Chuck Schumer Upchucks at Sight of TPP
Sen. Chuck Schumer, leader of the corporate wing of congressional Democrats, never met a global trade deal too ugly to hug. So when even he says, "This is really troubling," you know his eyes have been singed by something truly hideous.
That "something" is the trade scam called Trans-Pacific Partnership. The scam is that TPP only masquerades as a trade deal, while actually being a gross enlargement of multinational corporate power over our people's sovereignty. Specifically, a chapter of this secretly-negotiated, 12-nation deal empowers foreign corporations to challenge America's laws, rules, and court rulings – whether local, state, or national – by suing our governments in private, corporate-run tribunals set up by the United Nations or the World Bank.
That's what made Chuck nearly upchuck. "Savvy, deep-pocketed foreign conglomerates," he gasped, "could challenge a broad range of laws we pass at every level of government, such as made-in-America laws or anti-tobacco laws." Exactly.
Moreover, global corporate giants from Japan, Australia, Mexico, or other nations in the TPP could sue us not just for any actual harm they claim to be suffering because of, say, our clean water law, but for undermining their "investment-backed expectations." Translated from corporate-speak, that means a foreign conglomerate could haul our clean water law before a tribunal just by claiming the law undermines the profits it expected to make!
Even the corporate and governmental elites who have secretly negotiated this raw deal knew that its uglies would gag you, me, and even Schumer. So they added an extra layer of secrecy, mandating that the sovereignty-busting chapter not be declassified until four years after TPP is approved.
To help stop TPP in its tracks, join the grassroots coalition fighting it. Go to www.StopTPP.org.
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This has been reposted from Jim Hightower's website.
