Commentary on the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders

We think that it is a good thing that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is running for president. Senator Sanders has attracted some of the largest crowds of any presidential candidate by hammering away at the growing income and wealth inequality in the U.S. He supports the $15 per hour minimum wage, a government single-payer health care program and has been a consistent opponent of so-called ‘free trade’ agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP.

Senator Sanders has also been a critic of Wall Street and the most blatant displays of the richest 1%’s domination of elections. He wants to overturn the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that ended restrictions on corporate donations to political candidates. Sanders has also fought hard against the right wing and oil and gas industry’s opposition to any action on climate change.

That said, we cannot support the candidacy of Mr. Sanders. As senator, Sanders supported the 2010 Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that included more militarization of the border, more temporary workers, cutting legal immigration from Africa in half by the elimination of the so-called diversity visa, and cutting back on family reunification visas. Sanders has said almost nothing about the ongoing police occupation of oppressed nationality communities, and the plague of police killings that target young Black and brown men.

While Sanders has been a critic of the Pentagon, he does so from the perspective of pinching pennies, not from an opposition to U.S. intervention in countries around the world. Sanders has supported sanctions on Russia that are part of the U.S. strategy for ‘regime change’ in former soviet countries to isolate Russia. Even worse, he has been a supporter of the brutal Israeli attack on Gaza, which massacred over a thousand Palestinian civilians and hundreds of children.

For those of our readers who see change coming through elections, there is (unfortunately) no major candidate to the left of Senator Sanders. He is certainly better than Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party mainstream, having opposed President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform and having endorsed the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s campaign for president in 1988. But for those of us who see that “change is in the streets,” we will be putting our time, energy and meager amount of money into organizing on campus, in the community and at our workplaces, not into the election campaign of Senator Sanders. We invite you to join us.

Via: Fight Back News

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Obama sheds cool style for 'fearless' final lap in office

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama has reached the stage of his presidency where if he wants to break out in song publicly, as he did with “Amazing Grace” in a eulogy on Friday, then he’s going to do it.

With a year-and-a-half left in office, Obama is shedding some of his trademark “no drama” style for a looser approach, admitting that he feels more fearless and liberated.

It may also be in recognition that he has few big-ticket policy achievements left to enjoy in polarized Washington as the end of his two-term presidency approaches.

In a remarkable week for the president, a victory on Pacific Rim trade was snatched from the jaws of defeat on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The Supreme Court on Thursday validated his signature healthcare law, guaranteeing he would accomplish a central second-term goal, to protect the 2010 Affordable Care Act from being dismantled by Republicans.

The icing on the cake came on Friday with the high court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage, a move Obama said was a "big step" toward equality for Americans.

After the court decision was announced, Obama took a Rose Garden victory lap.

“Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back," he said.

"And then sometimes, there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

Some Obama confidants described a more liberated, even feistier president, willing to mix it up with a heckler inside the White House, as he did on Wednesday. Or willing to use a racial epithet, long abandoned by civil society, to describe black people in urging more racial unity.

Why the change in style? He has more experience now, the president said in a podcast interview last week with comedian Marc Maron.

Via: Yahoo News

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TEAM OBAMATRADE PLANNING TRICKY EFFORT TO SNEAK EXPORT-IMPORT BANK REAUTHORIZATION INTO DEAL

In the final hours before the House votes on a new leadership-concocted scheme to sneak Obamatrade past the American public, it’s been revealed that pro-Obamatrade forces are now aiming to sneak a renewal of the highly controversial Export Import Bank into the deal to secure Senate passage later if the House passes it on Thursday.

“I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” 

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA)

0%

, a Democrat who’s angling for this in the deal, said according to Politico. “A lot of [the meeting] was to talk about that very question of: What is a sufficient assurance?”

Politico reports that such a discussion happened at the White House between so-called pro-Obamatrade Democrats and President Barack Obama.

