What is with so many of us "progressives?" Are we scared to speak up, to demand? We "ask" our rulers not to abuse us, in our feckless petition drills. We are about to lose a whole passel of our residual "rights" as "citizens," via those so fraudulently labeled, secretly negotiated, heavily bribe-lobbied and arm-twisted and log-rolled and back-scratched "trade agreements." The people with Big money do not "ask," they DEMAND, and they get. Dollars Trump Rights, it appears.
These are NOT "trade agreements." They are transfers, wholesale, to our corporate overlords, of our little residual wealth and the power over our own lives and choices, such as they have actually been of late, (single payer? what's that? Obama couldn't go to Congress for THAT!) what we so blithely think of as our "sovereignty," as they are frittered away by the parasitism of great wealth concentrations and the connivance of our "representatives." But ooh, ooh, it's so complicated, that ISDS stuff and all... Have to trust our Rulers are Doing The Right Thing By Us, Because They Almost Always Have...
We are silly enough to think (as with the Grand Bargain and past assaults on the legacies of the New Deal, Social Security and its later brother, Medicare) that "adjustment assistance" is a Fair Trade for all the other stuff that TPP, TTIP, TISA and their many parts are going to do to us and our children. "Give us TAA, and you can have Fast Track and the rest of what goes with it!"
Say What?
TAA is not even a fig leaf, just a scam, as it has been since the first "trade agreements" in the '60s. And that our "Democrats" would consider that this is some kind of "see how tough we are" horse trade for the Fast Track Enema greasing that TPP-TTIP-TISA t_rd through the bowels of our imperial Beltwayspace? Shows how low the "Democratic" brand has sunk. Adding their inspirations to the giant sucking sound that is draining America of whatever virtues it once had. And do I have it right, that we should accept the TPP screwing if we get the K-Y lubricant of the "trade adjustment assistance" that (cue the earnest tears) will help all those people who will lose their jobs to another >>suck<< to "get back on their feet," except that in every previous trade scam, see below, nothing of the kind happened? And "we" will be paying for these losses of ordinary people's income by taking $600 million or so out of the Medicare budget? IF we are even allowed to ratify that "tradeoff," which it's not even clear will be part of the "offer we can't apparently refuse."
There's more, way more than there's room for below the squiggle.
What's in these complex Roberts' Rules-modulated "deals" for the rest of us? Lots of unpalatable stuff, as part of ensuring that corporations get the full benefit of the "minimum standards of international treatment," in their "investments" in the US. If not, they can sue the nation and us the taxpayers for any and all "expected profits" that might be lost to any daring exercise of regulatory effort on behalf of the public, like, oh, cigarette package labeling, if you are Uruguay or Australia: http://www.mintpressnews.com/...
Reality check, with one of our supposed "Democratic" coalition, AFL-CIO:
An "investor-to-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) is a special legal right that only those who invest in a foreign country can use to challenge a law, regulation, judicial or administrative ruling or any other government decision. Investors are those who buy property—whether it’s an acre of land, a factory or stocks and bonds.
ISDS allows the foreign property owner to skip domestic courts, administrative procedures, city hall hearings and the like (all the processes that home-grown property owners use) and sue the host-country government before a panel of private “arbitrators” (like judges, arbitrators have the power to make decisions in cases, but they are not democratically elected or appointed, and they are not subject to stringent conflict of interest rules). Not only that but the foreign property owners don’t lose access to the domestic U.S. processes—they can “double dip” to get what they want. ...
http://www.aflcio.org/.... And the link has specific examples of how the screws are applied.
If one wants to "reality check" a little more, how about looking at how the Dark Side reads all this, from a lawyer who represents supranational corporations in "trade disputes," and brags up his firm's success in beating public interests to death, like "country-of-origin" consumer information on meat and other potentially contaminated stuff ""mad cow," anyone?):
Investor-State Dispute Settlement: There’s no Reason for Any Fuss
...To put NAFTA ISDS in context, Statistics Canada data reports that the total value of U.S. foreign direct investment in Canada ranged from approximately $193.6 billion in 2000 to $352.1 billion in 2013.[1] Virtually all of this investment would benefit from the protections set out in the NAFTA. Given the extent of U.S. foreign direct investment, the fact that there have only been 20 serious ISDS cases taken against Canada over the past twenty years is a testament to the fact that ISDS has not been improperly used by investors. Even taking into consideration the further 15 cases that have been withdrawn or that are inactive, 35 ISDS arbitrations over 20 years covering over $352.1 billion in direct investment is really little more than a drop in the bucket.
