Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /home/customer/www/ufppc.org/public_html/libraries/fof30/Input/Input.php on line 99 United for Peace of Pierce County - UFPPC statement: TPP -- another nail in democracy's coffin
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy."
TPP—ANOTHER NAIL IN DEMOCRACY'S COFFIN
June 25, 2015
Don't let the phrase "trade deal" make your eyes glaze over! Check out instead what Global Trade Watch has to say about the struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then call your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think. Although the fast-track battle has just been lost, the struggle over TPP is not over yet, and the stakes are high.
Why do developed countries no longer have enough jobs for the citizens who need them? Why has inequality has been increasing year by year? Why are the rich withdrawing into gated communities as one sixth of our young people fall off the path from education to employment and millions of migrants flee their homes? Trade deals like TPP are a big part of the answer, and they're linked to the decline we've seen of late in cooperation among nations, too.
The nitty-gritty can be confusing and rebarbative, but the big picture is remarkably clear. In the 1970s global elites embraced free trade agreements as the path to neoliberal globalization. This vast, anti-democratic project has largely succeeded. It's the source of today's record corporate profits. Corporations are squeezing and homogenizing the cultural diversity of the planet as they shift jobs to lower-paid workers without benefits, seize natural resources, use the information revolution to "flatten" the world, extend private enterprise into realms heretofore regarded as public utilities (power, water, education, medical insurance, pensions, prisons, etc.), and institute legal procedures that are beyond democratic control, all with a view to creating and profiting from vast mass markets. Fast-track negotiating authority, by removing the control of trade agreements from the legislature to the executive, has played an essential part in the process.
From the point of view of those pursuing it, the neoliberal globalization project has been vastly successful. International trade in manufactured products increased 76 times from 1950 to 2013 (World Trade Organization, International Trade Statistics 2014). Enough wealth has been generated to corrupt every representative democracy on Earth. The upheaval engendered is destabilizing rich and poor countries alike as the nation state morphs into the market state.
The vestiges of democracy may have been preserved, but around the world, mastery of what Walter Lippmann was the first to dub "the manufacture of consent" has made democracy manageable for corporate elites. The result is a sort of soft fascism a new political order tailored to serve the wealthy, but that has no need to suppress dissent, no need for one-party states, no need to incarcerate political opponents. Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated (Princeton University Press, 2008) describes the shape of this new organization of political power. “The political role of corporate power, the corruption of the political and representative processes by the lobbying industry, the expansion of executive power at the expense of constitutional limitations, and the degradation of political dialogue promoted by the media are the basics of the system, not excrescences upon it," he writes.
This context makes it clear that the recent high jinks in Congress over the Trans-Pacific Partnership were designed to mystify a distracted public. Fast-track negotiating authority is the essential means of hamstringing popular opposition to free trade pacts and their depredations, and this week it was granted to President Barack Obama—the man who, when he first campaigned for the presidency in 2008, said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA.
Ultimately, the goal of neoliberalism is a world in which corporations are at the heart of social relations: a Disneyfied world in which business imposes its model upon government services and tames youthful imaginations by commodifying stultifying fantasies. The nation state set out to "establish Justice" and "promote the general Welfare" for citizens, but the market state proposes to maximize the options of consumers—provided they fall within the parameters of a money-drunk corporatized world that ultimately sets standards and values for education, employment, media, and recreation.
UNITED FOR PEACE OF PIERCE COUNTY
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy."
UFPPC statement: TPP -- another nail in democracy's coffin
UNITED FOR PEACE OF PIERCE COUNTY
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy."
TPP—ANOTHER NAIL IN DEMOCRACY'S COFFIN
June 25, 2015
Don't let the phrase "trade deal" make your eyes glaze over! Check out instead what Global Trade Watch has to say about the struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Then call your representatives in Congress and let them know what you think. Although the fast-track battle has just been lost, the struggle over TPP is not over yet, and the stakes are high.
Why do developed countries no longer have enough jobs for the citizens who need them? Why has inequality has been increasing year by year? Why are the rich withdrawing into gated communities as one sixth of our young people fall off the path from education to employment and millions of migrants flee their homes? Trade deals like TPP are a big part of the answer, and they're linked to the decline we've seen of late in cooperation among nations, too.
The nitty-gritty can be confusing and rebarbative, but the big picture is remarkably clear. In the 1970s global elites embraced free trade agreements as the path to neoliberal globalization. This vast, anti-democratic project has largely succeeded. It's the source of today's record corporate profits. Corporations are squeezing and homogenizing the cultural diversity of the planet as they shift jobs to lower-paid workers without benefits, seize natural resources, use the information revolution to "flatten" the world, extend private enterprise into realms heretofore regarded as public utilities (power, water, education, medical insurance, pensions, prisons, etc.), and institute legal procedures that are beyond democratic control, all with a view to creating and profiting from vast mass markets. Fast-track negotiating authority, by removing the control of trade agreements from the legislature to the executive, has played an essential part in the process.
From the point of view of those pursuing it, the neoliberal globalization project has been vastly successful. International trade in manufactured products increased 76 times from 1950 to 2013 (World Trade Organization, International Trade Statistics 2014). Enough wealth has been generated to corrupt every representative democracy on Earth. The upheaval engendered is destabilizing rich and poor countries alike as the nation state morphs into the market state.
The vestiges of democracy may have been preserved, but around the world, mastery of what Walter Lippmann was the first to dub "the manufacture of consent" has made democracy manageable for corporate elites. The result is a sort of soft fascism a new political order tailored to serve the wealthy, but that has no need to suppress dissent, no need for one-party states, no need to incarcerate political opponents. Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Incorporated (Princeton University Press, 2008) describes the shape of this new organization of political power. “The political role of corporate power, the corruption of the political and representative processes by the lobbying industry, the expansion of executive power at the expense of constitutional limitations, and the degradation of political dialogue promoted by the media are the basics of the system, not excrescences upon it," he writes.
This context makes it clear that the recent high jinks in Congress over the Trans-Pacific Partnership were designed to mystify a distracted public. Fast-track negotiating authority is the essential means of hamstringing popular opposition to free trade pacts and their depredations, and this week it was granted to President Barack Obama—the man who, when he first campaigned for the presidency in 2008, said he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA.
Ultimately, the goal of neoliberalism is a world in which corporations are at the heart of social relations: a Disneyfied world in which business imposes its model upon government services and tames youthful imaginations by commodifying stultifying fantasies. The nation state set out to "establish Justice" and "promote the general Welfare" for citizens, but the market state proposes to maximize the options of consumers—provided they fall within the parameters of a money-drunk corporatized world that ultimately sets standards and values for education, employment, media, and recreation.
UNITED FOR PEACE OF PIERCE COUNTY
"We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy."