Coping: Call Your Congressman on TPP! Now!

This morning, run your flag up the poll…perhaps upside down (and in “distress”) because our nation is on the brink.

On Wednesday, I sent to our local Congressperson:  (Jeb Hensarling, Texas 5th R)

I’m sure, Congressman, that your staff has at least read some of the TPP/TPA and TISA files that have been posted on WikiLeaks.

I am appalled that “secret laws” are now in the works by our “leadership” in Washington.  Secret deals that will take trade out of American court and place it in the hands of “arbitrators” instead.  This is a continuing attack on contract law – one of America’s founding principles.

I don’t mind TPP et al coming to a vote.  What I strenuously object to is the secrecy surrounding the specific contents of proposed legislation. 

The D.C. crowd has broken fail with the People by not operating in an open, forthright, and fully disclosed manner.  Secret legislation doesn’t fly back home in the district.

Do we not live in a country where debating an issue on its merits means anything, anymore?  Or, are we Germany circa 1932?

I look forward to something other than a form letter response.

Sincerely,

George Ure
Palestine

I am asking you to just one thing today:  contact your member of congress and ask them to vote NO on any legislation that has not be read and made available to the public for comment.  A minimum of 30-days seems good.  60-better, and 120 days best.

The elitists in Washington have a nasty record of placing themselves above We the People…and demanding our place at the bargaining table on things like crooked trade deals is well within our rights as we’ll be the people getting the Astroglide subsidy when still more of our jobs are hijacked offshore.

To the credit of Congressman Jeb Hensarling’s staff, I did receive a reply from staffer:  Although it was of the “form letter” sort.  Appeasement doesn’t just work in trade…it works in congressional relations….

But in the interest of fairness…

June 10, 2015

Mr. George A. Ure

*(they got my address wrong, lol)
Palestine, TX 75801

Dear Friend:

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns regarding Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). I appreciate the benefit of your thoughts on this issue of great importance to our economy, businesses, and national security.

Over the past several years, the United States has engaged in official talks over multiple Free Trade Agreements, including the ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. As you may know, TPA – also known as Fast Track authority – grants the President the authority to enter into reciprocal trade agreements and have the requisite implementing legislation considered under expedited legislative procedures. Congress has previously exercised TPA fourteen times, most recently when considering free agreements with Colombia, Panama, Peru, and South Korea. The most recent TPA expired on July 1, 2007.

Like you, I want to ensure that America remains a vibrant economy where workers can put in an honest day’s work for an honest wage, one that can help provide for them and their families.  That is why I support Free Trade Agreements (FTA) such as the one signed between the U.S. and Peru in November 2007.  FTAs allow Americans to have access to new and growing markets and will have even greater opportunity to market their goods and services worldwide.

When trade grows, income grows, and free trade not only creates opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed, it helps increase wages and improves the standard of living of our workers and consumers at home and abroad.  I am confident that American workers and American goods will continue to thrive in the global marketplace, and I will continue my efforts to open the borders and markets abroad to American innovation and ingenuity.

I understand your concerns about giving Fast Track Authority to the administration. The United States must work to ensure that in any agreement, American businesses and exports are given greater market access and will face less trade barriers as a result of the agreement. Congress, through the enumerated powers granted under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, is responsible for any agreements made with foreign nations in regards to trade and it is Congress which is ultimately responsible to render the final decision on these negotiations. While I disagree with the current administration on many issues, and will reserve judgment of both the TPP and TTIP agreements until a bill is presented to Congress, the issue of expanding market access and trade opportunities is not a Republican or Democrat issue, but an American issue. Although we may not see eye-to-eye, please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind should any relevant legislation addressing TPA be brought before the full House for a vote.

Thank you again for contacting me. I appreciate having the opportunity to serve you in the United States House of Representatives. I encourage you to visit my website at www.hensarling.house.gov where you can sign up for my e-newsletter. The website also provides links to my YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter pages, all of which will help bring my work in Washington, D.C., home to you.

Yours respectfully,

A

JEB HENSARLING

Member of Congress

JH/[Staffer.Initials]

Yours respectfully,

JEB HENSARLING
Member of Congress

JH/rs

Keep my thoughts in mind?  Yeah, right, guffaw…FMTT

Going with “Dear Friend” is probably fair play, as I often refer to detached Congressoids.  In this case, however, I’m trying to remain on point and where’s my Roberts Rules of Order?  So I sent back…

“Thank you for your reply.

