The quality of reporting on fracking in large outlets has been of varying quality. Day-to-day coverage of the latest developments is usually pretty good, but bigger picture trend pieces have a tendency to be positively fawning towards the industry. A couple of recent articles in the New York Times have been particularly bad, and one of them also foreshadowed an additional development.

The first was a credulous look at how great fracking is for the communities it occurs in. We are told how fat fracking checks are “swelling the bank accounts of some working-class families” in “amounts the recipients say are a bit disorienting.” Even better: “More is probably on the way, potentially much more.” So these struggling families have suddenly had their financial anxieties erased, their future incomes assured. I’m sure the ombudsman would say that the hazards of fracking were beyond the scope of the article, but wow does it read like a love letter

The leaked documents from the Trans-Pacific Partnership showed the possibility for the agreement to expand well beyond the original countries that are party to the agreement. And before the TPP has completed negotiations or been signed, we’re already seeing evidence of that. In remarks yesterday at the outset of the G20 summit, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced that his country would join the negotiations of the trade deal:

Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach has an analysis of that leaked document from the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and it’s really even worse than anticipated.

Zach Carter reports on a key leaked document from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. This is the “NAFTA for Asia” trade deal that Senators sought more transparency for earlier in the week. Well, thanks to Public Citizen, now they know a bit more about what’s in this trade deal. And now we know why it was a well-guarded secret.

The Washington Post was a strong supporter of NAFTA at the time the deal was approved. It continues to be a strong defender of the pact nearly two decades later. It has repeatedly shown itself willing to make up facts or just ignore them to push its pro-NAFTA line.

You know things are bad when Paul Craig Roberts, one of the founders of Reaganomics, says about deregulation and the current state of the economy:

It’s gone too far.

With Heist: Who Stole the American Dream, directors Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher trace the roots of today’s current economic crisis back to a 1971 memorandum written by Lewis F. Powell Jr.– a Virginia lawyer and representative of the tobacco industry who later became an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. The Powell Memo, written for the Chamber of Commerce, lays out a very solid, point by point plan for corporations to loosen regulations and gain greater and greater control of the economy for their own benefit at the expense of of the American people.

One intriguing item that Obama announced in his State of the Union was on a Trade Enforcement Unit. I I tend to be skeptical about these enforcement agencies. But if you follow the facts, the President is correct that his Administration has been solid on bringing trade cases against China, on tires, on steel, on solar products, on rare earth minerals, and he’s gotten results.

With the U.S. economy stuck in a constant rut and Europe going into a tailspin, President Obama is looking to escape to the East. While the nations of the Asian Pacific rim face strains of their own, from massive inequality to climate change, their growth rates look positively zen compared to the stagnant economies that used to run the world.

So for the past several days President Obama has been charming Asia-Pacific officialdom, hoping these “emerging” economies can prop up the West’s sagging empires.

That giant sucking sound you hear today is the sound of jobs being outsourced as President Obama signs into law three free trade deals; South Korea, Colombia and Panama. According to the Economic Policy Institute, passing the Korea Free Trade deal will likely cost this country 159,000 jobs.

Yesterday Obama scored another “w” with the passage of the Korea, Panama and Columbia Free Trade deals — virtually unchanged since Bush tried to push them through before he left office.

In 2008, the Columbia deal was a big campaign issue, with both Obama and Clinton denouncing any agreement until human rights conditions had been addressed. Obama declared he would oppose the Columbia deal “because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.”

Since that time, the murder of labor leaders in Colombia has only accelerated, but the value of their lives has apparently declined. Because when the Colombia Free Trade agreement passed yesterday, it was awfully lonely in the “what about the dead labor leaders” room.