That there have been so few ISDS cases against Canada over the years demonstrates that it is relatively easy for NAFTA governments to comply with the NAFTA investment obligations. For compliance purposes, all the Federal and Provincial Governments have to do is treat all investments, foreign and domestic, fairly; meet the minimum standard of international treatment; not raise unnecessary barriers to the establishment and operation of investments; and not expropriate investments except where there is a public purpose, on a non-discriminatory basis, following due process and where payment of appropriate compensation is provided. Meeting these obligations should not be onerous for any of the NAFTA Parties, particularly as these are the obligations that they negotiated and freely accepted at the outset.
http://www.wl-tradelaw.com/... Please note that this careful selection of data is just about matters involving US and Canada. And hey, after all, Mr. Silk Stocking Lawyer says our Trade Rep and President negotiated (in near total secrecy) and freely accepted these framework rules that make corporations equal to entire nations. On Our Behalf. Representative Democracy. So there.
For a more complete view of what "trade deals" do, on the other hand, there's this:
Trade Expert: Why TPP — “NAFTA on Steroids” — Must Be Stopped
...Holland: Lori, what questions should people ask about the TPP that weren’t asked about NAFTA?
Wallach: Number one question to your member of Congress should be, have you read the actual full text of the agreement? Do you know about the investment rules that promote job offshoring? Do you know about the rules that require us to import food that doesn’t meet our safety standards? Do you know about the ban on buy American and buy local? If you don’t know, if you haven’t read those chapters—the investment chapter, the food chapter, the procurement chapter—then you cannot vote yes to approve this.
Question number two: do you know this becomes binding US law limiting what Congress, states and local city councils can do as far as making domestic policy on all of these nontrade issues, and that not a word of this agreement can be changed unless all 12 countries agree? Do you understand that you are limiting the future of our democracy, indefinitely, on everything from internet freedom and our energy and climate policy to the prospect of having green jobs and an equitable economy? Do you understand that’s what you’re doing, i.e. throwing away your job as a Congressperson?
And then the third question is: what single piece of evidence do you have that this trade agreement is actually going to create jobs here versus lose more US jobs and push down our wages? We now have free trade agreements with 17 countries. Show me a single one of those agreements in which we have gained jobs on net. Show me evidence from a single one of those agreements that the partner countries have reduced their poverty. Show me any of the past promises that are being repeated now by the same interests — the same corporate think tanks, the same companies — to push TPP which has come true....
http://billmoyers.com/... This article is from early 2014, and a lot more bad stuff has happened since then. Wallach explains in much more detail in the link how everyone except "investors" is getting screwed by these negotiated-in-secret deals.
And for still more detail, for the "reality-based" if they care to seek it out and not just Trust, there's this little article:
NAFTA’s 20 Year Legacy and the Fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
NAFTA’s 20-Year Legacy: Corporate Investor-State Attacks on Public Interest Laws
NAFTA Grants Multinational Corporations New Privileges and an Extreme Enforcement Process
NAFTA included an array of new investment privileges and protections that at the time were unprecedented in scope and power among U.S. “trade” pacts. NAFTA elevates foreign investors to the level of sovereign signatory governments, uniquely empowering individual corporations to skirt domestic laws and courts and privately enforce the terms of the public treaty by directly challenging governments’ public interest policies before World Bank and U.N. tribunals. The tribunals are typically comprised of three private sector attorneys, unaccountable to any electorate, who often rotate between serving as “judges” and bringing cases for corporations against governments.103 The tribunals are empowered to order payment of unlimited sums of taxpayer funds to compensate the investors.
This process is called “investor-state” enforcement. Only commercial interests have standing to challenge government policy, not unions or consumer groups. Despite being embedded in a “trade” agreement, NAFTA’s sweeping investor privileges have nothing to do with the flow of goods across borders. Ostensibly, this investor-state regime was initially intended to provide foreign investors a venue to obtain compensation when their factory or land was expropriated by a government that did not have a reliable domestic court system. However, the actual NAFTA provisions expand far beyond that original purpose, providing foreign investors extreme privileges not available to domestic firms, and creating incentives to offshore investments to gain the new privileges. For example, the new protections include a guaranteed “minimum standard of treatment” that host governments must provide, which investor-state tribunals have increasingly interpreted as a foreign investor’s “right” to a regulatory framework that conforms to their expectations.
Corporate Demands for Taxpayer Compensation Surge
Foreign corporations have launched investor-state attacks on a wide array of consumer health and safety policies, environmental and land-use laws, government procurement decisions, regulatory permits, financial regulations, and other public interest policies that they allege as undermining “expected future profits.” The number of investor-state cases has soared over the last decade – in 2012 the number of new investor-state cases launched was twice the number launched one decade earlier, as indicated in the adjacent graph. From 2000 to 2012, there was a tenfold increase in the cumulative number of investor-state cases, even though treaties with investor-state provisions have existed since the 1950s.105
When the foreign investor wins a case, the government must hand the corporation an amount of taxpayer money decided by the tribunal as compensation for the offending policy. There is no limit to the amount of money tribunals can order governments to pay corporations, and there are very limited appeal rights. Source: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “IIA Issues Note: Recent Developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” May 2013.
Foreign firms have won more than $360 million taxpayer dollars thus far in investor-state cases brought under NAFTA [as of publication date of Feb. 2014.] Of the 11 claims currently pending under NAFTA, demanding a total of more than $12.4 billion, all relate to environmental, energy, land use, financial, public health and transportation policies – not traditional trade issues.106 To see a table of all NAFTA investor-state cases filed and their statuses, visit Public Citizen’s investor-state chart at http://www.citizen.org/....
NAFTA Cases Target Health and Environmental Policies, Behavior of Government Officials
The U.S. Ethyl Corporation used NAFTA’s investor-state system in the late 1990s to reverse a Canadian environmental ban of the carcinogenic gasoline additive MMT, also banned by numerous U.S. states, while also obtaining $13 million in compensation from the Canadian government.107
In another infamous NAFTA case, a Mexican municipality’s refusal to grant the U.S. firm Metalclad a construction permit, which it had also denied to the contaminated facility’s previous Mexican owner (until and unless the site was cleaned up), resulted in $15.6 million in compensation being paid by Mexico.108
The alleged rude conduct of an official in the province of British Columbia was the target of another NAFTA investor-state challenge launched by the U.S. Pope & Talbot firm. The corporation sought over half a million dollars in compensation for the official’s behavior, which a tribunal deemed a violation of NAFTA’s guaranteed minimum standard of treatment.109
In 2012 a NAFTA tribunal ruled in favor of U.S. oil corporations Mobil (of ExxonMobil) and Murphy Oil, deeming a requirement to use oil revenue to fund research and development in Newfoundland and Labrador – Canada’s poorest provinces – to be a NAFTA-barred performance requirement.110
In one recently-filed NAFTA claim, a Canada-headquartered natural gas corporation set up an office in the United States and launched a $241 million NAFTA demand against a Canadian province’s moratorium on natural gas fracking.111
In another ongoing case, a U.S. pharmaceutical corporation is demanding $481 million for Canada’s revocation of its medicine drug patents. The corporation has asked a NAFTA tribunal to second-guess Canada’s domestic court rulings that the corporation failed to present sufficient evidence that the drugs would deliver promised benefits when it requested monopoly patent rights.112
The table below further describes several NAFTA investor-state challenges of domestic environmental safeguards. Source: Public Citizen, “Table of Foreign Investor-State Cases and Claims under NAFTA and Other U.S. ‘Trade’ Deals,” February 2014. Available at: http://www.citizen.org/....
NAFTA Threatens Green Jobs Programs
As governments have come to recognize the necessity of supporting renewable energy generation and creating green jobs, corporations have started using NAFTA’s backdoor investor-state system to try to undermine these policies. In July 2011, U.S.-based Mesa Power Group, owned by Texas oil magnate T. Boone Pickens, announced that it would challenge a successful Ontario renewable energy program under NAFTA.113 The program incentivizes clean energy production by paying preferential rates to solar and wind power generators that source their equipment locally. In its first two years, the program created 20,000 jobs, attracted $27 billion in private investment, and contracted 4,600 megawatts of renewable energy.114 Michael Eckhart, President of the American Council on Renewable Energy, called the program part of “the most comprehensive renewable energy policy entered anywhere around the world.”115 Despite wide praise for this leading effort to combat climate change and support green jobs, Mesa Power is now using NAFTA to undermine the program and demand $746 million in taxpayer compensation.116
The Investor Wins Taxpayer Compensation via Tribunal Order
Mobil / Murphy Oil v. Canada: In 2012 a NAFTA tribunal ruled in favor of U.S. oil corporations Mobil (of ExxonMobil) and Murphy Oil, deeming a requirement to use oil revenue to fund research and development in Newfoundland and Labrador – Canada’s poorest provinces – to be a NAFTA-barred performance requirement.