“At the White House on Wednesday, pro-trade Democrats and Obama discussed the possibility of sticking together as a bloc so they can get TPA, TAA, a customs enforcement and perhaps an extension of the Export-Import Bank charter, which lapses at the end of the month,” Politico wrote late Wednesday.

What’s more, 

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

4%

—and Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA)—also confirmed the effort to sneak the Export-Import Bank reauthorization into the deal when it hits the Senate.

“

Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA)

12%

 said 

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)

4%

 and a ‘small group’ of Democratic senators who voted last month to renew TPA made ‘very clear’ in a June 16 meeting with House Democrats that they will support a standalone TPA only if they can get a vote on Ex-Im reauthorization,” Inside U.S. Trade, a high-value trade subscription-only publication for beltway insiders, wrote on Wednesday. “Connolly said for these ‘handful’ of Senate Democrats the Ex-Im issue seemed more important than the passage of TAA.”

Via: Breitbart

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GOP LEADERSHIP’S LATEST OBAMATRADE PLOY REVEALED: SMALL BUSINESS TAX HIKE THAT VIOLATES GOP’S ANTI-TAX PLEDGE

Establishment Republicans desperately trying to secure the passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which would give President Obama fast-track authority to secure congressional approval of at least three secretive trade deals, are now willing to increase taxes on small businesses in a way that would violate a pledge almost every Republican Congressman has taken when elected into office.

To secure final passage through Congress of a package that would include TPA fast-track authority—which would ensure finalization of the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), among other deals—the House would need to pass the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) package that was necessary for Senate passage of TPA. The House voted TAA down 302-126 with widespread bipartisan opposition to last week, but House Ways and Means Committee chairman 

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

58%

 and his allies in House GOP leadership have pledged that they will try to pass it again early next week. The vote would potentially be on Monday, but more likely on Tuesday—and if there is no vote by Tuesday, it’s unlikely that Ryan will be able to succeed in his ploy to revive TPA.

TAA is a big government program usually favored by Democrats—it increases the size and scope of government, and is essentially viewed by Republicans as a welfare program—so their opposition to it during Friday’s complicated and confusing House vote schedule was not opposition to TAA as a specific concept, but opposition to the full Obamatrade package, especially TPA.

House Minority Leader 

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

9%

 gave a blistering floor speech against the full Obamatrade deal, causing a Democratic rebellion against TAA—and forcing Ryan to push Republicans to vote for that part of the package.

Via: Breitbart

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Extreme secrecy eroding support for Obama's trade pact

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

“It’s like being in kindergarten,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who’s become the leader of the opposition to President Barack Obama’s trade agenda. “You give back the toys at the end.”

For those out to sink Obama’s free trade push, highlighting the lack of public information is becoming central to their opposition strategy: The White House isn’t even telling Congress what it’s asking for, they say, or what it’s already promised foreign governments.

The White House has been coordinating an administration-wide lobbying effort that’s included phone calls and briefings from Secretary of State John Kerry, Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and others. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has been working members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro has been talking to members of his home state Texas delegation.

Officials from the White House and the United States trade representative’s office say they’ve gone farther than ever before to provide Congress the information it needs and that the transparency complaints are just the latest excuse for people who were never going to vote for a new trade deal anyway.

“We’ve worked closely with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle to balance unprecedented access to classified documents with the appropriate level of discretion that’s needed to ensure Americans get the best deal possible in an ongoing, high-stakes international negotiation,” said USTR spokesman Matt McAlvanah.

Via: Politico

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‘TAA’, ‘TAA’, America!

The TAA (Trade Adjustment Assistance) vote coming Tuesday is the Final Act of the hideous Fundamental Transformation of America.  It brings forward an America that will exist in name only in a Barack Obama-styled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that holds ultimate power over 40 percent of the world’s total economy. It’s the original camel as a horse designed by a committee; a European Union called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that is really the North American Union; a partnership this time without Mexico, whose population already uses the U.S. as its primary escape hatch.

