I will look forward to that and be sure to stock many ales!
I dunno if we would ever take this step. It’s leaving a lot behind. I have two grandkids now. I wouldn’t see much of them unless their parents were willing to let them spend a few weeks every summer with us. It’s prohibitively expensive to fly from the U.S. to New Zealand.
Still, it’s a possibility. We are a bit tired of the political anger and the gun culture in the U.S.
Mr. Chmielewski told congressional staff members during a meeting this week that Mr. Pruitt would often seek to schedule trips back to Oklahoma, where he still owns a home, so he could stay there for weekends. “Find me something to do,” were the instructions Mr. Pruitt gave his staff, after telling them he wanted to travel to particular destinations, the letter says, quoting Mr. Chmielewski, who was expected to sign off on the trips.
When planning a trip to Italy, Mr. Pruitt “refused to stay at hotels recommended by the U.S. Embassy, although the recommended hotel had law enforcement and other U.S. resources on site,” according to the letter, which was written and sent to Mr. Pruitt, asking him to turn over documents related to the letter’s claims. Instead, Mr. Pruitt chose to stay “at more expensive hotels with fewer standard security resources,” while bringing along his own security team “at taxpayer expense.”
Another selfless public servant! Only the best people!
Weeeee!
These are the same GOP folks who cut funding for education at every opportunity and rail against the frivolous excesses of America’s “entitlement” programs (like EBT, Medicaid and social security) while championing fiscal responsibility and smaller government. I guess if you can cut enough money from social programs and reduce the size of the government down far enough, it’s just you and your lackeys, jetting off to anywhere you like and doing whatever you want, all funded by taxpayers, like a real kleptocracy should be.
Rejoining TPP is smart, so I can’t criticize Trump for doing it.
I can criticize him for doing it in the most profoundly idiotic way possible though.
Well said. I wish I could see the negotiations which had been going on with Obama’s administration so I could clearly point out where Trump’s idiocy cost the country, but I’ll have to settle for it costing him a little more credibility to his base (yeah, like that matters).
His base will immediately just change their position, and say TPP is good now.
I haven’t been keeping up on this but how do we rejoin TPP while slapping tariffs on China? Isn’t China part of TPP?
Oh I can criticize his sorry ass for it. The fucking idiot should never have abandoned it in the first place. And now we’re going to have to go begging to be let back in. Fucking idiot.
No, not at all.
That was kind of the POINT of the TPP. It was the US and all the OTHER countries in Asia, not China.
That’s why it was so important for the US, as it allows us to keep critical influence in the region, and prevent China from becoming more dominant there.
Heh. Yeah. Being against TPP as being part of being tough on China was a Trump talking point that made no sense. You fell for it @Scuzz! To be fair, the mainstream media didn’t push back enough on his idiocy even back then because there was just so much to refute.
I had no problem with TPP, even though I don’t think NAFTA has been a big winner, but I thought China was also one of the partners. I thought, wrongly it now turns out, that TPP was a way of involving China in Asian trade and putting limits on them that way.
This one’s gonna sting a little bit too.
The five stages of acceptance for this latest Trump flip-flop:
I’m guessing Malathor is somewhere between 1 and 2 right now.
It was hard to discern the truth about the TPP during the election.
IIRC:
Is there a good article on what the truth of the matter was? Were there actually pretty good rules in place that the workers in those countries had to have a decent wages? Conditions, etc?
The issue I had with it is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement,
The system is unusual in international law. Most international courts only allow disputes between states. ISDS, in contrast, creates one-way rights: Corporations can sue governments, but not vice versa.
It’s also ad hoc: The legal challenges are decided by arbitrators hired for that case only. The typical set-up is that the foreign investor appoints an arbitrator, the host state appoints a second, and the two parties or arbitrators appoint a third to chair the case. After their decision, they are paid by the parties, and the tribunal is dissolved.
Finally, it’s also unusually powerful for international law. Arbitrators can order governments to pay cash to the investor, who can then enforce arbitrators’ decisions with the full force of domestic courts. As the U.S. Supreme Court determined last year, domestic courts must defer to their decisions and not review their merits.
I’m pretty sure this is about getting the folks who are pissed about the Tariffs to backoff with the threat to get back into the TPP.
The problem is that we’re begin led by someone who has no clear idea what he wants. He knows he’s in favor of better approval numbers, and against anything that will make them worse. Beyond that, he’s not terribly interested.
So now we’re going to “look into” getting back into the TPP. Never mind that the other 11 countries have moved on without us and stripped out all of the carefully negotiated provisions from when we were in the deal. Now all of that will have to be re-negotiated, from a position of weakness this time.
Well done as always, Don.
If only that was the main issue. To me, the primary problem is the GOP, a party in power that will willingly and gladly sacrifice every shred of decency, loyalty to country, civic responsibility, and personal integrity on the altar of power, to the extent of aping and mimicking the most appalling bunch of lies, misstatements, and imaginary conspiracies with nary an ounce of remorse.