A
relative of mine is livid about the latest important trade legislation
on TPP pasted below. It is supported incredulously to me by the
president and REPUBLICANS. Elizabeth Warren is livid as I am sure is
Bernie Sanders. I believe the critics of this bill and you should read
what it does then write the White House, the Senate and Congress to NOT
pass this bill. It needs thorough vetting! KNOW what your legislators
are doing sometimes behind our backs!
Congress Introduces Fast Track Legislation to Help Enact Anti-Consumer Trade Bills
Congress Introduces Fast Track Legislation to Help Enact Anti-Consumer Trade Bills
by Stephen Lendman
Congressional passage of so-called "trade promotion authority" (TPA)
will let Obama expedite the legislative process for pending
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP) bills.
The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of
2015 (TPA 2015) lets Obama and his trade representative, complicit with
corporate predators, rush through Congress, with minimal hearings and
no amendments, legislation global justice advocates call NAFTA on
steroids.
TPP and TTIP are trade bills from hell. They're stealth corporate coup d'etats.
They're giveaways to banksters and other corporate predators. They're freedom and ecosystem-destroying nightmares.
They're secretive, multi-national trade deals giving monied interests
more power than ever at the expense of personal freedom for consumers
and environmental sanity.
They're ripoffs on the grandest scale. They'll establish unrestricted supranational global trade rules.
Corporate giants wrote them. Their demands will override domestic laws.
They'll trample on national sovereignty, privacy and personal freedoms.
They'll permit unrestricted trade in goods, services, rules of origin,
trade remedies, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers,
government procurement and competition policies, and intellectual
property (IP).
IP includes copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related considerations.
One-sided pro-business structuring harms popular rights. At stake is a
free and open Internet, its global infrastructure, and worldwide
innovation under level playing field rules.
Power brokers want secretive provisions established with no public knowledge of their destructive harm.
TPP and TTIP rewrite global IP enforcement rules. They include numerous other anti-populist provisions.
They override national sovereignty. They prioritize investor rights over public ones.
Obama lied saying:
"The bill put forward today would help us write (trade) rules in a way
that avoids the mistakes from our past, seizes opportunities for our
future, and stays true to our values."
"It would level the playing field, give our workers a fair shot, and
for the first time, include strong fully enforceable protections for
workers’ rights, the environment, and a free and open internet."
Fact: Trade rules Obama advocates are
polar opposite what he claims. They'll benefit monied interests at the
expense of all others.
The
Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) calls fast track legislation a way to "legitimize White House
secrecy and clear the way for (anti-consumer) trade deals."
They impose restrictive digital regulations. They create a new Chief
Transparency Officer - a likely corporate official with authority to:
"consult with Congress on transparency policy, coordinate transparency
in trade negotiations, engage and assist the public, and advise the
United States Trade Representative on transparency policy."
Given existing strict confidentiality rules (and greater than ever
corporate empowerment on trade), nothing meaningful will be done to
improve transparency.
As things now stand, fast track text language will be made public 60 days before signed if passed.
According to EFF, it doesn't matter. "(T)he text is already locked down from any further amendments."
Fast track "t(ies) the hands of Congress so that it is unable to give
meaningful input into the agreement during its drafting, or to
thoroughly review the agreement once it is completed."
It can only vote up or down with no changes. Most troubling is what's excluded from negotiating objectives.
Nothing requires "balance in copyright, such as the fair use right," says EFF.
"(I)f a country's adoption of a fair use style right causes loss to a
foreign investor, it could even be challenged as a breach of the
agreement…"
"(W)e do not see anything in this bill that would truly remedy the
secretive, undemocratic process of trade agreements," EFF stresses.
Fast track will likely be voted on next week. Passage "would legitimize
the White House's corporate-captured, backroom (secretive,
anti-consumer) trade negotiations."
Lori Wallach heads Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (GTW). Fast
track authority "delegate(s) away Congress' constitutional authority and
(grants) blank-check (presidential) power," she explains.
Fast track "would make it easier for corporations to offshore American
jobs, would undermine our wages by forcing Americans to compete with
Vietnamese workers making less than 60 cents an hour and would expose
our consumer and environmental safeguards to attack by foreign
corporations in extra-judicial tribunals" - run by corporate predators.
Congress is being asked to yield its constitutional trade authority to diktat presidential power.
Congress permitted fast track for only 5 of the past 21 years - 2002-2007.
It remains to be seen if it'll authorize what demands rejection - what
hugely benefits America's 1% at the expense of all others.
