President Obama Gives Up On The Trans-Pacific Partnership (theguardian.com) 355
An anonymous reader quotes The Guardian:
White House officials conceded on Friday that the president's hard-fought-for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would not pass Congress, as lawmakers there prepared for the anti-global trade policies of President-elect Donald Trump. Earlier this week, congressional leaders in both parties said they would not bring the trade deal forward during a lame-duck session of Congress, before the formal transition of power on January 20.
One Canadian law professor had argued the case against the TPP included its unbalanced intellectual property rules and risks to privacy, while the EFF believed it locked in the worst parts of U.S. copyright law and also exported them to other countries.
One Canadian law professor had argued the case against the TPP included its unbalanced intellectual property rules and risks to privacy, while the EFF believed it locked in the worst parts of U.S. copyright law and also exported them to other countries.
MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Interesting)
The most contentious passages also had to do with corporate super-sovereignty. It made corporations more powerful than sovereign nations and gave them the right to sue governments when national laws impacted business.
Good riddance.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Informative)
Forgot about the part which would allow businesses to import workers from any country and replace you. For Americans, you guys have already seen the bullshit with H1B's replacing people already working at a job. What you'd start seeing what we have in Canada with TFW's, where people even in skilled trades being replaced. The leaked document that was post a year and change back showed that any type of agreement negotiated in secret needs to be nuked from orbit.
They want to deny Trump credit for killing it, too (Score:5, Interesting)
At times like this, I'd like to remember Google for having sold us out on the TPP:
https://blog.google/topics/pub... [blog.google]
Thanks for nothing, sellouts.
Indeed. (Score:2, Informative)
The public was excluded from every phase of the process, despite the fact that it would have force of law over all of us. For a long time all we knew about it was from leaks, and the government completely ignored our protests.
I am glad to see this go. Bummed about the surveillance mentioned in a previous article, though.
Regardless of which laws pass and who the president is, the primary takeaway here is obvious: the president doesn't give a shit about you.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
If we're not careful, we may have to give republicans the nod on this one.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
...and republicans not want it?...
Since Inaugural Day 2009, the Republicans were against nearly anything and everything Pres Obama was in favor of. The Party of No, or have you been sleeping for these past eight years?
.
The Democrats were in favor of it because of the liberal Hollywood money.
Democrats are split (Score:3)
So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
The Democrats were in favor of it because of the liberal Hollywood money.
You say that as if "Democrats" were a single unit, and all Democrats all want the same thing.
From the very beginning, some Democrats were for TPP, and some were against it. This was a subject on which Democrats were split.
Which is somewhat understandable: the Trans Pacific Partnership is a very long and very complicated agreement (30 provisions plus 4 "annexes"). Whether you're for it or against it depends in large extent on which parts of it you're looking at.
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade
Re:Democrats are split (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Informative)
How little the left remembers or cares about history.
I'm a Republican. But that doesn't prevent me from criticizing my Party when they do stupid things, like meet on Pres Obama's Inauguration Day and decide to Say No to everything he does or tries to do. That was verified by the Republican strategist who called that meeting. The Democrats, as bad as they were, did no such thing to Pres GW Bush. You should try to remember some history yourself.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a conservative and the Republican party isn't anymore. The worst thing to me about Obama was the fact that he wasn't even a good liberal. He pushed a lot of the bad ideas that many Republicans support. Those ideas that lobbyists pay to have shoved on the American people. I at least hoped that President Obama would try to repeal the worst of the disgustingly badly named "Patriot Act." May the cocksucker that originally called it that burn in Hell. One of the most unpatriotic things ever and one of the reasons I did not vote for Bush in 2004. Modern Republicans aren't conservatives. Conservatives don't grow government.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
"Since Inaugural Day 2001, the Democrats were against nearly anything and everything Pres Bush was in favor of. The Party of No, or have you been sleeping for these past eight years?"
How little the left remembers or cares about history.
Oh yes, because the Democratic party voted in lockstep to prevent the Iraq War, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (Bush Tax Cuts), and the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (TARP). Oh wait, no they didn't, because they know how to run a functioning government when they don't hold the presidency. Were you even out of grade school during Bush's terms in office, or do you just go out of your way to stay willfully ignorant of recent political history?
The only major Bush program the Democrats did fervently fight was Bush's 2005 push to change social security, but in that case his own party couldn't even support him (and the public very strongly rejected his plans as well). They did oppose many of Bush's programs, such as his continuing the Iraq War as long as he did, but they never tried to shut down the government in a tantrum like today's Congress.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Informative)
They did oppose many of Bush's programs, such as his continuing the Iraq War as long as he did
No they didn't. They signed off on it every time, then grumbled a bit about it to no effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Populism, what they do and what they say are 2 different things, nudge wink and a handful of republicans let the treaty through whilst they look like they mostly opposed it. That's politics, opposition parties always criticise what the gov't do if they think it'll get them more votes at the next election.
Dems were hoping to put worker protections in (Score:2)
The left has been putting stuff like this in trade agreements since the 70s and the right has been ignoring it for just as long. Sooner or later the guard changes and it's easy for these kind of rules to just not get enforced. But I guess the left decided that _this_ time it'll be different.
Re: (Score:2)
So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
Mostly, that is not true. Most congressional Republicans support trade agreements, and most congressional Democrats oppose them. The public is generally opposed, and less educated people are more likely to be opposed. There are two reasons for this: 1) Low income people are more likely to lose their jobs to trade, and 2) it is "simple and obvious" that buying stuff from China is worse than making it in America, and the reasons why that is wrong are complicated and require thinking.
It was widely presumed
"It" isn't plural (Score:4, Interesting)
>> So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
> Mostly, that is not true. Most congressional Republicans support trade agreements, and most congressional Democrats oppose them.
"It", the Trans-Pacific Partnership, isn't "them", most trade agreements. TPP is a secret deal written by the RIAA and MPAA (who coincidentally gave tons of money to the politicians proposing the agreement).
Yes, in general Republicans support the idea that if a guy in Canada wants to buy a widget from me, and I want to buy a foo from someone in the UK, that's great unless there's some specific reason to prevent or discourage it. TPP isn't that principle, it's a specific treaty with specific (bad) legal requirements for US citizens.
Re:"It" isn't plural (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
> TPP is dead.
So was it's predecessor. They will try again over 4 or 8 years, so stay vigilant!
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The last I heard was there was an odd coalition between progressive Dems and libertarian leaning Repubs. against it. Basically anti-establisment forces.
Both Democrats and Republicans wanted it. (Score:2)
Both Democrats and Republicans wanted it. Donald Trump is for all intents and purposes that "independent" candidate people said they always wanted. He just had to run as a Republican because people are too dumb to elect a real independent or a libertarian. Get this: some of the top Republican brass (including former Republican presidents, governors, etc) voted for Hillary instead.
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So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
If we're not careful, we may have to give republicans the nod on this one.
At this point, I think most people would consider me a Democrat, and I did not want the TPP.
When we were cutting out 35% tariff rates and the like, that improves the system. When we're talking about exporting out broken copyright protections to the world, that is just wrong.
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:4, Informative)
There was never any difference between Democrats and Republicans
That is a dangerous misconception. There were always differences. In this case the anti-establishment wings of both parties have an odd coalition of sorts against these trade deals, while the establishment leaders are for it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
A very large segment of the population no logner cares if trump is good or bad, they are just sick of getting screwed by the politicians, and if trump ends up screwing them just like every other president in recent history, at least some of the elites are likely to take it in the shorts as well. Its the scorched earth mentality, and it is the logical result of 30+ years of policy that favors the wealthy at everyone elses expense.
It's not, though. I've heard it described as a brick through the window of the establishment with a yell of "can you hear me now". But it's not really like that. It's more like driving your battered old pickup at the 10 foot high cocrete wall surrounding the establishment. I mean sure, the nice wrought-iron fence in front of it will have to be replaced and the tasteful flower bed replanted, and there might be a couple of burst tires from the debris on the road. In some ways it will cost a lot more to put right than a simple brick through the window, but the don't care because unlike with a brick, nothing of danger got remotely close to them. And by golly the driver is going to get the worse part of that interaction.
Re: (Score:3)
You really ought to have watched the WHOLE video...
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Interesting)
They're tired of elites, so they elect a guy who flies around in a literal gold-plated private jet plane. They're tired of getting screwed, so they elect a professional conman. And they're tired of the wealthy getting everything, so they protest and condemn as socialism every attempt to equalize incomes or provide basic services, such as Obamacare, to the less wealthy.
You ever wonder if maybe there's a reason nobody much cares what these jackasses want?
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Insightful)
It was written by a lot of big corporations -- those are just the ones we tend to hear about the most because that's what the Slashdot crowd tend to focus on.
There's a lot of bad things in there for farmers and manufacturers as well, not to mention that whole investor-state bullshit that effectively lets companies override a country's sovereignty in order to protect their bottom line, weakening of environmental protections around the world and so on.
Its basically every Christmas and birthday present ever wrapped up and given to multinationals at the cost of local businesses, consumer rights and jobs (at least American jobs. It'd probably be great for creating Malaysian sweatshop jobs as we outsource even more labor to the lowest-wage, lowest-legal-protections country in the TPP roster.)
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:4, Funny)
That was a fun read. Can you do it again but this time make it look like Truman was at fault for everything Stalin did? I like alternate realities.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma (Score:5, Funny)
Well, we'll just have to look at Truman's emails to Stalin.
Re:obama had fewer executive orders (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ObamaCare is too expensive! (Score:5, Informative)
>Can't afford democratic plans anymore.
You don't have one. Obamacare was a republican plan, originally written by the heartland institute and first implemented in law by governor Mitt Romney. Why do you think the left was never happy with it. We only tolerated it as "better than nothing" we never thought it was "good" - it was Obama's 'reach across the aisle' move to do healthcare reform EXACTLY as republicans have always wanted to do it - and then suddenly they hated it.
America needs truly Universal Healthcare - along with price controls on pharmaceuticals. You want an actual democratic plan ? It means putting all the insurance companies out of business for ever.
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America needs truly Universal Healthcare - along with price controls on pharmaceuticals. You want an actual democratic plan ? It means putting all the insurance companies out of business for ever.
Thank you for your honesty. Please understand that this is why the Democrat party is in major decline at every single level in the US (federal, state, and local). Your party will continue to lose until you understand that your views are 180 degrees different than most of the country.
Most people were happy with healthcare before Obamacare. Now they're seeing premiums go up astronomically (125% in AZ this year) if they buy from an exchange. Many exchanges are now in a death spiral where they will have to
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>Universal health care is a moronic idea. Only price controls are more moronic. The only thing prices controls do is create shortages. Medicine will be cheap if you can find it.
Weird... the whole WORLD has implemented both - and this outcome hasn't happened ANYWHERE.
They all have better quality healthcare than the USA, that more people have access to (as in the entire population - no exceptioons), and they all pay LESS for that than you do for worse quality that fewer people can get.
Re: ObamaCare is too expensive! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to bring healthcare under control so folks can afford it at all will be to regulate it.
When you allow Big Pharma and Hospitals the ability to charge whatever they want, does it surprise anyone when they put their profits first ?
Regulate it and you'll go a long way in removing the need to have health insurance at all.
The current state of healthcare in this country is barely treading water as it is. We're already seeing folks opt out of the plans due to high costs. Once enough go, the money to sustain the rest is gone and the whole thing implodes.
The ONLY way this works is the plans have to be cheap enough for folks to afford. Two ways to achieve that:
1) Get more folks to sign up* and / or
2) Regulate the healthcare industry
*Unlikely given the premiums and out of pocket costs are quickly rising.
Don't regulate it and this will forever be a problem.
Healthcare is a critical infrastructure. It should not be a system driven by profits.
Good News (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good News (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, that's all b.s.. The TPP is a payoff to the rich for their support of Government elected minions. The only way to fix this is get money out of politics.
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Tariffs end up costing consumers.
How much do you want to pay for iPhone? Because if tariffs are erected, most of the components in that unit will be subject to punitive measures.
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They also cause employment and rising salaries to help you pay for those increased prices. So there's your choices, have a good job that pays well and you have to save for a couple months for more expensive goods but you can also afford food, clothing, and shelter along with health care or you can have cheap phones and a crappy job that barely pays so you can't afford those other things.
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some oligarchy puppet screams "you're against globalism, fair trade, against jobs and a racist!".
Sounds just like what the Clinton supporters have been saying to anyone who dares question he official line, and still say while they riot. Then again, gotta burnish that legacy ... oops, I t'ink it be the broken, tabarnak!
The agreements have provisions to balance all that (Score:2)
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"Free" trade only works when both trading partners are on equal status.
No. Sorry. Learn some actual economic theory. This is not correct.
Re:Good News (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually read the chapter summaries of the entire treaty, and it most definitely IS about trade. And it is ALSO about intellectual property. AND it is about environmental protection. AND it is about workers' rights. AND it is about currency manipulation. Oh, and by the way it's about cutting China off at the knees, which is a big deal for the Obama administration. Obama's much keener on using economics to shape geopolitics than most people realize, which is why he has been furtively supportive of the Dakota Access Pipeline despite it's wild unpopularity with his base: it'll be like pouring gasoline on the Russian economic fire.
This is how the world actually works: major changes require a coalition of interests. In an international agreement, it's actually multiple coalitions, one for each country, plus mulitnational entities like corporations. Every interest in each coalition has its own goals, and when they're done hammering out a consensus it HAS to be about about a lot of things.
It's only through the lens of retail politics that something this big becomes about just one thing.
The thing is, this sucker is monster huge. It will transform all the member countries in ways that will be nearly impossible to undo without inviting chaos.
What's with this obsession with confrontation? (Score:2)
What's with this obsession with confrontation with Russia? There was never a single country that fought against Russia and did not regret it profoundly afterwards. Can't we just get along and be partners? Do we really have to put nuclear weapons at their borders? What good can this do for us here?
Re:What's with this obsession with confrontation? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was never a single country that *invaded* Russia that didn't regret it profoundly. Russia (and the Russian dominated Soviet Union) has been successfully confronted many times.
The "obsession" with confrontation is that it's run by an authoritarian who assasinates and jails his political opponents, is killing civilians wholesale in Syria, has subverted his country's electoral process, and has ambitions of creating an empire in Europe. Not opposing people like that is also something people have historically regretted. So the smart thing is to oppose him without invading his country.
Fortunately for us Putin's run his country's economy into the ground with crony capitalism. It's too bad for the Russians but soon the economic disaster is going to curtail his international ambitions.
I'm all for being friends with Russia. I said back in '92 George H.W. Bush was making a big mistake by not extending Russia the hand of friendship. But at present there's no way to separate Russia from Putin, and Putin should be contained.
Re:What's with this obsession with confrontation? (Score:4, Informative)
There was never a single country that *invaded* Russia that didn't regret it profoundly.
The Mongol Empire?
Re: (Score:3)
If TTP were good then why did they hide the details from us? Transparency is key. If TTP were good they would have been crowing about how good it was. Instead they did it in secrecy.
I'm not buying it. I am glad TTP is dead in the water. I hope the sharks eat it so it stays dead.
Re: (Score:2)
You know why Obama wanted it, of course.
http://www.eonline.com/news/28... [eonline.com]
http://www.foxnews.com/politic... [foxnews.com]
Re:Good News (Score:5, Insightful)
Free trade reduces the inequality between wealthier and poorer nations. Great if you're in the latter. Bad if you're not one of the few elites in the former who can make that benefit you. It's not a win-win for both sides as the two-sides-of-the-same-coin major parties have been preaching in the US. It's absurd to believe otherwise. If the Democrats were actually still the party of the working class, they'd be fighting to retrain younger blue collar union workers for realistic transitions and protect older union workers (for whom retraining isn't realistic) from job exportation.
Free trade isn't great for everyone. And as soon as someone came along and admitted that (instead of trying to explain to a 48 year old factory worker who's losing the only job he's had for 30 years to free trade, who has no other skills or education, who has no prospects moving forward, but does have a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, how this is all somehow good for him), all sorts of lifelong Democrats suddenly showed up to vote for that person (who was very much not a Democrat). Let's stop lying about this "rising tide raises all ships" bullshit and start telling the truth: if you're doing something where the skills involved are limited and the labor costs make up a sizable portion of the total costs involved, you're going to fucked first by free trade (because it's cheaper) and second by automation (because it eventually becomes cost-effective). Step one is admitting you have a problem (and this also requires recognizing that these people actually matter). Step two is figuring out what you're going to do for all the third-generation 48 year olds with two kids and a mortgage who are in this situation. And whatever that is, it better be realistic for them and it better pay at least 85% of what they were making before or no amount of belt-tightening is going to keep them going.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Good News (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that's not how it works. What you'll have is what has traditionally happened, tariffs being used to fend off competition. Consumers end being screwed and the protected industries become less and less competitive.
Re: (Score:3)
Free trade reduces the inequality between wealthier and poorer nations. Great if you're in the latter. Bad if you're not one of the few elites in the former who can make that benefit you. It's not a win-win for both sides
Actually, according to conventional economic theory, free trade benefits the people in both the richer and the poorer nations. The poorer nations get funds. The people in the richer nations get cheap goods.
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Please visit Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, or any of the other former US manufacturing powerhouses, and specifically the factory towns within those states, and tell the people there about the benefits of free trade. What's been happening for the past 30+ years is that masses of people who are second, third, even fourth generation into factory jobs, who've worked those jobs since they graduated high school, who've been raised themselves and went on to raise their families on the salaries and benef
Re:Good News (Score:4, Informative)
No. The one chapter us nerds mostly care about was about copyright. The TPP is a humongously long document covering dozens if not hundreds of business interests.
Unfortunately from what I've seen, almost every single one of those chapters includes at least something that should make normal people afraid in some way.
There's a reason why the pro-TPP lobby can't even come up with a selling point beyond how much money could theoretically be made (for their companies and basically no one else.. but they also leave that part off of course.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes you can. You think the MPAA and RIAA are needed? No trade and your still going to see every movie and CD show up in the 3rd world. We allready know if they price it reasonably for the local market people will buy it over the bootlegs.
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Under the TPP, on beef products, Japan will eliminate duties on 74 percent of its tariff lines, while Vietnam will eliminate tariffs currently as high as 34 percent.
On machinery, which accounts for almost 6 percent of U.S. manufacturing output, Japan will immediately eliminate all tariffs, while Malaysia and New Zealand immediately eliminate about 94 percent of their tariffs.
About 15 percent of Vietnam's tariffs of 20 percent ad valorem or higher will be eliminated immediately (60 percent will be eliminated
First Victory! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Victory! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe this Trump thing could be a good thing.
Dream on.
The most important thing that happens when a presidental term expires is that the corporate interests are forced to purchase legislators again. Rest assured something like the TPP will appear after a couple years of "influence" changes hands.
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Eventually sure, but likely not until after Trump's out of office. These things take far too long to negotiate (the TPP was well over a decade in the making -- Bush' government would have been the one to open the initial talks a year or two before Obama was a name anyone had heard.)
If something does creep up that quickly, even if they forego the TPP's infamous secrecy, it would likely have been something initiated under Obama (and there could well be such things out there.. the TPP was big but there's stil
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Trump will be for it as soon as they change the name to Trump.
Re:First Victory! (Score:5, Interesting)
While I didn't vote for Trump nor support his campaign, he's in the black right now as far as I'm concerned:
-TPP is dead
-He finished off the remnants of the Bush crime family by humiliating and crushing Jeb! in the primaries. ("Iraq was a disaster," "9/11 happened on his brother's watch" -- pretty amazing he said this in a GOP primary right in their backyard.) Watch the various YouTube videos and Trump sounds like every leftist I knew circa 2006 waiting for the Democratic Party to say as much. Had that corpse of a candidate John Kerry been as animated in 2004, history might have turned out very differently.
-In an act of bipartisanship, Trump also finished off the remnants of the Clinton crime family by humiliating Hillary and her sycophants with the greatest upset of the modern political era.
That being said, his administration can easily go into the red in a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But until then, this stuff is more exciting and amusing than Game of Thrones. The more assholes he throws under the bus in his pursuit of petty vengeance and self-aggrandizement, the better.
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I like the cut of your jib, sir.
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You are correct. He's also smart enough not to repeal Obamacare.
Re:First Victory! (Score:5, Interesting)
Correction: He's smart enough to repeal the worst parts of Obamacare, that's what he also said at the beginning too. Though the entire thing should be tossed out, and re-written to be be sensible. If you guys in the US were smart about the whole "mandated healthcare" bit you would have modeled it after our legislation in Canada. And when they tried passing the existing legislation you would have been protesting in the streets. The federal legislation basically boils down to: Feds have oversight, they toss the provinces money. Each province is responsible for care, costs, where things get built, payment and so on. Minimum levels of care are ensured by an independent 3rd party, feds can only step in if the 3rd party says it's inadequate and feds can only take over at the provincial level until the minimum care level is adequate then it's turned back over to the province.
