Trump, Clinton, Obama and the TPP

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Yves here. While Naked Capitalism readers will be familiar with much of the terrain covered by this article, it’s a good high-level overview that lends itself well to sharing with friends, family, and colleagues who are catching up on this topic.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development. Originally published at Inter Press Service

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement between the US and eleven other Pacific Rim countries was under negotiation for the first seven years of the Obama presidency. For the first four years, Hilary Clinton was the Secretary of State, directly supervising the negotiations. Even after she quit her cabinet position to launch for her second presidential bid, she continued to tout it in superlative terms.

Yet, by early 2016, most presidential aspirants, including Mrs. Clinton, had disowned the TPP. No new information about the TPP had come to light to prompt this volte face. Nor had the then new Secretary of State John Kerry added anything radically new to the proposals she was associated with during her tenure.

While largely in the interests of corporate America, the TPP is not in the interests of the US economy or the public at large. While it is in the interest of US transnational corporations (TNCs) to source manufactures and services from low-wage Asian economies for the US market, by doing so, they are likely to displace those previously producing those goods, increasing US unemployment. This, in turn, reduces aggregate demand and increases the current account deficit in the US balance of payments.

US Corporate Interests

The TPP will promote US corporate interests by institutionalizing new arrangements which undermine the sovereignty of TPP countries, including the US itself. For instance, the TPPA’s patent and copyright provisions are stronger and for longer durations. This would strengthen corporate monopolies, especially of US TNCs, raising the prices of goods, especially pharmaceutical drugs, in all TPP countries. Thus, while US TNCs stand to profit greatly, consumers in all TPP countries, including the US, would be worse off.

The TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions will mean that foreign investors can sue TPP governments more easily in special tribunals. Such disputes will not be settled by national judiciaries or in accordance with host country laws. Thus, private corporations will be less subject to the national laws and governments of the countries where they invest; even US laws would be less binding on all TNCs.

Despite being a nation-state itself, the US is setting up supranational institutions that would serve TNCs, when needed, while not being subject to them, when convenient. Thus, the White House appears to be standing with big business against its own national economic interests, especially of its own working class, referred to as its middle class in better times.

Populism

But elections offer a rare opportunity for the public to have their voice heard. The November US elections are particularly interesting as its economy is not popularly perceived to have recovered although it has done better than most other advanced countries. Wooing working class support is crucial for both presidential candidates.

As in Europe, Donald Trump, whose narcissism is undermining his own chances, has successfully directed workers’ anger over their lot against ‘others’, i.e. Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, minorities and Asian workers accused of having ‘stolen American jobs’.

Despite having negotiated the TPP, Hilary Clinton also professes opposition to it while allowing it to stay as part of the Democratic Party platform for the election. This is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s earlier opposition to the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), negotiated by President George H. W. Bush, before becoming its great proponent after winning the White House. To legitimize her own volte-face, she may try to add new TPPA provisions banning ‘currency manipulation’ while making it clear that the real intended target is China.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Obama administration has successfully put together a bipartisan lobby, including establishment Republicans upset at Trump’s nomination, to get the TPP accepted by the US Congress during the ‘lame duck’ period right after the early November elections before the Christmas recess. Already, these efforts have met with early success.

US National Security

Recognizing the lack of credibility of earlier claims that the TPP would benefit the US economy and American workers, the Obama strategy has portrayed the TPP as necessary for ‘security’ to check the rise of China. Several TPP country leaders have expressed this concern while the White House has put growing pressure on the US Congress to this effect.

The Obama administration now contends that if the US pulls out of the TPP now, it will lose credibility as a ‘security partner’. Other TPP countries might then conclude that if the US could withdraw from the TPP despite having framed it, its other pledges would no longer be credible. The next US President will thus find it difficult to withdraw from the TPP at the risk of being accused of jeopardizing US ‘national security’.

Americans, and Europeans for that matter, are increasingly convinced that while elite interests are well served by ‘globalization’, the public interests of consumers and working people are not. The strong American popular opposition to the TPP, the Brexit vote and other recent developments in the West suggest growing rejection of the myth that national public and corporate elite interests are identical.

