OurFuture.org Blogs: David Sirota

Sotomayor Confirmation Fight As Vehicle for Discussion of Race, Class, Gender and White Privilege

David Sirota — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:38:08 -0700

Note: We discussed the potential value of the Sotomayor nomination fight to the broader cause of fighting racism, classism, gender persecution and systemic privilege on KKZN AM760 yesterday. You can listen here.

Between the Wall Street Journal telling us that business groups are confident that President Obama's Supreme Court nominees won't rock the boat and the New York Times telling us that Obama shunned so-called "favorites of the Left" in his Supreme Court search, I'm not (yet) fully confident that the selection of Sonia Sotomayor will mean huge policy change from the court. However, I am increasingly confident (and happy) that the Sotomayor nomination and ensuing confirmation fight could open up a much-needed discussion of taboo subjects like race, class, gender and privilege.

Sotomayor has been extremely outspoken on these topics. Indeed, her 2001 speech entitled "A Latina Judge's Voice" seemed deliberately (and, IMHO, courageously) provocative:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases...I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

Obama has spent much of his time in politics carefully avoiding or downplaying the issue of race, class and privilege. You can't fault him for that: Much of his relative reticence has to do with the unfortunate fact that black politicians who talk about such issues are automatically slandered as unserious race-centric rabble rousers (see Joe Klein's flippant denigration of John Conyers for a perfect example of this systemic racism in our media). Put another way, in order for Obama to achieve the credibility he has achieved, he has had to play by the Establishment media's rules on issues like race, class and privilege.

However, the nomination of Sotomayor suggests that Obama is willing - and, perhaps, eager - to start a discussion of these issues that he cautiously kicked off in his fantastic campaign speech on race.

He obviously knows that conservatives will try to derail Sotomayor's confirmation fight by specifically focusing on her provocative comments on race, class, gender and privilege. They will try to portray themselves - and America - as a color-blind, classless society of gender equality, with Sotomayor's undeniably true comments as supposed "proof" that she is a radical.

Of course, Sotomayor is absolutely right on these issues. People's experience, gender, heritage, ethnicity and economic station impact how they look at the world (I mean, if you don't think John Roberts' status as a wealthy white male of extreme privilege doesn't impact his rulings, then I've got some real estate to sell you). Thus, our court system (and entire political system) needs more diversity - and Sotomayor represents more diversity. And because her confirmation fight will likely pivot on discussions of her statements on race, class, gender and privilege, it means those issues - usually shoved to the side - will be on the national stage.

That's a damn good thing, if you ask me - it's about time we stop pretending we live in a color-blind, classless utopia of gender equality. We don't - and the sooner we admit that, the sooner we can actually move towards that utopian vision in the future.

BREAKING: Facing Progressive Pressure, Obama Backs Off Panama Free Trade Agreement

David Sirota — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:23:30 -0700

This is huge news for the Make Him Do It Dynamic:

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. trade accord with Panama, which is opposed by labor unions, won’t be submitted to Congress for approval until President Barack Obama offers a new “framework” for trade, an administration official said.

The decision, announced by Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Everett Eissenstat at a Senate Finance Committee hearing today, is a reversal from statements in March that the U.S. wanted to pass the accord soon...

Eissenstat’s comments follow remarks by John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO labor federation, that unions would oppose a rush to ratify the deal. Also today, 55 House Democrats told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reject the Panama accord unless it is renegotiated.

If you regularly read Ourfuture.org, you know we here at the Campaign for America's Future have been tracking this story, including the AFL-CIO announcement and the announcement today by the Populist Caucus to put major pressure on the White House to stop this NAFTA-style agreement. Indeed, as someone who has been working on this issue for a decade, I never thought I'd actually see the day where we, the progressive movement, could actually make a president back off (even temporarily) the NAFTA trade model.

Hilariously, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the K Street trade lobbyist dressed up as a U.S. Senator, has been relegated to desperation, insisting that we must pass the Panama Free Trade Agreement immediately despite the loophole-riddled pact and despite the country's status as a tax haven because “The Panamanians may back out.” Yes, that's right - Congress must pass this because it is supposed to take orders from the Panamanian government. What a joke.