It is not responsive.

My question is:  If it is so good a deal, why are you and your colleagues keeping it secret?

I spent 13 years as a major market news director and I know a “trust us” when I see it.

Which is why secret legislation is universally bad legislation in the end.

Sincerely,

George Ure”

I am holding my breath waiting for a reply. 

Oh, alright, I gave up.  I’m not that fit.  And “Dear Friend” ain’t gonna pry any leftovers from the slim pickens of the Social Security scam from our hands, either. 

One of these days I need to ask my attorney:  “If a politician gets more than 1/2 of their financial support from outside a congressional district, are they legally representing the people of that district?”  Seems to me they’re not.

But lookie here…an email from another reader who’s getting it…

Found this on my facebook feed this afternoon. It’s on Robert Reich‘s fb page a few minutes ago,via a mutual friend. Thought you’d find this exchange interesting. I do not know this person or if it is real or not. However I see this post has over 10k shares at this point.


“I’d like to see the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal,” I told the person I reached in the office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s classified.”

“But representatives from some 600 private corporations have access to it by way of a secured Internet portal,” I said. “I’d like the password to the secured portal, please.”
“That’s not possible,” she said.
“But I’m a former cabinet official. I had security clearance. Why can representatives from 600 private corporations have access to this text and not me?”
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
“Look, Congress will be voting shortly on whether to fast-track this deal without amendment or discussion. Several members of Congress have called me to get my advice before they vote. All I’m asking for is the same access to it that people who work for 600 corporations are getting.”
“I can’t help you,” she said.
“WikiLeaks has already published three leaked chapters and is selling the entire thing for $100,000. Wouldn’t it be cheaper and simpler just to give it to me?”
She laughed and said goodbye.
I don’t think this is a laughing matter.

No shit, Mr. Stockman.  This is an effing rip. TBS top to bottom.

If there are two people (barely) keeping the light of Freedom and Liberty on in America today, it would be former Labor Secretary Robert Reich (see YouTube for some dandy no bullshit straight-talk) …

e

As long as you’re there look up David Stockman.

Some reads that are really worthy of your time:

Yeah, by the way, it did fail. 

Although there is a good chance that the ‘Merican eCONomy will have one more Master-Blaster meteoric rise into 20167-2017, there’s also the hell to pay a-coming.  The slip joint down to 2,040 to 1,740 on the S&P is just fore-play.  Then a rally, and then the big turd in the punchbowl shows up.

So what can we all do about it?

And I urge you to personally defund and unseat Congressoids who vote on “secret laws” which run counter to the Founder’s great principles.

Anyone who takes more than half their money from outside their home district is a local sellout, plain and simple.

Congressman?  What’s the goddam secret, Sir?

Thank you, Ures in Liberty, yada, yada…

(Published earlier than our usual posting time Thursday because I’m just too ticked and cranky about this to hold it till morning.  This piece will be updated with lighter items in the morning.  But this ‘un just p*sses me off something fierce.  And peaceful public reaction (shunning, dis-electing) may be the only answer.)

GMAFB, Honorable Member.   I’m not your “Dear Friend” when you aren’t open.

The last TPA was in 2007.  And guess what?  The world hasn’t ended.  Give it up…this is a corporate scam to greedster out of the American court system  and it’s another step in the Globalist Empire Building which doesn’t include any of your “Dear Friends” around here.

We can see the writing on the wall:  Corporations (that already have more rights than humans) and now opting out of Constitutional government of recourse to the courts.  How you can support this is (to put it mildly) mind-boggling.

Or has the Honorable Member forgotten what  “Bool shit” is?

Dual Citizenship and Pollyticks

No, Bernie Sanders is not a dual citizen.

But it brings up a question we like to revisit now and then:  Should people who hold a passport of any other country be allowed to hold public office?

My thinking is no.  The egalitarian in me keeps coming back to a “man can’t serve two masters.”  You’re either in the melting pot or you don’t hold office, is how I see this.

No, that’s note anti-Semitic, either.  The problem is that if allowed for Israel, how long before we have dual citizens of, oh, say China, or Iran, holding office, too?

Shouldn’t American Blacks, who were stolen from someplace like Nigeria, also be afforded dual citizenship?  I mean if we want to play “trump the atrocities…”    Do try to remember how the Chinese-Americans were treated, as well.  And while we’re at it, should Native Americans have their own passports?  They didn’t ask for an 80% die-off from small pox or to have their land seized at gunpoint, as I recall.

Or, should Ures truly hold a Danish or Scottish passport and still be able to hold public office?

No, methinks not.

If you don’t like the passport regulations in America, change the political overclass that makes up rules on the fly.

Until then, one per customer if you want to hold office.  Think of it as Loyal Oath 2.0.  But ,all in or all out…that’s how principle work.

Help A Retired Firefighter

You may not go shopping in Riverside, California, often.  But long-time UrbanSurvival reader, and retired firefighter Philip Kusnier sent me an email:

Hello George, I am reaching out to all of my LinkedIn Friends because I NEED YOUR HELP!
PLEASE HELP AND SUPPORT A RETIRED FIREFIGHTER AND U.S. VETERAN!
I NEED YOUR VOTE!
TO VOTE GO TO THIS SITE:
https://www.missionmainstreetgrants.com/vote
TYPE IN: “Firehouse Foods”
Enter VOTE, That’s it!

Done. 

I don’t usually pimp such things, but…

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of PJ’s Firehouse Foods products benefits the International Association of Fire Fighters Charitable Foundation

So if you wouldn’t mind a click and a type, that’d be fine by us.  Kind of like Newman’s Own thinking…and a welcome shift from the corporate approach.

Since Ures truly came up in a firefighter family, I can tell you that not only the common-sense values of firefighters ought to be more widely promoted (way superior to Common Core, lol) but the cooking is usually great.

So give a brother a click and let’s see if we can bootstrap his beef jerky to the next levels.  (With apologies to Art Oberto up in Seattle).

There just can’t be too much beef jerky to choose from, Art.

Father and Son Wiring

Ever wonder how tight are the genetics attached that get passed down from parents to their children?  Well, here is a fine example.

Before he left Palestine, after finishing up his C parachute license down at Skydive Spaceland on Tuesday, my son and I got to talking about the emergency CB radio that we keep in the Lexus.It’s also a weather radio and nice to have when driving – which we do now and then.

We stop at the Palestine Post Office.  G-II decided that it would make sense for him to use a flat-rate box or two and send some of his heavier clothing home.  In  case you missed the father-son airplane ride over on his website, wearing “urban black” may seem cool in the frozen north, but in Texas?

So he spent a good 10-minutes inside the Posta Office which left me with time to kill.  So, I popped the trunk and set up the mag-mount antenna and tried calling a few stations.

Here’s the important part:  I didn’t have a CB “handle” so I took the first thing that came to mind.  Skyrider.

OK…Junior gets back in from the PO, by now there’s no hint of me playing with the CB and wee swing by City Hall because the city is hiring five full-time firefighters.   Yes, G-II would move down here to be a firefighter/EMT/PM and leave his job in Seattle, but I don’t know how he would do the written which comes up in about three weeks. 

N’other story, that. 

After City Hall, out to the airport to pick up his helmet and such and then we settle in for the long ride up to Dallas since I will take two hours each way of air conditioned car over 454 minutes each way in 100-degree airplane…easy call to make this time of year.

G-II spied the CB.

“What are you going to use for a handle?”

“Hmmm… “

So he calls a station using his freshly minted callsign.  Remember, I hadn’t told him mine.

Skyrider.

With no verbal cueing or prompting he came out with precisely the same handle.  That is how “tightly coupled” our DNA is.

Even stranger?  I asked him why he picked this particular handle.

Well, I ride around the sky and we’re riding in a car and it just made sense.”

My selection of the word   Skyrider, was a little different…and probably dates back to an ancient tube-type shortwave radio. 

“Skyrider” was a special term for a lineage of Hallicrafters radios from 1934.  It was applied to the SX-17 as well as the SX-28 (video here).   A following video about the role of ham radio in wartime is pretty interesting, too, as long as we’re drifting off point.

A bit of SX-28A trivia:  This was reportedly the radio that Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept in the Oval Office back when, so he could listen to things like the BBC and other shortwave stations during World War II.  Few things are faster than radio intel, except that stuff NSA is still collecting.

Just some notes on how DNA may frame more of our thinking than we thought…and some radio history worth knowing if you are a radio aficionado.

The nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.

73 and write when you get break-even.

George   george@ure.net

14 thoughts on “Coping: Call Your Congressman on TPP! Now!”

  1. thank you for voicing everyone’s fears, let’s hope there’s a silver lining in those dark clouds (or thunderbolt to hit Congress by lightning!) Have they really no shame, to clinch their deal behind closed doors?

  2. thanks for voicing our fears and expressing our inner rage at Congress for doing a deal behind closed doors, do they really have no shame at all?? (Yes I made a call to Barbara Lee, congress woman from my district)

    • Is this the part where I say “Gee, that’s surprising…”
      yeah…the me who has seen colchicine generic gout med for from 38 cents zoom up to $6-bucks a on the sell/out captive regulators at the Fooled and Drugged Administration thinking the 2,000 colchicine studies (and that’s just pub med) weren’t enough…and it’s been a gout cure for 2,000 years…oh FMTT this is unbearable.
      Somebody got bank on this and it wasn’t you and me, boys and girls. We been punkt again

  3. I know it sounds silly, but Jeb Hensarling lost my support during the 2012 Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth. I was a Ron Paul Delegate from Anderson County, and took a week off from work to spend a few days at the convention. In case you’re wondering, convention fees and hotel expenses were also on my own dime.

    Jeb Hensarling chose to spend that time on vacation, and sent a staffer in his stead to the one session of “meet your Congressman”. I believe that when there’s a meeting where a couple of hundred delegates from the counties you are representing, it behooves you to spend some time with the people you are supposedly representing.

    I’ve also received numerous canned responses to TPP and other issues that has led me to believe that our District is not well represented.

  4. I contacted my CONgressoids several weeks ago and got a nearly identical reply. Are all the repugs using a common form letter reply(our entire state went repug)? The part that struck me was their blather about ‘free trade’ and supporting American business, as if they even had a clue what that meant. Tom Cotton(our new celebrity’wonder boy’)is on board the TPP bandwagon too…so much for ‘doing the right thing for ‘Merica’… Boozman sent me his form letter response, even though I also asked specifically that they not send me one. He also said he would keep my comments in mind. Yeah, right. He also mentioned other FT pacts and how they were good for us.???? So I replied to him and asked how he thought NAFTA was good for Arkansas, seeing as it killed almost single-handedly all manufacturing here. I also asked, if he hadn’t even read the thing, how he knew it was good for ‘free trade’ or whether it was a sell-out of our country, also mentioning words like traitors and multinational corporate payoffs(yes, he and many others have taken money from MC that back the TPP). I told him I would be awaiting his non-form letter response…that was over 2 weeks ago. Our new repug Corpgov here has slashed every program that has anything to do with serving the people. ESD (unemp. div.) has fired all workers here and hired 2 newbies to replace the 6 old timers. Guess what that accomplished? People here are having to file grievances here against the ESD because of un-fulfilled UC. Some people here have been waiting for over a year for their unemployment compensation, even though they were approved, with no denials. Any contact with the state Corpgov is useless, as they send you back to the very people that are the problem…oh yeah, the ones not paying? The state. Looks like Greek style Austerity is here…but at least we’re going to have ‘free trade’…yeah, George…GMAFB is right.

  5. LOL LOL LOL I just love it when someone says its classified or its a secret.. Only a secret lies with one person. when you have committees and sub committees and task forces research groups.. before you know it the one person on top has developed a pyramid of people below.. Kind of like when congress spent fifty million to do a study on whether or not they should get a lamp by the time they were done doing the studies etc.. there was over seventeen thousand pages printed up about it…. well excuse me for living..If you can’t see the paper you probably won’t read anyway at your desk then go down to the local store and pick up a stupid lamp if you can’t see..My biggest fear on elections is one I read in one of the scariest books I had ever read about politicians, in one of the scariest books I had ever read besides the creature from Jekyll island or the new one adolph hitlers secret book..” http://www.amazon.com/Double-Cross-Explosive-Mobster-Controlled/dp/0446516244 ” and how elections are run will our votes really matter.. here is the link for adolphs book.. read it.. ( http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdf_books/zweitesbuch_wch7.pdf )

  6. Like most Americans, wrong question. If any candidate did not receive any financial support from you, and/or did receive more than half of their financial support from sources other than individual voters, WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT CANDIDATE WOULD ACT IN YOUR INTERESTS?