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59 comments

  1. diogenes

    “The public be damned.”

    Color me unsurprised that, during our Second Robber Baron revival, this sentiment is again in vogue, with apologists thick on the ground.

    At least the the first Gilded Age left us some nice museums and libraries. Boomer narcissism knows no bounds, and they have transformed the Republic into Empire. A half-assed one, of course.

    1. JTMcPhee

      Yah, let’s be stupid and blame it on the Booners, speaking of apologists being thick on the ground. The Elite is s class unto itself, one that patently transcends generational monikers. NOBODY except the Few is “doing well,” except at the marginal interface where the Self-Privileged and the Certificated intersect. And of course the MIC and the rest of the Beltway Aristcracy.

      “We” mopes are too often as guilty of just wanting MORE at the next mope’s expense, rather than d fining a genteel sufficiency that all of us can live with.

      How much would Jay Gould have to pay you to shoot your neighbor to take his stuff? Social Security and a living wage and universal health care and an end to imperial wars and the Postal Bank should extend to all of us. “We” must learn to live within the constraints old Gaia imposes, or we will all be living in Aleppo and Mosul and Yemen…

      Hang together, or once again get suckered into factionalizing and hanging separately.

      1. Science Officer Smirnoff

        Taking a neighbor’s stuff?

        It’s less well-known that such property grabs were licensed during the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Of course, better known is the taking in Europe of the possessions (and lives) of Jews and others.

        The treatment of Italian-Americans during that war was a featured presentation at the San Diego Public Library in recent years.

    2. optimader

      Boomer narcissism knows no bounds
      You will miss us when we are gone.
      Who will teach you how to use a slide ruler & log table, or how to maintain a tattooing handpiece for that matter after the Krell stumble?

      1. Skippy

        Some people like to describe reality by marketing jargon, thereby showing their disdain for some other brand… whilst inadvertently compartmentalizing themselves in the process….

        If I’m a sales – advertising mob then it might be applicable in determining my strategies wrt to consumers in both shaping perspectives and benefiting from it.

        “Generation Y is a marketing concept – and not much more. It allows advertisers to define a group of people, but the evidence for extending and attributing behaviours to this group is wafer thin. But this is what’s happening: because this generation has access to certain lifestyles and opportunities, it’s suddenly become a case of assuming we all behave and think the same way. Chelle Johnson slips into the trap of assigning personality traits to Gen-Yers on top of their media consumption habits, but these assumptions seem to me to be inherently wrong. My own traits are probably more similar to my grandfathers’ (one police sergeant, one slaughterman, both Scottish and dead) than to, say, Dizzee Rascal’s.

        To ascribe hopes, dreams and values to a group of people who only have a birth period in common is senseless. Generation Y-ers are taken to have been born between 1980 and 2000, which raises the first ridiculous point of this category: someone born in 1983 (age 27) is not going to have much in common with someone born in 1998 (age 12) beyond their number of knees.

        What am I, as a Gen Y-er, supposed to be like? Well, apparently I’m a voracious adopter of new technology (even though the 35-54 age group is the single biggest population of Facebook, and there are more Twitter users over the age of 30 than under it).” – snip

        https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/05/generational-labels-meaningless

        Sadly even Michael Hudson quoted an ‘Ernst and Young’ marketing study wrt millennials recently.

        This gets to the crux of what Mirowski [neoliberalism] and Curtis [Bernays] bang on about shaping human perception of reality. Where some people think their talking about “selfish individualism”, when their actually talking about grooming entire populations on how not only to perceive themselves, but everyone else from a market perspective, first and foremost with society last or not at all [see raygun and thatchers TINA]. Something both AET and M. Friedman [neoclassical] were up their eyeballs in it, its the only reason they were funded, marketing outfits for the Flexians.

        Even old commenter diogenes gets sucked into its vortex, especially when narcissism from an age factor is at it highest from an early age and slowly diminishes with age – for the most part. Plus I don’t remember Boomers having anything to do with the crafting of main stream econnomics since post WWII [dominate since the 70s] or funding the MPS and friends little party.

