Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
Know much about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? If you don’t, it’s not your fault. According to Zoë Carpenter (The Nation), Congress hasn’t heard much about TPP either. That’s because this so-called “free trade” agreement is being negotiated in “extreme” secrecy by representatives of twelve different countries—the United States, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Carpenter says that the Obama administration has ignored “repeated calls from legislators to make the process more transparent, while pressing to finalize the agreement this year.”
In his article titled Multinationals Are Plotting to Steamroll What’s Left of Our Democracy to Make Huge Profits, Dave Johnson says that the TPP negotiating process “has been rigged from the start.” While hundreds of representatives of corporate-interest groups have been providing their input— “representatives of labor, human rights, civil justice, consumer, environmental and other stakeholder groups have been kept away from the negotiating table.” Members of Congress have not seen the agreement yet. United States Senators “have been barred from seeing negotiation points or drafts.” The public has been denied any access to TPP negotiating texts. We the people—as well as our elected representatives—are being “kept in the dark” as to what is going on behind closed doors. Yet, “600 corporate advisers” have been involved in the negotiation process. Multi-national corporations like Monsanto and Walmart are helping to craft the agreement.
Most of the information that we have on the TPP trade agreement has come from “drafts leaked by participants dissatisfied with one provision or another.”
In May, Erika Eichelberger provided some information about TPP in her Mother Jones article titled The Biggest Secret Trade Deal You’ve Never Heard Of, Explained. She says that “trade experts” claim that trade deal negotiations are always conducted under a certain level of secrecy. This supposedly makes it “easier for countries to negotiate amongst themselves without too much noise from advocacy groups and others inside countries.” Bryan Riley, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said, “That is how trade deals have worked…if they are made public, all interested groups can start tearing things apart before it’s even done.”
Eichelberger argues that “there is precedent for releasing proposed trade deal information to the public.” She wrote: “A full draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americas was released in 2001 during negotiations on that 34-nation pact; a draft text of the recently-completed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was released; and the World Trade Organization posts negotiating texts on its website.”
David Brodwin, a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council, claims that TPP is not merely a trade pact because it would protect legacy industries from competition and would strip governments of the means to manage their own economies. Brodwin says that TPP has been “positioned” as a simple trade agreement that would “harmonize tariffs and other trade rules and promote trade among the countries involved.” He says, however, that the pact has been described by critics as a “stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny” and one that could “severely curtail government authority at all levels.”
Writing for The Nation, Lori Wallach said that TPP had been “cleverly misbranded” as a trade agreement by “its corporate boosters.” According to Wallach, that’s why “it has cruised along under the radar” since George W. Bush “initiated negotiations in 2008.” Although the Obama administration “paused the talks” for a while in order to develop an “approach compatible with candidate Obama’s pledges to replace the old NAFTA-based trade model,” the negotiations were restarted where Bush had left off by late 2009.
Wallach suggests we think of TPP “as a stealthy delivery mechanism for policies that could not survive public scrutiny.” She notes that just two of the twenty-six chapters of the pact cover traditional trade matters. She says the other chapters “embody the most florid dreams of the 1 percent—grandiose new rights and privileges for corporations and permanent constraints on government regulation.” She says TPP includes investor safeguards that would “ease job offshoring and assert control over natural resources”—and adds that it would “severely limit the regulation of financial services, land use, food safety, natural resources, energy, tobacco, healthcare and more.”
A Broad Range of Special Interest Giveaways
In his article titled Obama’s Pacific Trade Deal Is No Deal At All, Brodwin lists some of the “most problematic aspects of TPP”:
Many provisions of TPP have little to do with trade per se. They simply promote the interests of powerful global industry groups and use legal and political mechanisms to limit true competition in the market place. For example:
- Provisions of SOPA, the so-called “Stop Online Piracy Act” which was rejected last year by Congress. SOPA would give a competitive advantage to the film industry and other content-creators while restricting innovation on the internet.
- Provisions that would extend patent protection on pharmaceuticals while restricting governments from negotiating lower prices.
- Provisions that would privilege major banks and financial institutions over credit unions and the emerging sector of public banks.
- Provisions that would disadvantage organic farmers and others who adopt safer and more environmentally-sound agricultural practices.
- Provisions that would extend the dominance of coal and oil and hinder alternative energy producers, by blocking regulations and limiting deployment of smart grid and other infrastructure.
Brodwin added that the TPP pact would even prevent communities from making the decision about whether or not to allow fracking in their area. Some critics have referred to TPP as “NAFTA on steroids.”
