USTR Fishing For Academics To Astroturf In Favor Of TPP

from the if-you're-asking... dept

Fri, Oct 16th 2015 1:46pm — Mike Masnick

Now that the TPP deal is done, it appears that the USTR has decided to focus on pushing propaganda, rather than legitimately discussing the details with the American public. An anonymous recipient of a pitch from the USTR's "Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement," Mitch Gainer has passed along an email she or he recently received:

From: Gainer, Mitch <Mitchel_J_Gainer@ustr.eop.gov>
Date: Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:45 PM
Subject: USTR Trans-Pacific Partnership professor outreach
To: XXX

Dear Professor XXX,

The U.S Trade Representative is enthusiastic to inform you and your office that The Trans-Pacific Partnership has closed ministerial negotiations!

We believe that your expertise in labor standards in international trade would be significant in expanding the conversation about the benefits of this historic trade agreement to your larger community. I would be delighted to set up a call if you are interested in writing an op-ed, writing a blog post, doing research, or being on background for reporters – to highlight the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We would love to provide you with as much information as we can and answer any questions.

For more information about the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership take a look at www.ustr.gov/tpp. It has detailed issue-by-issue fact sheets for the areas that TPP will address.

Please let me know if there is time that works for you in the next two weeks to talk. When you respond, please include Catherine Vegis at Catherine_A_Vegis@ustr.gov – thank you!

Best,
Mitch

Mitch Gainer
Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Mitchel_J_Gainer@ustr.eop.gov

Of course, if the person in charge of "public engagement" were truly interested in "public engagement" he'd be focused on actually releasing the document, so that the public can actually engage, rather than fishing around for an op-ed, blog post, research or being a source for reporters. Notice that Gainer points the person to the laughably misleading sets of "facts" that the USTR has posted to its website, rather than the actual documents. Funny how that works.

Also, given how we've seen this kind of propaganda appear before, you have to wonder how much of it is orchestrated by the USTR. The very fact that the USTR seems to think its job is selling this to the American public, rather than hearing from the American public says an awful lot about the way the USTR is approaching everything related to the TPP, and confirms that it's not serving the interests of the US public at all.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: astroturf, mitch gainer, propaganda, tpp, ustr

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 1:48pm

Can We...
Just call the USTR...

"United States Troll Representative"?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 1:52pm

Dear professor,
please support this agreement sight unseen, and we will pretend that the resulting work is not fiction.

Yours
the US government.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 16 Oct 2015 @ 1:56pm

Well, the good news is...
The USTR is not completely confident this monster will pass.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 3:12pm

I don't know why IP laws ever came to existence or why they got expanded so much. I never remember seeing public pressure in favor of creating or expanding them. but I do remember Disney asking for copy protection extensions. I do remember astroturfing campaigns from organizations like the MPAA. Politicians are supposed to represent the public. IP laws don't seem to be a political response to public pressure but to pressure from business interests. So why do we have them?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 3:22pm

The Blindfold we super-glued over your eyes is just a formality, please disregard it while singing our praises.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 4:58pm

Re:
US Congress has an approval rating of 10%.

If that is not the definition of an illegitimate government that is governing without consent then what is?

It is time bury the myth that this is any sort of representative democracy once and for all.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Coyne Tibbets (profile), 16 Oct 2015 @ 5:07pm

Propaganda-in-propaganda-out
We know all the information on the USTR site is going to be propaganda, and that they're not going to be answering "any questions" in substance, because they're utterly determined that no one know what is really in the devil of the TPP details, until the ink is dry on those doomsday signatures.

Further, we know that any professor who comes up with a serious analysis arguing against TPP is going to be round-filed so fast his paper will catch fire from the friction, saving them the trouble of tossing in a match. Why it's right there in the letter: "If you are interested to [develop materials] that highlight the benefits of [TPP]."

So I guess they're asking the professors to do propaganda-in-propaganda-out.

No discussion of benefits to the professor, though: it's so gauche to put such details in writing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
tqk (profile), 16 Oct 2015 @ 5:37pm

Re: Propaganda-in-propaganda-out
No discussion of benefits to the professor, though: it's so gauche to put such details in writing.

I expect the professors' department heads are on the same mailing list. That'll be the carrot, or stick, you're wondering about.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 16 Oct 2015 @ 6:14pm

This highlights, yet again, how important anonymity is in exposing this kind of backroom deals.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ed (profile), 17 Oct 2015 @ 6:42am

It is very clear that the most dangerous 4-letter entities to America and American's Constitutional rights aren't some foreign band called ISIS or ISIL. No, the worst of the worst have the acronyms USTR, MPAA, and RIAA. If the US really wanted to advance freedom, it would direct drones on them.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Coyne Tibbets (profile), 17 Oct 2015 @ 10:25pm

Re: Re: Propaganda-in-propaganda-out
I wrote that because I suspect there will be heavy financial rewards shoe-horned in there, somewhere, as well.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 18 Oct 2015 @ 12:53pm

all USTR representatives should be arrested for treason! they may well have done as much as they can for various industries (and i'll bet been well paid for doing so!) but they have crapped big time on the people and the nation! and dont forget they have extended their reach to other countries, using the threat of sanctions against those nations that dont fall in line with what is wanted!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wendy Cockcroft, 20 Oct 2015 @ 4:56am

Re: Re:
The easiest way to do that is to get people off the Kang and Kodo bandwagon, or as Karl puts it, "Partisan Nitwit Disease."

As soon as the people stop plumping for Team Red and Team Blue over hot button issues, you'll have that representative democracy you've always dreamed of. Until then, you're stuck with that mouldy old two horse race you have now. Remember, folks, you get what you vote for (or allow to be voted for by not taking part in the process).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Uriel-238 (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 6:38am

Human Nature in Action
Tragedy of the commons is the end result of anything that depends on non-point-source self-awareness. The moment we have a statement where things will happen if only the voters could turn around and do X or voters could stop doing Y then it's not going to happen through merely education or culture change.

Horserace politics, single-issue politics, red vs. blue all are going to continue to happen as long as we have first-past-the-post, and that's going to happen so long as it benefits officials for it to be that way.

In the US, our best attempts at third-party candidate have only been spoilers for the slightly lesser evil primary party.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 3:05pm

Re:
I don't know why IP laws ever came to existence or why they got expanded so much... I do remember Disney asking for copy protection extensions. I do remember astroturfing campaigns from organizations like the MPAA.

Oh, so you do know.

IP laws don't seem to be a political response to public pressure but to pressure from business interests. So why do we have them?

Because pressure from business interest works, especially when there's no countervailing pressure in the other direction. There is no powerful rich organization lobbying for less strict copyright laws.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 20 Oct 2015 @ 3:07pm

Re: Propaganda-in-propaganda-out
Yeah, they specifically mentioned that this is all about the benefits of TPP about three times. They don't even pretend to be objective or neutral about it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]