More on the TPP and T-TIP
I received a call yesterday from a guy in Anna Eshoo’s office. It helped a lot.
I still don’t know much about the TPP and T-TIP. They’ll send me some more information.
Today I received a request from OurRevolution.com to call my member of Congress. Below are some of their points, and my response to them.
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Dear OurRevolution,
You wrote:
- The TPP would give multinational corporations the ability to challenge laws passed in the United States that could negatively impact their “expected future profits.” We can’t risk giving corporations this kind of power.
Please give an example. I heard that this is only in the case that a country makes a change that violates part of the TPP. Is this true?
- Trade deals like NAFTA and CAFTA have already done tremendous damage to American jobs.
Just by making foreign countries hospitable to our corporations? If American laws are bad, we should change them. But if it’s just bringing a stable business environment to those countries, is that really bad?
- In the past 25 years, nearly 60,000 manufacturing plants in this country have been shut down, and we have lost almost 5 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
But that’s not due just to NAFTA and CAFTA, is it? Haven’t many jobs moved to India and China? Weren’t some lost because cheaper factories abroad made our businesses unprofitable? I don’t know, I’m just trying to distinguish the facts from the propaganda…
- Already the company that wanted to build the Keystone XL Pipeline is suing the United States for lost profits once activists forced the government to cancel the pipeline.
What law of NAFTA are they saying the US violated?
- TPP would also mean that pharmaceutical companies could increase the price of prescription drugs, and generic drugs wouldn’t be as available or as cheap.
Just for 8 years, correct? US law protects for 10 (or 12?) years, but apparently the TPP specifies only 8. I wish you’d be a bit more accurate.
Part of the revolution I want is for us, The People, to receive real information, not just propaganda. Please?
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I value the analysis of the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and that of Public Citizen. EFF says the TPP has two kinds of problems:
(1) Digital Policies that Benefit Big Corporations at the Expense of the Public: The IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of expression, right to privacy and due process, as well as hindering peoples’ abilities to innovate. Other chapters… (have)… limited protection for your privacy, and allow foreign corporations to sue countries for laws or regulations that promote the public interest,
(2) Lack of Transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy.
And then they list many specific problems. They conclude:
…countries would have to abandon any efforts to learn from the mistakes of the United States and its experience with the DMCA over the last 16 years, and adopt many of the most controversial aspects of U.S. copyright law in their entirety. At the same time, the TPP’s IP chapter does not export the limitations and exceptions in the U.S. copyright regime like fair use, which have enabled freedom of expression and technological innovation to flourish in the United States. It includes only a placeholder for exceptions and limitations. This raises serious concerns about other countries’ sovereignty and the ability of national governments to set laws and policies to meet their domestic priorities.
And they have concerns about other provisions of the TPP that:
- Place Barriers in the Way of Protecting Your Privacy…
- Do Nothing on Net Neutrality and Spam…
- Prohibit Open Source Mandates…
sigh…
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Dear President Obama,
Let me give an analogy. Republicans have certain goals and values. To attain them, they’ve engaged in some evil practices: Spreading dishonest propaganda, including demonizing you and Hillary and Democrats in general, and gross obstruction of government action, including refusing to work with you, refusing to bring issues to the floor for a vote and refusing to consider Supreme Court nominees.
One standard phrase for this identifies a known evil:
- the ends justify the means
They’re using their appropriate desires for outcomes to justify evil actions.
Barack, you’re doing similarly. Your evil means are developing the TPP in secrecy, maintaining secrecy of parts of the T-TIP, excluding advocates for the public, and fast-tracking to prevent time for public comment and amendments to remedy problems. You say your goal is more jobs. You’re using that laudable goal to justify bad, even evil, government practices.
Please listen to your wife. When they go low, you’re supposed to go high. While Republicans compromise ethics, you’re supposed to operate with high values and ethics. Or at least decent ones. These are low.
I know you want to work with Republicans. And selling out The People to corporate interests seems to be an effective way to do that. But it’s neither good nor right.
There is one more in this series, the conclusion.