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I hated it from the start for the way they tried to do it. It did have good points but even with those it's still a very sorry substitute for any type of NHS. The very worst part of it IMHO was that people were not able to keep their plans as promised second worst is that the medicaid expansion was never done in several states (including mine) which made it look even worse.
I was really (still am) hoping that the ACA was a step toward a better system (if nothing else it really got the discussion going). We d
Re:First Victory! (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Obamacare did implement a few insurance reforms, but fundamentally insurance cannot fix the problem that even the most routine healthcare is 4 times more expensive than it has any right to be.
Trump sounds like whatever you want (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Agreed, though I don't trust any national politician. Based on Trump's background (real estate, living in a cosmopolitan city like New York, Hollywood shows), I'd characterize him as a Big City party machine Democrat-type -- who somehow owned the entire GOP field and got elected president. Do you think he's really much different than the Chicago/NYC/SF machine politicians?
As for social issues, my suspicion is that Trump doesn't care either way. Unlike Pence, he's not a self-anointed crusader for Evangelical
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While I agree with you, it feels odd to me that Congress would be adopting the expected policies of the next President rather than the known policies of the current one.
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Why would Congress start working with Obama now?
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That whole "elections have consequences, I won" thing doesn't exactly garner much support from the opposition, does it?
And when later you get "I have a pen and a phone" and end up getting rebuked by SCOTUS 9-0 more than any modern President... the effectiveness of the current President quickly ends up in doubt, doubly so when so much of what he 'accomplished' is so easily undone as failures like Obamacare cannot be left to fester as is any longer.
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And it's not the Congress' job to implement the President's policies. It's the President's job to convince them to implement his policies. Obama hasn't really been able to do that since about 2010, which is why he resorted to executive orders. In that respect the TPP would've faced an uphill battle
Re: (Score:2)
Not really THAT surprising:
a) Its extremely unpopular, even within congress.. especially the members who are likely still pissed off that they were asked to fast track something as large and complex as the TPP with little warning and zero input.
b) There's probably some fear about what Trump would do as well. Its bad enough for the TPP to be essentially killed by the country that pretty much wrote their own wishlist (even if it was a wishlist tailored to big business and nobody else,) but it would be far fa
Trump's got a private position too (Score:3)
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Except the TPP was definitely a bad thing for anyone who isn't the head of a huge corporation..
Oh, it'll definitely be good for the big multinationals, but the effect on other people is complicated. If you're a migrant factory worker in Malaysia (one of the worst countries to be a factory worker in) it'll prevent your employer from treating you like a slave. If you're an American it'll make some goods cheaper but medicines more expensive -- and we already pay more for the same medicines than anyone else does. If you're a patent or trade law attorney it'll be like the heavens have opened up and ar
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Are you joking, insane, stupid or pretending?
Clinton has a private and a public position, which part of that is unclear?
As to Trump, whether he would back TPP or not, his public position made it *embarrassing* for Obama, because if Trump immediately undid what Obama enacted, it would be such an embarrassment, wouldn't it?
Obama has no legacy left, he is embarrassed, he is so fucking embarrassed.
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"Clinton has a private and a public position, which part of that is unclear?"
The part where you think that other politicians do not.
The question with TPP is whether it will die (and trust me, it was struggling anyway, thanks to the many people who campaigned, protested and highlighted it for years before the US election took it up), or whether it will be replaced. Bit early to say yet. Especially early to say what Trump will actually do.
Re:First Victory! (Score:5, Insightful)
Only thanks to Sanders Clinton also was opposed to TPP. So even if she had won TPP wouldnt have gon forward.
Hillary would have tweaked it slightly purely for political effect and then enthusiastically supported the changed version.
Re: (Score:2)
She couldn't actually do that without reopening negotiations and that would take the consent of all 12 countries and have to go through the signing process again and so forth. It would take years.
At this point the only choice the US (or anyone else) has is whether to ratify it or not. There's not really any more room for changes, no matter who won the election.
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>> Only thanks to Sanders Clinton also was opposed to TPP.
That was her "public" position for the rubes. Her private one was whatever Goldman Sachs told her it needs to be after it paid her $250K per speech.
