Yay! Five Ways and Means Democrats Just Stood Up for Us!!

The Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade issues in the US House, has traditionally been a home for Democrats who are to the right of the rest of their caucus on tax and trade issues (ahem, because they get more political donations from Wall St & other big businesses looking for tax and trade rules that let them off the hook). In any case, yesterday, 5 of them--including some who have voted for neoliberal style trade deals in the past--told President Obama he needs to take the worst corporate rights provision of past trade deals, called ISDS, out of the pending agreement being negotiated with Europe. This is huge news that might not get much play due to the fact that it is the Friday before Christmas. Read the excerpt below and then go to the link and read the whole shebang. Then tell a friend about ISDS. Friends don't let friends support trade deals with "separate but equal corporate courts" provisions in them.


Powerful Members of Congress Oppose Special 'Corporate Court' Rights for European Firms

Yesterday, five members of the powerful Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives (Reps. Bill Pascrell, Lloyd Doggett, John Lewis, Linda Sánchez and Jim McDermott) stood up for working people by opposing the destructive “corporate courts” in the proposed trade and economic deal with Europe known as the “TTIP.”

President Trumka applauded Reps. Pascrell, Doggett and the other Ways and Means Democrats, saying:

“ISDS gives foreign investors extraordinary legal rights to challenge generally applicable public policies—including decisions about where to place toxic waste dumps, whether to increase minimum wages, and how to protect children from smoking and water pollution—in privatized ‘corporate courts.’ Giving foreign investors more rights than domestic businesses is no way to build shared prosperity.”

“Corporate courts” (officially known as ISDS, for investor-to-state dispute settlement) create a private system of justice for foreign forms that invest in the United States, setting these firms above all American citizens. This private system of justice allows foreign investors to bypass state and federal courts (the ones we ordinary citizens have to use) and bring complaints to a panel of three private lawyers. These lawyers, who are not accountable to the U.S. public in any way, do not have to follow the same strict code of conduct that U.S. judges do. This means they can sit on a panel to decide a case on one day, and represent a client suing our government the next day.

Read the rest of this here: http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Powerful-Members-of-Congress-Oppose-Special-Corporate-Court-Rights-for-European-Firms

And here is an awesome video describing ISDS/corporate courts here:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1003820622967459&video_source=pages_finch_main_video

And another one here: