Working Life

I start from the basic presumption that the president, and most of the people who work for him, are very, very smart people. So, when the president’s point person on the Trans Pacific Partnership, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, marches up to Capitol to testify on the TPP and gives false information, you can only conclude that he’s lying and intentionally misleading Congress. That’s the upshot of what happened on Tuesday.

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Ok, so, Bernie Sanders was more judicious in his demand to the Obama Administration that he have access to a full draft of the current Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. Still, this is extremely important because it is the very secrecy about trade deals–going back decades–that goes to the heart of our ability, as citizens, to function in a democratic society.

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Yet another installment in the decades-long white flag of surrender to the corporate elite took place in a relatively unnoticed vote — what, with the more important, front-page, relentless coverage of the passing of what’s-his-name Gandolfini. The country has a new trade representative…well, that’s not really accurate — Citibank has a new trade representative.

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