Where this all goes from here is anyone's guess - it might just be a temporary delay with no change, but it might be something much bigger. Either way, as I've said before, what we're seeing is very real evidence of the potential for major change. You've got a White House retreating, you've got the Congress's chief trade whore making laughably absurd arguments, you've got progressive institutions making demands, and you've got rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers insisting on reforms.

As I said, this is what the Make Him Do It Dynamic looks like.

Foxes Confirm Fellow Fox As Guardian of the American Henhouse

David Sirota — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:10:51 -0700

Chris Hayes, the New York Times and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin (among others) long ago raised serious concerns about President Obama naming 18-year Goldman Sachs veteran and deregulatory zealot Gary Gensler to head the Commodities Futures Trading Commission - the commission tasked with regulating derivatives trading. So it is with a bummed out, yet unsurprised sigh that I pass on this news item:

The Senate voted Tuesday to put Gary Gensler in charge of helping the Obama administration clamp down on financial firms that make risky bets in the derivatives market, less than a decade after he opposed doing so.

Gensler, a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration, won Senate confirmation, 88-6...

Gensler, who was an assistant secretary of the Treasury Department and later undersecretary for domestic finance, worked with Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to keep credit default swaps away from regulation by the CFTC or the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Adding insult to injury, the Associated Press doesn't even bother to mention Gensler's long record as a Goldman Sachs greedhead, instead portraying him as just a earnest and humble, if momentarily misguided, career public servant.

I'd say this is a telling vote - the U.S. Senate, chock full of millionaires, financial industry whores and other assorted foxes, could muster just 6 votes against putting a fellow fox in charge of the henhouse. Pretty sad...and sadly predictable.

When An Intern Can Form a Shell Corporation, It's Time For Trade Reform

David Sirota — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:40:35 -0700

Bloomberg News this morning reports that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk gave a speech yesterday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "saying he hopes Congress will approve stalled trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea within the next year." The good news is that Kirk also noted that Bush-written trade policies are "really a tough sell in this environment."

They certainly should be - our lobbyist-written trade policies have significantly contributed to the economic collapse, hollowing out America's good-paying job base for years. Indeed, just yesterday, we see what that means: As the government bolsters domestic automakers, our rigged trade/international economic policies may undermine those efforts by allowing taxpayer cash to subsidize more job outsourcing.

The good news out of Kirk's speech was the fact that he "said negotiators in his office are working 'furiously' on labor and tax issues with Panama." At a time of massive budget deficits, that's an important step - especially when you consider how easy it currently is to hide tax income in a tax haven like Panama. Check out this video from Global Trade Watch - notice that the organization's intern is able to quickly set up a shell corporation to hide tax revenues:

It's important to keep up the pressure on the Obama administration to substantially change the Panama, South Korea and Colombia trade agreements. It's fairly clear that the progressive trade policy changes Obama promised will not come unless that pressure is intense and constant. But if it is intense and constant, I'm increasingly encouraged we can begin moving this seemingly immovable debate forward.

Why Is Washington, D.C. So Afraid to Even Talk About Single Payer?

David Sirota — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:38:14 -0700

After high-profile arrests on Capitol Hill, there's a very simple question on health care that hasn't been answered: Why are top Democrats afraid to even discuss the concept of a single-payer health care system? This is the question I explore in my latest newspaper column.

President Obama's refusal to kick off a national debate about single payer is particularly perplexing when you watch this statement from 2003:

As you can see, Obama not only declares himself a "proponent of single-payer health care" but says the only reason proponents like him should tolerate delay is because - at the time - Democrats still had to take back the House, Senate and White House. And yet now that precisely that has happened, the White House has done its level best to exclude single-payer advocates from a national health care debate. Why?

Thanks to this new Great Falls Tribune article, we get at least one potential attempt at an answer to that question from Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the single most powerful opposition to single payer in the American government:

"We've got to reform our system fairly quickly, and to be candid with you, very few members of the House and Senate advocate single-pay. The vast, vast majority do not," Baucus said in an interview Friday. "It tells me that if I go down that road, it's not going to be successful — it's not going to pass the Congress."

