Is Hillary Really Channeling Roosevelt Tomorrow?

Congress passed the Trans Pacific Authority bill but it isn't a reality yet because the prior TAA (trade adjustment authority?) bill did not pass.  John Boehner called for an immediate vote on the Trans Pacific Authority "fast track" bill right then and it passed.  So technically it's a done deal except for compatability problems with the senate.  Apparently there is a reconsideration on the TAA and  that vote bill won't be till Tuesday “Giving the President time to round up the votes he needs to pass the T A A”.   So the “No” people don’t have a real victory yet.  Afterward, Louie Gommert made a speech in which I agree with about everything I heard him say.  I did turn it off when he began talking about the five for one prisoner swap from Guantanamo for Bo Bergdoll or whoever- - not because I disagreed with what he was saying but because I just wanted to smoke a cigarette after noon.  Gommert aledged that President Obama offered to help the victims of Boco Herone (?) in Nigeria if Nigeria would institute gay marriage and allow free abortions.  Why should we substitute one kind of brutal savagery for another?  It makes no sense.  But Obama offered other African nations the same deal if they would establish abortion and gay marriage in their countries.  Needless to say that on the issue of the TPP Louie Gommert is one of the good guys.   Otherwise- we had chili cheese tater tots today, and the chili was a better recipe than usual.  We had mushroom soup and a banana for dessert.  Today June 12^th is “Loving Day” because this is the date in 1967 the decision came down.  I remember the day.  It was overcast and rainy not too different from today and it was the next to the last day of school.  But I don’t remember this decision in the news.

Kevin Mc Carthy and this Miami Cuban guy were making speech favoring the trade promotion authority.  But their arguments were not for the bill at hand.  Even if it’s true that this trade agreement is so “wonderful” and a panacea for transparency and worker’s right protection and guarentees that the LA ports will never be shut down again- - THAT isn’t the issue here.  The issue is to they want to abrogate the constitution saying treaties are to be voted on by two thirds of the Senate.  Treaties have precedence over US laws.  Treaties are a big deal.  This bill ties the constitutional hands of congress not to discuss their own bill or limit it to 78 seconds per house member (what I heard) and no amendments are allowed at all.  This treaty does NOT address some of the fundamental trade issues we’ve had about China and manipulating their currency and whatever.  The argument is just stupid saying “This trade agreement will help us compete with China” is ridiculous!   This treaty binds the hands of congress for six long years and the Senate cannot even filibuster the bill with the sixty percent cloture rule!   This Ohio republican is making the argument “The world is passing us by” and we can’t compete with these other nations that have trade treaties with each other”.  That’s a bunch of nonsense!  But the stupidest thing of all is that WITH this bill passage, John Boehner wants a “jobs re-training” funding bill, where Medicare is raided- - to fund the jobs loss we KNOW are coming!

Daniel and Shane are asking us what we’d like to hear in Hillary Clinton’s campaign kick-off speech tomorrow in Four Freedoms park.  I laid out what I’d like to hear in a paragraph in a recent blog posting in “Rocca-rolla”.   Let’s review Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech in 1941.  Roosevelt had just picked a new Vice President in Henry Wallace, who was a virtual communist and became controversial later on.  Wallace delivered that speech attacking business and corporations in April of 1944 Thom Hartman has pointed out.  Republicans were uneasy with the Four Freedoms speech.  Freedom of speech, freedom of Worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  I alsays assumed “freedom from fear” had to do with the War effort and the Nazis.  Some have suggested that Blacks may take “freedom from fear” to mean fear of bigotry and lynchings that were still going on.   And Roosevelt said “A necettus man is not free”.  This “freedom from want” may have been the scareyist thing to the Republicans, because it implied some massive new socialism, and perhaps even socialized medicine.  One can only wonder whether she is gotten back in touch with Eleanor Roosevelt she used to have séances in order to make spiritual contact with Eleanor in the White House, or so it was rumored.  One is to listen to see if Hillary is spurring us on to DEMANDING the specific things that are spelled out in her general outline of goals, which presumably she will spell out.

 There are brand names we use that are so ubiquitus often we don’t even know the generic term for them.  We speak of taking a Polaroid, or making a Xerox, or lounging in a Jacuzzi.  I spoke the other day of the Velcro phenomenon where everything sticks to you.  People say Water-Pick and not dental irrigator or playing a Blue Ray (rather than a DVD)  or using a Kotex.  And even the ubiquitous IBM card is obviously a brand name, or having a Teflon coating.  But there are other terms that are almost ubiquitus.   We speak of Mylar trash bags or taking a Valium, or an Aspirin, or having Trojans in our pocket or carrying a Colt 45 (the gun, not the beer).  And of course we all know what we’re referring to with Jell-O is or Windex, or going out for a Coke or a Big Mac or a Whopper.  There are a few terms that are still generic.  I think both Latex and Spandex are brand names but Acetate is generic, and micro-waving is certainly generic.  Sometimes generic labels stick.  Nobody speaks of making themselves a Welch’s and Skippy sandwich, or of Johnson-ing the floor.   Is Vaseline a brand name?  Then you have these gasoline additives such as "Chevron with Techron."

AN OPEN LETTER EXCERPT ABOUT THE T P P

“I am writing this letter because I believe that the creation of private arbitrative tribunals to decide whether otherwise valid federal, state, and local laws are inconsistent with the investor protection provisions of the TPP improperly removes a core judicial function from the federal courts and therefore violates Article III of the Constitution.”  He then emphasizes that, “my objection is that our Constitution does not permit disputes that, in practical effect, challenge the legality under the TPP of federal, state, or local laws of the United States, to be assigned to private parties for their exclusive resolution.”  He gives examples of the dangerous consequences that this would open up, such as:  “If Congress decided to regulate them [e-cigarettes] after enactment of the TPP, a non-U.S. investor from a TPP country that makes e-cigarettes here could ask an ISDS panel to rule that its investment-based expectations were improperly violated [by the regulation] and thus that it is entitled to damages under the minimum standard of treatment provisions.”  “A similar challenge could be made by a TPP investor who owned farm land in California and objected to an intensification of mandatory water rationing for farms enacted after the TPP goes into effect, even if such rules also applied to U.S. owners of land that would be adversely affected by them.”  He concludes:  “Given the importance of the ISDS provisions to the TPP, the Administration owes it to Congress and the American people to explain how the Constitution allows the United States to agree to submit the validity of its federal, state, and local laws to three private arbitrators, with no possibility of review by any U.S. court.”