Wallach:
Countries would be obliged to conform all their domestic laws and regulations to the TPP’s rules—in effect, a corporate coup d’état. The proposed pact would limit even how governments can spend their tax dollars. Buy America and other Buy Local procurement preferences that invest in the US economy would be banned, and “sweat-free,” human rights or environmental conditions on government contracts could be challenged. If the TPP comes to fruition, its retrograde rules could be altered only if all countries agreed, regardless of domestic election outcomes or changes in public opinion. And unlike much domestic legislation, the TPP would have no expiration date.
At a Senate banking Committee hearing in May, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) cautioned, “There are growing murmurs about Wall Street’s efforts to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership…as [a] vehicle…to water down the Dodd-Frank Act. In other words, trying to do quietly through trade agreements what they can’t get done in public view with the lights on and people watching.”
TPP Tribunals
Countries that are signatories to the trade pact “will have to change their policies to conform to the agreement.” What does that mean? It would require a dismantling of “any regulations, safeguards or incentives” the countries had enacted “to support their economies and provide better lives for their citizens.” In fact, a system of tribunals would be established in order “to hold governments to account.” Corporations would be allowed to sue governments “to demand the relaxation of standards, and could claim damages from governments that failed to conform.”
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership “represents an about-face by President Obama, who as a candidate pledged to replace the NAFTA model with a US trade policy that protected workers and the environment.” OWS notes that some members of the US Business Coalition for TPP—namely Microsft, Time Warner, and Walt Disney—were among top donors to Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.
On Fast Tracking TPP & Secrecy
President Obama is seeking Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority for TPP. This would permit Obama to sign the trade agreement “without Congressional approval.” The signed agreement would then be sent to Congress to be “voted on after the fact under a special restricted procedure that forces a vote in 90 days, limits debate, and prevents Congress from responding to public pressure to amend the agreement’s most egregious anti-public interest provisions.” Zoë Carpenter says that allowing “fast-track” authorization, would limit the ability of Congress “to address three major concerns with the TPP: the potentially harmful economic impacts of the deal, the very real prospect of the agreement superseding domestic policy in areas ranging from internet privacy to environmental and financial regulations and an unbalanced negotiating process and its likely outcome, both tipped towards corporate rather than public interest.”
In her Mother Jones article, Eichelberger reported that the secrecy shrouding the TPP negotiations “has some lawmakers and advocacy groups up in arms.” She said that several members of Congress had called on the United States Trade Representative (USTR) requesting the release of the TPP draft agreement to the public, but to no avail. It seems time is running out for “non-corporate” interested parties to find out what is in the trade agreement before it’s signed by the twelve countries and goes into effect. It hasn’t even been made clear “whether members of Congress will ever be able to see the entire contents of the massive trade deal before it’s finalized.” It appears that the public—and maybe our elected representatives—will remain in the dark until after the Trans Pacific Partnership is a done deal.
Members of the U.S. Business Coalition for TPP
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Dennis Kucinich on Trans-Pacific Partnership
How the TPP can rewrite US domestic laws
TPP: The Biggest Threat to the Internet You’ve Probably Never Heard Of (EFF)
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SOURCES
Obama’s Pacific Trade Deal Is No Deal At All (U.S.News)
AFL-CIO Campaigns Against Trans-Pacific Partnership (Firedoglake)
Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Remove What’s Left Of American Democracy (Firedoglake)
Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Coup (Truth-out)
Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks: Senators Demand Access To Controversial Documents After Leak (Huffington Post)
Monsanto and Walmart Influence Secret TPP Negotiations (New American)
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: The Closed-Door Deal To Establish Corporate Power (Occupy Wall Street)
Keeping a Massive Trade Deal Out of the Fast Lane (The Nation)
J. Holmes,
On the subject of issue distraction in politics, Matt Taibbi wrote about it “Griftopia”. I’ve mentioned before that DOMA and same-sex marriage, while crucially important to gays and lesbians, are every bit the distraction that steroids in sports are.
Elaine,
Thanks for the information. Stories like this are primary reason I follow this blog.
Everybody better just start girding your loins now, cause we’re screwed. Two things I’ve come to believe about Obama:
1) He simply lacks the experience to oversee a negotiated agreement that approximates, even nominally, the rhetoric of his Hope and Change campaign even if he wanted to.
2) He really doesn’t want to. I think he’s trying to prove to the plutocracy that a black man can be in a position of high power and not screw things up with a lot of ameliorative social programs, but can, instead, “deliver” for the corporate structure. I’m sure in his mind, he’s promoting the cause of social equality on some level, only more intelligently than Herman “999” Cain. He has become our Judas goat.