That no one knows what’s in the TPP is the one big lie that keeps the masses from realizing that the TPP, packaged in the one-party politics that is now the United States of America,  is spinning non-stop toward an inevitable fait accompli.

That Nancy Pelosi and the Dems have turned on their master Obama is merely a Machiavellian ploy at work.

Watch the video (below) of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi’s broad-grinned, cat-that-swallowed-the-canary joint entry into a meeting on the Hill yesterday.  Do they look like natural foes to you?

What about TPP coordinator, Paul Ryan as Obama’s latest Go-to Guy for getting the job done?

Window dressing that should be filed under ‘o’ for ‘obfuscation’.

Via: Canada Free Press

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How Obama’s Trade Deal Unraveled in the US House

President Obama’s last-minute push to whip votes for his trade bill backfired Friday as the House of Representatives killed a related measure providing aid to workers displaced by trade. The legislation was critical to the president’s pursuit of greater authority to negotiate trade agreements.

The 126-to-302 vote marked a failure for Obama after forging an unusual alliance with House Republicans. Skeptical Democrats argued the bill authorizing Trade Adjustment Assistance was funded through cuts to Medicare and would accelerate job losses.

“Our people would rather have a job than trade assistance,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said before the vote. “Whatever the deal is with other countries, we want a better deal for America’s workers.”

Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., said House Democrats have taken the trade bill “hostage” in an attempt to “undermine America’s trade agenda.”

“The Democrats are very good at talking about how much they care about the fight for working men and women who have been displaced and they didn’t send that message today, they did quite the opposite,” Dent said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Trade Adjustment Assistance was used as an attempt to entice Democrats to support a second bill central to the trade deal. TAA, as it’s known, would have provided job training and relocation allowances for those who lose their jobs because of increased international trade.

Democrats didn’t go for the ploy and instead struck a blow to a program they typically support, bucking Obama’s 40-minute plea for passage just hours before the vote.

Via: The Daily Signal

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For Democrats split on trade, the fight is getting personal.

President Obama's feeling the heat -- from Democrats ahead of Friday's vote on trade legislation. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Democrats feel backed into a corner on today's high-stakes vote on Obama's trade deals. And they're letting it show.

The House of Representatives is expected to take a very important vote Friday on legislation known as fast track. It would give Obama leeway to negotiate two massive deals with Pacific Rim nations and Europe. Broadly speaking, Republicans support the plan. Democrats, not so much.

[The congressional trade deal explained, in 6 factions]

Labor unions, those well-funded foundations of all that is good for the Democratic Party, absolutely hate the trade deals. Unions have promised to spend cash, lots of it, to take out any Democrat who supports Friday's vote.

So as Obama works with House Republican and Democratic leaders to shove fast-track legislation through on what's expected to be a razor-thin vote, most of the 188 House Democrats feel their career hanging in the balance.

And they're increasingly attacking not just the trade deal, but their own president.

Obama arrives on the Hill for trade vote(0:35)

President Obama made an 11th-hour appeal to dubious Democrats on Friday in a tense run-up to a House showdown on legislation to strengthen his hand in global trade talks. (AP)

The vitriol started with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). As the Senate prepared to vote on fast track last month (it passed 62 to 38), the liberal darling was so vocal about the secrecy surrounding Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with 11 other countries that she earned a rare diss from Obama.

Via: Washington Post

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Obama makes last-ditch plea to Dems ahead of showdown vote on trade

President Obama went to Capitol Hill Friday morning to make a final plea to congressional Democrats for his trade agenda, ahead of a showdown vote in the House. 

The president met with House Democratic leaders ahead of a caucus meeting. While it is extremely rare for a president to make a visit like this before a big vote, the last-minute lobbying comes after the president also made a surprise appearance at the annual congressional baseball game between Democrats and Republicans the night before. His personal involvement underscores how fragile the effort is -- Fox News is told the effort is still short on the votes -- and how important he sees it to his second-term legacy. 

