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The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

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Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#181

Post by cchip »

dexterdog wrote: post #149
bdg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plutocrats doing their policy making has nothing to do with who the proles voted for.

His point (although a little too blunt for me) was that Obama was this "hope and change" guy that was going to be transparent and all of that nonsense. Even though he's ultimately powerless in matters like this, if he were truly a man of character he would at least speak against it. The problem is the systems we have will not allow men of character to get within sniffing distance of that position. There are the Chene…

Thanks for it breaking down.

They are both worse. Also, given the amount of candidates, it's amusing how we become bipolar with notions of good/evil. I prefer objectivity:

Vote for the cleaner voting record; that means some voting record and no PATRIOT Act, FREEDOM Act, etc.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#182

Post by cchip »

bdg wrote: post #147
cchip wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. This is a conspiracy by definition: "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful." The unlawful thing being the laws they are trying to pass (as they are not yet laws, and not determined by lawful structures: judicial system). Its all going from executive to legislative, and we are fucked. The administration is attempting to weaken our sovereignty and globalize [overthrow] our gov…

Plutocrats doing their policy making has nothing to do with who the proles voted for.

It is the un[self]educated proletariat who gave the plutocrats their power.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#183

Post by cchip »

jjoonathan wrote: post #143
cchip wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. This is a conspiracy by definition: "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful." The unlawful thing being the laws they are trying to pass (as they are not yet laws, and not determined by lawful structures: judicial system). Its all going from executive to legislative, and we are fucked. The administration is attempting to weaken our sovereignty and globalize [overthrow] our gov…

Your party could block this if they wanted to. Evidently, they don't. The only solution here is campaign finance reform. Suggesting that it's a my party vs your party issue is laughable.

Did i mention party?

Finance reform will solve nothing. You can't stop a billionaire from investing in himself.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#184

Post by effie »

walterbell wrote: post #50
api wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the TPP as part of the obsolescence of the nation state in favor of global corporate governance. The incompetence you mention fits in with this-- those boobs are just leftovers from the old system. The fact that Donald Trump is being seriously considered for president should tell you that the nation state is dead. Not saying this is a good thing. Read any 80s cyberpunk novel to see what's coming. William Gibson…

Corporate lawsuits against governments at the World Bank (ISDS) can offer data on the balance of power between states and corporations. See this Aussie explainer video, in the style of the Daily Show: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU More at http://www.isdscorporateattacks.org & https://icsid.worldbank.org Water: Azurix v. Argentina Investor win (awarded $165 million plus interest) Ban of toxic fuel additive:…

I do not think that a corporation should not be allowed to challenge a government due to decisions impacting its business. Some of its actions can be very harmful to businesses. If an harm is done, the victim should be able to initiate a process of _public_ investigation (which ISDS seems not to be, I wonder why) and if the government is shown to have done wrong, the corporation should have the possibility to get compensated.

The above Saluka v. Czech Republic case got me interested, so I have read a little on this. At the time Japanese Nomura had invested in Czech IPB bank in 1998, there was an international treaty on protection of investments in effect between the Czech republic and the Netherlands. Nomura had transferred the 46% ownership of IPB to their Netherlands-based fund Saluka (I am not sure on legality of this operation). The lawsuit took place after Czech government's actions reacting to IPB bank falling down. Nomura was partially responsible for the downfall as it did not make promised actions to help the bank, but the government also had their feet wet when later they helped other banks in similarly bad shape, but did not help IPB. Nomura was smart and resourceful enough to point out this is in odds with the above treaty and benefit from the situation. The government has tried to sue Nomura as well for its actions/inactions and law breaking for 240 billion crowns, but then dropped it to make an agreement with Nomura.

An international arbitrage took place in 2006-8 which found 5 out of 8 claims made by Saluka to be invalid, but the remaining 3 were found to be valid. The most important finding was that the Czech republic did not give the same kind of financial assistance to the IPB bank it had given to other banks in similar shape and thus failed to honor the international treaty ion investment protection. Saluka demanded 30 billion crowns as a compensation, the arbiters decided only 3.5 billion crowns, equal to initial Nomura's investment, should be payed. In this case at least, it seems to me, legally things worked well - the government screwed up, it got sued, it lost and it paid up.

Sorry for the long write-up. What's the morale of the story? I am not outraged so much by the possibility of corporation suing the government as by government's utter ineptness. We need more efficient, less corrupt government that can follow and enforce meaningful rules and at the same time, keep nasty investors and their schemes in check.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144277

http://www.protext.cz/zprava.php?id=2487 http://www.kurzy.cz/zpravy/117569-respekt-nomura-na-investic... http://www.rozhlas.cz/radiozurnal/publicistika/_zprava/jan-m...

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#185

Post by jjoonathan »

cchip wrote: post #183
jjoonathan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your party could block this if they wanted to. Evidently, they don't. The only solution here is campaign finance reform. Suggesting that it's a my party vs your party issue is laughable.

Did i mention party? Finance reform will solve nothing. You can't stop a billionaire from investing in himself.

> Did i mention party?

Blaming the standing president for systematic problems is a fairly reliable sign that someone is a member of the opposite party (or an independent that always votes one way, natch). Even if that somehow happens to not be the case for you, there's the little problem that we have a FPTP voting system which effectively means that elections always boil down to two options (assuming that you're a rational actor who understands vote splitting). Claiming that voting for one option shows "bad judgement" implies that the alternative (remember, FPTP => only one rational alternative) is better, so it really is a partisan statement.

Sanity check: would a statement of the form "Obama is bad because x,y,z" be necessarily partisan by this logic? No.

> Finance reform will solve nothing. You can't stop a billionaire from investing in himself.

Sure you can, but for now that's a largely speculative failure mode. First let's solve the problem that our system effectively imposes a mandatory bribe quota on the candidates and see if that doesn't improve matters. If the problem you propose becomes an issue afterwards then we can fight over the whole "money is speech" argument.

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#186

Post by speby »

SwellJoe wrote: post #105

The thing I find most galling about this is not merely what it contains. It is an awful document, with horrible policy, yes. But, what is most disgusting is that we had to learn of how bad it is from leaked documents . The leadership in many nations (not just in one nation, this is effectively a conspiracy at the highest levels of several nations, most egregiously the US) supported the TPP, lobbied for the TPP on beh…

I agree especially with respect to the secrecy surrounding this whole thing. But which leadership of which countries? Who, to be specific?

And which select corporation's interests?

Re: The Final Leaked TPP Text Is All That We Feared

#187

Post by tomlongson »

oldmanjay wrote: post #3

I still feel strongly that disrupting the flow of free entertainment is the one thing that will actually get people up and protesting. Rights and freedoms stripped away with regularity have minimal impact, but SOPA got the world riled up in fear that torrenting the next season of Game of Thrones was about to get mildly more difficult. I suspect something similar will happen here.

SOPA had opposition from companies like Google. From what I understand, companies like Google had input into TPP, whereas organizations like the EFF were ignored.
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