Americans are going to find out how much Hillary Clinton will rally her supporters to oppose the corporate-crafted regulatory treaty she strongly promoted as Secretary of State. If she wasn’t just hoodwinking progressive voters with brilliant phrasing, then the TPP has a much better chance of not getting passed through Congress. Congressional Democrats will have to decide with whom to be loyal, the current or, the neo-liberals hope, the next President. They should be loyal to their constituents and the Constitution, but the neo-liberal Democrats, who voted for fast-track bill (TPA), are neither.
Fast track, which Secretary Clinton provisionally supported, is unconstitutional; and the TPP will be an international, corporate coup des lois. Obamatrade, these so-called “trade agreements,” are an inversion of what democratic order is supposed to be. Instead of local and national self determination, these corporate-crafted regulations are international, top down and enforced by a legalized protection racket for transnational corporations. The Obamatrade treaties will be the imposition of corporate rule upon large sections of the world. Elected representatives of the American people in Congress are not involved in the negotiations of these regulatory regimes as required by line three of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
President Obama, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, is a neo-liberal. Obamatrade is naked corporate power-grab the President is leading the U.S. into. These radically undemocratic and unconstitutional international regimes are the most blatant demonstration of just how anti-socialist and unprogressive the President is. Glenn Beck and the rest of the reactionary right had Obama all wrong; he really is a moderate Republican the President claimed he is in 2012. Obama’s super PAC was not engaged with the 2014 congressional races. It’s almost as if Obama wanted a Republican Congress for his final half term. The neo-liberals are trying to impose, using an unconstutional, fast-track law that prevents any amending or modification of what Vice President Biden–another neo-liberal–calls a “new world order.”
Debating the jobs lost or gained under the TPP is like bickering over how many walnuts are contained in a poisonous brownie. Not only will there be outsourcing of jobs to countries that traffic in slave labor, but Obama’s State Department upgraded Malaysia’s ranking on slavery to allow them into the TPP. Obama’s TPP would not just undercut what the Framers crafted for Americans, democratic self-government; but the President is striving to become the anti-Lincoln.
Neo-liberals are trying to impose this on the world because corporations now control the governments, they crave cheap labor and want regulations their lawyers write. The American, corporate coup d’etat — brought about by Citizens United v FEC and McCutchen v FEC-granted campaign anarchy — is complete. Whether or not the TPP gets through Congress will be the consequence of the coup. Transnational corporations want the regulations they crafted imposed upon the national and local legistors of 12 nations with Obamatrade. The absence of currency manipulation regulation to insure market values (floating exchange rates) means this treaty is not even about free trade. Secretary Clinton has known this for years, but now it matters to her. Obamatrade, like NAFTA, will worsen American trade deficits.
Hillary Clinton’s recent change of mind is, as Cenk Uygur states in the video above, about politics. She knows the Democratic Party base opposes this coup des lois, so she wet her finger, held it up to determine which way the wind is blowing and came out against it. However, she made it clear that she would support the Obamatrade-type, corporate-crafted regulatory regimes. When Clinton announced her “opposition” the the TPP, she added:
I still believe in the goal of a strong and fair trade agreement in the Pacific as part of a broader strategy both at home and abroad, just as I did when I was Secretary of State.
Revolt Against Plutocracy’s campaign coordinator Charlie Hobbs stated that Clinton’s supposed opposition to the TPP is “more flop than flip.” RAP is the sponsor of the Bernie or bust pledge, a campaign strategy designed to tell Democrats that their nominee will be Senator Sanders or else they will write in his name for the general election next year. Hobbs added, “She’s a corporate tool.”
Writing in The Daily Beast, Ben Domenech was even more direct. He wrote, “Clinton has always been a perfect barometer of where her party is. She is a follower, not a leader.” He continues, “She is likely lying about what she thinks, and even if she’s not, her words have no necessary relationship with her true policy goals…It is a position taken for the sake of advantage at this juncture of a long campaign—and there is no reason she will feel bound by it once in the White House.”
The title of Domenech’s article says it all: “Hillary’s Trade Flip-Flop Shows How Dumb She Thinks We Are.” If Hillary Clinton ends up as the Democratic Party nominee, after the damage wrought by President Clinton’s NAFTA and deregulation of Wall Street bankers, the majority of Democrats and super delegates will demonstrate that they are as dumb as she thinks they are.
