Who determined that the NSA and TPP are the most important issues?

[OrwellwasRight]

294. "TPP isn't a fucking law yet"?????

First of all, nice language. Do your arguments become stronger when you use foul language or do you just not have very good arguments.

So we should wait until its law to fight it?

Like if there was a law reduce the minimum wage or to outlaw all abortions or to reinstate Jim Crow or any one of 1000 proposals to undo progress in this country you'd sit on the sidelines "because it isn't fucking law yet"? Do you know how LITTLE sense that makes? Honestly, think about it.

Second, if as you say inequality is the most important issue in this country, then the TPP is part of that the TPP will exacerbate inequality. Do you understand how US free trade agreements work?

1) They incentivize outsourcing by giving US-based corporations extraordinary investor rights and privileges to challenge laws in the country of investment (which in the case of the TPP means Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam). The companies can use the investor-to-state dispute settlement system to challenge laws they do not like in private, unaccountable, undemocratic arbitration tribunals. Developing countries in particular are susceptible to threats of cases and so often capitulate in order to keep the corporation happy and the jobs the foreign corporations bring. This system has been used to challenge and win against developing countries, including a $2 billion judgment against Ecuador when Ecuador simply exercised its rights under a contract with Occidental petroleum. The panel said the contract provision was unfair to Oxy. Really, like Oxy couldn't fend for itself in contract negotiations? Read more about ISDS here: http://www.tni.org/briefing/profiting-injustice HOW does this exacerbate inequality? By providing an additional incentive to close factories here and offshore jobs to Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.

2) By putting US workers in competition with workers in countries where they cannot exercise their rights to form a union and collectively bargain. By signing the TPP, the largest ever free trade agreement for the US, which will cover 40% of world trade, US workers will be put in direct competition with workers in Vietnam, who have no labor rights at all--Vietnam practices child labor and forced labor, and arrests workers who advocate on behalf of free labor unions. Collectively, these actions keep wages in Vietnam extremely low. This expansion of the labor market to the TPP region puts US workers in direct competition with workers in Vietnam, where annual GDP per capita is less than $2,000 and in Malaysia, where GDP per capita is less than $10,000. This puts a downward pressure on US wages, exacerbating inequality. For more on who US FTAs have suppressed wages, go here: http://www.epi.org/publication/ib244/ and here http://www.epi.org/publication/trade_policy_and_the_american_worker/.

3) The TPP will place constrictions on future policies in the US, including industrial development policies, the provision of public services, and financial services regulations. This boxing in of policy responses empowers corporations and increases corporate influence over the economy. The effect of this deregulatory, pro-corporate, neoliberal trade and tax policy since 1980 has already caused an extreme increase in income inequality, and doing more of the same in the TPP will exacerbate inequality.

So if addressing inequality is yours, or the President's or anyone's concern, then that person must, by definition, care about the TPP.