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Emails Show How Industry Lobbyists Basically Wrote The Trans-Pacific Partnership
An anonymous reader writes: This Techdirt story shows how industry lobbyists influenced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, to the point that one even openly celebrates that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) version copied his own text word for word. The email exchange between Jim DeLisi, from Fanwood Chemical, to Barbara Weisel, a USTR official reads: "Hi Barbara – John sent through a link to the P4 agreement. I have taken a quick look at the rules of origin. Someone owes USTR a royalty payment – these are our rules. They will need some tweaking but will likely not need major surgery. This is a very pleasant surprise. I will study more closely over the weekend."
This has become standard practice for the US.
The industry groups write the treaty, and then tell the government what they want.
Then the US government dutifully becomes lackeys to industry, and advances a position which gives industry ridiculous things which could never be negotiated in public.
During this, they insist on secrecy so that the citizens of none of the countries can know that they're being heavily undermined to advance the interests of US businesses.
Lather, rise, repeat.
The US government isn't just advancing the interests of multinational corporations, they're advancing them to the detriment of the citizens -- which means nobody benefits from these fucking things other than corporations.
Welcome to the global fucking oligarchy. Make no mistake about it, the US government are nothing more than industry shills.
Fuck you, America.
This is mainly a way for tax money to flow into the pockets of people who are already very rich.
Foreign companies are treated very well, governments want the extra jobs.
Why do foreign companies need more/better rights than nationals?
Defenders will say this is false, but it's what TTIP will lead to, like what other similar trade agreements have lead to.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
This has been SOP for years.
The US government is now acting as a foreign policy arm for multinational corporations, and doing secret negotiations so nobody knows just how badly we're being fucked over for our corporate overlords.
This is the worst form of capitalism, one in which all consideration is for corporations who have the government on the payroll, and in which the citizens of the countries get fucked over.
America has been allowing corporations to write the trade treaties for a long time. Because America is essentially a corrupt shell beholden to corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
to know how this thing will operate. Whether there needs to be an agreement, and what needs to be in it, must be decided by some folks who have some decent idea of how these relationships operate.
The unfortunate part is that no one involved is doing anything to establish their credibility with regard to my interests. The people involved are plenty smart, but most of their words and actions seem to indicate that they have little to no consideration of my interests.
Are my interests more important than yours? Of course not. Neither are yours more important than mine. And most importantly, neither are the authors' more important than ours, collectively.
It would be nice to see some attention paid to that fact.
Both are ways, for large corporations, to "externalize risks to policitcs, and internalize profits". The wording is not mine. Karl Marx already observed this practice.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I think it's common knowledge by now that industry can buy legislation. The new low is that the actual text of the bill is being kept under lock and key.
I simply cannot see how it is constitutional to permit this to happen. While I understand that rules are being leveraged to limit its exposure (including the fast-track vote process), the spirit of the Constitution has always advocated for transparency and public ownership of government operations.
I suppose what upsets me the most is that I cannot determine which I am more upset with: what's being done with the TPP or the fact that we don't have enough congressmen speaking out against it. As a representative of the people, any legislative process that seeks to erode the spirit of the Constitution is a threat to their constituents and should not be passed. I don't care if the text of the bill would buy every American a new house; the fact that it's being kept secret should be plenty of reason alone to vote it down.
One small consolation is now some in the USA feel what it was like to be a poor South American or South Asian or African whose government was totally controlled by foreign companies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sorry, but you seem to be confusing a corrupt oligarchy for a nanny state.
And that's pretty much bullshit.
This is governments becoming beholden to corporations, and selling the farm for some magic beans.
This isn't a nanny state, this is a wholesale co-opting of government for corporate interests.
This has NOTHING at all to do with socialism, and everything to do with corporate welfare and stacking the deck for them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And then the US complains that FIFA officials are corrupt.
> As for the secrecy, unfortunately, this is generally how complex international treaties are negotiated [...]
No.
In a democracy, *I want my representative to know what's in the negotiations*, *I want to read about the content in the newspapers*.
I don't need to take part in said negotiations, but I want to have an informed opinion on what is being negotiated on my behalf. *I want my representative to have an informed opinion* when it comes to the up/down vote.
Everything else is anti-democratic.
A law so secret that you can't even view it unless you're a congressperson, and even then you have to go to a locked room without recording equipment.
But how could that be suspicious at all?
And now we find out it's written and conceived by multinational corporations.
And we all know how benevolent and caring *they* are.
More seriously, anyone who votes for this has been bribed or blackmailed. It's an obvious takeover of nation-states by a globe spanning elite corporate-state.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
This is how most bills are written. That is not a cynical but rather purely factual statement.
And you're okay with that? The point isn't that it is unusual, the point is that it is anti-democratic and contrary to the interests of the general population.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)