Bron,
The unfortunate reality is that free trade never is free on both sides and that since the Reagan years, free trade means the US and workers are going to come out as the losers.
Mike,
We won’t have to worry about hanging in there if this secret trade deal goes through. However, our kids may not have a rope to hang onto. Scary stuff.
from what I heard on the cato symposium, linked to above, the TPP is not secret at all and is available on one of the other links I posted to above. Some of the provisions, according to cato, are secret but cato is saying these are issues having to do with competitive advantage and not some sinister cabal.
Free trade is a good thing if it works both ways.
Obama’s Covert Trade Deal
By LORI WALLACH and BEN BEACHY
Published: June 2, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/obamas-covert-trade-deal.html?_r=0
Excerpt:
While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released. Even the George W. Bush administration, hardly a paragon of transparency, published online the draft text of the last similarly sweeping agreement, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, in 2001.
There is one exception to this wall of secrecy: a group of some 600 trade “advisers,” dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators.
This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose parameters on nontrade policies. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports.
Remember the debate in January 2012 over the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have imposed harsh penalties for even the most minor and inadvertent infraction of a company’s copyright? The ensuing uproar derailed the proposal. But now, the very corporations behind SOPA are at it again, hoping to reincarnate its terms within the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s sweeping proposed copyright provisions.
From another leak, we know the pact would also take aim at policies to control the cost of medicine. Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as “advisers,” have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.
And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta — a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.
The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis. Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.
Elizabeth Warren: Floor Speech on TPP and in Opposition to Michael Froman’s Nomination for USTR
Warren on Trans-Pacific Partnership: If people knew what was going on, they would stop it
By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/19/warren-on-trans-pacific-partnership-if-people-knew-what-was-going-on-they-would-stop-it/
Excerpt:
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Wednesday voiced her opposition to President Barack Obama’s top international trade nominee because of a secretive free trade agreement.
“I am deeply concerned about the transparency record of the U.S. Trade Representative and with one ongoing trade agreement in particular — the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” she said on the Senate floor.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been negotiated behind closed-doors for years by trade representatives from Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. Though the free trade agreement could have wide ranging consequences on workers and consumers, the public only knows a few details of the treaty thanks to leaked documents.
“I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant,” Warren explained. “In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”
not tryin to take this important article off topic. But check THIS out too
http://news.yahoo.com/report-nsa-maps-persons-social-connections
Report: NSA maps out a person’s social connections
WASHINGTON (AP) — For almost three years the National Security Agency has been tapping the data it collects to map out some Americans’ social connections, allowing the government to identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, The New York times reported.
Citing documents provided by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, the Times reported that the NSA began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine some Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after NSA officials lifted restrictions on the practice. The newspaper posted the report on its website Saturday.
Alan Grayson On Trans-Pacific Partnership: Obama Secrecy Hides ‘Assault On Democratic Government’
By Zach carter
Posted: 06/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/alan-grayson-trans-pacific-partnership_n_3456167.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Progressive Democrats in Congress are ramping up pressure on the Obama administration to release the text of Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive free trade agreement with 10 other nations, amid intensifying controversy over the administration’s transparency record and its treatment of classified information.
The only publicly available information on the terms of the deal has come from leaks, some of which have alarmed public health experts, environmentalist groups and consumer advocates. According to a document leaked in the summer of 2012, the deal would allow corporations to directly challenge government laws and regulations in international courts.
Members of Congress have been provided with only limited access to the negotiation documents. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) told HuffPost on Monday that he viewed an edited version of the negotiation texts last week, but that secrecy policies at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative created scheduling difficulties that delayed his access for nearly six weeks. The Obama administration has barred any Congressional staffers from reviewing the full negotiation text and prohibited members of Congress from discussing the specific terms of the text with trade experts and reporters. Staffers on some committees are granted access to portions of the text under their committee’s jurisdiction.
“This, more than anything, shows the abuse of the classified information system,” Grayson told HuffPost. “They maintain that the text is classified information. And I get clearance because I’m a member of Congress, but now they tell me that they don’t want me to talk to anybody about it because if I did, I’d be releasing classified information.”
How and why the administration decides to make information classified has come under intense scrutiny in recent months, after the Associated Press learned that the Department of Justice had been monitoring the records of more than 20 phone numbers — including the personal phones of reporters and editors — as part of a government leak investigation. Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures of two broad National Security Agency surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post have sparked a heated debate over what kinds of leaks should be prosecuted as criminal.
“What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it,” Grayson said, referring to the draft Trans-Pacific deal. “It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.”
