Working Life

In the roll-call of truly horrendous Village transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) a standout has been Jackie Calmes. And, today, she keeps her reputation intact with a truly awful piece about the Trans Pacific Partnership. To begin, Calmes has a long and storied career at just gobbling up government nonsense and spitting […]

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One of the greatest dangers we face from the odious Trans-Pacific Partnership is the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The pro-TPP forces–who advocate for the non-existent so-called “free trade”–want to ignore the reality of the ISDS and, to do so, they actually have to lie about it. Unfortunately for them, Public Citizen is a tiger that won’t let these lies pass.

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Personally, I have to say I’m a bit queasy about the “Buy American” campaign. Seems to me that the problem is not, ultimately, that people don’t buy American products. It’s that wages are way too low elsewhere — which is what needs to be solved. But, for the record, the Trans Pacific Partnership will obliterate “Buy American”.

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Time flies when you’ve been screwed. I’m going to write some more about this but, for the time being, let’s not forget that it’s been 20 years since NAFTA was passed…and it was bad shit then and bad shit now.

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Yesterday, I wrote about the disastrous state of labor in the wake of the elections. Suffering from either a lack of sleep or simple brain lock, I neglected to include one of the most dangerous coming debacles: we have lost much of the ground built opposing so-called "free trade" agreements, which have played a central […]

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I get why people are angry. Not the anger espoused by the racists, birthers and anti-government people. Across the political spectrum, wherever people place themselves, there is a unifying point that keeps coming up: we’ve been robbed by corporate powers. And the foolish, failed so-called "free trade" policies–pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike–is a place […]

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   If policy was constructed by the people, not the wishes of the lobbyists and corporate interests, we would never see a so-called "free trade" deal pass Congress again. That’s pretty much the upshot of the 2008 elections–though, believe me, this fight ain’t over yet.     I would argue that the issue of trade […]

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    You are going to see a lot of rubbish in the coming weeks about the virtues of yet another so-called "free trade" deal, this one with Colombia. It’s always interesting–mind-boggling and enraging as well–that proponents of so-called "free trade" spew a whole bunch of nonsense about the virtues of these deals and what we […]

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