. . . “details would outrage Americans and spook Congress from rubber-stamping it.” Who said that? A.) An al Qaeda leader? B.) Saddam Hussein? C.) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un? D.) None of the above? The answer is D; the speaker was Ron Kirk, President Obama’s trade representative speaking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Administration’s latest gift to multi-national corporations. The T-PP is an attempt to disguise a corporate giveaway as a trade agreement. The T-PP would require all countries who sign it – including the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Viet Nam, and eventually China, Indonesia and Russia - to pass no laws or enact policies of any kind that infringe upon trade with or production within any of the other countries in the Partnership. So far the Obama Administration has refused to allow any members of Congress to view the 29 chapters of the agreement, of which only five have anyt...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.