Idaho should be proud of having the best voting record in the U.S. Congress for the 113th Session. You four representatives of Idaho’s citizens have done a stellar job for the most part in voting with the Constitution as reported in The Freedom Index at jbs.org for the 2 years just completed by the 113th Congress. Rep. Labrador @ 92%, Sen. Risch @ 87%, Sen. Crapo @ 85% and Rep. Simpson @ 52%. Although Rep. Simpson’s vote is not exceptional, at least it’s ahead of the abysmal average U.S. House vote of 47%. The average U.S. Senate vote was even worse at a shameful 36%.
Men of your caliber work in a complicated world where accomplishing perfection can be difficult and downright menacing to citizens of states like Idaho, where we still know the difference between liberty and puppet states of Big Gov. I am most concerned about how you vote and affect others to vote on these most serious Free Trade bills coming up. You need being educated on some real facts, real quick or you might aid in our country’s demise as a sovereign nation. There are a lot of legislators listening foolishly to the wrong people and not doing their due diligence for ‘our citizens’ America on this ‘free trade’ debacle.
The biggest threat to our continuation as a sovereign Republic that you are facing currently is the very deceitful Free Trade Agendas (FTA’s) known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Most urgently, Obama is demanding you to give him Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), a new name for fast track authority. And too many members of your Republican fraternity think that’s just fine which makes people who understand what’s really going on madder than hell!
TPA must be voted down! Members of congress, as you must know, already have been shut out of negotiations, with no press or public participation being allowed, yet corporate lobbyists, other nations and their corporate lobbyists are having full access. The only information to-date has been leaked. And now OB wants it all hurried up. You know if you don’t stop this, you’re going to wind up with a tall stack on your desk just like ObamaCare with the same ‘no time to read it’ hustle and I believe there are enough sorry ‘sheep’ sitting with you to just go along like they have been rubber stamping as they are told.
Big money lobbyists, talking heads from the Council On Foreign Relations, The UN, The National Chamber of Commerce and the in-the-tank leaders like Mitch McConnell, John Boehnner, Paul Ryan and Rand Paul (either fools or part of our problem) all sing the same propaganda song of it being good for American businesses. Just like their ilk did for NAFTA. There was a winner, right?
Let’s see: Over 720,000 American workers lost their jobs since NAFTA began and we went from having a $1.6 billion trade surplus with Mexico the year before NAFTA to over a $60 billion deficit by 2010. Before NAFTA we exported 225,000 cars annually to Mexico and in 2012 Mexico’s exports to us exceeded 1.4 million cars and Chrysler, Ford and GM transferred major production facilities to Mexico.
And this doesn’t even speak to how NAFTA courts have overruled our courts. In 2004, the NAFTA court ruled against a Massachusetts company by overruling the highest courts of the State of Massachusetts and the United States. Hofstra University law professor Peter Spiro said the NAFTA ruling “points to a fundamental reorientation of our constitutional system. You have an international tribunal essentially reviewing American court judgments.”
These are not the ‘free trade’ policies that have led to lower tariffs and lower export subsidies over the past couple centuries. Catch on. The words ‘free trade’ have been so-to-speak ‘hi-jacked’ and are used very deceptively and promoted very professionally as everything they absolutely are not. (Do you remember the great words ‘Affordable Care Act’?) Great words! Sounded re-e-a-a-l good.
Real FREE TRADE is as it should be, FREE. These masked agreements are chock full of restricting and illegal regulations that, like our experience with NAFTA, are ruinous to our interests, freedom and sovereignty and are forecast to be 10 times worse than NAFTA in scope and affect.
What do these issues have to do with free trade? Climate change • sustainable development• internet regulation • homeland security • the military • labor • patent and copyright including intellectual property rights • land use • food • agriculture and product standards • natural resources • the environment • professional licensing • competition • state-owned enterprises • government procurement policies as well as financial policies • healthcare • energy • e-commerce • telecommunications and other service sector regulations. And what do international courts have to do with trade? Nothing, but its all part of the pending FTA’s as per the 151 house democrats’ letter to Obama in November 2013 opposing fast track, the secrecy, and all these un-related issues that should not be included in these negotiations.