So Baucus is giving us the "politically impossible" canard - ie. the canard insisting that even though polls show a majority of Americans support the concept of single-payer, it's "not going to pass the Congress." Of course, the "evidence" for his assertion is the claim that "very, very few members" of Congress support single payer, and that "evidence" is refuted by the Great Falls Tribune's note that Rep. John Conyers' (D-MI) single-payer bill "has 75 sponsors in the House and is endorsed by more than 500 unions in 49 states." That doesn't sound like "very, very few" - and certainly not so few that single payer should be barred from the debate entirely.

As I wrote last week, I support single payer, and we clearly need single payer to be in the health care debate right now. The fact that the Washington Establishment is doing everything not only to stop single payer, but to keep it out of the debate entirely, suggests that Establishment is genuinely frightened of any proposal that takes on the health insurance industry. And that's not a good reason to refuse to even discuss a system that, on the merits, is probably the best solution to the health care crisis.

Read the whole newspaper column here.

The column relies on grassroots support - and because of that support, it is getting wider and wider circulation (a big thank you to all who have helped with that). So if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

Fair Trade Dems to White House: Listen & Change, Or Watch NAFTA-Style Deals Die

David Sirota — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:19:28 -0700

Roll Call has an update in the increasingly intense war of words between rank-and-file Democrats in Congress who ran and won promising fair trade reform, and White House officials who may force Congress to vote on the Bush-negotiated, NAFTA-style Panama Free Trade Agreement:

An increasingly agitated faction of Democrats is warning party leaders of ugly economic and political consequences if they try to move the Panama agreement.

Not only will it hurt the economy, critics say, but action on a Bush-negotiated trade deal endangers freshman Democrats in 2010 since many ran on a trade reform agenda. In addition, critics say, it doesn’t bode well for Obama to anger a bloc of Democrats early on when he needs their support for his ambitious domestic agenda.

“I’m getting really pissed off,” said House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D)...

Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), co- chairman of the House Trade Working Group, singled out House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in his criticism of his party leaders’ desire to advance the Panama deal.

“As a Democratic leader, I don’t think it’s helpful to vulnerable Members to ask them to support a Bush-negotiated trade deal,” Michaud said. “As a Democratic leader, [Hoyer] should not be encouraging the White House to move forward on this.”

Panama itself “is not a big deal,” said one aide to a House Democrat opposed to the agreement. “It’s an opportunity to re-evaluate our cookie-cutter trade deals and then use that as a framework...Panama sets the course for what future agreements look like.”

To ratchet up pressure, some of the most senior fair traders in the Democratic caucus are threatening to use their positions to block the trade pact from moving through the House. Specifically, "Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), one of the Members who attended the USTR meeting, said Slaughter repeatedly reminded USTR officials that she chairs the powerful Rules Committee" and that Slaughter "made it very clear that she didn’t intend to move any of those bills."

This is what the Make Him Do It Dynamic looks like in legislative practice - fair traders using their leverage to pass and stop bills in Congress to force the White House to respect President Obama's campaign promises. In this case, the administration is being forced to slowly but surely acknowledge - and potentially champion - fair traders' demands for major trade policy reforms, with the Panama trade deal serving as the first vehicle for such changes. As I noted before, such change moves at a glacial pace, but it is moving.

The Politics of Ending Bailout-mania

David Sirota — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:59:42 -0700

Dean Baker has expertly provided the economic case for ending taxpayer-funded bailouts for Wall Street. But, as we all know, just because something makes sound economic sense does not mean Congress or the White House will change course.

That's particularly true when it comes to policies affecting the financial industry. The continuation of no-strings-attached bailouts is not merely a product of the industry's outsized political influence bought by hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying. It is also a product of both a money-worshiping media Establishment and a strain of sycophantism that inhibits the progressive movement from taking on a more confrontational posture.

Should We Bail Out This Bailout?

In the days leading up to the America's Future NOW! conference starting June 1, we're hosting an online dialogue featuring conference speakers on the key issues they will be addressing during the conference. Join the conversation by clicking the "Discuss" link below or contribute your own post.

