Come one, come all! Step right up and buy your ticket for a ride on the splendiferous, phantasmagoric, supersonic, miraculous, “Trans-Pacific Partnership!”
TPP is not some sort of futuristic flying machine, but yet another global trade scam coming at us like a volcanic eruption straight out of hell. This thing is a “partnership” of, by, and for global corporations – similar to NAFTA, only much, much, much bigger and far more destructive both to the middle class and to our people’s sovereignty.
Negotiating in strict secrecy during the past seven years, a cabal of the Obama White House and corporate lobbyists are now ready to spring it on us, and Republican leaders intend to ram it into law before We the People can get a whiff of its anti-democratic stench.
Indeed, to perfume it, they’ve already begun a PR campaign touting TPP as the long-sought wonder cure for America’s downtrodden working class. For example, such odd-bedfellow boosters as Secretary of State John Kerry and the US Chamber of Commerce both exclaim that the 12-nation scheme will “support 650,000 new jobs.” Wow… really?
No. Glenn Kessler, who writes the Washington Post’s “Fact-Checker” column, dug into that number in January and found that it was incorrectly calculated, misleading… and silly. In fact, he wrote, instead of TPP yielding 650,000 new jobs, “The correct number is zero.” He also pointed out that even if 650,000 jobs were created, that’s not even a drop in the bucket, for it would increase US employment by less than one-half of one percent.
Be alert, friends, for the TPP Gang will try to dazzle us with hokey numbers and neon lies – while they steal our democratic rights and turn our future well-being over to global corporations. To get information and get involved, go to www.citizen.org/trade.
“Wrong-Way Obama,” The Nations, March 2-9, 2015.
“The Obama Administration’s illusionary job gains from the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” www.washingtonpost.com, January 30, 2015.

The secret corporate congress
inside the US Congress

My dictionary defines a “staff” as a walking stick, used either for balance – or as a weapon.
So how are today’s congressional staffs used? At one time, they were behind-the-scenes people hired to walk lawmakers through the complexities of legislation, or to help find some balance between competing viewpoints. These days, though, top staffers tend to be a specific type of high-profile operative: Corporate lobbyists.
At the urging of House Speaker John Boehner, members are bringing the K-Street lobbying crowd directly inside their offices and committees to run America’s lawmaking process. There’s nothing subtle about the intent – these staffs are weapons for knocking aside the public interest and advancing the narrow legislative interests of their former corporate clients. Yes, the same corporations that generously fund the campaigns of Boehner’s Republican majority. Neat, huh?
As the excellent investigative digger Lee Fang recently detailed in The Nation, the conflict of interest in this hat-switching scheme is a brazen, insolent affront to our democratic ideals and to any sense of ethics. Examples abound, ranging from the new staff director of the Intelligence Committee (who comes straight from lobbying for such intelligence contractors and profiteers as General Dynamics, Boeing, and the infamous Blackwater outfit) to a leading anti-minimum wage lobbyist for retail giants like Walmart, who has now been embedded as a top staffer inside the troika of House leaders.
It’s bad enough that our laws have been corrupted by unlimited corporate spending on their army of influence peddlers. But now we taxpayers have the added insult of having to foot the bill for the horde of lobbyists who’ve quietly been slipped inside to serve as staffers. They’re not there merely to influence lawmakers, but to become the de facto, unelected Corporate Congress.
“With These Hires, Congress Becomes Even More Like a Corporation,” www.thenation.com, February 11, 2015.

The pastoral Pope

Old songs occasionally need to be refreshed with updated verses – such as this: “Old McPope had a farm /E-I-E-I-O/ And on that farm he had a cow… a donkey… chickens… ostriches… rabbits… /E-I-E-I-O!”
Who knew that the Pope has a farm? Fifteen miles outside of Rome, Castel Gandolfo is a 50-acre plot of Paradise on Earth. It features Roman ruins, breathtaking views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and (of course) a castle. Since the 1500s, this place has been a summer vacation home for Popes – but in the 1930s, the Vatican added bucolic function by planting crops and bringing in some farm animals.
And now, Pope Francis, who chose the patron saint of animals as his papal name, has opened the farm to the masses, welcoming us to witness the productive bounty of nature, as well as its beauty. This is no hobby farm, but a sustainable enterprise that delivers a cornucopia of milk, yogurt, veggies, meat, cheese, honey, olive oil and more to the Vatican every day.
For this Pope, however, Castel Gandolfo is also a living metaphor, for it personalizes his message that we humans are “Stewards, not masters” of nature, and that “access to food is a basic human right that shouldn’t be subject to market speculation.” He’s been putting the power of his popeship behind religious and governmental policies that promote food justice, provide proper stewardship of natural resources, and combat the causes of climate change – all a part of his overarching call for a moral ethos that rejects “the pride of dominating, possessing, manipulating, exploiting.”
By opening the papal farm to the public, Francis is not only providing a living model of a sustainable food system, but he’s also extending his pastoral ideal of humility and openness. This guy is living up to his growing reputation as the “The People’s Pope.”
“Pope Francis: We Are ‘Stewards, Not Masters’ of the Earth,” www.ecowatch.com, November 28, 2014.
“Pope Francis to Open Vatican Farm to the Public,” www.ecowatch.com, January 7, 2015.