Please note: Some have renamed the TPP. It's new name is SHAFTA. Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement.
I know this is probably screwing up my reputation, however, if I somehow have my first agreement, the following may also be of interest:
From: Obamatrade.com (An interesting new site)
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — Organizer Toolkit —
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, threatens our economy, our sovereignty, and our Constitution. The TPP is being negotiated by the Obama administration in secret because it cannot survive the light of day. Use this toolkit to spread the word and expose the TPP to daylight.
1. Bullet Talking Points 2. Social Media
3. Bird-Dogging
4. Town Halls
5. Letters to the Editor
6. Petitioning
Bullet Talking Points
What is the TransPacific Partnership?
• The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a massive new investment pact being pushed behind closed doors by the Obama administration.
• What we know about the TPP comes from leaked texts, discussions with negotiators from other countries and a handful of public statements and written testimony.
• TPP is misleadingly called a "trade agreement." But only two of its 26 chapters actually cover trade issues. It is really an expansive system of enforceable global government that the Obama administration is negotiating with eleven Pacific Rim nations: Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Japan, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and Peru.
• If this agreement is enacted, the TPP will serve two primary purposes:
1. TPP would impose one-size-fits all international rules to which U.S. federal, state and local law must conform. The pact would subject the U.S. to the jurisdiction of two systems of foreign tribunals, including World Bank and United Nations tribunals. These foreign tribunals would be empowered to order payment of U.S. tax dollars to foreign firms if U.S. laws undermined the foreign firms' new special TPP privileges.
2. TPP would give foreign firms operating here a competitive advantage over American-owned businesses. Foreign businesses operating here would be exempted from financial, environmental and land use regulations that would continue to strangle American businesses.
• The TPP is also specifically intended as a "docking agreement" that other countries including China could join over time, with Thailand, and others already expressing interest.
• U.S. negotiators are pushing to complete the TPP this year. We must get organized as soon as possible to kill this bad deal.
How Will the TPP Affect the Economy?
• TPP Gives Foreign Companies Unfair Advantage Over American Businesses. TPP would exempt foreign companies from EPA and other onerous regulations that American firms would still be forced to comply with. Under TPP, foreign companies could actually go to an international tribunal and sue American taxpayers for cash awards to compensate them for costs associated with government regulations – something American-owned companies cannot and would not be able to do.
• Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was enacted in 1994, the U.S. Labor Department has certified more than 2.5 million American jobs have been destroyed by either offshore outsourcing or by cheap foreign imports. The Economic Policy Institute estimates the number of jobs lost is actually closer to 3.5 million.
• The TPP is expected to accelerate job losses, outsourcing and foreign imports. Vietnam is a communist country where businesses are owned by the government. Privately owned American businesses would have to compete against these state-owned companies under TPP. In addition, Vietnamese workers are often paid only one-third to one-half of what Chinese workers are paid. New Balance, the American athletic shoe maker, says imports from Vietnam under TPP would force it to close its American factories.
• The leaked investment chapter of the TPP also includes proposals that would grant foreign banks and other corporations the power to challenge any laws, regulations and even court decisions that they believe violate the pact through foreign tribunals that would overrule American courts and laws.
How Will the TPP Affect States Rights?
• The agreement undermines the critical checks and balances and freedoms established by the U.S. Constitution, which reserves many rights to the people or state governments. Obama's agreement would obligate the federal government to force U.S. states to conform state laws to 1000 pages of rules, regulations and constraints unrelated to trade - from land use to whether foreign firms operating in a state can be required to meet the same laws as domestic firms.
•The U.S. federal government would be required to use all possible means – including law suits, and cutting off federal funds for states – to force states to comply with TPP rules. A foreign tribunal related to the World Trade Organization has already issued a ruling explicitly stating that such tactics must be employed against U.S. states or the U.S. would face indefinite trade sanctions until state laws were brought into compliance.
• Leaked documents show that the U.S. trade negotiators are pushing for the TPP to include so-called "investor-state" provisions that would grant transnational corporations the power to challenge virtually any new environmental or consumer safety law, regulation or court decisions that negatively affects their expectation of profits as a "regulatory taking" throughout private tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems.
How Will the TPP Affect U.S. Sovereignty?
• Obama's TPP deal would empower foreign investors to use foreign tribunals to enforce special privileges only available to them. There are more than 700 establishments from TPP nations now operating in our country that would newly be empowered to skirt our courts, drag the U.S. before UN and World Bank tribunals and raid our Treasury for payment to foreign corporations.
