Thursday, October 8, 2015

Some TPPs For the 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidates

You come out against it, but it will be law by the time you get in so it won't cost you anything. You can thank Obummer!

Looks like Hillary got it:

"Splitting with Obama, Clinton opposes Pacific Rim trade deal" by Tracy Jan Globe Staff  October 07, 2015

WASHINGTON — Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton — in a major split with President Obama and a departure from her previous position — came out Wednesday against the historic Pacific Rim free trade deal.

“As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it,” Clinton said in an interview with PBS News Hour while campaigning in Iowa.

She must be befuddled regarding her position.

Obama is hailing the tentative agreement, reached this week between the United States and 11 other countries, as good for just about everyone — from American ranchers to workers to manufacturers. Clinton championed the deal as secretary of state, but now that she is running for president and more details have been negotiated she says she does not believe it’s going to “meet the high bar I have set.”

She said she’s specifically worried the agreement does not prohibit currency manipulation and that it favors pharmaceutical companies more than patients.

Her stand settles an outstanding question that hung over her campaign for months. The pact had put Clinton, the Democratic front-runner — as well as Vice President Joe Biden, who is seriously considering a candidacy and supports the agreement — in a delicate position with union workers who, fearing domestic job losses, generally oppose international trade deals.

Related: Labor Behind Biden

He's the only one who can rescue them?

“It’s a tricky dance for anybody who’s been a part of the Obama administration,” said Steve McMahon, a longtime Democratic strategist based in Virginia. “It would be difficult for them not to support the deal. On the other hand, as they pursue labor endorsements, it’s difficult for them to support it.”

Hours before Clinton’s announcement, David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief strategist, tweeted about Clinton’s dilemma Wednesday: “Having touted TPP as [secretary of state], to oppose it would mean new questions on trust. Yet embracing it would rile base. #hardchoices.”

In a statement issued by her campaign Wednesday evening, Clinton, without naming specifics, said previous trade deals had fallen short on promised benefits.

“I don’t believe we can afford to keep giving new agreements the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “The risks are too high that, despite our best efforts, they will end up doing more harm than good for hard-working American families whose paychecks have barely budged in years.”

Republicans quickly branded her a flip-flopper for withdrawing her previous support. While liberals cheered her position, some moderate Democrats balked.

“We are disappointed that Secretary Clinton is now opposed to this deal,” said Jon Cowan, president of Third Way, a Washington think tank representing the party’s centrist wing and named after Bill Clinton’s political philosophy.

Third Way is the a "centrist Democratic think-tank,"meaning it is a corporate creation.

Globe really makes you think, huh?

Clinton appeared to create wiggle room for her campaign by distancing herself from the final product, rather than the overall concept of free trade. Moreover, she now has a point of contrast with Biden, if he chooses to enter the race, and she is siding with the more populist wing of the party and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on the issue.

Sanders, a self-described socialist who has surpassed Clinton in some polls in the early-voting states of New Hampshire and Iowa, took advantage of the issue this week, currying favor with the liberal base. On Monday, within hours of a deal being announced in Atlanta, he issued a fund-raising e-mail that slammed the deal as disastrous because it favors corporate interests at the expense of American jobs.

He is right on that one, and everybody knows it.

The Republican presidential field has fractured over the agreement, with front-runner Donald Trump — a billionaire capitalizing on the anti-Wall Street fervor among the electorate and anger over growing economic inequality — calling it a “terrible deal” on Twitter.

Ooooooh! That's why they don't like him! Between that, the off-the-cuff remarks supporting Russian airstrikes against ISIS™, and the other things that come out his mouth it is just too risky.

Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina has in the past expressed skepticism about the deal, while former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Governor John Kasich of Ohio, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida have voiced support.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest regional trade deal in history, covers nearly 40 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Among its many provisions, the deal to lower trade barriers would eliminate more than 18,000 taxes other countries impose on US exports and serves to better position American products to compete with China in the fast-growing Asian market.

Critics of the deal say it does not ban currency manipulation by countries such as Japan, which seeks to decrease prices for Japanese goods exported to the United States.The pact also sets rules on intellectual property for a range of industries from pharmaceuticals to information technology.

\The pharmaceuticals are befuddled by it.

Obama has to wait at least 90 days after officially informing Congress of the deal, expected to occur later this week, before he can sign it. Congress is not expected to vote on it until sometime in 2016.

A Biden spokeswoman said Wednesday that the vice president supports the agreement and would help get the deal passed by Congress. 

It's already been signed, he says!

For those who may be dreaming of a ticket featuring Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren as a vice presidential candidate, the pact creates even more wrinkles. Warren, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat, has been among the harshest critics of the deal and has publicly sparred with the Obama administration over it.

How would she reconcile her opposition if she were to move beyond her private lunch with Biden in August, which generated a flurry of speculation, and align herself with a Biden campaign?

So far, she is not saying. Warren has refused to discuss the possibility of a vice presidential campaign.

She said in a written statement to the Globe Wednesday that she intends to review the details of the deal as soon as she can get a final copy of the agreement.

“I worry that TPP provisions could undermine American sovereignty, hurt workers, and weaken financial and environmental regulations,” Warren said.

The Democratic base, which includes worker unions, has historically clashed with the party elites on the issue of trade.

“This is like the replay of NAFTA in the minds of many Democrats,” said McMahon, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement that was negotiated under President George H.W. Bush and signed by President Bill Clinton more than two decades ago. “It puts the same pressure on Democrats and it arouses the same emotion among organized labor.”

Did you see what Obama said about NAFTA?

Ohio, a key swing state, has lost more than 320,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001, said Tim Burga, president of Ohio AFL-CIO. He said the union will back only a presidential candidate who supports American workers.

“After each one of these so-called free trade deals, we’ve been losing manufacturing jobs,” Burga said. “The candidates who are looking for labor and worker support will have to speak to this, whether it’s now or later.”

Where does Kasich stand on the issue?

While serving as Obama’s secretary of state, Clinton championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an imperfect deal that would ultimately benefit American businesses and workers. But she began distancing herself from it this summer, saying “we should be prepared to walk away” unless the agreement creates jobs and raises wages.

“Hillary Clinton is late to the party,” said Phil Johnston, former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and a prominent party fund-raiser who has yet to endorse a candidate.

Isn't that fa$hionable?

--more--"

Time to start reading through some texts:

"Officials say Clinton failed to turn over some e-mails

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has discovered a chain of e-mails that Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to turn over when she provided what she said was the full record of work-related correspondence as secretary of state, officials said Friday.

The development added to the growing questions related to the Democratic presidential front-runner’s unusual usage of a private e-mail account and server while in government.

It's really making her labor over the nomination.

The messages were exchanged with retired General David Petraeus when he headed the military’s US Central Command, responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They began before Clinton entered office and continued into her first days at the State Department.

He won't be president.

They largely pertained to personnel matters and don’t appear to deal with highly classified material, officials said, but their existence challenges Clinton’s claim that she has handed over all of her work e-mails from the account.

The Clinton campaign had no immediate comment on the new disclosures. Speaking of her e-mails on CBS’s ‘‘Face the Nation’’ earlier this week, Clinton said: ‘‘We provided all of them.’’ But the FBI and several congressional committees are investigating.

--more--"

Related:

Officials looking at Clinton Libya e-mail

State Department presses Clinton for more e-mails

The battle lines have been drawn and Clinton says she can’t explain the e-mails, while the State Dept. says it erred and now some e-mails are missing!

Like Clinton, Kerry also uses private e-mail

The whole thing is giving her a headache so let's change the subject:

In Boston, Clinton calls for more US regulation for painkillers

One wonders what is she on because she looks either drugged or ill.

New Kennedy tape shows frustration with Clintons, health bid

Bill Clinton appears in virtual-reality movie on Africa

That's what is called the campaign.

Hillary Clinton still has the numbers

She has some endorsements, but the firefighters’ union isn't behind her (they are still backing Obama?) and she will have to work hard for votes of Latinos before primaries.

China rebuts Hillary Clinton on women’s issues

As for ‘‘big mouth’’ Trump:

"Donald Trump’s plan would slash tax rates for corporations from 35 percent to 15 percent. It would cut individual income tax rates for the wealthy from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, and eliminate taxes altogether for some Americans. The plan would eliminate the marriage penalty and the Alternative Minimum Tax. It would also eliminate the estate taxes paid on property when someone dies, while keeping in place deductions for charitable giving and mortgage interest. Some 40 percent of households right now don’t pay any federal income taxes; Trump estimates that under his plan that number would grow to 50 percent. Some 31 million households, which right now pay an average of $1,000 in taxes, would not pay anything. Trump’s first act has caught the Republican nominating contest, and the country, by storm. He has illustrated the depth of the anger throughout the country, and that antipathy toward Washington is even deeper than many thought. He has catapulted to the top based on an unscripted message, and a willingness to poke fun at his political opponents. But so far, it has been lacking in substantive policy, and Monday morning was an attempt to change that." 

He's an "insurgent outsider" who "has slipped from a dominant leader in the polls to a more fragile front-runner in search of a second act, one that would show voters that he can not only rail against Washington but also propose some solutions," and who believes in "supply-side economic theory, deeply slashing taxes on rich Americans and corporations," with some "minimally populist aspects."

That's one hell of an in$urgent out$ider, huh? 

The problem is he is uncontrollable because he can't be bought off.

Walking Away From the Presidential Campaign

I won't even be watching any debates.

NDUs: 

Looks like Joe is out, and....

"Sources of attempts to hack Clinton’s e-mail server ID’d" by Ken Dilanian and Jack Gillum Associated Press  October 09, 2015

WASHINGTON — Clinton ‘‘essentially circumvented millions of dollars’ worth of cybersecurity investment that the federal government puts within the State Department,’’ said Justin Harvey, chief security officer of Fidelis Cybersecurity.

‘‘She wouldn’t have had the infrastructure to detect or respond to cyberattacks from a nation-state,’’ he said. ‘‘Those attacks are incredibly sophisticated and very hard to detect and contain. And if you have a private server, it’s very likely that you would be compromised.’’

A spokesman for the Clinton campaign did not answer detailed questions about the cyber intrusions. Instead, the spokesman, Brian Fallon, attacked Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin [and] chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, by linking him to the House Benghazi committee inquiry, which the campaign dismissed in a recent media ad as politically motivated.

Yeah, changing the subject and attacking the investigator carries all the hallmarks of cover up.

The FBI is investigating whether national security was compromised by Clinton’s e-mail arrangement.

In June 2013, after Clinton had left office, the server was moved from her Chappaqua, N.Y., home to a data center in New Jersey, where it was maintained by a Denver technology company, Platte River Networks, records show.... 

I hate to say it, but it's the base of the Jewish mafia in AmeriKa.

--more--"

We are told the attacks originated in China, South Korea, and Germany, but it could have been anybody.

Also see: Hillary Clinton’s move left is no flip-flop