        Disheveled Marsupial…. how to use a slide ruler are you daft…. this computer thingy never lies opti… your such an old product…. the code never lies… its cake… everyone wants to rule the world… then cake… the cake will absolve all fear and wrong doings… in order to eat the cake… till then… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGCdLKXNF3w

        1. Optimader

          (Shaking my dot matrix fanfold) as we alI approach our event horizon (or atleast mine) the % difference in age between the Bbmrs, genX and genY inexorably diminishes and the baton of craven agendas is perpetually passed on to those that are so dull they feel compulsed to run other ppls lives. File under The Black Adder

          Nothing last forever, eventually the BBmrs will all be taking the dirtnap and it will be the continuum of generations next to show how it should have been done.

        2. flora

          Whenever I hear “Millenials will…, or Boomer have..” . (short, of course, for “youth will..” and “age has…”) , I think of someone I know in the Millenial age group – Joe, say – or someone I know in the Boomer age group – Jane, perhaps – and ask myself, what is Joe doing, what does he personally want to do? What has Jane done in her life, within the confines of her time?
          Eventual youth becomes age and the advertising starts anew.

    3. auntienene

      I’m a boomer, but before that term became popularized, some called us the “pig in the snake.” Anybody remember that?

  2. sharonsj

    I’m too old to be a boomer, but please stop bashing them. It’s not the boomers who did this, you know damn well it’s the corporations and their bought Congress critters and state legislative lackeys. It’s also a very stupid American public who knows it is in trouble but doesn’t understand why (thanks to the national lamestream media). We are circling the drain and I see no way out short of revolution or eating the rich.

    1. For Fawkes Sakes

      If not the fault of the short sighted, venal, and selfish Boomers, then who is to blame? To what generation do those bought and paid for politicians belong? One unto themselves? Boomers supported these positions at the ballot box, and have wrought this America.

      Identity politics and ageism are losing games, but you have to place blame squarely where it belongs. With the “Me” generation.

      1. Vatch

        There are short sighted, venal, and selfish people in every generation. Boomers are among the most vigorous opponents of those who are short sighted, venal, and selfish.

        I’m pretty sure that Yves is a baby boomer, and so is Bill Black. They certainly aren’t responsible for corrupt politics and finance. Lori Wallach, a vigorous opponent of the TPP and other toxic trade agreements, was born at the tail end of the baby boom.

      2. Starveling

        The only identity that matters in this case is class identity. We have been sold up the river by the managerial capital class with the aid of the professional class. No reason to be mad at boomers, even if my girl’s parents are die hard Clintonite types.

        I save my rancor for the oligarchs and their professional tier lieutenants. Matt Y is as odious as David Brooks, age means nothing.

        1. hunkerdown

          “Boomer”, as it is used in practice, must be an age-class intersection. I propose it comprises those who are retired and who, having accumulated many favors on behalf of Society™ from people now long dead in exchange for not rocking the boat, expect us to make them good, at full face value.

      3. Lee

        As Lambert is wont to observe: “generations don’t have agency.”

        Assigning universally shared traits based on an arbitrarily chosen period of years in which one is born and raised is about as useful or definitive as astrology. There certainly are shared traits that derive from the social, economic and geographical circumstances of ones birth but these traits are to a large extent received rather than shaped by those born into them. The great advantage of assigning blame for all that is wrong with the world to a particular age cohort is that, assuming euthanasia is not an option, we only have to wait for the aged baddies to die off and all will be well. Good luck with that.

        1. jrs

          They don’t tend to be radical leftists to the degree say the millennials are – they haven’t needed to be – not when there were still some opportunities to be found within the existing economic system. While there are certainly poor older people, the kind of utter and complete economic hopelessness and despair of being able to make anything personally better that many younger people have, I’m not sure it’s shared.

          So boomers believed in capitalism (and that the U.S. system could be democratic) to a much greater degree. And of course they were wrong in that assessment.