When the Wall Street meltdown first hit and public opinion polls showed a country deeply opposed to the Bush-Obama bailouts, almost every television pundit, newspaper columnist and reporter portrayed bailout proponents as Serious and Sober Defenders of the Republic and bailout opponents as Unserious Luddites Who Want the Country to Enter a Depression. Perhaps the best example of this unbridled elitism came from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who appeared on Charlie Rose's PBS show to liken bailout proponents to those courageous legislators who supported 1960s civil rights laws, and berated bailout opponents as irresponsible. This kind of portrayal largely continues today.

At the same time, much of the progressive movement has opted to give President Obama a pass on his strong support for more no-strings-attached bailouts. The rationale for this is some mix of loyalty and worship, with many believing that to take on the White House in an oppositional fashion would unduly weaken the new president.

So, then, what to do? How can the bailout politics ever change?

Well, first and foremost, bailout politics are changing already, without the consent of the Washington media Establishment. With polls continuing to show the public angry at the prospect of more bailouts, the administration has been forced to hold off asking for more bailout funds, knowing that intensified opposition in Congress means another request would likely be rejected. Indeed, Congress already stripped Obama's second $750 billion bailout request out of his 2010 budget proposal.

Second, both the fledgling protests against bailouts - on the left from A New Way Forward, and on the right from the so-called Tea Parties - suggests a potential base of support for challenger candidates who base their campaigns against incumbents on a progressive or conservative brand of anti-bailout populism. For Democrats who control Congress, this poses a particular threat, because they have far more to lose than the Republicans. And so progressive movement efforts to force Democrats to take tougher anti-bailout positions is the opposite of disloyal - it's the best way to help Democrats avoid unnecessarily emboldened GOP candidacies in 2010.

The necessity for progressives to help strengthen an anti-bailout political coalition, rather than sitting on the sidelines hoping public anger recedes, is obvious.

According to Bloomberg News, the White House, the Congress and the Federal Reserve have committed almost $13 trillion to the financial industry in one bailout form or another. If even more resources continue to be devoted to bailing out the same financial con artists who got us into this economic mess, that means far less resources will be available to tackle all of the nation's other challenges (health care, infrastructure, education, etc.). And when those challenges aren't met, conservatives will have a set of failures to cite as a powerful rationale for their own political revival.

So while bailout politics have yet to become the cause du jour of the progressive movement, it must be that cause—because if it doesn't become central to progressive organizing and opposition, it could undermine the movement's entire legislative and electoral agenda.

Three Questions About Obama's "Major" Health Care Announcement Today

David Sirota — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:05:00 -0700

So the big news today is President Obama's press conference with the health insurance industry touting the industry's "voluntary" commitment to slashing $2 trillion off Americans' health care bills over the next decade. The New York Times reports that this voluntary announcement is motivated by the health insurance industry's "hope to stave off new government price constraints that might be imposed by Congress or a National Health Board of the kind favored by many Democrats."

My three questions are really simple:

1) If the health industry is saying it can lower costs by $2 trillion over 10 years and remain highly profitable, isn't the industry admitting that it was planning to absolutely bilk consumers, and has been bilking consumers in the past? Put another way, isn't the industry admitting that it's entire business model is based on outright profiteering?

Trust, But Verify

The Health Care for Amerca NOW! coalition is taking the insurance industry's announcement of a voluntary cost-reduction effort as a positive sign—but one that deserves to be viewed warily.

"The insurance industry has, in a sense, endorsed the Obama vision of health care reform," writes Jason Rosenbaum on HCAN's blog. "They have said to the President, 'Hey, if you make the changes you talked about in the campaign, we can reduce costs.'

"Now, of course, they remain opposed to a public health insurance option. So the key here will be accountability. As Bob Laszewski says, it's 'trust but verify.' The industry will never make a binding commitment to control costs, so we need to put something in place that can police this agreement. That something is a public health insurance option."

The top story in Bill Scher's Progressive Breakfast today links to several key articles on the insurance industry announcement, including articles from Jonathan Kohn, Marc Ambinder and Paul Krugman.