Re:First Victory! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a strange remark and it shows up now and then. Usually it implies that if Hitler had not tried to exterminate the Jews , people would not be able to come up with an argument against Hitler.
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So far the leftists fighting against fascism are behaving pretty fascist themselves so don't give me none of that crap about Trump just yet
What is this "so far" you talk about. All parties in power lately have shown fascist tendencies. Power corrupts.
Re: (Score:3)
And there's a very large overlap between Clinton supporters and people who will believe anything the media says. Case in point: Hillary has a 98.5% chance of winning. The DNC nomination process wasn't rigged. The media weren't doing a cover-up when they didn't make a big thing about Hillary being openly against same-sex marriage [youtu.be] while in [youtu.be] the senate [youtu.be]. Good thing there's video, because with the whitewashing (gaywashing?) that the media has done, nobody would believe it.
Bunch of Butthurt crybabies [youtu.be]. Hint: If y
Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to be for work (Score:3)
Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to be bad for workers rights. With the non us courts that could gut stuff like min wage, over time, safety and more.
This must suck (Score:2)
All that hard work by megacorps to secretly create a system which enables half the world to effortlessly move capital and chase cheap labor all the while imposing US's draconian over the top IP schemes including MMPA and suing governments for pursuit of public policy that makes megacorps lose money.. poof...gone .. up in smoke.
Some good, some bad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Some good, some bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I guess your comment is what happens when you don't have a sound foundation in how a society works, but only care about economics.
What the hell is a poor person supposed to do when he has a "pre-existing condition" and can't afford the treatment? Just die off? Yeah, fuck the poor.
A society isn't just about money and economics. You are all better off if the people on the lower end of society are better off, too. Less crime, for example, but also much more.
Then of course, you're right, this isn't a job f
I'm a free-trader (Score:2)
....too bad TPP had very little to do substantially with free trade, and everything to do with IP and expanding the US's rather ridiculous copyright bullshit to Asia.
Re: (Score:2)
Trumps stance on NAFTA is also good, especially since that agreement is fair trade. But people don't seem to realize that.
TPP and NAFTA would be less a problem (Score:2)
I could live with NAFTA if it actually leveled the playing field. But our trade deals have been promising to hold 2nd world countries accountable for abusing their citizens since the 70s and haven't done it even once.
Still, this is why progressives keep getting behind these deals. If progressives could stay in powe
Re: (Score:2)
2nd world countries
I don't think that word means [wikipedia.org] what you think it means. Admittedly, China and Vietnam have been doing a lot of manufacturing lately, but that has nothing to do with NAFTA.
Good news! (Score:2)
TPP would have greatly benefitted USA corporation at the expense of other countries.
Since I'm not from the USA, this is excellent news.
Thank you mr, Trump!
Re: Good news! (Score:2)
Trump's election probably has little to do with this reality...
Re: (Score:2)
TPP would have benefitted corporations at the end the expensive of individuals in all countries.
Don't thank Trump, though. It was already struggling and had become a hot issue in many countries well before the US election. Also, he might change his mind.
Silver lining, such as it is (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to see that there is one good thing to come out of this last election. And I guess I'd better cherish it, because there aren't many.
Remember when... (Score:5, Interesting)
One Canadian law professor (Score:4, Informative)
This "one Canadian law professor" is Dr. Michael Geist [wikipedia.org], the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, a syndicated on technology law issues in major newspapers and a member of many boards, including the CANARIE Board of Directors, the CanLII Board of Directors, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's Expert Advisory Board, the EFF Advisory Board, as well as the founder of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
If you are a Canadian /. reader, I strongly recommend following his blog [michaelgeist.ca].
Re:Trump is not anti-trade (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that tariffs were invented for "freedom" is absurd. They were invented to protect domestic industries against competition. And the lesson of erecting large tariff walls is that it is the consumer that ends up paying to protect these industries, and the industries themselves become ever less competitive, protected in a nice encirclement of economic privilege. But that cannot be sustained forever, and eventually when the door opens a little bit, the coddled and increasingly indolent domestic industry is crushed.
Besides, the whole fucking thing is going to be automated in a few decades. Even the wage slaves of Bangladesh and China will be out of a job. And then what? Erect tariffs against foreign robots, or even better, against domestic robots?