Metalclad v. Mexico: A Mexican municipality’s refusal to grant the U.S. firm Metalclad a construction permit, which it had also denied to the contaminated facility’s previous Mexican owner (until and unless the site was cleaned up), resulted in $15.6 million in compensation being paid by Mexico.
S.D. Myers v. Canada: A NAFTA tribunal ordered Canadian taxpayers to pay $5.6 million for a temporary Canadian ban on the export of a hazardous waste called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). Though the ban complied with a multilateral environmental treaty encouraging domestic treatment of toxic waste, the tribunal deemed it to be discriminatory and a violation of the corporation’s NAFTA right to a “minimum standard of treatment.”
The Investor Extracts Payment through a Settlement
Ethyl v. Canada: The U.S. Ethyl Corporation used NAFTA’s investor-state system in the late 1990s to reverse a Canadian environmental ban of the carcinogenic gasoline additive MMT, also banned by numerous U.S. states, while also obtaining $13 million in compensation from the Canadian government.
AbitibiBowater v. Canada: AbitibiBowater, a paper corporation, challenged the decision of Newfoundland and Labrador, a Canadian province, to confiscate various timber and water rights and equipment held by AbitibiBowater after the corporation closed a paper mill in Newfoundland, putting 800 employees out of work. Though the government argued that the rights were contingent on the company’s continued operation of the paper mill, AbitibiBowater used the investor-state case to extract a $122 million settlement.
Investor-State Attacks Force Costly Defense of U.S. Policies
Although the U.S. government has had to expend tens of millions of dollars in legal expenses to defend against NAFTA investor-state cases, thanks in part to a series of technical errors by the lawyers representing the foreign corporations in several cases, the U.S. government has thus far dodged the bullet of having to pay compensation. For example, in the Loewen vs. U.S. case, a NAFTA tribunal concluded that a Mississippi jury’s requirement that a Canadian funeral home conglomerate follow normal civil procedure rules, such as posting a bond to appeal a contract dispute it had lost against a U.S. firm, violated NAFTA investor protections.117 Luckily for U.S. taxpayers, before the compensation phase could conclude, the Canadian firm’s bankruptcy lawyers reincorporated the firm as a U.S. corporation under bankruptcy protection. This eliminated Loewen’s status (and privileges) as a foreign investor.
When U.S. state laws are challenged under the investor-state system, state governments have no standing and must rely on the federal government to defend their laws. If states are invited by federal officials to participate, they must pay their own legal expenses. California has incurred millions of dollars in legal costs helping to defend two state environmental laws – a toxics ban and a mining reclamation policy – that were challenged under NAFTA.118
The U.S. government has also not had to face tribunal-mandated compensation under NAFTA and other FTAs due in large part to the fact that current U.S. FTA partners, except for Canada and Korea, are not major exporters of capital. In fact, nearly all current U.S. FTA partners receive significantly more foreign direct investment from abroad than they send to other countries.119 Relatively few corporations in these FTA partner countries have subsidiaries in the United States that could launch an investor-state challenge against U.S. policies.
However, the United States would vastly increase its exposure to such attacks if the TPP and a proposed Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) would take effect. The TPP includes Japan, second only to the United States in outward foreign direct investment.120 Overall, corporations in TPP countries have more than 14,000 subsidiaries in the United States, any one of which could provide the basis for an investor-state claim against U.S. domestic policies. And corporations in the European Union (EU) have more than 24,000 subsidiaries in the United States, which could expose the U.S. government to an unprecedented wave of investor-state attacks if TAFTA were to take effect.121 To see maps of all the foreign-owned corporations in the United States that would be empowered to use the investor-state system against U.S. policies under the TPP or TAFTA, visit Public Citizen’s TPP and TAFTA corporate empowerment maps at http://www.citizen.org/... and http://www.citizen.org/....
http://www.citizen.org/...
Anyone wanting to be "reality-based," and look at more detail on what is in play, here's a link that kind of explains the current legislative "sausage," and especially how fraudulent that TAA "whorestrade" is (and is it still the case that "we" are ok with the TAA even if it is funded by stripping $3 or $700 million out of MEDICARE? What kind of cowards are we?):
Are the Dems Being Sucker-Punched on Trade?
....
Thanks to a last-minute deal last Thursday between President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress, the fast-track bill is still alive. Its passage depends on whether a handful of Senate Democrats can be persuaded to go along.
Quick recap: The trade negotiating authority that Obama needs to complete his cherished Trans-Pacific Partnership has been linked to passage of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). The House at first voted down assistance in order to kill the whole deal, but then Republicans promised a separate vote on adjustment assistance; and so the House on Thursday narrowly approved fast track, 218-208, with 28 Democrats in support.