—Isaiah J. Poole

2) Why should the American public believe the health industry is going to voluntarily do anything to cut into its profits? Health executives have a fiduciary responsibility to private shareholders to maximize profits. Voluntarily lowering those profits would violate that fiduciary responsibility. Are we really expected to believe these health executives will, out of the goodness of their hearts, violate their fiduciary responsibilities? What has actually changed to suggest that they will violate their fiduciary responsibilities and help health care consumers?

3) Isn't President Obama legitimizing voices that will use that added credibility later on to try to derail serious health care reform? Today's press conference has the President of the United States effectively saying that the health insurance industry should have a major seat at the health-reform table - and that it should be trusted. But any serious health care reform will need to take on the health insurance industry in a way that will make that industry unhappy. When that eventually happens, won't the previous efforts to legitimize the health insurance industry's voice add credibility to its opposition to reform? I think so, and agree with Ezra Klein who says, "The fact that the White House is making a big deal of [the health industry's] support means" the White House is suggesting that it "would be a big deal if they lost it."

Look, I have no problem with the industry making voluntary commitments about lowering costs - and if it follows through, then that's great. But I also have no illusion about industries making voluntary commitments to reduce their profits - those commitments usually aren't worth the paper they're written on. And so I worry that promoting such commitments as "major" can be politically dangerous and, frankly, counterproductive.

Obama's political calculus throughout his life has been to avoid making enemies. He seems to believe that he can make lots of different interests happy - and on many issues, that's certainly possible. But on some issues, like health care, it's a binary fight: Either you appease the health industry and preserve the status quo they are making big bucks off of, or you take on the health industry and make real change. Touting the industry's "voluntary" commitment to not rip off consumers seems more in the appeasing camp than in the "real change" camp.

Piggish Capitalism - The Connection Between Swine Flu Outbreaks & Wall Street's Meltdown

David Sirota — Fri, 08 May 2009 09:56:56 -0700

Let's say you have a diversified industry of small, medium and large sized firms. Let's say you then gut anti-trust enforcement, eviscerate regulation, and massively increase subsidization to create textbook oligopoly. And then, finally, let's say the few mega-conglomerates that dominate the oligopoly make big mistakes and dangerous decisions. What are you going to get? As I show in my new newspaper column, you're going to get exactly what you got not just in the Wall Street meltdown, but also in the swine-flu outbreak.

I call the mix of consolidation, deregulation and subsidization "piggish capitalism" - and if you're going to be honest about it, it's a bipartisan problem. Both parties in Congress and in the White House formed a consensus around that ideology in the 1980s and particularly in the 1990s, and now we're left with oligopolistic industries like finance and agribusiness whose ruthless efficiencies, vertical/horizontal integrations and lack of oversight have allowed them to turn relatively manageable problems into international emergencies.

Interestingly, as both conservatives and progressives struggle to claim the populist mantle in these times of crisis, they are each seeking to criticize a different leg of piggish capitalism's three-legged stool. The right attacks the concept of spending (ie. subsidization) and progressives attack the deregulation and consolidation. Though I (obviously) think we progressives are far more correct in our analysis of the root problems, I think conservatives (at least the honest ones) are onto something in their criticism of government subsidization of huge business.

As the Huffington Post's Tom Edsall reported, because the Obama administration is still playing into a conservative frame that demonizes public sector jobs, much of the new government spending is corporate welfare - ie. subsidization. It may be better targeted and less corrupt than Bush-style subsidization of Halliburton, et. al.*, but it's the same destructive economic principle: give a shit-ton of government money to the biggest of big corporations.

I want to be clear: Subsidization unto itself isn't always bad. Sometimes it's necessary, and it can be particularly positive when it is targeted at small businesses so as to not underwrite oligopolistic consolidation. The problem is that, as the American Small Business League's Lloyd Chapman shows, so much of our current subsidization is aimed at the mega-conglomerates - even the subsidization that claims to be targeted at small business.

The point here is that we're now suffering through two emergencies directly related to an three-pronged economic theory that we must confront head on - and change. The fact that the Wall Street crisis and the swine-flu outbreak are portrayed as two totally separate and random phenomena is positively absurd.