The night before, a bizarre scene unfolded as the crowd crammed inside Nationals Park lurched into a chant about the legislation. 

“TPA! TPA! TPA!” chanted Republican congressional aides seated near the first base dugout when Obama stepped onto the field at the top of the fourth inning.  

This wasn’t quite the drunken, Bronx throng at Yankee Stadium cantillating “Reg-GIE! Reg-GIE! Reg-GIE!” after Reggie Jackson swatted three consecutive home runs in Game Six of the 1977 World Series. This was gamesmanship, Washington-style. A game in which most congressional Republicans find themselves backing the Democratic president’s efforts to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), a framework for a big trade deal the administration hopes to advance later this year.

Via: Fox News

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WIKILEAKS RELEASES MORE OF OBAMATRADE DRAFT ALTERING HEALTHCARE, HALTING MEDICARE REFORM

WikiLeaks is releasing another part of President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

The Healthcare Annex, according to WikiLeaks, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.”

Dr. Deborah Gleeson, who gave professional review and analysis to WikiLeaks said, “The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high-quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” Gleeson added, “Nor does this do anything to promote ‘free trade.’”

“The inclusion of the Healthcare Transparency Annex in the TPP serves no useful public interest purpose. It sets a terrible precedent for using regional trade deals to tamper with other countries’ health systems and could circumscribe the options available to developing countries seeking to introduce pharmaceutical coverage programs in the future,” noted Gleeson.

For Americans, it means Congress wouldn’t be able to reform Medicare, reported WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks reports the document isn’t released until four years after the TPP is passed into law.

Via: Breitbart

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REVEALED: THE SECRET IMMIGRATION CHAPTER IN OBAMA’S TRADE AGREEMENT

Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters.

The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents uncovered by Wikileaks are until now. (See below)

The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, which is one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade in fact unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law. TiSA, like TPP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) deals, are international trade agreements that President Obama is trying to force through to final approval. The way he can do so is by getting Congress to give him fast-track authority through TPA.

TiSA is even more secretive than TPP. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill can review the text of TPP in a secret, secured room inside the Capitol—and in some cases can bring staffers who have high enough security clearances—but with TiSA, no such draft text is available.

Via: Breitbart

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EXCLUSIVE — KEVIN MCCARTHY PRESSURED BY REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE: WHAT’S THE RUSH ON OBAMATRADE PLANS WITH ITS ‘GLOBAL GOVERNANCE’ HIDDEN INSIDE?

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)

67%

 is pressuring House GOP leadership, particularly Majority Leader 

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

47%

, to delay plans to muscle Obamatrade through the House of Representatives quickly. In in a letter to McCarthy obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, he’s asking leadership to slow down and consider the ramifications of what it is doing.

“I write to you today to request that you delay any vote on fast-track authority for the Executive until the President has made public all text and information pertaining to the new economic union known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission, as well the ‘Living Agreement’ authority,” Hunter wrote to McCarthy, his fellow California Republican. “My concern is that this allows the President and the members of the union to change the agreement and its membership following adoption.”

Hunter’s concern is well founded.

Despite claims from some Obamatrade proponents to the contrary, if Congress approves Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) which would fast-track and all but ensure the approval of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal, the “Living Agreement” inside the TPP would allow President Obama and the other TPP nations to add China or any other country for that matter to the deal without seeking approval from Congress.

China, President Obama confirmed last week, has been in talks with top Obama administration officials already and is interested in becoming part of TPP. If the House approves TPA as the Senate did—thereby ensuring that TPP will approved—then that technically means, despite anything proponents of this deal say, it would be empowering China and undermining the United States.

Hunter’s letter continues by noting that the TPP Commission would create a new global governance, ceding U.S. sovereignty to foreign and global interests, something 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

80%

 first revealed in a letter to President Barack Obama last week

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Ed Schultz: ‘Why Give Obama Fast Track Authority On Trade Deal? Because He’s African-American?’