          1. aab

            As a tail end boomer who was investigated by the FBI for checking Das Kapital out of my local public library as a middle schooler, I beg to differ with this assertion. I wasn’t poor, I was just a person with a sense of honor and decency trying to figure things out.

            Being poor in of itself doesn’t necessarily make someone leftist. If that were true, West Virginia would be more of a people’s Republican than Vermont is. In fact, huge swaths of the South would be radicalized already. It’s more complicated than that.

            Neoliberals like the Clintons were assisted by people older than them. There were a lot of Greatest Generation types who felt like they had earned the right to be greedy. Those RVs with “I’m spending my grandchildrens’ inheritance” bumperstickers were a thing in the 90s.

            I don’t see why I should be smeared as part of a selfish group and Matt Yglesias, Rachel Maddow and Rebecca Traister get off scot free. Or Lena Dunham. Or Neera Tanden, who — like Paul Ryan — survived her childhood thanks to government benefits that she now seeks to deprive other children of.

            Terrible people have made the political, economic, and environmental system so broken that it is easier for Millennials to reject it. But some of us saw the problems when we weren’t personally suffering because of it. There are terrible people in every generation, and decent people in every generation. The terrible people are the minority. They gain power due to systemic and structural forces.Those forces are, to some degree, generational. That’s relevant. But blaming all humans born during an arbitrary slice of time for that is inaccurate and unjust.

        2. Fiver

          Lambert would say that. And isn’t it just typical of a Boomer to try to deny our life-long utter failure to resist – at the cost of the planet – even now to find the will to respond effectively, even as rebel Elders (oh, what’s that?). It’s awfully depressing to think that it never gets better than Boomers.

          1. Lambert Strether

            > “Lambert would say that”

            (Presumably because Lambert is a boomer, and you know how they are.)

            Hmm. The site policies have something to say about throwing your drink in your host’s face.

            Consider adding something of value to readers, instead of vague mudslinging and me-tooism?

          2. Skippy

            My previous opinion about your intelligence just took a Mexican swan dive Fiver, especially after all these years.

            Especially considering all the information presented against using – covenant slur words – based off equally dubious homo economicus reverse marketing methodology [ indoctrination and behavioral modification of perspectives ]. Think Temple Grandin – Bernays – and that old mythologist Freud.

            Never took you for a Strauss–Howe The Fourth Turning sort, especially considering all the data cheery picking, lack of empiricism, that conclusions are overly broad and do not reflect the reality of every person in each generation regardless of their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, or genetic information.

            I mean FFS next thing your going to reference is old Glen Beck since he is such a big fan of its “prophecy”….

            Disheveled Marsupial…. its stuff like this Fiver that brings into question, others underlining motives, whilst using legitimate concerns as a deceptive vehicle [Trojan horse] to forward their hidden agenda.

    2. diogenes

      The folks I hold accountable for our deplorable state – Jamie Dimon, John Stumpf, Timothy Geithner, the Clintons, George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Trump,etc. – are Boomers.

      It is acceptable to speak in general terms, when we understand we are talking about a general population, and that there are exceptions. Birds fly, for example.

      I imagine Yves is a Boomer (guess what? So am I) and I adore her work. Sadly, she is not running our economy and the powers-that-be would never let her anywhere near the steering wheel.

      I’ve worked hard for change that is meaningful to working people, as a Democratic chair and as a union grievance chair. And unless a miracle occurs, I am left with decent folks fighting a rearguard action until the ruling paradigm dies.

      Last, I had the great good fortune to have be raised by the Greatest Generation. There were rotters in the lot, and they certainly needed their consciousness raised about civil rights, but we could use a healthy dose of their pragmatism and common sense.

      1. DarkMatters

        Er, the “Greatest Generation” were the folks that brought Operation Mockingbird to bear upon the American public, which primarily victimized the Boomers. Criticizing or praising generations amounts to proof by anecdote, since you can select examples to prove any point you want. Can we return to discussions that makes sense?

