Hightower: Corporate PR Flacks Are Trying to Convince You the TPP Will Benefit Workers

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35190-corporate-pr-flacks-are-trying-to-convince-you-the-trans-pacific-partnership-will-benefit-workers

The article opened with this sunny headline: "Trade Pack Would Lift US Incomes, Study Says." Sounds like a dandy deal! But wait, a study by whom? Four paragraphs down into the story, we're finally told that this analysis of TPP's impact comes from the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Fine, but who's behind that? We're not told, even though that information is key to understanding the upbeat interpretation of the TPP trade scheme. Readers would likely be less reassured by the positive spin if they knew that the Peterson Institute is largely funded by the major global corporations that would gain enormous new power over consumers, workers, farmers, our environment and the very sovereignty of America if Congress rubber stamps this raw deal. In fact, many of the multinational giants financing the institute were among the 500 corporate powers that were literally allowed to help write the 2,000-page agreement they're now trying to shove down out throats—including Caterpillar, Chevron, IBM, GE, Deere & Company, General Motors and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Oh, and what about this Peterson guy—is he some sort of unbiased scholar? Hardly. Pete Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire, one of the 400 richest people in the country, and the founding chairman of his eponymous institute. He's also a reactionary, anti-government, anti-public-spending ideologue who was Nixon's commerce secretary. Hailed by the establishment as one of "the most influential billionaires in U.S. politics," he uses that influence (and his fortune) to demonize such for-the-people programs as Social Security and to push policies to further enrich and enthrone the billionaire class over the rest of us. TPP would be his ultimate political coup against us commoners.

We don't need any institute to tell us who would benefit from TPP. All we need to know is that it was negotiated in strict secrecy with global corporate elites while we consumers and workers were locked out. Remember, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

[PWPippin]

1. ". . . if you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

Reminds me of a great George Carlin standup bit. Wish he were still with us!