The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose

[Mainecat]

As I have said before the corporate media keeps the idiot class looking at daily minuscule bullshit like the Clinton e-mails, Benghazi etc while shit like this goes on behind doors by the corporate owned congress. Its pathetic and the total sellout of America. The entire country will be like Detroit when multi national corporations get done with us.

 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose

By Elizabeth Warren February 25, 2015

Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, represents Massachusetts in the Senate.

The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?

One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. 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.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat?

If the tilt toward giant corporations wasn’t clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court: only international investors, which are, by and large, big corporations. So if a Vietnamese company with U.S. operations wanted to challenge an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, it could use ISDS. But if an American labor union believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the union would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts.

Why create these rigged, pseudo-courts at all? What’s so wrong with the U.S. judicial system? Nothing, actually. But after World War II, some investors worried about plunking down their money in developing countries, where the legal systems were not as dependable. They were concerned that a corporation might build a plant one day only to watch a dictator confiscate it the next. To encourage foreign investment in countries with weak legal systems, the United States and other nations began to include ISDS in trade agreements.

Those justifications don’t make sense anymore, if they ever did. Countries in the TPP are hardly emerging economies with weak legal systems. Australia and Japan have well-developed, well-respected legal systems, and multinational corporations navigate those systems every day, but ISDS would preempt their courts too. And to the extent there are countries that are riskier politically, market competition can solve the problem. Countries that respect property rights and the rule of law — such as the United States — should be more competitive, and if a company wants to invest in a country with a weak legal system, then it should buy political-risk insurance.

The use of ISDS is on the rise around the globe. From 1959 to 2002, there were fewer than 100 ISDS claims worldwide. But in 2012 alone, there were 58 cases. Recent cases include a French company that sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage, a Swedish company that sued Germany because Germany decided to phase out nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and a Dutch company that sued the Czech Republic because the Czechs didn’t bail out a bank that the company partially owned. U.S. corporations have also gotten in on the action: Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Uruguay from implementing new tobacco regulations intended to cut smoking rates.

ISDS advocates point out that, so far, this process hasn’t harmed the United States. And our negotiators, who refuse to share the text of the TPP publicly, assure us that it will include a bigger, better version of ISDS that will protect our ability to regulate in the public interest. But with the number of ISDS cases exploding and more and more multinational corporations headquartered abroad, it is only a matter of time before such a challenge does serious damage here. Replacing the U.S. legal system with a complex and unnecessary alternative — on the assumption that nothing could possibly go wrong — seems like a really bad idea

This isn’t a partisan issue. Conservatives who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals. Libertarians should be offended that ISDS effectively would offer a free taxpayer subsidy to countries with weak legal systems. And progressives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multinationals to weaken labor and environmental rules.

Giving foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system would be a bad deal. If a final TPP agreement includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement, the only winners will be multinational corporations.

 

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

[oleroule]

couldn't find an older article?

[Mainecat]

1 hour ago, oleroule said:

couldn't find an older article?

You support the TPP or just thought you would wear some letters off the keyboard?

[oleroule]

nope and yep

 

[BOHICA]

25 minutes ago, oleroule said:

couldn't find an older article?

Give him a break!!!  This is what is trending on the first page of DU.

[Momorider]

36 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

You support the TPP or just thought you would wear some letters off the keyboard?

You defend the liar at every opportunity  

 

[Mainecat]

1 hour ago, Momorider said:

You defend the liar at every opportunity  

 

Her biggest mistake along with voting for the Iraq invasion, accepting corporate money and being a republican

[racer254]

Is there anyone on this site that supports TPP?

[Mainecat]

1 hour ago, racer254 said:

Is there anyone on this site that supports TPP?

Think about what you asked?

[Elkhorn]

58 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

Think about what you asked?

Hillary said TPP was the gold standard......

[GGNHL]

1 hour ago, Mainecat said:

Her biggest mistake along with voting for the Iraq invasion, accepting corporate money and being a republican

Then stop defending her at every turn.

