Dear President Obama, Please shut the f' up about TPP rainbows and unicorns...

[RiverLover]

98. Over $400 mill has already been paid out to corps in a series of investor-state FTA cases

Among the most dangerous but least known parts of today's "trade" agreements are extraordinary new rights and privileges granted to foreign corporations and investors that formally prioritize corporate rights over the right of governments to regulate and the sovereign right of nations to govern their own affairs. These terms empower individual foreign corporations to skirt domestic courts and directly challenge any policy or action of a sovereign government before World Bank and UN tribunals.

Comprised of three private attorneys, the extrajudicial tribunals are authorized to order unlimited sums of taxpayer compensation for health, environmental, financial and other public interest policies seen as undermining the corporations' "expected future profits." There is no outside appeal. Many of these attorneys rotate between acting as tribunal "judges" and as the lawyers launching cases against the government on behalf of the corporations. Under this system, foreign corporations are provided greater rights than domestic firms.

This extreme "investor-state" system already has been included in a series of U.S. "trade" deals, forcing taxpayers to hand more than $400 million to corporations for toxics bans, land-use rules, regulatory permits, water and timber policies and more. Under a similar pact, a tribunal recently ordered payment of more than $2 billion to a multinational oil firm. Just under U.S. "trade" deals, more than $14 billion remains pending in corporate claims against medicine patent policies, pollution cleanup requirements, climate and energy laws, and other public interest policies. Continue reading...

http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=5329

FYI,

Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is an instrument of public international law, that grants an investor the right to use dispute settlement proceedings against a foreign government.

...Notably, only foreign investors can sue states under investment treaties, and only states can be held liable to pay damages for breach of the treaty. States have no corresponding right to bring an original claim against a foreign investor. Thus, a decision in favour of the State means that the state has not been ordered to pay compensation, not that it has received any compensation from the investor. A state cannot "win" in ISDS in the manner of a foreign investor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement

Coming to a town near you via TPP?

Check this map to see what corps can sue you, your state or city govt~

. Click here for a full list of companies based in TPP countries that operate in the United States, sorted by congressional district.
= Corporation based in Australia = Corporation based in Vietnam
= Corporation based in Canada = Corporation based in Singapore
= Corporation based in Japan = Corporation based in Mexico
= Corporation based in Malaysia = Corporation based in New Zealand
= Corporation based in Peru
= Corporation based in Brunei
= Corporation based in Chile

Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and other organizations have called for a different trade agreement model that protects the environment, workers’ rights, and the public interest. This new model necessitates eliminating or dramatically scaling down the “investor-state enforcement” provisions of trade agreements which corporations can use to sue governments. Click here for a report outlining this vision.

http://citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=4083

What does Liz think?

...Warren, Baldwin and Markey are particularly concerned with a process called "investor-state dispute settlement," which grants foreign corporations the political power to challenge the laws and regulations of a government before an international tribunal. This nongovernmental court has the power to levy trade sanctions against offending nations. The investor-state dispute settlement regimen differs from those used in World Trade Organization treaties, which allow only sovereign governments to bring trade challenges.

"We believe that the TPP should not include an investor-state dispute settlement process," the letter reads, warning that doing so "would expose a broad array of critical American financial regulations to challenge by many additional foreign companies."

Investor-state challenges were rare before the new millennium, but have become increasingly popular tools for corporations to use when challenging regulations they object to. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, for instance, companies including Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical and Eli Lilly have attempted to overrule Canadian regulations on offshore oil drilling, fracking, pesticides, drug patents and other issues.

Unrest over investor-state powers is not exclusively a progressive phenomenon. Free-trade advocate Daniel J. Ikenson of the Cato Institute has argued against the practice, on the grounds that it gives foreign firms an unfair advantage over domestic companies....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/18/elizabeth-warren-trade-deal_n_6350312.html