• TPP would shift decisions over the payment of U.S. tax dollars away from Congress and outside of the Constitutionally-established Article III federal court system (or even U.S. state system) to the authority of international tribunals. These UN and World Bank tribunals do not apply U.S. law, but rather international law set in the agreement. These international tribunals judge whether foreign investors operating within the U.S. are being provided the proper property rights protections. The standard for property rights protection that is the basis for the award of U.S. tax dollars is not those established by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, but rather international property rights standards, as interpreted by an international tribunal.
• TPP would surrender control of 544 million acres of public land - a quarter of the entire U.S. land area - to international authorities. TPP would subject to the foreign tribunals' judgment all contracts between the U.S. federal government and investors from TPP nations – including subsidiaries of Chinese firms - that obtain mining, logging or other concessions, run a power plant or obtain a government construction contract on U.S. federal lands. They would be able to take their disputes with the U.S. government to the UN and World Bank tribunals while U.S. companies with identical contracts would go before domestic courts. This not only creates an unacceptable double standard, it cedes control of federal lands to international tribunals.
How Will the TPP Affect the Constitution?
• The TPP would establish a foreign judicial authority higher than even the U.S. Supreme Court that could overrule federal court rulings. That is unconstitutional.
• Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. In a legislative move known as 'fast track' or Trade Promotion Authority, Congress will be asked to surrender that power to Obama so he can negotiate the TPP, sign it and enter into it before Congress even sees it. Obama will then tell Congress how long it has to review it, and tell Congress to pass it in an up-or-down vote without any amendments or revisions. This is an unconstitutional power grab by Obama.
How Will the TPP Affect the Internet?
• TPP rewrites the global rules of the Internet to impose restrictive covenants that Congress rejected when it rejected SOPA, PIPA and ACTA.
• The draft chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement insists that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) enforce copyright protection rules. The TPP would require Internet Service Providers to undertake the financial and administrative burdens of becoming copyright cops.
Under TPP, Internet Service Providers would be forced to:
• Terminate their users' Internet access on repeat allegations of copyright infringement
• Filter all Internet communications for material Hollywood says is potentially copyright-infringing.
• Block access to websites that allegedly infringe or facilitate copyright infringement
• Disclose the identities of their customers to copyright-holders on an allegation of copyright infringement.
This would have a devastating effect on Internet freedom and innovation.
• Rep. Darrell Issa says the secrecy surrounding the TPP could have "serious consequences for the Internet community."
• "At a time when the American people and Internet users all around the world are rightfully wary of any closed-door negotiations that could adversely impact their ability to freely and openly access the Internet, the Obama Administration continues to pursue a secretive, closed-door negotiating process for the Trans Pacific Partnership."
Secrecy
• The TPP is believed to include some 26 separate chapters that are likely to affect jobs, wages, agriculture, migration, the environment, access to medicine, consumer safety, banking regulations, Internet rights, government procurement and more. A pact this far-reaching should be negotiated in the most open and transparent manner possible — but so far, U.S. negotiators have refused to share their proposals with the American public or even members of Congress.
• Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Trade Subcommittee charged with overseeing U.S. trade policy, was forced to introduce legislation on Congressional trade oversight before finally being allowed limited access to the TPP texts. His staff members are still denied access, and the Senator is denied from making copies of or even taking notes about any of the TPP documents he reads.
• While the public has been denied access to the TPP text, the U.S. Trade Representative has given some 600 corporate lobbyists special "cleared advisor" status that enables them to review and comment upon specific negotiating drafts.
• U.S. negotiators have said they will not share text with the public until after negotiations are completed — at which point it is virtually impossible to make substantive changes.
Social Media
Twitter: All tweets about the TPP should include the hashtag #TPP. Other hashtags can also be used for local and issue-specific differentiation, but please always include #TPP.
Facebook: Please post any humorous photos, stunt videos or stories to
www.facebook.com/americanjobsalliance .
Contacting Congress
It's critical that members of Congress – particularly members of the House of Representatives - start hearing from We, The People about TPP and Fast Track.
Any time is a good time to communicate with Members of Congress, but it is particularly important that they hear face-to-face from us when they are at home "in district."
• You can learn about "Town Hall Events," "Congress on Your Corner" and other public events featuring your Congressperson by visiting their website, signing up for their email list and following them through social media. Joining state or regional political party email lists is also sometimes helpful. When in doubt, simply call your Congressperson's local office and ask when they'll next be making a public appearance where you can ask them a question.
• Pay attention to the Congressional Calendar to get a sense of when they'll be in session in Washington, DC and when they'll be back home. Most Members of Congress spend the end of May and a good part of the month of August and early September in their home states, and often have public events then. There are specific weeks throughout the year when the House or Senate will be on recess.