Your comments, email replies and non-committals have you gentlemen all over the board on this one. Either you get it or you don’t. You’re either being duped or you’re not paying enough attention to facts and reality if you support these bogus plans. Don’t be wrong and sorry on this issue. America can’t take it. As my wife says, ‘what we have now is the best government money can buy.’ We have gone astray as badly as Rome did and we can’t expect different results if we don’t reverse this national suicide course we are on.
For me and a lot of other good Americans who understand this issue, we appreciate your service in the past, but if you blow it on this vote all bets are off as far as we’re concerned about caring a whit about your re-elections.
I choose to believe that you’re unable to really read emails and are unreachable by phone due to how busy you stay. I wish I knew a big money donor who ‘gets it’ on Free Trade that could have his call to you accepted so you would hear some reality rather than all the hyped lies and prattle of the ‘fix’ in magical Washington.
This overwhelming onslaught of ruinous new rules and regulations under the TPP will surely steer our republic into history and our former sovereign country will be evolved into the intended new member state of at first a regional government probably called the North American Union under the auspicious of the UN to be graduated toward full membership as a member of a new global government, eventually as a result of the TTIP being passed later, which of course, would be run by unaccountable, unelected global power elitists who know best for us on all things.
Maybe that’s just as well, since most of your colleagues are ruining our country anyway and righting it will just be too much work for those that really don’t care that much about the consequences they are creating. And getting rid of whole unconstitutional agencies and bureaus, laws and thousands of strangling regulations, redundancies and eliminating thousands of unnecessary government employees would take a serious plan and commitment. A national one! Not a party one. A plan and commitment that would require real statesmen, not politicians! But that would just be too messy and the parties’ handlers at the Council On Foreign Relations and the UN wouldn’t approve and campaign funding from Soros, Buffet, Gates and their kind would go away. Unfortunately, such a plan and commitment wouldn’t be bought and paid for such as our evolved system has.
I don’t think there are enough ‘real Americans’ with the patriotic intestinal fortitude to wake up and turn this mess off that the likes of NAFTA and these new FTA’s propose and get us back to what brought us: A constitutionally run country of law and limited national and state governments for free men to pursue whatever level of success they wish to attain unencumbered by the shackles of all these strangling laws, regulations and taxes so our commerce can flourish and truly compete in the new marketplace of the very competitive world that hasn’t all our restraints. Your world you live in today is too much about power and money and citizens know it and are sickened by it and most of you don’t know what can be done about it. But staying the course is the wrong direction absolutely!
In my opinion, one of the vilest people I’ve ever heard speak, the extreme far lefty named Alan Grayson, U.S. Congressman (D-Fla.), is one of the few members of Congress given limited access to the TPP negotiation documents, and he told the Huffington Post, “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why.“ If even he gets it, what is wrong with the rest of our legislators?
The above link with Grayson’s quote from the Huffington Post is part of an even more in-depth story from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy that chronicles much more detailed information that should set you straight with reality on this most important matter.
As writer Adam Needelman states at the end of this article: “Ultimately, what we see in the TPP isn’t anything futuristic, but a double down on old, bad ideas. The level of secrecy is unprecedented, the power given to corporate advisors and experts is unprecedented, and the work to dismantle local regulation goes further than any deal we’ve seen before. The choice inherent in the notion of a “21st-Century Trade Deal,” is who the 21st century belongs to—will food policy continue to go down the road of 20th-century neoliberalism that never really worked, or will it be decided by consumers and the officials they elected to represent their interests?
- Oppose Fast-Track: Fast Track allows USTR to negotiate trade agreements behind closed doors, and then rush them through Congress circumventing ordinary review, amendment and debate procedures. To create policies that are accountable to people, not just big corporations, Fast Track must be eliminated.
- No more Secrecy: The people have a right to know what United States Trade Representatives are negotiating in their name.
- Special provisions for food and ag in agreements: Small farmers deserve protection, and food safety standards aren’t simply “barriers” to be knocked down. Our food systems, the people whose livelihoods depend on them, and the consumers who support them deserve protection from the whims of the international market.
- Oppose the TPP: It’s a double down on old, bad ideas done in secrecy and dependent on the outdated fast-track model. We want an actual 21st-century Trade Agreement!” – unquote, Adam Needelman
Thank you for your indulgence and I hope you effectively influence others and see to it that this grand scheme is sent to the dust heap of history with an emphasis of disgust.
