Trans Pacific Partnership(s)
Trends
The Rising Tide
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
From those
who suggest our country is on the right track, it is becoming more difficult
each day to speculate as to what those folks are actually inhaling to produce
such hallucinations.
Nothing
seems to be ‘normal’. Black is white, white is red, and red is merging chameleon-like
toward branch water. Not much offers hope in our realm, and, less yet, provides
assurance that the conditions that cause alarm will improve.
We are flying
solo in our pursuits.
Trends
Not too
many years ago, the number of USDA employees outgrew the number of farmers and
ranchers the agency was ostensibly created to serve. Through time, that
situation made for interesting discussion, but the impact on the ground was
muted by distance from Washington
and the attitude and the aptitude of the federal employees that formed the
front line. Most of those people were from rural America or they were only one
generation removed. They understood the complexity of the folks they served
because they remained attached to the heritage and the realities of rural America. They could
speak the language. They understood the resource concerns of emphasis.
Importantly, they were also under the guidance and leadership that largely
elevated the service role of the agencies of their employ. Those conditions are
now waning at accelerating rates.
More and more, archeologists are overseeing
grazing and timber harvest initiatives, botanists from the East are filling key
management roles in the West, and nary a PhD dissertation be found that is
related to production forestry. Philosophy of the human condition is displacing
multiple use management and the production of grains and protein are becoming
trading chats for international tribunals. Increasingly, the American farmer
and rancher are bit players who produce the raw products that serve as a
vehicle for seizing more control of the government of the United States.
The best current
example is the debacle being promoted as TPP, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
It is being touted by the Crown as a major boon for Ag segments. If it is, the
good part must be found somewhere else in its 5,544 pages and beyond my
attention span to study.
Even
Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, agrees with the immensity of the document.
He calculated that 16.6% of the monstrosity actually deals with trade. The rest
regulates an “unimaginable” number of things, “including the internet”.
The tenth
chapter suggests the effort is a backdoor immigration plan. There are plans to
bring workers from partnership countries here to oversee various administrative
duties. This “temporary entry for business persons” calls for providing visas
to not just so called professionals but for their spouse(s) and children.
Reciprocity
is not required. Alan Newport reporting for Beef Magazine found in the
appendices of Chapter 12 that nearly all other countries don’t have to conform
to the demands laid on us. Japan’s
limits are very finite. Only certain professionals will be allowed and they
must have an equivalent of a Japanese associate degree. Japan is also given
broad horizons to conform to taxation demands. They have been given 16 years to
reduce their current 74% duty placed on beef. That will equate to more than three
full cycles of “professional” trading partner representatives in their country who
are required to pack up and go home on five-year visa limitations (the U.S. did
not demand any such limits on their “guest workers”).
Too many
people are starting to smell the stench of this debacle. Former assistant
secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts, says the
real function of TPP is to set global corporations above the laws of the
nations where they operate.
William F.
Jasper is saying the same thing. “The real agenda behind TPP is to consolidate
and centralize economic and political power,” he says.
Last fall,
the American Thinker had an article
that outlined the specter that world government and cronyism is at work. They
make their case on the basis of seven points that have little to nothing to do
with trade. The points are:
1. There
will be a legislative body superior to our congress that will oversee the
partnership.
2. The
final document will become a vehicle for Obama to get his climate treaty
passed.
3. The
process will, without question, increase legal immigration.
4. It
will reduce the patent protections of U.S. industries not the least of
which is pharmaceuticals.
5. Quotas,
not unrestricted sales of U.S.
agricultural exports, will grow and be enforced.
6. There
will be increased currency manipulation.
7. There
will be reduced U.S.
power and self rule on the world stage.
In short, this is a catastrophe
waiting to happen. The underlying goals are
being revealed to be our wildest and worst nightmares.
The Rising Tide
If our
system was based on limited government, these fundamental changes could never
be contemplated much less made. The problem is our government isn’t limited and
the breadth and scope of its expansion is staggering. There is new Bureau of
Labor data that pegs the work force of government (federal, state, and local)
at 22,213,000 employees. Manufacturing now employs 12,281,000. There are 1.81
government workers for every American actually making something to sell.
Astounding?
Not really because this country has
been shedding manufacturing jobs at a rate of 16,400 workers per month since
1979. It is no secret why American manufacturing is leaving our shores. It is
simply to survive the assault of the hordes of bureaucratic megalomaniacs who
we are competing to regulate a shrinking body of workers. What TPP and other multi-thousand page
legislative actions are demonstrating is that these ultimate power junkies aren’t
satisfied with just raping this system.
They are taking aim … at the world.
Stephen
L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New
Mexico. “One way or the other, changes will escalate
after November.”
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