Obama calls critics of TPP secrecy 'Conspiracy Theorists'

[TiberiusB]

131. How do people defend this nonsense?

While I think most people will focus on the obvious denigration of critics by Obama's slipping "conspiracy" into the conversation, I am taken by the now all-too-typical pretense that the government is working to balance the interests of the people against those of industry. I laughed when the line "companies...oftentimes want a return" came up. Try, "always want a return". Take all that in. Obama is going out of his way to frame drug companies as simply being kind servants of the public who just want to occasionally make a bit of money for their efforts. Industry profits over the ten years ranging from 2002 to 2012 reached over 700 BILLION dollars, much of that made on the backs of American seniors and tax payers (thanks, "no drug price negotiation" Medicare Part D). Now they want Asians to pay what Americans do. We just can't have countries like India creating cheap, generic knock offs of hideously expensive drugs (frequently not expensive to make, mind you, just expensive to buy) for the impoverished masses, now can we? If we had a rational copyright and patent system in the U.S., I could possibly get behind extending it to our trading partners. That isn't even close to being the case, however.

Even largely corporate written laws like the ACA could come under attack under the TPP if they are seen as interfering in "free" trade, with any future effort to establish universal health care almost certainly DOA. That's the kind of "balance" we get when industry greed is weighed against public need.