U.S. Mexicans haven’t benefited either. Wealthy corporations have though. Certainly.

There’s certainly a paranoid “one world government” fringe that has xenophobic roots, but that’s definitely a far right wing breed of nut.

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I couldn’t watch the video past “Set up international courts with more power than the Supreme Court”. This video is clearly speculative, but it seems to be making every single worst case assumption possible.

Here a more detailed article describing what this is about. As you can imagine in a 100 second video it’s hard to explain Supremacy Clause.

From the article:

TPP “trade” agreement courts trump national sovereignty

The second problem with these “trade” agreements is that they trump national sovereignty. This is very clever and literally true. I’ve written about this before, as have others, but here it is in a nutshell. From a different earlier piece, here’s how it works with NAFTA and the NAFTA court (slightly modified):

In general, the corporate-sovereignty story goes like this:

Nations have national courts, including a Supreme Court, the top court in the country.

National courts operate under the nation’s constitution, its “supreme law of the land.”

In the U.S. and many other countries, treaties are folded into the constitution and become part of that “supreme law.” (If you think about it, this is the only way treaties can be enforced.)

In the U.S. Constitution, the clause that does this is the Supremecy Clause:

Article VI, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution, known as the Supremacy Clause, establishes the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and U.S. Treaties as “the supreme law of the land.”

NAFTA and other “free trade” treaties have their own court system, operating by rules specific to that treaty. In NAFTA’s case, it’s the NAFTA court. In TPP’s case, it will be the TPP court.

Corporations from any NAFTA nation can sue cross-border nations, states, and municipalities in NAFTA court for “lost profits” due to regulations (among a variety of other reasons).

Courts that are structured like the NAFTA court have jurisdiction that is superior to the member nations’ court system. This jurisdiction is given to them by the language of the NAFTA treaty.

Because treaties like NAFTA are folded into national constitutions, international corporations have found a way to establish a new international system of dispute resolution that trumps national governments.

The U.S. Supreme Court can’t overturn a NAFTA court decision. Thus, in this new system, corps (and the billionaires who run them) rule.

Breath-taking, right? “NAFTA” Bill Clinton has much to answer for. This is the “one-world order” your grandpa warned you about. But he thought it would be “libruls” or the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group in charge. Nope; it’s our friends at GE, Walmart, NestlĂ©, and the gang at Mouse (sorry, the folks at Disney) that will soon have the nation’s nuts in their squirrel-like hands.

Here is some more info on how NAFTA cost 700,000
NAFTA affected U.S. workers in four principal ways. First, it caused the loss of some 700,000 jobs as production moved to Mexico. Most of these losses came in California, Texas, Michigan, and other states where manufacturing is concentrated. To be sure, there were some job gains along the border in service and retail sectors resulting from increased trucking activity, but these gains are small in relation to the loses, and are in lower paying occupations. The vast majority of workers who lost jobs from NAFTA suffered a permanent loss of income.

The Supremacy Clause simply says that federal law—be it the Constitution, federal statutes, or treaties—trumps state law; federal law is supreme. This is why states can’t enact unconstitutional laws, and why state legalization of marijuana does not insulate citizens from federal drug laws. It doesn’t mean that “treaties are folded into the constitution.”

And while NAFTA Article 11dispute resolution tribunals operate independently of the federal courts system, it’s simply not the case that their decisions cannot be reviewed by a country’s judicial system.
http://www.dlapiper.com/supreme-court-of-canada-upholds-nafta-award-against-mexico/[quote=“Spocko, post:36, topic:16451”]
Here is some more info on how NAFTA cost 700,000 NAFTA affected U.S. workers in four principal ways. First, it caused the loss of some 700,000 jobs as production moved to Mexico.
[/quote]
Funny how the piece you’re quoting/referencing doesn’t cite any figures for this 700,000 job loss.

The funny thing is one of the big sticking point with whatever the EU trade deal is called is that the EU has far higher food safety and quality standards and the US’s comparatively lax food safety regulations are likely to be a sticking point in those negotiations from what I’ve read.

Also if the US doesn’t like it.they’ll just get sued and end up paying a fine eventually.Brazil gets a but load of money every year so the US can be protectionist towards its sugar (I’m guessing in the form of HFCS) producers because they are quite fragrantly breaking a trade law. That’s far from the only one.they are breaking as well.

I see that this post is being swarmed by free trade trolls.

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Certainly a weird character. Couldn’t understand how this old guy sitting at a desk complaining about bottled water helped the overall story.

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