Re TPP : CALL CONGRESS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!1!!!1!!

[Autumn]

19. I downloaded the talking points to my lap top. This is the first page. Great site

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP TALKING POINTS

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “Free Trade” Agreement: Talking Points
Have you heard about the stealthy new policy being pushed by corporate America, a dream of the 1 percent? In one blow, it could:
• Offshore millions of American jobs
• Flood us with unsafe imported food and products
• Free the Banksters from oversight
• Ban Buy America & “buy local” policies used to create green jobs & rebuild our economy
• Jack up medicines prices
• Undermine Internet freedom
• Empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards before tribunals of corporate lawyers, and demand unlimited taxpayer dollars as compensation

• Meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “trade” deal: Warning: it’s not really mainly about trade. Rather the usual gang of American job offshorers, Banksters, oil, gas and mining giants, and agribusiness monopolists that got us into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has a new, stealthy Trojan horse strategy. They’re using negotiations that they have branded as “trade talks” to impose many non-trade policies that could undermine our basic needs and rights.

• Job Loss, Greater Income Inequality: This deal is slated to include the extreme foreign investor protections that help corporations offshore American jobs to low wage countries. These NAFTA-style terms give special benefits to firms that relocate investment and jobs – and this deal includes Vietnam, the low-cost offshoring alternative to even China. Since NAFTA and the global WTO, the U.S. has lost more than 5 million (1 out of every 4) of its manufacturing jobs while 54,000 manufacturing plants have closed. (You can check trade jobs loss in your state at www.tradewatch.org – go to the “Trade Data Center.”) At the same time, we are offshoring service sector jobs in computer programming, engineering, accounting, medical diagnostics and more. Government data shows that when workers lose manufacturing jobs to trade, or professional service sector jobs are offshored, then wages across the economy are pushed down. The result, real median wages are barely above 1970s levels, even as American worker productivity has soared.

• Ban on “Buy America”: The draft TPP text would give all firms operating in any signatory country equal access to U.S. procurement contracts – rather than us recycling our tax dollars here to create American jobs. That means Chinese government-owned firms in Vietnam would get equal treatment with American firms in getting contracts for goods and service bought by the government paid for with our tax dollars. And, the pact would limit the sorts of terms these contracts could use, basically turning what is now an important policy tool to create jobs and develop new green technologies into a new corporate offshoring opportunity. For instance, specifications like “renewable/recycled” or “sweat free” and obligations for firms to meet prevailing wages could be challenged. Corporations could not be barred because of the horrible human rights conditions of their home countries or the firms’ record.

• Benefits for Banksters, More Financial Crises for Us: Wall Street is turning the TPP into a backdoor way to roll back new safeguards that many nations have implemented to get banks and securities firms under control and restore financial stability. Governments would be forbidden from banning risky financial services or products, imposing limits on the size of firms so they cannot get too-big-to-fail, or using “capital controls” to avoid future crises by forestalling floods of hot money speculation. Translated out of technical jargon: this deal would be a get-out-of-regulation-free card for the financial firms that wrecked our economy.