How Many Nails Does It Take to Seal a Coffin?

How Many Nails Does It Take to Seal a Coffin?

How many lopsided trade deals does it take to teach a nation it is being sold down the river? Apparently it takes one more than we have.

After months of secrecy, President Obama has the chutzpa to throw the thing online and challenge people to read it, saying, “Along with the text of the agreement, we’ve posted detailed materials to help explain it. It’s an unprecedented degree of transparency — and it’s the right thing to do.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? How open. How accessible. Give it a quick read and let’s get on with the job of selling out our heritage for a bowl of oatmeal.

The next time you have a few moments free between jobs, why not give it a go. It is only 5,544 pages containing 2,056,560 words. That is, according to the Daily Caller:

3.18x longer than the King James Bible
5.77x longer than the Affordable Care Act
1.63x longer than the entire Harry Potter series
3.73x longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy
1.06x longer than the entire Game of Thrones series
4.33x longer than the entire works of Shakespeare
2.65x longer than the New Oxford American Dictionary 3rd Edition

Just take a little break from trying to make ends meet while you compete with workers around the world making ten dollars a day and make a decision about whether we should take another bite of the free trade apple. Of course, no matter what you decide, the twin headed party of power in Chicago on the Potomac is going to shove this giveaway of American jobs and prosperity down your throat.

TPP is an agreement between the United States and 11 other countries — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. China is not a party to this treaty.

According to Public Citizen:

The TPP would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) “trade” pact model that has spurred massive U.S. trade deficits and job loss, downward pressure on wages, unprecedented levels of inequality and new floods of agricultural imports. The TPP not only replicates, but expands NAFTA’s special protections for firms that offshore U.S. jobs. And U.S. TPP negotiators literally used the 2011 Korea FTA – under which exports have fallen and trade deficits have surged – as the template for the TPP.

In one fell swoop, this secretive deal could:

offshore American jobs and increase income inequality,
jack up the cost of medicines,
sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom,
empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards,
expose the U.S. to unsafe food and products,
roll back Wall Street reforms,
ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,
and undermine human rights.

Although it is called a “free trade” agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP’s 29 draft chapters, only five deal with traditional trade issues. One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries. Many would impose limits on government policies that we rely on in our daily lives for safe food, a clean environment, and more. Our domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules.
So if the stagnant or falling wages of the last few decades have left you feeling as if you haven’t given enough, hold on, because the DC Leviathan is about to ask for more.

I would now make a plea for everyone to call their senators and congressman, but does anyone believe that would make a difference? This is just another milestone on the road to the third world by those who seek to fundamentally transform America. Then along comes Hillary, the nail in our coffin.


By Robert R. Owens