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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Sanders the only candidate to stand against oligarchy

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Former president Jimmy Carter recently said that the U.S. is now an “oligarchy”, with “unlimited political bribery” which created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.”

Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence -“the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Nowhere can this blatant payoff corruption be seen in full force as in the trade agreement that is currently being negotiated by trade representatives of large corporations and a token government official or two. The terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) are so secret that drafts of the current negotiations are to remain classified for four years or five years respectively after the deals have been passed into law.

How can our elected representatives vote on trade agreements that are being treated as if they were matters of national security, yet these agreements have nothing to do with military or terroristic matters? Surely something else is going on. If a member of Congress does make an effort to become informed on these treaties they can go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can’t copy pages, and they can’t tell the public what they just read.

So who wins if these trade agreements are passed into law, yet it is UNLAWFUL for the American citizens to know what is in this secret agreement? The American worker will lose again as the payoff system rewards the embedded oligarchy, as we have experienced firsthand with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the loss of more 60,000 jobs. Only one presidential candidate has stood up and shouted “NO” to this seizure of the American economy by corporate interests – Bernie Sanders. It is time the average citizen understands who among those vying for the oval office will represent the American citizens or multi-national economic elites.

George Pliml

Cook, Minn.