Read the whole column here.

* Though I have my doubts about that specifically in relation to the bank bailout...

Trade Reform Begins Glacial Move Via the Changing Debate Over Panama

David Sirota — Thu, 07 May 2009 09:01:54 -0700

Often times, change on huge issues like trade and globalization comes at a glacial pace - largely because these issues are the political equivalent of glaciers: Huge blocks of seemingly immovable policy cemented by years and years of ice and stone. But glaciers can move, and so can trade policy - the latter, as evidenced by the shifting debate over the Panama Free Trade Agreement.

More than a year and a half ago, I wrote a column about how the Panama Free Trade Agreement, if passed, would reward a country that has allowed itself to become one of the world's leading corporate tax havens. My column was based, in part, off an even older piece by trade expert Peter Riggs. At the time, the argument against rewarding corporate tax havens put forward by myself, Riggs and groups like Public Citizen were completely ignored - most of the very few objections from lawmakers to the agreement surrounded the election of Pedro Miguel Gonzalez to Panama's parliament, despite his being indicted for murder in the United States.

Now, suddenly, with the U.S. government desperate for increased revenues, the argument against the Panama agreement on the basis of its tax haven status is the pact's major obstacle:

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- A trade agreement with Panama faces objections by Democrats in the U.S. Congress who say they won’t support the pact unless that country agrees to clamp down on tax evaders who find refuge there. The dispute is a setback to President Barack Obama’s bid to get the free-trade agreement approved soon...

“There is no doubt that the tax issue has become front and center,” said Christopher Wenk, a lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

So, we've gone from a small amount of opposition to this specific pact based on problems with an individual criminal to a much larger amount of opposition to this kind of pact based on problems with the structural issue of corporate tax evasion. That is genuine progress, because it means we're finally starting to have a conversation about the overall trade and globalization system, and how it often works to reward and intensify the worst kind of corporate behavior.

To better understand that latter point, note Public Citizen's new report about how the Panama Free Trade Agreement, if passed, would help banks both offshore taxpayer bailout cash and allow them to use international courts to strike down any domestic financial regulations that are passed in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown:

Many of the top 30 recipients of TARP money have subsidiaries in Panama. Because Panama does not charge taxes on “offshore” subsidiaries, the TARP and other bailout fund recipients may be able to avoid paying significant amounts of U.S. taxes by essentially permanently deferring repatriation of their income in Panama...

[If the Panama agreement passes] TARP recipients’ Panama-registered subsidiaries would be newly empowered to demand U.S. taxpayer-dollar damages for U.S. financial service regulations or limits on transfers (related to Panama’s status as a tax-haven country) that they could claim undermined its future expected profits and were thus ”tantamount” to (“indirect”) “expropriations.” These cases would be heard by UN or World Bank tribunals, and could be brought to attack domestic regulatory measures...

If you don't believe that corporations are happy to use trade agreements' protectionist provisions on "investor rights" to crush domestic laws in this country, just take a look at how corporations may attempt to use NAFTA provisions to destroy California's new anti-pollution regulations.

This goes to the bigger point: Proponents of pacts like the Panama Free Trade Agreement will float any argument to get these things passed into law - and their favorite argument is size. "Oh, Panama's economy is tiny, so the opposition to this agreement is way overstated," they will insist - except, as you can see, these agreements often have little to do with the size of a potential trading partner's economy, and much to do with other more systemic issues. In Panama's case, it's the multi-billion dollar tax evasion industry, in other deals' case (as well as Panama's actually), it's opening up a source of cheap labor from workers who are paid slave wages, have no union rights, etc.

Again, though, we're seeing progress - especially this week with the Obama administration being forced to publicly say it is concerned about these tax haven issues in the Panama pact. Indeed, the fact that the Panama trade deliberations are focused on tax evasion means the Obama administration now has to deal with big questions about our entire trade and regulatory system. That suggests the entire trade/globalization debate is slowly moving beyond the manufactured idiocy that presents these questions as Enlightened Advocates of Trade against Luddite Protectionists Who Hate All Commerce. And because that shift is happening, there's genuine reason to hope that our trade policies may change.