Why Is TPP So Hard For Obama To Sell? Stan Sorscher in Common Dreams

We have accumulated over $10 trillion in goods trade deficits since NAFTA. Our lived experience tells us the 99% are getting burned by our trade policy, while global companies are doing great.

Barack Obama is cool and personable -- no-drama Obama. Then suddenly, he scolds critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his NAFTA-style trade deal. He accuses them of being "wrong," unable to look at the facts, fighting the last war and confusing this new improved trade deal with NAFTA.

The Trans Pacific Partnership critics are right. They are looking straight at the facts. The critics know exactly what a good trade policy would look like, and it's nothing like NAFTA or TPP.

So what's wrong with TPP?

Will TPP create jobs?   No. Economic models predict a tiny increase in GDP from TPP. Globally, tariffs are already low. That deal is done. In the past, these same models have been wildly optimistic, so when they predict "no gain," that says a lot.

We can't walk away from trade.   We are told that 95 percent of the consumers in the world are outside the US. That's a big scary number. On the other hand, that number for Belgium is 99.8 percent, and Belgium is still OK.

Is TPP a secret?  President Obama says TPP is not a secret. Any member of Congress can look at it. .... as long as they don't take notes -- no pictures, no copies and they can't discuss what they see. However, if Senator Elizabeth Warren tells her constituents about TPP's language protecting corporations, she would be violating national security secrecy laws!  Ridiculous.

Exports go up.  Exports go up. Of course, imports go up faster.

What have we learned from NAFTA?  The labor and environmental standards are so ineffective that a country as violent as Colombia can get a trade deal with favorable access to our country, while hundreds of labor activists are killed for speaking up for workers. Our US Trade Representative is struggling to decide if murders are a violation of the labor protections in previous agreements.

Will TPP set higher new standards?  Not the way we might hope. Hundreds of corporate lobbyists are actively involved in the negotiating process. TPP will produce very favorable terms for global investors and global companies.

We have accumulated over $10 trillion in goods trade deficits since NAFTA. Our lived experience tells us the 99% are getting burned by our trade policy, while global companies are doing great.

The full article is available here

Happy Radical Mother's Day - Diana Butler Bass

Mother's Day honors a progressive feminist, inclusive, non-violent vision for world community.

At first glance, Mother's Day appears a quaint holiday, a sort of greeting card moment, honoring 1950s values, a historical throw back to old-fashioned notions of hearth and home.  However the story of it's founding is decidedly less Hallmark.

Beginning the late 1800's, radical Protestant women had been agitating for a national Mother's Day hoping that it would further a progressive political agenda that favored issues related to women's lives.

The original Mother’s Day Proclamation was made in 1870. Written by Julia Ward Howe, it was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament.

In May 1907, Anna Jarvis, a member of a Methodist congregation in Grafton, West Virginia, passed out 500 white carnations in church to commemorate the life of her mother -  Anna Reeves Jarvis, who had died in 1905. Although now largely forgotten, Anna Reeves Jarvis was a social activist and community organizer

In 1858, she had organized poor women in Virginia into "Mothers' Work Day Clubs" to raise the issue of clean water and sanitation in relation to the lives of women and children. She also worked for universal access to medicine for the poor. Reeves Jarvis was also a pacifist who served both sides in the Civil War by working for camp sanitation and medical care for soldiers of the North and the South.

In the early 1900's, many progressive and liberal Christian organizations -- like the YMCA and the World Sunday School Association -- picked up the cause and lobbied Congress to make Mother's Day a national holiday.

Although I've never seen it on a pastel flowered greeting card, Mother's Day honors a progressive feminist, inclusive, non-violent vision for world community.

The full article is available here

Agency Overseeing Obama Trade Deal Filled With Former Trade Lobbyists

 

#notpp There's no such thing as free trade. Corporations go around bottom feeding at the expense of the working class. Another sad example of the lobbyist revolving door

CD Review: Before We Get Buried - Emergency Broadcast

Based on the six tunes on Emergency Broadcast, the future certainly looks bright for Before We Get Buried. 

Hailing from Austria, Before We Get Buried plays intricate yet accessible metal core reminiscent of bands like Shai Hulud, As I Lay Dying and Zao. Though their influences are recognizeable, these Austrian gents aren't derivative. Their songs are well-constructed, creative and adeptly arranged.

 Their latest EP, Emergency Broadcast, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Deezer. It features 6 songs that flawlessly navigate the transitions between sung and screamed vocals. While countless mediocre metal core bands do one or either ok but the other poorly, Before We Get Buried are clearly songwriters, not clumsy song section compilers.

Further, vocalist Stefan Jakober is not a one-trick pony on the screamed vocals; showing terrific range from guttural lows to piercing highs that perfectly suit the song's needs. Lyrically, Before We Get Buried deal with themes like the quest for truth and meaning, the frustrations of imperfect relationships and stubborn hope in the midst of dark times.

The opening track Epiphany is a great choice to get things started. It features guest vocals by Ricky Amellino. The two singers weave their parts together well while the band alternately rocks and pummels. Next up is Truth and Other Rumors, which begins methodically with some nice guitar interplay.

The workman-like chugging continues on A Southern Cry. Dining on Ashes features another guest singer, Richard Sjunnesson, whose vocals also nicely compliment Jakober's. It begins at break neck speed, then instantly jolts into thunderous riffing. It finishes off with a nice acoustic picking part.  

The 5th track Burnt and Built (see embedded Soundcloud player below) is my personal favorite from the EP. It features some tasty dissonant riffing with complementary climbing and falling lead guitar. Midway through, the band hammers you over the head with an intense breakdown while Jakober howls, "I am my own god and I hate it. I am my own god, it makes me so sick." That section is sure to inspire pile-ons and mosh mania when played live.

The closing track Copenhagen is the heaviest on the EP, seething with down tuned muscle and bristling with righteous fury. The tune shows Before We Get Buried exploring new sonic territory and is a sign of good things to come.

Based on the six tunes on Emergency Broadcast, the future certainly looks bright for Before We Get Buried. On their own, they've produced a stand out EP that I found myself giving repeated listens, which for me is always the litmus test for new music.

You can follow the band on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/BeforeWeGetBuried) and find them online at http://www.beforewegetburied.com.