[sudo-law] Fwd: Fast Track bill submitted - decisive moment for TPP

From: "Steve, Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch" <gtwinfo(a)citizen.org> Subject: Fast Track bill submitted - decisive moment for TPP Date: January 9, 2014 11:26:35 AM PST To: eddank(a)aya.yale.edu Reply-To: gtwinfo(a)citizen.org January 9, 2014 Eddan, This moment could not be more important. It is do-or-die time for our years of work against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Hours ago, U.S. Representative Dave Camp and U.S. Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill for Congress to grant President Barack Obama Fast Track trade authority. If Congress approves this bill, it will give away its constitutional authority to protect us from the numerous threats posed by the TPP. Write now and demand that your representative commit to you in writing to vote “no” on Fast Track. If the Fast Track bill passes, the TPP could be signed before Congress votes on it. Then the deal could be railroaded through Congress with no amendments and limited debate. We must not allow Congress to give away its authority to save us from the TPP. Email your representative today and demand that he or she commits to vote “no” to Fast Track. The last thing we need is to Fast Track another so-called “free trade” agreement written for the benefit of big corporations and to the detriment of us, our families and our communities. Fast Track trade authority is how Clinton and Bush passed the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA and other disastrous “trade” deals. If Congress grants President Obama Fast Track, then the TPP likely will be added to that list. Email your member of the House of Representatives today and tell him or her to oppose Fast Track. There is almost no progressive movement or campaign whose goals are not threatened by the TPP. And vast swaths of public interest policy achieved through decades of struggle would be undermined by the deal if it gets Fast Tracked through Congress. If we don’t get Congress to say “no” to Fast Track right now, all of the TPP’s threats we’ve been warning about for the past three years could become reality. The TPP would empower foreign corporations to sue governments in international tribunals if a country implements environmental, public health or other public interests policies that undermine corporations’ “expected future profits.” It would create new incentives to offshore more American jobs. The TPP would grant new monopoly privileges to Big Pharma that would raise medicine prices and cut consumers’ access to live-saving medicines. As revealed by the TPP chapter released by WikiLeaks in November, it would even attack Internet freedom by imposing copyright provisions that put the interests of Hollywood fat cats before our basic right to free speech. And that’s only a sliver of the damage that could be done by the TPP. Write now. There is so much at stake. But if we act together, we can derail Fast Track and the TPP. Onward, Steve Knievel Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch About GTW | Contact Us | Write Your Rep | Support Us Stay informed and speak out when it counts. Sign up for the Public Citizen Action Network or other online announcements. If you do not wish to receive e-mail messages from Public Citizen in the future, please click here. Public Citizen employees are members of SEIU Local 500. We support the right of workers in the United States and around the world to organize freely. Union Yes! Copyright © 2014 Public Citizen. All Rights Reserved 215 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, 3rd Floor Washington, DC 20003