Now the Senate has to concur. Back in May, when the Senate voted for the package that was rejected by the House, 14 Democrats supported it. But that package included trade adjustment assistance. The one that will come before the Senate Tuesday includes only a promise to approve adjustment assistance later.
There are enough Democrats in the Senate to block passage with a filibuster, if they hang together. But a few key Democratic senators are on the fence -- and being pushed hard by Obama.
In the coverage of this drama, Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) has been portrayed as the deal-clincher. Yes, the Pacific trade deal will cost some jobs, but if TAA is included in the package then Democrats will get something in return that protects workers; and so they will be obliged to vote for fast-track.
But hold on. TAA is pretty weak tea. And it doesn't begin to offset most of the objectionable features of the proposed Pacific trade deal. Let's take a minute to review what TAA is....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/....
Sucker-punched? The only sucker-punching that is being done is to the solar plexus and throat of us "Democrats" and our "progressive ineffectual pretensions and social-issue distractions:" Yeah, is that shooter a white terrorist? Is it a Great Victory if the CSA Battle Flag is no longer displayed at the S. Carolina capitol, when here in FL the jacked-up pickup trucks are rolling around with the same kinds of flagstaffs that fly the ISIS flag on the "insurgent technicals," with the Stars'n'Bars flapping violently in the ever hotter air...
In the meantime, these bills that are "about" completely trashing whatever was left of that "quaint" document, the Constitution, in favor of corporate rule made "legal" by Congress and our President violating their oaths of office and spitting in our eyes, and we mopes are stupid enough to just let it happen, and tacitly agree that henceforth oligarchic kleptocratic rule is, well, hey, ok I guess as long as I can smoke dope and marry whoever I want at least in some states, and oh, well, time to go fiddle with my iDevices...
This disabled Vietnam vet, who enlisted to defend my country, and took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, woke up last week to see that "my country" has been greased up and slid right out from under me and a lot of the rest of us who apparently are just resigned to the taking of all our wealth and privacy and sovereignty by post-national corporations.
Brave people, we are -- not even hardly pressuring the few "Democratic" trade traitors who are going along with the Hated Republicans to ensure that "we" get hosed by the TPA-TPP-TTIP-TISA Juggernaut, our Really Democratic Reps and Sens who can't even get the bandaid-over-the-gaping-sword-wound "adjustment asssistance" pittance in exchange for letting corporate Troikas tell us what our laws and regulations to protect our workers, our health, our environment can and cannot say, who can sue us for "loss of expected profits." So we have Sen. Bill Nelson, all gung ho to protect us Floridians against oil drilling off our coast (remember how that works out?) or fracking in the Everglades, but voting in favor of the "trade bills" that will make us pay billions to corporations if we dare to enforce bans or even restrictions on those deadly activities. Let alone the effects of TISA on any effort to rein in the excesses of the "financial industry" that is blowing up another bubble for us mopes to once again pay the costs of repairing the damage when it blows up: http://demonocracy.info/.... The financial press is all about how the recovery has started. What that means is that the small players in the political economy have gotten their feet back under them, started creating REAL wealth again, and the Rich Folks are leveraging off that to set u the next giant swindle.
Quite a Party we got here... More and better Democrats, and Obama and his people would not sell us out, would he? There must be some 11-dimensional chess thing going on here that we just are not smart enough to understand... Yeah, that's it...
Hey, even the Tea Party types we love to hate are pretty fully in agreement that these "deals" are like the Wall Street casino -- we get to pick up the tab on the wagering and shenanigans of our "betters." One wonders if they have thought about one more little "feature" of the ISDN setup: I understand that the Troikas will have some latitude in looking for standards, comparables and rules of decision. I wonder if the Tea Party types are aware that one very possible outcome (see, e.g., the lowest-common-denominator rules on slavery and standards in Malaysia, that are rooted in their application of the Koran and Commentaries) is that #####SHARIA LAW##### may be applied in a ruling by a Troika on a matter that leads to compulsory payment by Tea Party taxpayers (if they still do pay, that is) of claims for “expected profits” that were based on **SHARIA LAW**!!!!!!!!
Do you suppose the Tea Party folks are aware of this particular fly in the ointment?
So come on, apologists for the Administration -- Same challenge for you that the little kid had for Shoeless Joe Jackson, who apparently "helped" the Chicago White Sox, from a town noted to this day for its corruption and indifference to the suffering of ordinary people, lose some important games, in exchange for a little personal gain, back in the days of the Gilded Age: "Say it ain't so, Joe!" We beleeeeved in you, our hero!