THE FIGHT IS ON! - People & Planet vs Greedy 1% (TPP Team call tomorrow!)

[RiverLover]

Since Thursday's early morning release of the text, experts agree on one thing: the reason the TPP has been kept under wraps for the last 6 years is because it stinks to high heaven!

In every meaningful way the TPP could have set benchmarks higher than former trade agreements, it fails miserably, especially when it comes to jobs, access to healthcare and lifesaving medications, environmental protection, digital rights, food sovereignty, and democracy.

Think about this for one minute: Our representatives are being told by a handful of corporate interests, to approve a treaty that is required to set up a separate bureaucracy of foreign corporate interests to harmonize our laws so they can do away with Buy American policies and kill country of origin food labeling, so countries like Viet Nam, with its poor labor standards and toxic fish have unhampered market access. And let's not forget the words "global warming" aren't mentioned a single time.

I hate to say global corporate dominance for want of sounding alarmist, but if we're not careful and don't stand up and fight now, those who follow us are going to pay the price for generations to come, because this treaty is open-ended.

There is no expiration date.



THE FIGHT IS ON! PEOPLE AND THE PLANET VS. THE GREEDY 1%

NATIONAL TPP TEAM CALL SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8 / 4:30 PACIFIC / 5:30 MOUNTAIN / 6:30 CENTRAL / 7:30 EASTERN TIME

Click this link to login to the online meeting room: http://login.meetcheap.com/conference,87610294

Online meeting room opens 15 minutes before the call

DIAL-IN NUMBER AND ACCESS CODE: 605-562-3140 / 951146#

ALTERNATE NUMBER: 559-726-1300 / 951146#

TPP VS. FAMILY FARMS AND FARMERS

Join the National TPP Team to discuss how TPP would further impact food sovereignty and safety, and jobs, with John E. Peck, Executive Director, Family Farm Defenders and Oscar Gutierrez, Director Nacional Dignidad Agropecuaria por la soberanía alimentaria de Colombia (National Executive Director of Dignity in Agriculture, working for food sovereignty for Colombia).

Mr. Gutierrez will address the continuing detrimental impacts of the U.S. Colombia Free Trade Agreement on agricultural workers in Colombia. Also with us will be the coalition partners reporting on the current state of Congress when it comes to the unpopular coming vote.

Kathryn Johnson, Policy Impacts Coordinator, American Friends Service Committ, will give her analysis on the recent leaked text of the TPP;

Emilianne Slaydon, TPP Media March, will update us on the TPP Tuesday Twitter Storm;

Adam Weissman, TradeJustice NY Metro, will update us on coming events; Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, Popular Resistance / Flush the TPP will fill us in on the imminent #FallRising D.C. Days of Action against Toxic Trade, November 14-18, and how we can participate; And

Andrea Miller, Co-Executive Director, People Demanding, will moderate the call.

Please join us,

Harriet Heywood

Co-Coordinator, National TPP Team

P.S.: Please sign and help spread Peter's petition which we will deliver in D.C. during #FallRising:
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/stop-the-trans-pacific?mailing_id=31855&source=s.em.cr&r_by=1444895

(xposted in Environment & Energy forum)

Please JOIN the FIGHT!!!

[cantbeserious]

1. All Made Possible By The Sell Out President And Former Secretary Of State

eom

[RiverLover]

2. True, but right now in this moment, what is important is STOPPING it.

We need to all get together to stop this. Put our team jackets down & put on the ones for all citizens of the US & the World.

from Sherrod Brown~

Democratic senators have typically used deferential language when discussing Obama administration initiatives, even ones they don't support. In that, they have emulated Ronald Reagan's (possibly apocryphal) "Eleventh Commandment" about not publicly attacking members of your own party. But that may be changing with the president's push for a 12-nation trade agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In a blast email sent out Wednesday morning, senior Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown -- who represents the all-important swing state of Ohio -- slammed the White House initiative in terms typically reserved for attack ads against Republicans. He declared that Obama’s proposal “is an enormous giveaway to huge corporations and CEOs and a massive sellout of American workers and jobs.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/democratic-senator-sherrod-brown-slams-obama-backed-tpp-massive-sellout-american

Though it may look bad for the party, if what a member of the party is doing is incredibly bad for the country, it should be a 12th commandment to speak up.

[AZ Progressive]

4. Maybe this was the condition that was given to Obama if he wanted to be president...

That he had to give them something back: passing the TPP.

[RiverLover]

5. I actually think that could be. It began as Bush Jrs' trade deal, just like NAFTA was Bush Sr to

start. Those corporate donors might have made it very clear what they expected from their million$ in campaign funding.

Its all one big happy corporate party.

[AZ Progressive]

3. TPP allows big corporations to basically VETO our laws! This is a national sovereignty issue!

America is not for sale! Big Corporations are trying to take possession of America!

[kelliekat44]

7. And this is not true. nt

[RiverLover]

8. Is True, Elizabeth Warren: "The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose"

By Elizabeth Warren

...The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled.

Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators.

If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html

[jazzimov]

10. LOL! That was written way back in February!

What about the actual text?

[RiverLover]

11. LOL! Way to show you know what you're talking about!!

She knew what she was talking about way back in February.

A fear that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will give corporations undue influence over public policy in the U.S. and other countries remains at the heart of objections to the trade deal.

Critics are especially concerned about a legal process TPP establishes for enforcing new regulations called “investor-state dispute settlement,” or ISDS. ISDS allows foreign companies to challenge a participating country’s laws before an international tribunal of judges if they think that law excessively limits their investors’ profits. The tribunals have the power to levy fines on the government should they rule in favor of the companies, which could in turn prompt countries to change their laws and deter them from passing similar measures in the future.

Concerns about returns are only one kind of grievance foreign companies can use ISDS to address. They can also use the system to challenge an array of less contentious practices, like expropriation of property and breach of contract. And ISDS is a feature of many trade agreements.

But as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted in a Washington Post column in February explaining her opposition to ISDS, companies have dramatically increased the number of claims they bring against sovereign governments in recent years, taking aim at a minimum wage increase in Egypt and a move away from nuclear energy in Germany.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trade-deal-confirms-advocates-worst-fears_563b9061e4b0411d306ff765

And it isn't a laughing matter.

You know what would be really nice? If people would stop seeing this as a personal attack on them personally because our democratic president crafted this. I voted for him too. Many of us did who can actually see what he is doing, both good & bad.

This is the bad. Pretend its still Bush's deal, like it was to begin with, and see it for what it is.

Its screwing workers, and patients, and farmers, and local govts who may want to protect their sovereignty over corporations profits..

See it for what it IS. Not an attack on the president, its an attack on what the president is DOING.

We can praise many many great things President Obama has done for this country, but this isn't one of them.

[Faryn Balyncd]

6. kick

[Kablooie]

9. I hope a huge popular movement stops this...

But I give that about the same odds as winning the Powerball.

Americans just don't mind giving up all their rights, freedoms and savings in order to make the obscenely rich even richer.

In fact many of them arrogantly gloat over doing so.

[RiverLover]

12. Given the responses here,

or lack thereof, I'd say you're most likely (& sadly) spot on.

Or maybe this just isn't much of a LW gathering place after all.

Hard to say.