NEW POLL:  55% OPPOED TO FAST TRACK!!!

MSNBC’s Ed Schultz continued his critique of President Barack Obama’s push for Fast Track Authority on trade Friday by invoking the president’s race as he looks to push through a deal against Democratic opposition.

In his opening monologue, Schultz wondered why Democrats should “give the president fast track authority,” before going on to invoke Obama’s ethnicity into the debate

“Why give the president fast track authority? Because he’s African-American? I don’t think so,” Schultz said. “I don’t care if the president’s Asian, African-American, from Nigeria, if he’s a fat white guy from Minnesota, it doesn’t matter.”

ED SCHULTZ: The bottom line in all of this is that we have a track record of trade agreements that have gutted American jobs. In fact, we have seen the Chinese cheat when it comes to trade agreements. We have seen them dump stuff on our market. And the trade agreements aren’t set up where we can recoil fast enough and straighten things out. By that time, the jobs are lost down the road. So this is more of the same.

So why give the president fast track authority? Because he’s African-American? I don’t think so. I don’t care if the president’s Asian, African-American, from Nigeria, if he’s a fat white guy from Minnesota, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, this is a bad deal for America. And no one’s telling the truth exactly what is in this. And why do we have to have a trade deal with Brunei? Sharia law. Really? That’s going to make our economy better? No. This is a Wall Street deal. This is a corporate deal. It’s not for the betterment of raising wages in this country.

Via: Daily Caller

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Leaked TISA Documents Reveal Privacy Threat

Under the draft provisions of the latest trade deal to be leaked by Wikileaks, countries could be barred from trying to control where their citizens’ personal data is held or whether it’s accessible from outside the country.

Wikileaks has released 17 documents relating to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), currently under negotiation between the US, the European Union and 23 other nations. These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force.

The deal, which has been under discussion behind closed doors since early 2013, is intended to remove barriers to trade in services. It’s a sort of companion piece to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which cover trade in goods – but potentially far bigger, with Wikileaks claiming that ‘services’ now account for nearly 80 per cent of the US and EU economies.

Like TTIP and TPP, TISA could be sped through Congress using Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as fast-track authority, which has been passed by the US Senate and may be taken up in the House this month. Under TPA, Congress is barred from making amendments to the trade deals, and most simply give yes-or-no approval.

A demonstrator protests against the legislation to give US President Barack Obama fast-track authority to advance trade deals (Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

And the contents of TISA make interesting reading, particularly for anybody concerned about privacy. Under the draft agreement, the EU would be barred from requiring the personal data of its citizens to be held within European borders, an idea currently under discussion in Germany.

Via: Forbes

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WikiLeaks offers $100,000 bounty for Asian trade pact pushed by Obama

By Krista Hughes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whistleblower website WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 bounty for copies of a Pacific trade pact that is a central plank of President Barack Obama's diplomatic pivot to Asia on Tuesday.

WikiLeaks, which has published leaked chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating text before, started a drive to crowdsource money for the reward, just as U.S. unions launched a new push to make the text public.

"The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let's open the TPP once and for all," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a statement.

Nine hours after the campaign was launched, WikiLeaks' website was showing $25,835 pledged by more than 100 people.

The text of the TPP, which is still under negotiation and would boost the flow of goods between 12 nations from Japan to Chile, is a classified document. The U.S. Trade Representative has increased availability of the text to lawmakers, but critics complain there is still not enough oversight.

Union group AFL-CIO led a march on the USTR office in Washington to demand to read the text, but said it found the doors locked.

Under legislation awaiting approval from the House of Representatives, the text of the TPP will be publicly available for 60 days before it is signed by the president.

But it is still unclear when the House will debate so-called fast-track legislation granting the White House power to speed trade deals through Congress, although House majority leader Kevin McCarthy has said a vote is likely this month.

Via: Yahoo News

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