• When you attend a "Town Hall" or other event, try to arrive early, so that you can get a good seat and in case they hand out numbers for people to ask questions. If you bring friends with you, you may want to spread out, rather than sitting next to one another, in order to increase the likelihood you get called for a question.
• Consider writing down your question before you get there. Think carefully about what you want to communicate to the Congressperson and the audience in a couple of sentences, and make sure you end with a clear "yes" or "no" question, rather than something more open-ended like "what do you think?" If the Congressperson doesn't give a clear "yes" or "no" feel free to follow up immediately after they've answered before they can call for the next question.
• Examples of "yes" or "no" questions include: "Congresswoman, will you defend the Constitution as it is written and vote NO to giving President Obama Fast Track powers?" or "Congressman, will you defend U.S. sovereignty and oppose the TransPacific Partnership ?"
• Take notes on the Congressperson's response, and please email their answers to
[email protected].
If after searching online and calling their office you find that your Member of Congress is one of the few who doesn't do "Town Halls" and other events with constituents, consider leafleting with one of the factsheets above outside one of their fundraisers (every Congressperson does those) or calling through your list of friends and family and urging them to call the Congressperson's office about the TPP. The less used to interacting with constituents they are, the more meaningful your persistence will be.
Town Hall Meetings
Corporate media isn't giving the TPP the attention it deserves, so it is up to us to spread the word. Making a presentation to your organization or organizing your own town hall or community forum about the TPP is a good way to educate and mobilize your community about it.
• Find a venue. Churches, community centers and libraries are all great, low-cost venues. Choose a venue that is convenient and familiar to the audience you're seeking to reach.
• Recruit speakers. You know your audience and what messengers will move them. You can also reach out to us for additional speaker suggestions.
• Get cosponsors. Ask trusted local organizations if you can list them as event cosponsors and if they will spread the word about your event to their membership.
• Spend most of your time on turnout. At minimum, create an email about the event that you circulate to as many people as you can — asking them to forward it to their lists. Other turnout strategies include: creating a Facebook event page for the event; leafleting other events; posting flyers at the venue and elsewhere; phonebanking your friends and other phone lists; and putting an event listing in newspapers and newsletters. Please also email
[email protected] and we may be able to help promote it.
• Invite Members of Congress. Invite Members of Congress and their staff to attend your event. If they show up, they will learn something — and they'll know that constituents are talking about the TPP.
• Circulate a sign-in sheet. Have a sign-in sheet for the event, and have a volunteer hit up everyone as they enter and/or circulate it on a clipboard as people are seated. These are people who care about the TPP and you may want to communicate with them in the future. Be sure to get their names, email addresses and phone numbers.
• Include an action step. Circulate a poster-sized petition that you have people sign and then recruit volunteers to help deliver it to your local Congressional office; have people pull out their cell phones and call their Member of Congress right then-and-there; ask people raise their hands if they can help bird-dog at an upcoming Congressional town hall; or leave people with some other easy way to take action.
• Spread the word about what you learn. Recruit someone to videotape your presenters and post the videos online. You can share the videos with people who signed up on the sign-up sheet and encourage them to share them with friends who couldn't attend and to post them on social media. Also consider writing and circulating a press release about the event with short quotes about the TPP from each of your speakers. You can send it out to both the mainstream media and over email lists to help spread the word.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the Editor are a great way to get the word out about the TPP. Not only are they one of the most closely-read sections of any newspaper, but they are often monitored by politicians as a gauge of public opinion. Over time, letters can even influence the editorial positions and coverage decisions of a paper. Here are some tips for getting published...
• Stick to one main point, such as "The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a bad deal because..." or "Our Congressman should support the Constitution, not the TransPacific Partnership..."
• Keep it short. A short letter is more likely to be published and less likely to be edited down than a long one.
• Find a news hook. If possible, write in response to something the paper recently published (ie, unemployment figures, a factory closure, etc.).
• Be opinionated and civil. The Letters section is meant for opinions, but avoid insulting politicians, readers or the paper.
• Include your contact info. Include your full name, address and phone number along with your email address when you submit it. Some papers will want to confirm you really wrote the letter submitted.
• Personalize the letter. Use the taking points provided in this toolkit to help craft a personalized letter. Cookie-cutter letters are often detected.
• Please send copies of your published letters to
[email protected] and we will link to it on our Facebook page.
Petitioning
Some of the latest national petitions on the TPP are on the "Take Action" button at
www.NoTPP.us. For a PDF that you can print out and circulate at meetings and elsewhere, please email
[email protected].