    This is how American politics has worked for years. In Florida, there was a family business that contrôlée more than half the production of oranges in the state. The father passed the business to his two sons. Come election time, they donate heavily, one son to the republicans, one to the democrats. They do not care who wins, all they care about is that when one of them picks up the phone and calls a politician, the politician will pick up on the other end of the call.

    I consider it a form of mental illness to believe USA political candidates intend to work for the interests of people who do not financially support them.

    Kind of like the people who believe voting can resolve anything in the current the current situation.

    That’s how it looks from Ecuador, six years out.

  7. Whenever I think about NAFTA, GATT, PTT and other Globalista Dreck I think of Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant /insightful script from the movie Network and wonder if he is actually dead on the money, (and yes “immane”
    IS a word even tho I can’t find in my Websters):

    “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal — that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

    Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

    You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war and famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”

  8. “A portion of the proceeds from the sale of PJ’s Firehouse Foods products benefits the International Association of Fire Fighters Charitable Foundation” – Mind you, I’ve nothing against the IAFFCF – but if I want to donate money to them – I will – I will NOT give it via some company that gets to write it off as a donation on THEIR taxes or get the hoorah for doing good. This applies to ANY company that takes my money – charging more than the item is worth to give part of it to someone else in THEIR name.

    For the same reason – I do not support the United Way – there are “charitable” organizations that are under their umbrella that I do not and will not support – and if you KNOW how UW divvies up the money – you know that those you do not support get it – regardless of who you want your money to go to. Walmart and other businesses are at least up front when they collect money for a charity at the check out – “would you like to give to X charity” – as in the change from your purchase rounded up to the next dollar. NOT that have any way of knowing that the money isn’t simply going to ‘the Walton bank account’.

  9. PS: I don’t expect any real danger to our supposed economy until AFTER the elections next year. Since much of the China economy trade is base on American consumer materialism – I’m not betting that the yuan will become the ‘universal’ currency back up – gold or no gold. What will they do with all the crap they make if ‘Mericans can’t buy it?

  10. Obama Care was hijacked thru with Sign now Read later and the republicans rode that to there Supposedly victory in the House now the Stupid republicans are doing the same thing and will get wiped out next election, It is way past time that that whole collection of both houses was flushed down the toilet for the same reason dirty diapers are, Then perhaps we will get a clean start before it becomes saturated again with lice

  11. Hello George,

    Here’s a copy of the letter I sent to my Congresswoman this morning. Please delete any Contact Information if you are going to post this to your site. Love the job you’re doing.

    Best Regards,
    Ron

    The following information has been submitted:

    Name: Ron

    E-mail:

    Issue: TRADE

    Message Subject: STOP the TPP
    Message Text:

    Hello Jackie,
    You can tell I must have a desperately IMPORTANT issue to contact you about ~ since I came back to your horrendously formidable website. I’m pleasantly surprised to find that Microsoft Auto-Fill (not your web people) does all that tedious fill-in-the-box for me.

    TODAY you’re faced with doing the Right Thing yet again. The right thing would be to STOP (the Trans-pacific Trade Pact) TTP NOW ~ before it makes the terrible situation we common people face even WORSE. I know; so far your track record on doing “The Right Thing” for us common people (we’re not talking about Business nor Banking Interests here) Back Home in Indiana is ZERO. Still, you’re faced with yet another Golden Opportunity to Finally Come Through ! !

    You have my email address and my phone number. Please get back to me on how you VOTE on this issue. I promise you won’t have to fill in any kind of repulsively unpleasant form nor deal with any of my little people who might come between us with some kind of shady or evasive language.
    My Best Regards from Back Home in Indiana,
    Ron

    Would you like a response? Y

  12. George,
    Did you hit a nerve with your insistence that there will be a false flag?
    I see that another attempt at this treaty fast track nonsense will be on Tuesday. By coincidence Project Camelot posted a story about a false flag EMP attack on June 15th. I know that they are kinda crazy but my i -ching coincidence thoughts had me searching on last Wednesday night for Project Camelot’s website even though I had not looked at or even searched it out for years. Actually it was 4 laptops ago. I was driving along and I thought “hey, I should look at them” I was not even sure that they were active still, but once I found it I looked about and remembered why I stopped checking it. Now FreedomFighterReports has a video linked on youtube from them.

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