      2. Waldenpond

        If it’s acceptable to speak in general terms, why don’t more people do it instead of using oligarch/marketing terms (to divide and exploit for profit) like boomer?

        No generation is harder working or lazy, no generation contains more geniuses, no generation is more innovative, violent, creative, better at educating, parenting etc.

        There are age brackets responding to environmental, resource/economic and political (power and war) issues. Sounds like humans humaning throughout the existence of humans.

        1. jrs

          yes but the economic circumstances were not the same. The behavior of some exploitative rich person and some drug dealing poor person are also much due to circumstances, but the circumstances are not the same. And there is often a certain amount of privilege in much boomer perspective on the world.

          1. jrs

            It’s not really that Boomers caused all the evils in the world, but it often is that they seem unable to see beyond their own privilege, their own optimism, their own belief in the system.

      3. Vatch

        Greatest Generation. . . .we could use a healthy dose of their pragmatism and common sense.

        Every generation makes blunders. Vietnam is an example of a long series of blunders by The Greatest Generation. There wasn’t much pragmatism or common sense displayed in that fiasco.

        By the way, Newt Gingrich was born in 1943, so he’s not a baby boomer. We were set on our current course by people like Lewis Powell, David Rockefeller, and Ronald Reagan, none of whom were baby boomers. The baby boomer generation happens to be the generation of people who are currently in their fifties and sixties, and those are the people who usually run a country or a business. They’re just continuing the mistakes of the previous generation.

      4. optimader

        Is BabyBoomer a monolithic cohort? You seem to make this claim then contradict yourself. You need to extend yourself as a student of History.

        ..until the ruling paradigm dies
        Don’t hold your breath “the King is dead , long live the King” and so forth..

        Your confirmation bias is that this happens to be the time in which you live

      5. pretzelattack

        the greatest generation started the pushback against the new deal which brought us to our present pass. why are you an apologist for the greatest generation. the pragmatism and common sense that brought us trickle down economics, and expanded the senseless, ceaseless wars such as korea and vietnam, worse than iraq or libya or syria, and brought our civilization to the brink of annihilation over the cuban missle crisis. they invented the atom bomb, now there’s a contribution.

        1. hemeantwell

          Please don’t respond to this idiotic generational nonsense. We’re wasting our time on this troll.

      6. Plenue

        Unless your parents were Russian, I don’t think you really get to refer to them as part of the ‘Greatest Generation’.

        1. auntienene

          I dunno about that. My father was in the Norwegian merchant marine, carrying oil and gasoline for the allies. Couldn’t get home for six years until the war ended. Got torpedoed by the Japanese in the Persian Gulf. Lost plenty of his fellow mariners in convoys. I think they were pretty great.

      7. different clue

        The Greatest Generation destroyed train, trolley and streetcar travel throughout America. The Greatest Generation created the Superhighway and the Suburb. The Greatest Generation created the Boomer Generation and made the Boomer Generation what it was.

        The Greatest Generation sent the Boomer Generation to fight the Vietnam War.

        Pragmatism.

        Common Sense.

    3. Ignacio

      Very much agreed. Blaming boomers is as stupid as blaming immigrants, blaming russians or blaming americans depending on your particular manias.

        1. RMO

          Fine with me. From the U.S. we expect nothing more than the occasional recognition that our nation even exists:-)

      1. Waldenpond

        I am still waiting for the bs blaming of generations to stop. If the older generation is to blame for the mediocre choices it has to vote for so is every other generation. Since younger people are about to be a significant (if not the largest) block about to elect Clinton, you’d think some people would get a clue. Maybe, like all persons before them, individuals are simply struggling to make the best out of a bad situation and trying to select the least horrible person the oligarchs have preselected for them.

        Using marketing terms such as boomer and millenials just demonstrates that everyone is as susceptible to jargon as everyone else but then to use the terms and then place blame for not rationally navigating the subterfuge of a rigged system is inconsistent.

    4. Michael

      Sorry, man, I’m at the Gen X/Millennial divide.

