What should we make of this new Obama? Are he and his new agenda for real? For liberals, these are tender questions. When Obama first appeared, their response was almost worshipful. Even today, many liberals treat Obama’s progressive critics as apostates. Given their deep investment in him, the vitriol of Tea Party attacks and the looming specter of GOP rule, it’s easy to understand why. But it’s crucial now for his liberal critics and defenders alike to see him as he is.

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Obama’s failure to reconcile words to deeds detracts mightily from the grab bag of ideas he offers under the catchy title “middle class economics.” As noted, these policies could really improve people’s lives. But while he’s out thumping for them, he’s in hot pursuit of what he hopes will be his last coup, approval of the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership. It’s such a popular idea he chose not to breathe its name in his speech. What he did say was worth sampling if only to savor its cleverness: “China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. We should write those rules… That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but fair.”

He doesn’t want another free trade fiasco like that awful NAFTA, just “trade promotion authority to protect American workers.” Surely we can all be for that.

Nearly all left-leaning Democrats oppose the TPTP: Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Bob Reich, Elizabeth Warren. One can’t imagine Obama changing his mind on it any more than one imagines him asking any of them to help craft his new populist agenda. As he likes to reassure his donors, “I’m a market kind of guy,” meaning he comes as close as a Democrat can to being a market ideologue. And yes, there is such a thing.

During the past six years, the officials and trade specialists of the 12 countries have huddled in 24 rounds of intense, deeply secret negotiations, and now they're ready to spring their scheme on the unsuspecting public. This year--possibly in March--Obama will hold a flashy press conference, launch a major PR campaign, and begin arm-twisting and horse-trading to try winning congressional ratification of the TPP coup.

I have no clue why he is doing this to us, but I do know that we must defeat his raw deal of a trade bill. And we can, in large part because its contents are butt-ugly--but we have a job ahead of us to make sure that the American people see those contents. The danger posed by TPP's package of corporate favors can be summed up in a line from Bruce King, the former governor of New Mexico. He was a good guy, but he was given to mangling metaphors and goofing up literary references. One day, a couple of staffers urged him to support a particular bill, but Bruce thought it sounded pretty dicey, so he backed away, saying: "I don't know, boys--I'm afraid we're about to open a big box of Pandoras."

Goofy, yet well-put! Let's peek at a few of the Pandoras in the TPP box:

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/3851#.VMWUYdLF_To

Warren’s grounds for objecting to Weiss were straightforward: his experience was no fit for the requirements of his proposed Treasury role. On top of that, he had been involved in and therefore profited from acquisitions called inversions that Treasury opposes because they reduce the taxes paid by the acquirer, which uses the acquired company to move its headquarters to a lower-tax jurisdiction.

Today (1/12/15) Weiss withdrew as a candidate for the Treasury position...

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Having someone with that background as a well placed insider made it abundantly clear how serious the Administration was about cleaning up crisis-related abuses. Having Antonio Weiss, even in a lesser role at Treasury, will, as it did with Lee Sachs, inhibit any investigation into areas that relate to the work he did at Lazard. That’s a feature, not a bug. Having Antonio Weiss in Treasury in any capacity sends a powerful signal that Obama remains deeply committed to advancing the pet needs of major financial firms.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/01/elizabeth-warren-takes-scalp-antonio-weiss-withdraws-nomination-3-position-treasury.html