Leaked: What's in TPP’s intellectual property chapter

First, let's consider a contrast. Neoconservatives have for decades been obsessed with the Middle East. This is mostly because of its strategic importance as the source of oil.

There presents itself now an opportunity to change this strategic focus because of two trends. 1) Domestic oil production is up; so is fuel efficiency; so is the development of alternate energy. 2) Korea, China, Vietnam, and other Asian nations have growing economies and strategic ambitions. In the future of the U.S., oil will be less important; Asian trade relationships will be more important.

Thus Obama's "pivot to Asia." It has been mocked by Republicans, given the ongoing problems in both Russia and Iraq/Syria (both long-standing Republican policy bad guys). But really, something as big as the U.S. does not turn easily or fast.

TPP is a major component in that turn. It will create or enhance special relationships with a variety of Asian nations. It will firm up relationships that are currently being challenged by China, which has the biggest ambitions of anyone these days.

The details of the policy chapters are almost unimportant; they just need to be balanced well enough among all the parties, so that everyone gains slightly more than they lose. Trade agreements are, almost by definition, not optimal for any given single interest group or stakeholder.

In terms of IP specifically, it's worth considering that the U.S. is far more dependent on IP than other nations. If you think about our most successful companies, many of them make nothing but IP: Apple, Google, Microsoft, TV shows, movies, recorded music, software, pharamceuticals, etc. So U.S. negotiators are going to try for max protection on those things. (Does not mean they will get it.)

pot is still very much illegal on the federal level... that's important because that's the level that handle your taxes.

Why does the Republican leadership support them? At the more reductionist level, I've seen it best described as a "donor riot"; rather obviously the interests of the wealthy who identify as Republican are different that the base (and this is one reason why the Emmanuel Goldsteining of the libertarian Koch brothers strikes us as bizarre, then again they've got some truly dangerous thoughts).

At a more general level, these "establishment" Republicans are, or aspire to be, members of the ruling class. We of the base obviously aren't, and I don't think many of us aspire to be.

"Offend" is a good word, we are mightily offended by all this. But there's only so much we can do short of, say, starting a 3rd party that's successful enough to either threaten the Republican party such that it adopts our positions, or replace it like it replaced the Whigs (or there's a thesis that the Democratic party will die since its war on arithmetic means it will eventually fail to keep its promises, the Republican party will replace it as the party of the state, and the 3rd party becomes the natural opposition). Short of that, we can withdraw our votes, which has a strictly limited effect in the Congress, and we can and have withheld our money, which gets us back to that donor riot.

Ah, I should note there's always been a non-conservative faction in the Republican party. Its abolitionist roots were in opposition to the conservative nature of the Whigs, remember the trusting busting and imperialism of Teddy Roosevelt, and the north-east wing in general is much less conservative. Think of Nelson Rockefeller who opposed conservative Goldwater, not so conservative Nixon, and was Ford's first VP. Or former governor of Massachusetts and "severe conservative" Mitt Romney (hint, that's the first and last time I've every heard someone use the word "severe" like that).

[1]: The case for "taxpayers" has been assisted by the language of "victim's rights" wherein people first accepted the idea that some citizens should have higher status before the law than others. Using the idea that paying taxes is a form of theft, taxpayers establish their victimhood and by an extension a privileged interest over ordinary citizens in matters concerning taxation. The obverse of the coin is "consumer rights" wherein buying "Little Plastic Shit" is seen as a high form of social engagement and the primary civic duty of ordinary Americans.