      Yeah, it’s Boomers. If you’re a good Boomer, then you are against the mainstream of Boomers and you got outvoted. If it’s not about you, it’s not about you. But yes, this is a generational thing as well as a class thing, a race thing, and a gender thing.

    5. polecat

      Also don’t forget D.C.s policies of : It takes a Pillaging … and NO childishness lift behinds …

  3. Joe Kapoe

    A few days ago, the Center for International Environmental Law sent out this news:

    After seven long years, the international arbitration tribunal at the World Bank ruled in favor of El Salvador and against Pacific Rim Mining Corporation yesterday.

    ciel.org

    That’s good news but it seems like such a meager victory against these poison ISDS provisions. If a country in central America makes strides in resisting environmental devastation through ISDS courts, the foreign policy establishment will make sure that their elections, activists and economy stay within the bounds of neo-lib/neo-con ideology, by assasination if necessary.

  4. tongorad

    When Clinton is installed in the White House, I have little doubt she will invoke the image of terrible mean ole Trump in order to ram-rod TPP (and all manner of neoliberal uglies) down our throats. Prepare for the age of Clinton triumphalism.

    1. Lambert Strether

      I wonder if having three trade deals going at the same time (TPP, TTIP, TISA) is the cosmpolitan financial class’s design to give themselves not one, not two, but three shots of getting an ISDS into place and destroying national sovereignty. Can anybody with real knowledge comment on this idea?

    2. jawbone

      Uh, does “triumphalism” mean “facism,” or just lead to it?

      Scary times to see a party which once had the well being of the general population among its primary objectives become the new party of Sucking Up and Kicking Down.

      As a leading edge Baby Boomer, I can attest that this Democratic Party is not my father’s Dem Party. I’m not sure when it left the rails, but I tend to view the assassinations of JFK, and RFK, and MLK, was when the Deep State asserted its total sovereignty over our nation’s politics.

      I keep envisioning any slightly non-Corportist candidates getting The Talk, along with their security briefings. Anyone who steps out of line and they will take them out.

    3. oh

      O the architect of TPP will sign and seal the deal during the lame duck session. By the time Clinton’s in the horse would’ve long bolted the barn. O will cash the big checks for his great speeches to the big corporations. If we want to stop it, we only have a couple of months.

      1. aab

        My occasional reminder that NAFTA, TPP and probably all these other trade deals have an escape clause, with six months’ notice. I’d love to hear from someone like Yves if it would be as painful for us to leave NAFTA as it will be for Britain to leave the EU. From what I have read, it seems like it would be much less harmful for our citizenry.

        Of course, we still have to figure out a way to elect people who would do it. I can’t tell from the language whether a bill would have to be passed or whether the President could do it unilaterally. I’m presuming we’d need legislation, since that’s how we activated the agreement.

  5. FebrileThoughts

    Please don’t forget seminal influences on this toxic stew of economic misery: Friedman (Milton, not Tom), Greenspan, etc.
    Not boomers. While the Boomer cohort was instrumental in the implementation of the polices, a majority of us are not ‘movers and shakers’. If we boomers, like the German people of 30s and 40s, have a collective responsibility for our fate, then history will be our judge. However, the loss of any constraint on the machinations of the politico-business duopoly has been deftly utilized up to point when the masses awakened to their fate.
    I, for one, was fortunate to be ahead of curve in the IT explosion. I also watched with increasing dismay and anger at the disingenuous marketing of ‘higher skilled’ jobs as the magic-bullet economic solution accompanied by the willful, simultaneous destruction of one of those industries by outsourcing.

    For the next 4 years (at a minimum), we will be forced to endure increasingly perilous scenarios.

