The New Republic says it’s even more secret, too:
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks brought this agreement into the spotlight by releasing 17 key TiSA-related documents, including 11 full chapters under negotiation. Though the outline for this agreement has been in place for nearly a year, these documents were supposed to remain classified for five years after being signed, an example of the secrecy surrounding the agreement, which outstrips even the TPP.
What’s so bad about TiSA?
Though member parties insist that the agreement would simply stop discrimination against foreign service providers, the text shows that TiSA would restrict how governments can manage their public laws through an effective regulatory cap. It could also dismantle and privatize state-owned enterprises, and turn those services over to the private sector. You begin to sound like the guy hanging out in front of the local food co-op passing around leaflets about One World Government when you talk about TiSA, but it really would clear the way for further corporate domination over sovereign countries and their citizens.
. . .
You need to either be a trade lawyer or a very alert reader to know what’s going on. But between the text and a series of analyses released by WikiLeaks, you get a sense for what the countries negotiating TiSA want.First, they want to limit regulation on service sectors, whether at the national, provincial or local level. The agreement has “standstill” clauses to freeze regulations in place and prevent future rulemaking for professional licensing and qualifications or technical standards. And a companion “ratchet” clause would make any broken trade barrier irreversible.
Read the link. It appears to be a massive and comprehensive subversion of the world’s governments’ ability to restrain corporate practices. No matter how much you trust the current Administration, you really, really don’t want this to happen.
The real issue for governments worldwide is the relentless demand of the one percent or one-half percent to suck up even more wealth than the thirty four percent they already have (in the US). Agreements like this hamstring the ability of government to regulate this unrestrained greed.
The desire of Wall Street, acting as a mercenary agent of the 1%, is to plunder everything they can take from the rest of us. These corporate interests are as threatening to the economic interests of the rest of us as any government was during the cold war.
Wealth means power. During the post WWII era, America’s middle class led the world in freedom, intellect, technology — we were the first by pretty much any chosen benchmark. Our middle class was also among the world’s wealthiest during that time. Wealth is power, and our middle class had wealth during those years.
With the significant exception of Elizabeth Warren, our leading political figures talk about everything except what matters. Party affiliation does not matter — Barack Obama is just as beholden to the 1% as Mitt Romney.
In terms of a real and present threat to the day-to-day life of the average American, these Wall Street attacks — negotiated in secret, hidden in vaults, and bringing world-wide criminal harassment and prosecution to those who reveal them — dwarf the threats posed by ISIS, “illegal immigrants”, or any of the other scapegoats offered by either side.
Our “enemy” is not ISIS, or “domestic terrorists”, or Iran, or North Korea, or the Chinese, or “illegal immigrants”, or “the Tea Party”, or “Climate Change Deniers”, or any of the other strawmen erected to keep us distracted.
None of those people are likely to take your money or mine overnight tonight. None of those are likely to take your job or career away from you today or tomorrow. None of those destroyed the value of your home in 2008, nor will any of those do the same tomorrow.
The one percent — and Wall Street acting as its mercenary army — is your real enemy.
…but between this comment and your police state post I’m starting to sense a trend toward hyperbole and paranoia on your part. That said since the red menace was itself mostly paranoia, saying something is worse than that isn’t a very high bar.
…is that laws are public. I thought secret treaties went out of style with divine right of kings. Besides, if Congress acts on them doesn’t the Constitution require they be part of the public record?
The article quoted below refers to negotiations with Iran, but it’s applicable to the constitutionality and legal status of secret treaties in general:
n/t
A treaty is defined as: “…an official agreement that is made between two or more countries or groups.”
Is not an “agreement” really a treaty? And doesn’t the Constitution deal with treaties under Article II, Section 2, Clause 2? Shouldn’t treaties be sent to the Senate by the President for approval by 3/4ths of the Senate? Does the administration have its own lexicon when it would face certain defeat in honest lawmaking?
BTW TPP Fastruck is coming up Friday, the 12th in the House. The claimed undecided Representatives are:
Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) – (202) 225-3341
Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) – (202) 225-2040
Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) – (202) 225-2861
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) – (202) 225-2645
Rep. John Carney (D-DE) – (202) 225-4165
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) – (202) 225-8020
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) – (202) 225-3236
Maybe making a call to any of these people will help.
There have always been executive agreements, and agreements that require the concurrence of the House because funding is involved. I admit to not knowing for sure where the lines are.