[Cold War]

You mean phony issues like gay marriage, bathroom wars, black lives matter, assault weapons, voter ID,

[Mainecat]

1 hour ago, GGNHL said:

Then stop defending her at every turn.

Against what? Witch hunts? What next from the republicans? They get stupider by the day doing shit and wasting taxpayer dollars. I said from the beginning no charges would be filed. Benghazi and e mails...lmao

[Cold War]

3 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

Against what? Witch hunts? What next from the republicans? They get stupider by the day doing shit and wasting taxpayer dollars. I said from the beginning no charges would be filed. Benghazi and e mails...lmao

What are you talking about....witch hunt????

Is O J innocent too?????

[Capt.Storm]

7 minutes ago, Mainecat said:

Against what? Witch hunts? What next from the republicans? They get stupider by the day doing shit and wasting taxpayer dollars. I said from the beginning no charges would be filed. Benghazi and e mails...lmao

if nothing else she has been ousted as a lying cheating killer  cunt...end of story.

Edited July 5, 2016 by Capt.Storm

[Boered]

1 hour ago, GGNHL said:

Then stop defending her at every turn.

He does not defend her. Not liking trump does not equal liking Clinton. 

[Cold War]

6 minutes ago, Boered said:

He does not defend her. Not liking trump does not equal liking Clinton. 

He just did.....was it a witch hunt or s legit investigation?

Grossly negligent.

[Rod]

Oh that must minuscule Benghazi thing where hillary got people killed

[Cold War]

5 minutes ago, Sludgey said:

Oh that must minuscule Benghazi thing where hillary got people killed

Where our government tried to float a lie about those Americans getting killed for a week....week 1/2?

Somewhere there is a boy Ina dress that isn't sure what potty to use.

[Mainecat]

2 hours ago, Boered said:

He does not defend her. Not liking trump does not equal liking Clinton. 

They don't understand that. 

[GGNHL]

3 hours ago, Mainecat said:

Against what? Witch hunts? What next from the republicans? They get stupider by the day doing shit and wasting taxpayer dollars. I said from the beginning no charges would be filed. Benghazi and e mails...lmao

You wanted Bernie to stay in the race in case something came about from one of these Clinton scandals as you knew that was his only shot due to the stupid dem electorate picking Clinton.

3 hours ago, Boered said:

He does not defend her. Not liking trump does not equal liking Clinton. 

Maybe you haven't been reading his posts from the last website and here but he constantly white knights for her and wants her very much to win over trump. I want trump and Clinton to be smothered in their sleep before the first presidential debate.

Edited July 6, 2016 by GGNHL

[Kivalo]

4 hours ago, Boered said:

He does not defend her. Not liking trump does not equal liking Clinton. 

No it doesn't. But most of us, myself included, have no doubt, zero doubt, that MC will vote for whoever the Dems put up no matter what. He has proven over the years that when it comes to politics, he a shill and a hack.

I miss the old MC, he used to joke around and post up the occasional interesting cigar thread. The new, pure political hack MC is rather boring.

[Rod]

10 minutes ago, Kivalo said:

No it doesn't. But most of us, myself included, have no doubt, zero doubt, that MC will vote for whoever the Dems put up no matter what. He has proven over the years that when it comes to politics, he a shill and a hack.

I miss the old MC, he used to joke around and post up the occasional interesting cigar thread. The new, pure political hack MC is rather boring.

I think it's because he knows that hillary is a steaming pile of shit but he has to vote for her anyway 

[jtssrx]

Wow we agree on something this trade deal is garbage. 

 

You know Hillary supports it right 

[Mainecat]

11 hours ago, Kivalo said:

No it doesn't. But most of us, myself included, have no doubt, zero doubt, that MC will vote for whoever the Dems put up no matter what. He has proven over the years that when it comes to politics, he a shill and a hack.

I miss the old MC, he used to joke around and post up the occasional interesting cigar thread. The new, pure political hack MC is rather boring.

BigDums lol