I smell BS. Congress doesn’t care to have a say in this – they don’t read trade pacts anyway, they just sign them. Hell, they don’t read most things they sign….
Fast Track
An Undemocratic Path to Unfair “Trade”
Public Citizen
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=500
Excerpt:
Fast Track was an extreme and rarely-used procedure that empowered executive branch negotiators advised by large corporations to skirt Congress and the public and use “trade” agreements to rewrite policies that affect our daily lives – from the stability of our jobs to the safety of our food. Past “trade” deals rammed through Congress under Fast Track have empowered foreign corporations to attack domestic health and environmental policies, enabled pharmaceutical firms to raise medicine prices, and equipped banks with a tool to roll back financial regulation.
Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is supposed to write the laws and set trade policy. For 200 years, these key checks and balances helped ensure that no one branch of government had too much power. But, over the last few decades, presidents have seized those congressional powers using the Fast Track mechanism. hide
Fast Track has only been used 16 times in the history of our nation, often to enact the most controversial of “trade” pacts, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Meanwhile, hundreds of less controversial U.S. trade agreements have been implemented without resort to Fast Track, showing that the extraordinary procedure is not needed to approve trade agreements.
Fast Track allowed the executive branch to unilaterally select partner countries for “trade” pacts, decide the agreements’ contents, and then negotiate and sign the agreements — all before Congress had a vote on the matter. Normal congressional committee processes were forbidden, meaning that the executive branch was empowered to write lengthy legislation on its own with no review or amendments. These executive-authored bills altered wide swaths of U.S. law unrelated to trade – food safety, immigration visas, energy policy, medicine patents and more – to conform our domestic policies to each agreement’s requirements. And, remarkably, Fast Track let the executive branch control Congress’ voting schedule. Unlike any other legislation, both the House and Senate were required to vote on a Fast Tracked trade agreement within 90 days of the White House submitting it. No floor amendments were allowed and debate was limited.
Because Fast Track’s dramatic shift in the balance of powers between branches of the U.S. government occurred via an arcane procedural mechanism, it obtained little scrutiny – until recently. Its use by Democratic and Republican presidents alike to seize Congress’ constitutional prerogatives, “diplomatically legislate” non-trade policy, and preempt state policy, has made it increasingly controversial.
‘Winning the Race to the Bottom’: Obama Moves to Fast-Track the TPP
Critics slam highly secretive deal as a tool for U.S. and corporate power
– Sarah Lazare, staff writer
9/19/13
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/09/19-9
Excerpt:
As Obama moves to fast-track the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), critics are blasting the highly-secretive trade deal as “NAFTA on steroids” and a tool for advancing U.S. and corporate power.
“If impoverishing working people around the world is the goal, then the trade policies like this are working quite effectively,” Chris Townsend, political director for United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), told Common Dreams. “This is the grand-daddy of trade deals, a very destructive project, and it is happening completely under the radar.”
Meeting with his corporation-heavy Export Council, President Barack Obama declared Thursday he intends to push for renewal of Trade Promotion Authority legislation to allow him to fast-track so-called trade agreements by giving Congress a yes or no vote but taking away powers to amend.
The statement comes as the U.S. continues negotiations with 11 other countries on the TPP, with the stated goal of wrapping up the deal by the year’s end. The U.S. is also pursuing a similar trade deal with the European Union…
Leaks have also revealed that the U.S. is pushing to expand the power of pharmaceutical companies to establish monopolies on life-saving drugs—a move that would boost drug prices while cutting access.
Even laws regulating tobacco companies could end up on the chopping block in this agreement.
Critics charge that this corporate model of global development deepens inequalities and depresses wages for all countries involved and sets dismal standards in global trade. “I always tell our union members: there’s a race to the bottom, and we’re winning,” Townsend told Common Dreams.
Gene H. 1, September 29, 2013 at 8:03 am
…
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
…
============================
I like that analogy too (The Matriarch of The Matrix).
We are all going to have to be “the one” it would seem.
Congressional Report: US Is Negotiating TPP as if Fast Track Authority Still Exists and its IP Provisions Go Beyond International Standards
Electronic Frontier Foundation
9/7/12
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/09/congressional-report-us-negotiating-tpp
Excerpt:
Fast Track Authority
International trade agreements negotiated under the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA)—also known as the fast track authority—are reviewed by Congress under limited debate, on an accelerated time frame and are subject to a yes or no vote by Congress without any amendments. This expedited consideration is conditioned on the President observing certain statutory obligations in negotiating trade agreements, including the notification and consultation of Congress. The purpose of the TPA is to preserve the constitutional role of Congress to regulate foreign commerce in consideration of implementing legislation for trade agreements that require changes in domestic law, while also bolstering the negotiating credibility of the executive branch by assuring that a trade agreement, once signed, will not be changed during the legislative process.
The CRS starts the report by making an important point in regard to this TPP implementation process, saying:
“The present negotiations are not being conducted under the auspices of formal trade promotion authority (TPA)—the latest TPA expired on July 1, 2007—although the Administration informally is following the procedures of the former TPA. If TPP implementing legislation is brought to Congress, TPA may need to be considered if the legislation is not to be subject to potentially debilitating amendments or rejection. Finally, Congress may seek to weigh in on the addition of new members to the negotiations, before or after the negotiations conclude.”
Although it has expired, the Obama Administration has proceeded to negotiate the proposed TPP as if the TPA were in effect. The fact that the Obama is negotiating TPP without a renewed TPA has raised questions from public interest organizations, academics, and members of Congress in regard to the future constitutionality and implementation of TPP into US law. They have also commented on the credibility of the negotiations and positions pushed forward by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), since there is no assurance that Congress cannot amend any US commitments.
In a book titled “The Rise and Fall of the Fast Track Authority”, Todd Tucker and Lori Wallach from Public Citizen comment on this fast track mechanism:
“Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress writes the laws and sets our trade policy. Yet, over the last few decades, presidents have increasingly grabbed that power through a mechanism known as Fast Track. This undemocratic procedure has facilitated controversial commercial pacts like NAFTA and the WTO, which restrict nations’ trade and non-trade policies.”
Justice Holmes,
If you aren’t seeing that pattern, you aren’t paying attention. I had a couple of ideas for columns this weekend that died on the vine from what I call “bloatcreep” – a neologism combining the terms “information bloat” and “scope creep”. “Bloatcreep” is when you start digging into a subject that appears fairly narrow in focus only to find that just beneath the surface, there is a lot more information with a much broader relevance than is appropriate for a short form column or article. Very often when I run into this issue, it’s because of the onion like nature of corporations and/or governmental agencies using nesting (plans within plans) as an obscuring technique. When you peel back the upper layers is when that pattern becomes most apparent. Very much of what passes as news anymore is indeed misdirection. At my grimmest most cynical moments, it reminds me of the following famous film conversation:
But the prison walls I keep glimpsing through the fog of misinformation is for more than your mind. It’s for your whole life. Cynical is inevitable. The reactions of depression, frustration and righteous anger are somewhat more problematic.
I’m normally a pretty happy person. However, I’ve had a straight month with a steady diet of bloatcreep. It has been a grim diet indeed. My spirit is lagging. Every story I look in to reveals a deeper and darker story behind it, but it’s not the cynical that’s wearing me down.
It’s the cynical that’s keeping me going.
That and the words of Buddha (also used by the Oracle in the aforementioned film series).
Everything that has a beginning has an end.
No, Justice Holmes. You aren’t too cynical. You’re paying attention. You’re awake. And we need more of that in the world. One cannot fix a problem until one can define its parameters. The first step in that definition process is always “pay attention”.
“It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Gene,
Amen. However, the curse that goes with waking up is the pain of understanding just how desperate things are. I lived with that a long time but words of the Buddha and other masters have comforted me and given me strength. I have found that one can live and even enjoy life despite the true order of things that surrounds and enslaves us. The first step is always knowledge of the true reality. When more of us “wake up”, with that knowledge we can then do something about it. The “trick” I’ve personally found comes from the words of Baba Ram Dass and Fritz Perls: “Be here now.”
Being in the “here and now” reminds me of my childhood on a warm summer day when all there was to do was play. The feeling inside me I can only describe as an excited “hum” as I let myself enjoy whatever it was I was doing. You know I’ve gone through a lot in my life and yet remaining in the present allowed me to muddle through, survive and emotionally prosper. I know you are on the same path with me and others like Justice Holmes, we just need to hang in there.
Justice Holmes,
You’re a realist.
pdm,
Thanks, I have seen Taibbi’s article. I always pick up a copy of Rolling Stone when he has an article in it. I had considered writing a post about the public pension story this weekend–but I decided to go with TPP as I had already done a lot of research on the subject. I still may write a guest blog about the pensions.
Have you read Taibbi’s book “Griftopia?”
Where do the Pee Party members of Congress stand on this?
I continue to feel that many of the crisises that we get enmeshed in are really distractions so that corporations can destroy our country. Am I just getting to cynical?