Transpacific Partnership Lurches Closer to Fast Track?

[georgephillip]

without free trade we'd have to make everything ourselves. Can you imagine that?

Can you imagine the US Supreme Court being unable to rule on the constitutionality of rulings handed down by corporate trade tribunals?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Can you imagine the US Supreme Court being unable to rule on the constitutionality of rulings handed down by corporate trade tribunals?

1) its never happened after decades of free trade agreements
2) the issue is free trade and if you, as a liberal, have to IQ to understand it.

 

[georgephillip]

1) its never happened after decades of free trade agreements
2) the issue is free trade and if you, as a liberal, have to IQ to understand it.

It is part of the TPP you support.

 

[DelugePrism]

"One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries.

dear low wages are an incentive to lower prices and thus make Americans richer. Do you want a law that they must relocate to the highest wage countries??

Enormous companies such as Walmart, don't need to raise their prices in order to raise their wages. There really needs to be a limit made to the profit that companies are allowed to make, at least as a percentage, or a maximum wage limit for CEOs and the upper-echelon in the economic scheme.

I think it is sad that so many Americans seem to care more about the price of what they purchase rather than the quality of the product and the sustainability of the process and the economic prosperity of the workers that are producing it. Our grand and great-grandparents fought hard for an 8-hour work day, benefits and living wages. Since NAFTA most of those jobs have been outsourced so that the corporate interest, that cares nothing for the daily life of the people, could increase their profit margins exponentially.

 

[DelugePrism]

TPP: An attack on the US Constitution.
"And the thing about that, one of the things about this that makes it so dangerous is that not only do you have to harmonize your laws, but then going forward if a city passes a law, or state or federal passes a law in the public interest to protect their people or the planet or their resources, and it undermines the profits of a corporation, they can sue the government for their expected profits.

"The profits they expected to make. And that means that they go not to a regular court.

"They go to a trade tribunal.

"And the judges on this trade tribunal are three judges who are corporate lawyers, on leave from their corporate job, being lawyers, making decisions, and going back to their corporate job.

"So it's a rigged trade tribunal, and our courts or Vietnam's courts or Peru's courts, any country's courts, cannot review that decision. The U.S. Supreme Court cannot overturn a decision of the trade tribunal. It becomes the more powerful decision."
Obama to Get Fast Track for Trade Pacts

without free trade we'd have to make everything ourselves. Can you imagine that?

There is another option, it's called negotiating for FAIR trade. And I think our culture would benefit by making more things ourselves. We used to, and we used to have a strong middle-class- now we're all teetering on the edge of impoverishment.

 

[DelugePrism]

I think this a deeply disturbing issue in the US Congress and I must share my concern.

The Senate Committee has approved to pass on the TPP. Now the House of Representatives will decide, perhaps even today, whether to also pass it on, and then I am confused if it goes back to the Senate or if it goes directly to the President. If WILPF has made a statement on the TPP I would like to pass it around. I have been trying to expose and express my concern about this Trade Pact for the last year and 1/2 and I hope that if it does actually get Fast tracked that we can initiate and coordinate a massive action.

I have just written my Rep in MT, this is the letter I wrote- short and to the point because they may be meeting on this issue today.

Here is the link to find and contact your own Representatives: The United States House of Representatives House.gov

Honorable Representative...

Please, hear the plea of every working American who has the time to be self educated about issues that are not discussed or deceitfully portrayed by the mainstream media.

I greatly urge you not to allow the TransPacific Partnership to be Fast Tracked to the President.

This Trade pact is exponentially worse than NAFTA and 10 or 12 years after NAFTA was signed by President Clinton, he apologized for it! What ever benefits have come to pass since that 1st major Free-trade agreement it cannot mend the damage done. 2 million Mexican farmers lost their ability to farm for a living in Mexiso, and they were displaced. Now in the US we have a great frustration with the rise of immigrants over the last 10-15 years.

Here we also lost many and continue to lose the well-paying union jobs that our grand and great-grandparents fought so hard to establish at the beginning of the 20th century. We cannot allow this new pact to take even more of our jobs and our rights- our citizen and national sovereignty will be lost to corporate oligarchs if this pact passes.

This is not acceptable and the people will rise if it's implementation is approved.
If you surrender your right as congress to discuss this trade negotiation you have failed.

Sincerely ....


Please help this message spread like Wildfire!

 

[georgephillip]

There is another option, it's called negotiating for FAIR trade. And I think our culture would benefit by making more things ourselves. We used to, and we used to have a strong middle-class- now we're all teetering on the edge of impoverishment.

Some of us have toppled over that edge while corporate CEOs earn hundreds of times the income earned by productive labor. The worst part of "Free Trade" agreements like NAFTA and the TPP is the subjugation of national sovereignty to unelected corporate trade tribunals. Anyone who honestly believes the richest 1% of humanity deserve more income/wealth should support the TPP.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

2 million Mexican farmers lost their ability to farm for a living in Mexiso, and they were displaced.

dear, you are a low IQ liberal. Yes they were displaced as were all those in the horse and buggy industry. This is called progress!!

Do you understand?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

. Anyone who honestly believes the richest 1% of humanity deserve more income/wealth should support the TPP.

Why not be happy for those who earn more wealth regardless if they are top 1%
or top 79%?? A liberal will lack the IQ to answer questions and would be held in contempt of court.

 

[georgephillip]

Why not be happy for those who earn more wealth regardless if they are top 1%

Because many of the 1% are not EARNING their wealth.
They are stealing it.
See?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Why not be happy for those who earn more wealth regardless if they are top 1%

Because many of the 1% are not EARNING their wealth.
They are stealing it.
See?

so they are forcing you to buy their produsts?? Give best example of this stealing or admit you lack the IQ to be here.

 

[georgephillip]

so they are forcing you to buy their produsts??

What products, SIVs?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

so they are forcing you to buy their produsts??

What products, SIVs?

dear, are they forcing you to buy their products. This is yes or no question. Do you understand??

 

[Stephanie]

well , three cheers for your Government SELLING YOU OUT
how about that

 

[Stephanie]

well , three cheers for your Government SELLING YOU OUT

Clinton started it with NAFTA


how about that

 

[Stephanie]

well , three cheers for your Government SELLING YOU OUT

Clinton started it with NAFTA


how about that

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

well , three cheers for your Government SELLING YOU OUT

Clinton started it with NAFTA


how about that

stupid stupid liberals want to ban trade altogether so we have to make everything ourselves and work 24/7/365 just to have a chance to survive.

 

[georgephillip]

"R: Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch DT: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 RE: Analysis of Leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership Investment Text

"After more than five years of negotiations under conditions of extreme secrecy, on March 25, 2015, a leaked copy of the investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was posted.

"Public Citizen has verified that the text is authentic. Trade officials from the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – are in intensive, closed-door negotiations to finish the TPP in the next few months.

"The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of 'trade' negotiations occurring without press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that TPP negotiators already have agreed to many radical terms that would give foreign investors expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to domestic firms under domestic law."
http://citizen.org/documents/tpp-investment-leak-2015.pdf

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

"R: Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch DT: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 RE: Analysis of Leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership Investment Text

"After more than five years of negotiations under conditions of extreme secrecy, on March 25, 2015, a leaked copy of the investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was posted.

"Public Citizen has verified that the text is authentic. Trade officials from the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – are in intensive, closed-door negotiations to finish the TPP in the next few months.

"The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of 'trade' negotiations occurring without press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that TPP negotiators already have agreed to many radical terms that would give foreign investors expansive new substantive and procedural rights and privileges not available to domestic firms under domestic law."
http://citizen.org/documents/tpp-investment-leak-2015.pdf

stupid stupid liberals want to ban trade altogether so we have to make everything ourselves and work 24/7/365 just to have a chance to survive.

 

[georgephillip]

stupid stupid liberals want to ban trade altogether so we have to make everything ourselves and work 24/7/365 just to have a chance to survive.

"The leaked text would empower foreign firms to directly 'sue' signatory governments in extrajudicial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals over domestic policies that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms that foreign firms claim violate their new substantive investor rights.

"There they could demand taxpayer compensation for domestic financial, health, environmental, land use and other policies and government actions they claim undermine TPP foreign investor privileges, such as the
'right' to a regulatory framework that conforms to their 'expectations.'

"The leaked text reveals the TPP would expand the parallel ISDS legal system by elevating tens of thousands of foreign-owned firms to the same status as sovereign governments, empowering them to privately enforce a public treaty by skirting domestic courts and laws to directly challenge TPP governments in foreign tribunals."
http://citizen.org/documents/tpp-investment-leak-2015.pdf