  6. JEHR

    I do not know who is responsible for the conditions that affect the world today but I am pretty certain that we share the responsibility to do something about it. By our very nature, human beings take chances and make risky decisions and we will continue to do so. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have leaders who will see the overall results of bad or mediocre decisions and they manage to save the rest of us from a terrible fate but for the most part we human beings bumble along, looking after ourselves first, then our families and sometimes our communities. It seems, however, that things have changed somewhat because of the increased emphasis on consumerism and on enriching ourselves while impoverishing others. We have sometimes disregarded religion that puts brakes on our behaviour and we have become complacent about how we are educated and how we educate future citizens. Money has also achieved too high a place in our sense of values but money in itself is valueless. Better education, more attention to moral precepts, jettisoning consumerism, becoming co-operative within our community: those things are the way back from our present destructive path.
    We must not emulate those who take more than they give back which pretty much describes those who presently work in the financial sector.

  7. jawbone

    Once upon a time, AARP would have worked to get the seniors and others out to protect SocSec and Medicare.

    WIll they do any such thing now? Or has it become too Corporatized?

    1. Synoia

      AARP is interested only in selling insurance.

      As a representative Organization of Seniors, it is poorly lacking.

    2. Waldenpond

      Once upon a time they might have been able to do that. Information flows too quickly now.
      How the AARP Made $2.8 Billion By Supporting Obamacare’s Cuts to Medicare
      http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/09/22/the-aarps-2-8-billion-reasons-for-supporting-obamacares-cuts-to-medicare/#78e33f647006
      “AARP is the largest reseller of insurance in the country and as such has a vested interest in seeing that the market for reselling supplemental insurance expands.”
      http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/29/ginny-brown-waite/aarp-insurance-health-reform-conflict/
      AARP might get you travel/hotel discounts, but they can cost you more on insurance.
      Why Elderly People Fall for So Many Scams
      http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/12/why-elderly-people-fall-for-so-many-scams.html

  8. Mel

    I’m diving into a book The New Individualists: The Generation After The Organization Man, by Paul Leinberger and Bruce Tucker. It looks to be a sociological study of these Boomers and the society they’ve formed. The title looked interesting because I’d run across a copy of Paul Goodman’s last book The New Reformation. Goodman was a radical social critic from the ’50s and ’60s, also wrote Growing Up Absurd and The Community of Scholars (among others), and IIRC developed the idea that the generation then developing was alienated and cut off from participation in the greater society, e.g. perhaps by being shunted off into “youth culture”. Perhaps evidenced by Margaret Thatcher’s opinion that there is no society — only individuals and families — as though she had no experience of anything bigger. The big theme of The New Reformation was the differences he encountered behind his conservative outlook and the outlooks of the radical youths he had been working with. So a book that might illuminate the extreme individualists growing out of the alienation that Goodman described looks very interesting. TNI was published in 1991, so the data must have come from the ’80s, and there’s a whole decade gap between that and Goodman. We’ll see what happens.

  9. Skippy

    Lmmao @ all the new marketing product blaming the old product for bad Q&A…. when the product does not have any agency in the Q&A process… from onset….

    Disheveled Marsupial…. the mighty Wurlitzer thanks the dancing monkeys for distracting the crowd whilst the music does it cortex injections thingy… your peanuts are in the mail…

  10. John

    Meanwhile, the outgoing Obama administration has successfully put together a bipartisan lobby, including establishment Republicans upset at Trump’s nomination, to get the TPP accepted by the US Congress during the ‘lame duck’ period right after the early November elections before the Christmas recess. Already, these efforts have met with early success.

    What does anyone know about who this is?

    1. Vatch

      I have no specific knowledge about this. However, I suspect that most of the Senators and Representatives who voted in favor of “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority will also support the TPP when it comes to a vote.

      House roll call vote:

      http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll374.xml

      Senate roll call vote:

      http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00219

      In both the Senate and the House of Representatives, a Yes vote was a vote in favor of “fast track”. The bill title for HR 2146 is misleading, and is an instance of parliamentary shenanigans. If you go to the Congressional web site and look up the text of the bill, you will see that Trade Promotion Authority is really part of the bill.

      1. MED

        Who would have known about fast track when it is buried in:
        “A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow Federal law enforcement officers, firefighters, and air traffic controllers to make penalty-free withdrawals from governmental plans after age 50, and for other purposes.”

        Appears pretty innocent, like you say its buried in the riders

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