August 27, 2016
Why Obama Wants to Get the TPP Passed
When Obama first ran for president in 2007 he told us he was out to improve the plight of we the people, not the corporations and the elite rich.
For a while after he got elected it seemed he did intend to fulfill his promise, and maybe he tried, but he has done little good. There is scant evidence now he has done anything that has appreciably helped we the people. In general he has been a much better president than Bush II, the worst in my lifetime. He has not done something as stupid as start a war like the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but he has not done much to curtail our military activities benefiting the military-industrial establishment.
While the US economy appears to be in much better shape than it was when Obama took over, it is once again on the edge of a cliff with a Sword of Damocles hanging over its head. Obama is a failure with regard to fiscal policies. The Repubs in Congress completely destroyed his effectiveness when it came to significantly raising the taxes of corporations and the elite rich, as he said he would, to generate funds for infrastructure projects to create good jobs for working people.
Unfortunately, for the last year or so Obama has been a strong advocate for the passage in Congress of the TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership, a new trade agreement similar to NAFTA involving several countries in the Far East, an agreement sure to harm the interests of working people in the US and elsewhere and dramatically benefit large corporations and the elite rich.
Why is Obama pushing so hard for the TPP?
Most likely he wants to benefit large corporations and the elite rich with the TPP so they will pay him back when he leaves office like they did Clinton and his wife Hillary when they left office, with quid pro quo riches for signing NAFTA and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act got rid of provisions in the Glass-Steagall Act that enabled banksters in too big to fail Wall Street banks to get much richer wheeling and dealing like investment bankers and selling exotic loan packages and derivatives, almost destroying the US money and banking system by 2007, leading the US economy down the primrose path to where it is today, with market bubbles and credit problems worse than it had in 2007 when the second great depression began.
If Obama can get the TPP passed in Congress and written into law before he leaves office maybe the corporate/elite rich establishment will pay him back for his trouble by paying him $250,000 or so per one-hour speech for many speeches like they did the Clintons after they left office.
Whether Obama will pile up $100 million or so in personal wealth like the Clintons did after he leaves office remains to be seen.
What do I recommend? Vote for Jill Stein and hope for the best.
Stein is actually the lesser of three evils. Voting for her is an evil because there is some chance if large numbers of Independents voted for her it might cause Trump to win. But it is still the lesser evil in my opinion taking everything into account. It’s a crapshoot any way you look at it. If enough Independents and Bernie supporters vote for Stein she will win, and it seems to me this is the best we can hope for given the choices we voters are saddled with, thanks to the rigging of the US primary voting system and the befuddled voters who selected Hillary as the Demo nominee rather than Bernie Sanders.
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