Jim Hightower: Far from "liberalizing" global policies, TPP is corporatizing them

[marmar]

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/8634#.VXEGW9JVhHw


Words can be discombobulating when people twist them to fit concepts that are the exact opposite of what the word actually means.

Consider the current debate in Washington over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This secretly-negotiated deal is the exact opposite of a "liberal" reform, for it blatantly transfers a major portion of our people's democratic sovereignty into the plutocratic hands of multinational corporate giants. Yet, lawmakers and pundits fronting for the corporations have disingenuously dubbed this corporatization of power a "liberalization" of global policies.

I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. For an example of the reactionary reality of TPP, look at a couple of little favors it does for Big Pharma. First, it extends the number of years that a pharmaceutical giant can keep a patent on its brand-name drugs. Not only does this artificially add more monopoly profits into the coffers of drug makers, but it simultaneously postpones competition from the makers of cheaper generic drugs – an especially dangerous delay for low-income people who're ill. A second provision restricts public regulation of drug prices by any of the 12 countries that are part of the agreement. This is a gross nullification of the people's sovereign right to remedy price gouging by corporate profiteers that hold monopolies on life-saving medicines.

Those pushing TPP assert that it's merely a trade agreement – and we should not bother our little heads with worry about its details. But it's filled with gotchas like these gifts to Big Pharma. They have nothing to do with trade, and everything to do with global elites secretively, deceitfully, and immorally agreeing among themselves to steal power from us.

[djean111]

1. I have been told, though, that this will be helping poor Vietnamese farmers. So I should be

ashamed for being against it.
NO. The people pushing this corporate coup should be ashamed. But I doubt they are capable of that.

[Hoyt]

2. Hightower, a big supporter of Nader in 2000. We know where that got us.

[marmar]

3. Yes, a false narrative that Nader somehow cost Gore an election he won .....

.... when in actuality it was judicial fiat that cost Gore the election.

[djean111]

4. Why conflate the election with a trade agreement? Smear the messenger doesn't really work here.

[marmar]

5. Because they're running out of defenses of this monstrosity.

[Hoyt]

6. LMAO. Like you haven't done that very thing today.

[Initech]

7. Why are we so fixated on helping developing countries?

Especially when we can't fix problems here at home like our crumbling infrastructure? Is our government just going to keep letting our country deteriorate until we must ask other countries for help?

[Hoyt]

10. We have taken more than our fair share of the worlds wealth and resources, for one reason.

[pampango]

11. Democrats have a funny history of being 'fixated' on helping poor people. Developing countries

have lots of poor people.

If we wait for republicans to help poor people (here or anywhere else), the poor will have to wait a long, long time - unless the 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' thing actually starts to work. Repubs are notorious for wanting to cut our foreign aid which is already much lower percentage-wise than those of progressive countries.

Our per capita GDP is over $50,000 which gives us the capacity to both solve our own problems like our crumbling infrastructure and help poor people at the same time. Most of Europe is between $35,000 and $45,000 per capita GDP but they help the poor (their own and globally) more than we do.

[Faryn Balyncd]

8. Hightower nails it.