Tran Pacific Plan about to end almost all American Dreams [View all]

[truedelphi]

Back in the quaint Eighteenth Century, when Business Leaders wanted to have some idea of theirs go forward, legislatively speaking, it was required for Congress to pass the "Act" by a two thirds majority vote.

Since then, the One Percent has become much more savvy. Currently, a game-changing proposal is afloat, off in secret, and sometime later this year, it will not go to Congress as an "Act" but as a "Plan." This means the legislation will only require a simple majority in Congress to become law. And once it becomes law, it will set forth the most onerous set of rules that any American has ever faced.

Do you think our prison system is run poorly now? What will that same system be like when the Chinese are running it? Are you happy that here in California, cars must be built to have maximum fuel efficiency? Well, it's possible that under the TPP, those laws won't apply to any foreign auto maker whose cars aren't built to meet those standards.

Meanwhile, is some local law allowing your chosen neck of the woods to have a cleaner environment than other areas of the world? Well, wait till those laws are seen as being subservient to the TPP legisaltion, and you will watch your protections quickly fade away.


From way back in Lat Fall, 2010, Truth Out has this to say about the Trans Pacific Plan:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12934-why-so-secretive?-the-trans-pacific-partnership-as-global-coup

For example, public interest groups have been warning that the TPP could result in millions of lost jobs. As a letter from Congress to United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk stated, the TPP “will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas,” including “those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.” In other words, as promised, the TPP goes far beyond “trade.”

Dubbed by many as “NAFTA on steroids” and a “corporate coup,” only two of the TPP’s 26 chapters actually have anything to do with trade. Most of it grants far-reaching new rights and privileges to corporations, specifically related to intellectual property rights (copyright and patent laws), as well as constraints on government regulations.

The leaked documents revealed that the Obama administration “intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations,” as Obama and Kirk have emerged as strong advocates “for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.”

In other words, the already ineffective and mostly toothless environmental, financial, and labor regulations that exist are unacceptable to the Obama administration and the 600 corporations aligned with the TPP who are giving him his orders. Also, the agreement stipulates that foreign corporations operating in the United States would no longer be subject to domestic U.S. laws regarding protections for the environment, finance or labor rights, and could appeal to an “international tribunal” which would be given the power to overrule American law and impose sanctions on the U.S. for violating the new “rights” of corporations.

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What else will the TPP do? Here's statement from Doctors without Borders March 2013:

“The negotiations are being conducted in secret, but leaked drafts of the agreement include aggressive intellectual property (IP) rules that would restrict access to affordable, lifesaving medicines for millions of people.

Proposed by U.S. negotiators, the IP rules enhance patent and data protections for pharmaceutical companies, dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law, and obstruct price-lowering generic competition for medicines.”

A bit of text from Common Dreams Also, March 2013:

Meanwhile, provisions in the proposed investment chapter would give pharmaceutical companies the right to sue governments for instituting any regulation that reduces their expected profits, using private tribunals that circumvent a country’s judicial process

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So this is an indication that all the "wonderful" Eleventh dimensional chess that guaranteed that Big Insurers and Big Pharma could continue to raise their prices Sky High, will now be a policy for the people of the entire TPP region to rejoice in! No more generic medicines! Ability to claim that decent drugs, that happen to be inexpensive as they are now outside the patenting provisions (items like Benadryl, and other over the counter drugs) can be eliminated simply by some foreign company stating that they are not safe. This all certainly brings the ACA process regarding generic drugs and drug re-importation into a much sharper focus.

And if you think that our laws that help keep our environment are extremely lacking in power of enforcement, just wait! Do you ever think BP Cleanup, or think Fracking and oil refinery pollution is out of control? Wait till the TPP is in effect. These past few years will seem like a Golden age, when contrasted with this new piece of legislative "Planning."

On edit: Here are two separate reports on the Trans Pacific Plan. The first report is favorable; the report from the Citizens' Trade Org is far from favorable.

A PDF that details which nations are part of the plan, and various statistics regarding the nations and their populations. This study is a study favoring the USA doing this:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42344.pdf

Disapproving report of the TPP
http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/TransPacificFactsheet.pdf

"Democracy Now" has also had some decent programs regarding the issue, with the following link reminding us of various pledges that Barack Obama made to us back in 2008, that are now just inconvenient campaign promises, there to be broken:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc