Tim Kaine Chooses The Form of the TPP Destructor

In a wide-ranging interview yesterday, with The Texas Standard, Hillary Clinton’s anti-abortion, far-right VP candidate, Tim Kaine, spilled the beans on how Clinton plans to betray the American people in regards to the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership.)

While it will come as no surprise to progressives, who never believed  Hillary Clinton’s weasel-worded disavowal of the TPP, under pressure from progressive voices in the Democratic primary, until now we didn’t know exactly what lame excuse she would use those weasel words with, to do what she was always going to do, to pursue her far-right economic policies.

To start it off, Kaine reiterates the dedication to the far-right Neoliberal economic dogma that he and Hillary Clinton share, the same dogma that  has ruined the United States for the vast majority of its hardworking citizens and turned the Democratic party into the party of the Neoconservatives.

“Trade is a reality and I want to do trade if the rules are fair. If the rules are fair, we should be moving ahead and finding export customers for our businesses.”

After that, he reveals the form that Clinton’s betrayal of the American people will take…

But the rules do have to be fair. A year ago, I voted to give the president the tools to negotiate the best deals possible…. The deal that’s on the table now, the TPP, which has to be voted up or down, it’s not enforceable in so far as the environmental and the labor standards. If a company doesn’t like an action the trade partner takes, then the company can file a lawsuit in a private court in a private court against the nation seeking billions of dollars. But if a labor union says a nation has violated the labor standards of the deal or an environmental group says ‘wait a minute’ or environmental standards of the deal,’ they’re not even allowed to go into the tribunal to challenge it.

So there you have it: They’re going to give Veal-Pen Organizations, like The Sierra Club, the Human Rights Campaign, or the AFL/CIO the right to petition the court full of corporate lawyers, for redress against some or other subset of government actions. Bur, certainly they will not get such right to seek change from corporations.

And with that iota of meaningless small change, a Chilton administration will, once again, crown the TPP the “Gold Standard of Trade Deals,” and betray the nation, just as her husband did with NAFTA. It’s Deja Vu, all over again.