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by wfo 3972 days ago
Of course it's pertinent. It tells the whole story. The TPP is being negotiated exclusively by the hyper-wealthy private capitalist elite who have no connection or concern for the well-being of the vast majority of citizens. These people live in a different world than most of the readers of any newspaper or magazine. The accommodations hammer this fact home. To not mention this would whitewash the story in favor of the negotiators, and allow the reader to make his or her own (invariably incorrect) assumptions about where the talks are held; in a public venue, government offices, modest accommodations as suitable for public interest group representatives as it is to high-powered corporate oligarchs. It would be journalistically lying by omission.
1 comments
AnimalMuppet 3972 days ago
> The TPP is being negotiated exclusively by the hyper-wealthy private capitalist elite...

False. It's being negotiated by government bureaucrats. They may be doing it on behalf of "the hyper-wealthy private capitalist elite", but it's not the same people.

And of course, government bureaucrats like to stay in a luxury hotel on the government's dime.

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wfo 3968 days ago
The USTR is essentially an official corporate proxy and having government officials act as a go-between, asking corporate representatives what they want and then trying to get it for them is an insignificant technicality -- if a crime is contracted out, you don't spend time making a real distinction between the criminal who actually carries it out and the criminal who commissions and pays for it -- the distinction technically exists but really it's meaningless and discussing it actually distracts from the facts of the case.

They're in the luxury hotel so the round-trip time between the negotiating table and the corporate representative's hotel room is minimized -- they can all be in the same hotel. Government employees don't live in the lap of luxury by any means regularly they are generally poorly paid (that's why they swap between corporate rep and regulator, the regulator role doesn't pay well), it's the proximity to corporate wealth/corruption that's incidentally getting them nice accommodations.

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